29 January 1536 A.D. Queen Catherine of Aragon Buried at Peterborough Cathedral, UK

29 January 1536 A.D.  Queen Catherine of Aragon Buried at Peterborough Cathedral, UK

Grueninger, Natalie. “The death of Catherine of Aragon.”  On the Tudor Trail.  7 Jan 2011. http://onthetudortrail.com/Blog/2011/01/07/the-death-of-catherine-of-aragon/.  Accessed 7 Jan 2015.

The death of Catherine of Aragon

 

 ‘The most virtuous woman I have ever known and the highest hearted, but too quick to trust that others were like herself, and too slow to do a little ill that much good might come of it.’

(Eustace Chapuys describing Catherine of Aragon after her death)

 

Catherine of Aragon by Michael Sittow c. 1502

 

On the 13^th December 1535, Chapuys wrote that Catherine of Aragon ‘has recovered and is now well’ (Tremlett, Pg. 417) but on the 29^th December Dr Ortiz, Catherine’s doctor, sent an urgent message to Chapuys alerting him to the fact that she had ‘had a serious relapse’ and that he should immediately seek permission to visit Catherine at Kimbolton Castle.

This Chapuys did with great haste, seeking permission from Henry the very next day at Greenwich. Henry gave Chapuys permission to visit Catherine but he was not as generous with Mary, instead turning down her request to visit her mother on her deathbed (Tremlett, Pg. 418).

So, 50-year-old Catherine was forced to spend her final days without the support and company of her beloved daughter but she did receive a surprise visit from her loyal friend, Maria de Salinas. Salinas had gone to great lengths to be by her mistress’ side. She disguised herself and fabricated a story about having fallen off her horse and claimed to desperately need a place in which to recover. Tremlett describes how Salinas begged the men who were running the household to not throw her out into the cold and assured them that the letter licensing her to enter Kimbolton was on its way (Pg. 419).  The charade must have been convincing because the steward allowed Salinas to enter and she proceeded directly to Catherine’s chamber.

Chapuys arrived the following day. By this time Catherine was very ill, she had difficulty sitting up, hadn’t eaten or slept very much in days and complained of a terrible pain in her stomach. Although very good friends, Chapuys and Catherine conducted their meeting in the presence of several witnesses to ensure that Henry VIII could not claim that they had plotted against him even at this late stage.

Chapuys visited Catherine every afternoon for the following four days over which time Catherine’s health began to improve. She was now able to hold down her food and on the fourth day, Chapuys thought it safe to return to London (Tremlett, Pg. 421).

On the 6^th of January all was well but that evening things took a turn for the worse. Catherine’s condition deteriorated and she knew her end was near. According to Giles Tremlett, Catherine’s famous last letter that she is said to have dictated to her husband from her deathbed ‘is almost certainly fictitious’ (Pg. 422). He does though concede that the letter may have reflected what she was feeling in the early hours of the 7^th of January. This is what was penned:

My most dear Lord, King, and Husband, The hour of my death now approaching, I cannot choose but, out of the love I bear you, to advise you of your soul’s health, which you ought to prefer before all considerations of the world or flesh whatsoever. For which yet you have cast me into many calamities, and yourself into many troubles. But I forgive you all, and pray God to do so likewise. For the rest, I commend unto you Mary, our daughter, beseeching you to be a good father to her. I must entreat you also to look after my maids, and give them in marriage, which is not much, they being but three, and to all my other servants, a year’s pay besides their due, lest otherwise they should be unprovided for until they find new employment. Lastly, I want only one true thing, to make this vow: that, in this life, mine eyes desire you alone, May God protect you.

Death now had a firm grip on Catherine and the bishop of Llandaff administered extreme unction. Prayer had been Catherine’s companion all her life and now in her final moments it was her only consolation.

On the 7^th January at approximately two o’clock, Catherine of Aragon, left all her worldly troubles behind. Henry’s Spanish Queen was no more and Henry’s court was left to celebrate.

