Resistance to Bishop Edward Feild in Newfoundland, 1845-1857, Harbour Buffett : a case study

Hollett, Calvin (2002) Resistance to Bishop Edward Feild in Newfoundland, 1845-1857, Harbour Buffett : a case study. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

This thesis sees religion as a major category of social history. Its focus is the evangelical opposition from 1845 to 1857 to the Tractarianism of Bishop Feild of the Church of England. The people of Harbour Buffett, Placentia Bay, and Thomas E. Collett were catalysts in that opposition which echoed back to England, itself. Refusals to pay to the Church Society were not the source of the opposition but merely one avenue of resistance to the theology and practice of Bishop Feild. -- Bishop Feild introduced Tractarianism to Newfoundland in the context of a robust Roman Catholicism under Bishop Michael Anthony Fleming and a vibrant, expanding Methodism. The latter cooperated with the evangelical Anglicans in the Newfoundland School Society. Feild drove both to toward political collaboration with Roman Catholics in bringing about Responsible Government by pressing for a denominational school system under the control of his clergy. -- These factors were prominent in Placentia Bay with its expanding economy, population and access to government services. Harbour Buffett was founded out of a desire of a scattered and mobile people, mainly of the evangelical Church of England, to centralize and establish a community with a school and a church. In this effort Archdeacon Wix and Bishop Spencer provided leadership. The Methodists and Newfoundland School Society were also a significant support in the community's evangelicalism which became a major obstacle to the introduction Bishop Feild's Tractarianism to Newfoundland. That evangelicalism, however, did not succeed.

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