Nelson & His World

Just today I was speaking to a chap who is doing a thesis about the role of the dissenting churches during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

I was able to show him some of the lists from the Times of churches that had contributed to the Patriotic Fund after Trafalgar. This included various dissenting churches such as Unitarians etc.

But he told me of a contradictory story from 1798. Apparently the congregation at the Union Chapel in Birmingham made a collection in aid of the widows and orphans after the Battle of the Nile.

One of their church leaders then wrote letters (2?) to the congregation telling them that what they had done was inappropriate.

And he refused to preach any sermons at the chapel for some time after.

I can understand that this church may have had an "anti-war" doctrine - but it seems pretty radical to actually disown the innocent victims of war.

I believe that these letters still exist - but unfortunately I don't have an archive reference for them.

I will try and track them down some time and see what the actual content of the letters was. Especially if there is any specific reference to Lord Nelson.

Sorry this is only half a story, but I thought it was worth sharing - even at this stage.

MB

Mark:

many thanks for that interesting post.

I have many personal connections with the Society of Friends (Quakers), which has a strongly pacifist ethos. So I was very intrigued to come across this extract from the Epistle from London Yearly Meeting of 1804 (a sort of AGM of the Quakers) published at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, expressing dismay that not all Friends seem committed to the ways of peace:

Most, if not all people, admit the transcendent excellency of peace. All who adopt the petition ‘Thy kingdom come’, pray for its universal establishment. ……Now, friends, seeing these things cannot be controverted, how do we long that your whole conversation be as becometh the Gospel; and that while any of us are professing to scruple war, they may not in some parts of their conduct be inconsistent with that profession!…Friends, it is an awful thing to stand forth to the nation as the advocates of an inviolable peace; and our testimony loses its efficacy in proportion to the want of consistency in any. . …..Guard against placing your dependence in fleets and armies; be peaceable yourselves, in words and actions, and pray to the Father of the Universe that he would breathe the spirit of reconciliation into the hearts of his erring and contending creatures.’

I would like to follow this up and discover just how much pro-war sentiment there was in the Society at this time, and why.

Interestingly enough, several Quaker friends of mine, some now dead, who were conscientious objectors at the beginning of World War Two, eventually volunteered for military service.

And have you seen my post with a picture of my village's contribution to the Napoleonic war fund - spearheaded by the local vicar, the Rev. Mr Salmon? So the dear old C of E was on board!

(For overseas viewers: the 'dear old C of E' is the Church of England, the officially established church, which seems to have its heart in the right place, even if it is somewhat woolly doctrinally. It arouses fury in the fundamentalists, and a sneaking affection in many others, including me, not least for its crowning glory, the Book of Common Prayer of 1666, one of the most transcendent works of literature ever written in the English language and now criminally abandoned for a 'modernised' replacement which sounds like an extract from the regulations for Value Added Tax. Don't get me started.)