Eric Ives claims that the news of Catherine’s death was greeted at court ‘by an outburst of relief and enthusiasm for the Boleyn marriage’ (Pg. 295). This seems very plausible considering that their great enemy was now dead and that Queen Anne Boleyn was pregnant with the heir to the Tudor throne.

At hearing the news of his first wife’s death, Henry cried, ‘God be praised that we are free from all suspicion of war!’ (Ives, Pg. 295). Anne was overjoyed and rewarded the messenger who brought the news to Greenwich a ‘handsome present’ – for the first time in her reign; Anne was now the one and only Queen of England.

Ives describes the events of the day after Catherine’s death in his biography ‘The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn’,

“The next day, Sunday, the king and queen appeared in joyful yellow from top to toe, and Elizabeth was triumphantly paraded to church. After dinner Henry went down into the Great Hall, where the ladies of the court were dancing, with his sixteen-month-old daughter in his arms, showing her off to one and another. After several days of such paternal enthusiasm, he evidently decided that something more masculine was called for, and the tiltyard was soon busy with his favourite form of self-exhibition.” (Pg. 295)

Although Alison Weir initially claimed that Henry and Anne wore yellow ‘as a mark of respect for the woman that Henry insisted had been his sister-in-law’ as yellow was the colour of royal mourning in Spain (Pg. 299), after further research, Alison found the claim to be unsubstantiated and corrected this error in The Lady in the Tower . Here she plainly states,

‘It is a misconception that yellow was the colour of Spanish Royal mourning: Anne’s choice of garb was no less than a calculated insult to the memory of the woman she had supplanted.’ (Pg. 18)

Although the court seemed happy and relieved at the news of Catherine’s death, not everybody was celebrating. Chapuys was greatly mourning Catherine’s passing and some people even suspected that she had been poisoned, on Henry’s orders, although this seems highly unlikely and in one historians words ‘ludicrous’.

Antonia Fraser argues that Henry was aware that Catherine was gravely ill and that ‘God was likely to carry off Catherine soon enough without extra help’, she also states that Henry VIII regarded poison ‘with moral repugnance’ and preferred to punish those that went against his authority in public using other weapons (i.e. Axe and rope) rather than using poison in secret (Pg. 228).

In Tremlett’s biography, ‘Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen’, he states that she almost certainly died of cancer (Pg. 424). The embalmer whose job it was to prepare Catherine’s corpse ‘found all the internal organs as healthy and normal as possible, with the exception of the heart, which was quite black and hideous to look at’ (Pg. 424). Tremlett describes how the embalmer cut Catherine’s heart in half and washed it in an attempt to cleanse the heart of its black appearance. He also commented on another ‘strange black body’ attached to it that Tremlett believes was caused by a ‘secondary melanotic sarcoma’ (Pg. 424).

The fact remained that although not everybody was rejoicing at Catherine’s passing, her death failed to produce any rebellion against Henry.

Catherine of Aragon's tomb at Peterborough Cathedral

 

Catherine was buried at Peterborough Abbey, later cathedral, on 29^th January and was given a funeral ceremony befitting her position as ‘dowager princess’.

Alison Weir describes the funeral in The Six Wives of Henry VIII:

“The Chief mourners were lady Bedingfield, the young Duchess of Suffolk and the Countess of Cumberland, Eleanor Brandon, the king’s niece…The funeral sermon was preached by John Hilsey, who had replaced Fisher as Bishop of Rochester; he was a staunch King’s man, and alleged, against all truth, that Katherine had acknowledged at the end that she had never been the rightful Queen of England. Then the woman who had in reality stoutly maintained to the last that she had been the King’s wife was buried as Dowager Princess of Wales in the abbey church.” (Pg. 300)

Henry VIII did not attend the funeral and instead remained at Greenwich where he wore ‘black mourning clothes and attended a solemn mass’ (Weir, Pg. 300). Henry VIII also refused to allow Mary to attend her mother’s funeral. He had denied her leave to visit her mother on her deathbed and he now deprived her of this final moment.

Chapuys chose not to attend, as they were not burying Catherine as Queen.

