Richard Enraght
Richard William Enraght was an Irish-born Church of England priest of the late nineteenth century. He was influenced by the Oxford Movement and was included amongst the priests commonly called "Second Generation" Anglo-Catholics.
Enraght believed ritualism in worship was essential for adherence to the Church of England's Catholic tradition. His religious practices and publications on Catholic worship and Church-State relationship led him into conflict with church authorities and were prosecuted under the Public Worship Regulation Act.
Enraght's practices included adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, the use of eucharistic candles, wearing of chasuble and alb, the use of wafer bread in Holy Communion, the ceremonial mixing of water and communion wine, making the sign of the Cross towards the congregation during the Holy Communion service, bowing his head at the Gloria, and allowing the Agnus Dei to be sung, all of which his Bishop forbade. These practices resulted in Enraght being prosecuted by the Church Association's lawyers and put to trial by the presiding Judge, Lord Penzance.
Enraght refused to attend his own trial on grounds of conscience. He was found guilty and received the maximum penalty under the Act: arrest, imprisonment and dismissal from his parish. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church states, "This attempt at suppressing Ritualism so discredited the Act that it led to its being regarded as virtually obsolete." In 2006, the Brighton & Hove City Council honoured Enraght as a "Priest, fighter for religious freedom."
Ministry
Early life and work
Little is known of Richard Enraght's early life; he was born on 23 February 1837 at Moneymore in County Londonderry, Ireland. At the age of 23, in 1860, he graduated with Bachelor of Arts from Trinity College Dublin. The following year he was ordained a Deacon at Gloucester Cathedral by the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. He served as a Curate at St Bartholomew Church, Corsham, Wiltshire, and was ordained into the priesthood in 1862.Career
After spending three years at Corsham, Enraght continued his ministry at St Luke the Evangelist, Sheffield in 1864. Here he revealed his commitment to the Anglo-Catholic cause in the pamphlets, To the Poor the Gospel is Preached in which he criticised the pew-rent system for barring the poor from Churches throughout the country. He also criticised "Bible-Ritualism", that is, over-reliance on scriptural authority for aspects of ceremonial worship. From Sheffield he moved to Wrawby in Lincolnshire for one year in 1866 to continue his ministry. In 1867 Enraght travelled to the south coast of England to take up a curacy under Arthur Wagner, the Tractarian vicar of St Paul's Church, Brighton and "Father" of the Catholic Revival in Brighton.Brighton and "the South Coast Religion"
The Anglican Church in Brighton was heavily influenced by the Oxford Movement, to an extent unparalleled elsewhere in the country apart from London.In Anglo-Catholic circles, Brighton became associated with London, as in the collective title of "London-Brighton and South Coast Religion", a play on a railway company's name "London, Brighton and South Coast Railway". The railway, coincidentally or otherwise, linked all the large and growing centres of Anglo-Catholic worship spreading from London to Brighton and then east and west along coast of Sussex to the neighbouring counties of Kent and Hampshire.
Wagner held Tractarian opinions since his time at Cambridge University. He was the leading light of the Catholic Revival in Brighton, with prolific church and school building, and generous charitable works of building 400 houses for the poor, all at his own expense.
Wagner was the subject of critical debates in the House of Commons for his liturgical practices. Legislation was proposed to halt the Catholic Revival in Brighton by taking away Wagner's authority to install Anglo-Catholic priests as vicars in the five churches which he had financed.
The local press and the Brighton Protestant Defence Association created a hostile reception of ritualistic priests. The Brighton Gazette was vitriolic about any clergy who adhered to the English Catholic Tradition. In 1873 the newspaper reported critically that Fr. Wagner had refused in court to answer questions that would "involve him to breach the confessional". Following this article, Wagner was physically assaulted on the streets of Brighton; his assailants went to prison. Fr. Wagner, characteristically, supported their wives and families at his own expense. Wagner was not the only priest to suffer violence in Brighton. Fr Thomas Perry, from the most advanced ritualist church in Brighton, St Michael & All Angels, stood alone at a Brighton public meeting and defended Wagner's cause. He too was to suffer at the hands of the mob by being beaten-up for his courageous stance.
In another parish in Brighton, at St James Church, Fr. John Purchas was prosecuted for using vestments and the eastward position. His trial at the Court of Arches took three years to conclude, and he refused to attend it. It resulted in the Church of England's paying £7,661 in total costs as Purchas had placed all his property into his wife's name. He was unable to pay the costs of £2,096 the Court awarded against him. To appreciate the scale of these costs, a house in Portslade could be rented for £13 a year in 1872.
While serving under Wagner and sharing his Anglo-Catholic views, Enraght wrote the pamphlet "Who are True Churchmen and Who are Conspirators?". It was distributed nationally. In The Last Settlement of English Reformation in 1662, he stated that he had proved that the English Church was both Catholic and Reformed.