It seems though that Catherine had the last laugh because on the very day of her burial, Queen Anne Boleyn miscarried of her saviour.

Catherine of Aragon's badge

 

Today a wooden plaque on Catherine’s tomb describes her as: ‘A queen cherished by the English people for her loyalty, piety, courage and compassion’.

Catherine of Aragon always- Humble and Loyal.

(Read about Anne Boleyn’s Reaction to Catherine of Aragon’s Death)

References

Fraser, A. The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 1992.

Ives, E. The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 2004.

Tremlett, G. Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen, 2010.

Weir, A. The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 2007.

January 4th Century A.D. Diocese of London, UK

January 4^th Century A.D.  Diocese of London, UK

Bishop of London

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bishop of London
Bishopric
Anglican
Incumbent: Richard Chartres
Province:	Canterbury
Diocese:	London
Cathedral:	St Paul's Cathedral
First Bishop:	Thean
Formation:	4th century, but current establishment from 604

 

Anglicanism portal

The Bishop of London is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of London in the Province of Canterbury.

The diocese covers 458 km² (177 sq. mi.) of 17 boroughs of Greater London north of the River Thames (historically the County of Middlesex) and a small part of the County of Surrey. The see is in the City of London where the seat is located at the Cathedral Church of Saint Paul which was founded as a cathedral in 604 and was rebuilt from 1675 following the Great Fire of London (1666).^{[citation needed]}

Third in seniority in the Church of England after the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the bishop is one of five senior bishops, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of Durham and the Bishop of Winchester, who sit as of right, each as one of the 26 Lords Spiritual in the House of Lords (as opposed to the remaining diocesan bishops of lesser rank, for whom elevation to one of the seats reserved is attained upon its vacancy and is determined by chronological seniority).^{[citation needed]}

The bishop's residence is The Old Deanery, Dean's Court, London. Previously, for over 1000 years, Fulham Palace was the residence although, from the 18th century, London House next to the Bishop's Chapel in Aldersgate Street was where he had his chambers.^{[citation needed]}

The Bishop of London originally had responsibility for the church in the British colonies in North America, although after the American Revolution of 1776, all that remained under his jurisdiction were the islands of the British West Indies. The diocese was further reduced in 1846, when the counties of Essex and Hertfordshire were ceded to the Diocese of Rochester.^{[citation needed]}

The current and 132nd Bishop of London is the Right Reverend and Right Honourable Richard John Carew Chartres, who was installed on 26 January 1996 and who signs Richard Londin. The diocesan bishop of London has had direct episcopal oversight in the Two Cities area since the institution of the London area scheme in 1979.^[1]

Contents 

• 1 History
• 2 List of bishops
• 3 References
• 4 Bibliography
• 5 External links

History

A certificate of ordination (with seal) given at Westminster by Richard Terrick, Bishop of London, 24 February 1770

Bede records that in AD 604 St Augustine consecrated Mellitus as the first bishop to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Saxons and their king, Sæberht of Essex. Sæberht's uncle and overlord, Æthelberht, king of Kent, built a church dedicated to St Paul in London, as the seat of the new bishop.^[2]

Because the bishop's diocese includes the royal palaces and the seat of government at Westminster, he has been regarded as the "King's bishop" and has historically had considerable influence with members of the Royal Family and leading politicians of the day. Since 1748 it has been customary to appoint the Bishop of London to the post of Dean of the Chapel Royal, which has the amusing effect of putting under the bishop's jurisdiction, as dean, several chapels (at the Tower of London and St. James's Palace, among others) which are geographically in the Diocese of London but, as royal peculiars, are specifically outside the bishop's jurisdiction as bishop.

The recorded antiquity of the office dates back to the Roman province of Britannia when 16 named bishops are listed by Jocelyne of Furness in his work Bishops. Stowe noted that this was the sole available source of these names. However, the earlier of the two bishops named Restitutus in the work was alive in 314, the year in which he was named as attending the Council of Arles. The Saxon bishopric of which the present diocese is the direct successor was established in 604 by Mellitus, the same year as St Paul's Cathedral (and also the Diocese of Rochester) were founded.

16 June 1752 A.D. (CoE) Bishop Joseph Butler Passes in Bath, UK

16 June 1752 A.D.  (CoE) Bishop Joseph Butler Passes in Bath, UK

White, David E. “Joseph Butler (1692-1752).  International Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  N.d. http://www.iep.utm.edu/butler/. Accessed 3 May 2014.

Joseph Butler (1692—1752)

Bishop Joseph Butler is a well-known religious philosopher of the eighteenth century. He is still read and discussed among contemporary philosophers, especially for arguments against some major figures in the history of philosophy, such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. In his Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel (1729), Butler argues against Hobbes’s egoism, and in the Analogy of Religion (1736), he argues against Locke’s memory-based theory of personal identity.

Overall, Butler’s philosophy is largely defensive. His general strategy is to accept the received systems of morality and religion and, then, defend them against those who think that such systems can be refuted or disregarded. Butler ultimately attempts to naturalize morality and religion, though not in an overly reductive way, by showing that they are essential components of nature and common life. He argues that nature is a moral system to which humans are adapted via conscience. Thus, in denying morality, Butler takes his opponents to be denying our very nature, which is untenable. Given this conception of nature as a moral system and certain proofs of God’s existence, Butler is then in a position to defend religion by addressing objections to it, such as the problem of evil.

This article provides an overview of Butler’s life, works, and influence with special attention paid to his writings on religion and ethics. The totality of his work addresses the questions: Why be moral? Why be religious? Which morality? Which religion? In attempting to answer such questions, Butler develops a philosophy that possesses a unity often neglected by those who read him selectively. The philosophy that develops is one according to which religion and morality are grounded in the natural world order.

Table of Contents

1.      Life

2.      Human Nature as Made for Virtue

3.      Human Life as in the Presence of God

4.      This Life as a Prelude to a Future Life

5.      The World as a Moral Order

6.      The Christian Scriptures as a Revelation

7.      Public Institutions as Moral Agents

8.      Butler’s Influence

9.      References and Further Reading

1.      Works by Butler

2.      Secondary Literature

1. Life

Joseph Butler was born into a Presbyterian family at Wantage. He attended a dissenting academy, but then converted to the Church of England intent on an ecclesiastical career. Butler expressed distaste for Oxford’s intellectual conventions while a student at Oriel College; he preferred the newer styles of thought, especially those of John Locke, the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson, leading David Hume to characterize Butler as one of those “who have begun to put the science of man on a new footing, and have engaged the attention, and excited the curiosity of the public.” Butler benefited from the support of Samuel Clarke and the Talbot family.

In 1719, Butler was appointed to his first job, preacher to the Rolls Chapel in Chancery Lane, London. Butler’s anonymous letters to Clarke had been published in 1716, but a selection of his Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel (1729) was the first work published under his name. The Rolls sermons are still widely read and have held the attention of secular philosophers more than any other sermons in history. Butler moved north and became rector of Stanhope in 1725. Only at this point is his life documented in any detail, and his tenure is remembered mainly for the Analogy of Religion (1736). Soon after publication of that work, Butler became Bishop of Bristol. Queen Caroline had died urging his preferment, but Bristol was one of the poorest sees, and Butler expressed some displeasure in accepting it. Once Butler became dean of St. Paul’s in 1740, he was able to use that income to support his work in Bristol. In 1750, not long before his death, Butler was elevated to Durham, one of the richest bishoprics. The tradition that Butler declined the See of Canterbury was conclusively discredited by Norman Sykes (1936), but continues to be repeated uncritically in many reference works. Butler’s famous encounter with John Wesley has only recently been reconstructed in as full detail as seems possible given the state of the surviving evidence, and we are now left with little hope of ever knowing what their actual relationship was. They disagreed, certainly, on Wesley’s right to preach without a license, and on this point Butler seems entirely in the right; but Butler may have supported Wesley more than he opposed him, and Wesley seems entirely sincere in his praise of the Analogy.