Enraght directed his text at the Church Association to counter their campaign against Anglo-Catholic priests:
"I have now, then, I think, sufficiently demonstrated what I undertook to prove. I have proved that the last Revision and Settlement in 1662 of the Formularies of the English Church, by which the Bishops and Clergy are bound, both by their Ordination promises and by Act of Parliament, was distinctly Catholic. I have proved, therefore, that the Catholic-minded clergy of the English Church alone are in the right, that the charge of "Romanizing" and unfaithfulness to their Church, so persistently brought against them because of their faithful adherence to Catholic truth and practice, is a grievous slander, and that the only consistent course for their opponents to adopt—in order, if they can, to put themselves in the right—is to endeavour to get the Formularies of the Church altered in a “Protestant” direction, and so to alter the basis on which we now stand. Until this be accomplished, which God forbid! Catholic-minded Churchmen, and they only, truly represent the mind of the English Church. All others are simply, more or less, conspirators against "the principles of the" English "Reformation" in its latest, and therefore most carefully considered, development. Consequently, it is obvious that the efforts so strenuously made in the present day by nominal Churchmen of Puritan sentiments to persecute and, if possible, put down the Catholic-minded clergy of the English Church, under a pretended zeal for the principles of the English Reformation, wear an appearance of gross hypocrisy. Puritans, ever since the first dawn of "the Reformation", have been in the Church of England only on sufferance. If any are to be restrained, it must not be those clergy who loyally carry out the principles of the Church which the Revisers of 1662 so strenuously maintained against all attacks, but any who use their position and influence, contrary to their Ordination promises, to carry out the work of the Nonconformists of 1662, and undermine the Reformation principles for which the Revisers of 1662 contended, and which they have preserved in the Formularies of the Church."
The Union Review, Literary Churchman, Church Review and Church Times gave positive reviews to Enraght's essay "Who are True Churchmen and Who are Conspirators".
Priest in charge of Portslade by Sea with Hangleton
In 1871, after serving as a curate to Fr. Wagner, the vicar of St Paul's, Brighton, Reverend Richard William Enraght continued his ministry at , Portslade by Sea. He was appointed Priest in Charge of the District Church of St Andrew, Portslade by Sea with St Helen's Church, Hangleton, by the Vicar of St Nicolas Church, Portslade who, at that time, held the patronage of St Andrew's. Enraght's appointment was not without controversy.The vicar of the neighbouring Parish of Southwick appealed to the Bishop of Chichester. He questioned the authority of the Vicar of Portslade to make the appointment of a priest to Portslade by Sea.
As Portslade was only three miles from Brighton with good railway links, Fr. Enraght SSC was able to continue as an officer of the Brighton Branch of the Society of the Holy Cross. This was described by its national leadership "as one of the most promising and was carrying on a vigorous campaign in Brighton." While living in Brighton and Portslade, Enraght also served as the organising secretary for the National Association for the Promotion of Freedom of Worship and campaigned for the abolition of "pew-rents." St Andrew Church, Portslade, was one of the first churches in Sussex never to have had "pew-rents".
In Portslade, Fr. Enraght continued to publish pamphlets and letters to The Brighton Gazette promoting adherence to the English Catholic Tradition within the Church of England. As priest in charge of Portslade,Enraght published the pamphlets "Catholic Worship", that promoted the importance and necessity of ritual in worship, and "The Real Presence and Holy Scripture", which the Church Times described as "A masterly exposition of the texts which more directly relate to the Blessed Eucharist".
Such writings put Enraght in confrontation with the Brighton Gazette, a local paper that supported the Public Worship Regulation Act and tried to ensure no hint of ritualism took place in local worship. The Brighton Gazette's editorial of 8 January 1874 was titled "Protestant Reaction", and sub-titled, 'a warning to polemics' from which these quotes are taken;
"True Protestants can scarcely desire the loss of power and influence this would involve and the great help it would be to the Papists to re-establish their supremacy in Britain, through the Ritualists." The Gazette also accused Fr. Enraght of Puseyism and of trying to turn the local St Nicolas Church School in Portslade into a Puseyite school.
Another example of the Gazette's biased reporting, for Thursday 21 May 1874:
In 1874 the Government, under the leadership of Disraeli, with the backing of both primates and many bishops, decided to crush ritualism in the Church of England by passing the Public Worship Regulation Act to control religious belief.
Wagner, Purchas, Enraght and the many other Brighton Anglo-Catholic priests all carried out their ministries to large sympathetic congregations. Against the backdrop of public support for Anglo-Catholic priests the local press continued in their campaign to use the Public Worship Regulation Act to rid ritualism from the churches of Brighton. From the Brighton Gazette's editorial for 23 April 1874 on the topic of the Public Worship Regulation Act, quote, "Let us have the law obeyed and let there be an easy mode of redress from offending clergyman".
In the winter of 1874 Fr. Enraght left Portslade to take on a new challenge in the City of Birmingham as Vicar of Holy Trinity, Bordesley, an area much like Brighton where the Church Association were very active. Portslade was a good stepping stone in Enraght's ministry as this was his first Parish where he had sole responsibility for the parishioners and being so close to Brighton he was able to maintain his links with the Brighton Branch of the SSC and with his former Vicar, Fr. Wagner.