Butler has become an icon of a highly intellectualized, even rarefied, theology, “wafted in a cloud of metaphysics,” as Horace Walpole said. Ironically, Butler refused as a matter of principle to write speculative works or to pursue curiosity. All his writings were directly related to the performance of his duties at the time or to career advancement. From the Rolls sermons on, all his works are devoted to pastoral philosophy.

A pastoral philosopher gives philosophically persuasive arguments for seeing life in a particular way when such a seeing-as may have a decisive effect on practice. Butler had little interest in, and only occasionally practiced, natural theology in the scholastic sense; his intent is rather defensive: to answer those who claim that morals and religion, as conventionally understood, may be safely disregarded. Butler tried to show, as a refutation of the practice of his day (as he perceived it), that morals and religion are natural extensions of the common way of life usually taken for granted, and thus that those who would dispense with them bear a burden of proof they are unable to discharge. In arguing that morals and religion are favored by a presumption already acknowledged in ordinary life, Butler employs many types of appeal, at least some of which would be fallacious if used in an attempted demonstrative argument.

2. Human Nature as Made for Virtue

Butler’s argument for morality, found primarily in his sermons, is an attempt to show that morality is a matter of following human nature. To develop this argument, he introduces the notions of nature and of a system. There are, he says, various parts to human nature, and they are arranged hierarchically. The fact that human nature is hierarchically ordered is not what makes us manifestly adapted to virtue, rather, it is what Butler calls “conscience” that is at the top of this hierarchy. Butler does sometimes refer to the conscience as the voice of God; but, contrary to what is sometimes alleged, he never relies on divine authority in asserting the supremacy, the universality or the reliability of conscience. Butler clearly believes in the autonomy of the conscience as a secular organ of knowledge.

Whether the conscience judges principles, actions or persons is not clear, perhaps deliberately since such distinctions are of no practical significance. What Butler is concerned to show is that to dismiss morality is in effect to dismiss our own nature, and therefore absurd. As to which morality we are to follow, Butler seems to have in mind the common core of civilized standards. He stresses the degree of agreement and reliability of conscience without denying some differences remain. All that is required for his argument to go through is that the opponent accept in practice that conscience is the supreme authority in human nature and that we ought not to disregard our own nature.

The most significant recent challenge to Butler’s moral theory is by Nicholas Sturgeon (1976), a reply to which appears in Stephen Darwall (1995).

Besides the appeal to the rank of conscience, Butler offered many other observations in his attempt to show that we are made for (that is, especially suited to) virtue. In a famous attack on the egoistic philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, he argues that benevolence is as much a part of human nature as self-love. Butler also argues that various other aspects of human nature are adapted to virtue, sometimes in surprising ways. For example, he argues that resentment is needed to balance benevolence. He also deals forthrightly with self-deception.

Only three of the fifteen sermons deal with explicitly religious themes: the sermons on the love of God and the sermon on ignorance.

3. Human Life as in the Presence of God

Butler’s views on our knowledge of God are among the most frequently misstated aspects of his philosophy. Lewis White Beck’s exposition (1937) of this neglected aspect of Butler’s philosophy has itself been generally neglected, and both friends and foes frequently assert that Butler “assumed” that God exists. Butler never assumes the existence of God; rather, at least after his exchange with Clarke, he takes it as granted that God’s existence can be and has been proved to the satisfaction of those who were party to the discussion in his time. The charge, frequently repeated since the mid-nineteenth century, that Butler’s position is reversible once an opponent refuses to grant God’s existence, is therefore groundless. It is true that Butler does not expound any proof of God’s existence. (Notice that this fact makes it problematic to identify him with the character Cleanthes in Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.) However, he does endorse many such proofs, using common names rather than citing specific texts.

The sermons on the love of God are rarely read today, but they provide abundant evidence that Butler’s God is not some remote deity who created the world and then lost interest in it. On the contrary, the difference that God makes to us is the difference that a lively sense of God’s presence makes.

4. This Life as a Prelude to a Future Life

Butler considered the expectation of a future life to be the foundation of all our hopes and fears. He does not state exactly why this is so, and most commentators have concluded that he is referring to hopes and fears regarding what will happen to us as individuals when we die. Such an intention would be contrary to Butler’s general line of thought. More consonant with what Butler does say is the Platonic point that one cannot truly benefit by acting viciously and then escaping punishment. Since that is what appears to happen in this world, appearances must be denied. Secondly, and here Butler would agree with Hume, in this world there is an appearance that the superintendence of the universe is not entirely just. Thus, there are three logical options: (1) the universe is ultimately unjust, (2) contrary to appearances, this world is somehow just, or (3) the universe is just, but only when viewed more broadly than we are able to see now. Given these options, Butler thinks there are good practical reasons for accepting the third in practice.

The first chapter of the Analogy is devoted to the argument that what little we know of the nature of death is insufficient to warrant an assurance that death is the end of us. And when we lack sufficient warrant for acting on the presumption of a change, we must act on the presumption of continuance. The recurrent objection, offered by such otherwise sympathetic readers as Richard Swinburne, is that in the physical destruction of the body, we do have sufficient warrant. Roderick Chisholm (1986) has proposed a counter to this criticism.

Butler appends to his discussion of a future life a brief essay on personal identity, and this is the only part of the Analogy widely read today. That it is read independently is perhaps just as well since it is difficult to see how it is related to the general argument. Butler says he needs to answer objections to personal identity continuing after death, which he certainly must do. But the view he proposes to refute is Locke’s, and Locke seemed not to see that his theory of personal identity presented a problem for expectation of a future life. Locke’s theory was that memory is constitutive of personal identity. Even if Butler is right in his objection to Locke’s theory, he certainly needs personal memories to be retained since they are presupposed by his theory of rewards and punishments after death.

5. The World as a Moral Order

Butler’s work is directed mainly against skeptics (and those inclined toward skepticism) and as an aid for those who propose to argue with skeptics. The general motivation for his work is to overcome intellectual embarrassment at accepting the received systems of morals and religion. To succeed, Butler must present a case that is plausible if not fully probative, and he must do so without resorting to an overly reductive account of morals and religion. Butler’s strategy is to naturalize morals and religion. Although generally scorning scholastic methods, Butler does accept the ontological argument for God’s existence, the appeal to the unity and simplicity of the soul and the distinction of natural and revealed religion. The fundamental doctrine of natural religion is the efficacy of morals—that the categories of virtue and vice, already discussed in terms of human nature, have application to the larger world of nature. To some, fortune and misfortune in this world seem not to be correlated with any moral scheme. But, with numerous examples, Butler argues that the world as we ordinarily experience it does have the appearance of a moral order.

Butler takes up two objections: the possibility that the doctrine of necessity is true and the familiar problem of evil. With regard to necessity, he argues that, even if such is the case, we are in no position to live in accord with necessity since we cannot see our own or others’ actions as entirely necessitated. Butler’s approach to the problem of evil is to appeal to human ignorance, a principal theme in various aspects of his work. What Butler must show is that we do not know of the actual occurrence of any event such that it could not be part of a just world. Since he does appeal to our ignorance, Butler cannot be said to have produced a theodicy, a justification of the ways of God to us, but his strategy may show a greater intellectual integrity, and may be sufficient for his purposes.

6. The Christian Scriptures as a Revelation

Butler’s treatment of revealed religion is less satisfactory, since he had only a partial understanding of modern biblical criticism. Butler does insist on treating the Bible like any other book for critical purposes. He maintains that if any biblical teaching appears immoral or contrary to what we know by our natural faculties, then that alone is sufficient reason for seeking another interpretation of the scripture. The point of a revelation is to supplement natural knowledge, not to overrule it. Far from compromising the role of religion, this view is entailed by the fact that nature, natural knowledge and revelation all have a common source in God.

It is only in the second part of his Analogy that Butler argues against the deists. The characterization of his work as on the whole a reply to the deists is entirely a modern invention and is not found anywhere in the first century of reactions.

Only one chapter of the Analogy is devoted to the “Christian evidences” of miracles and prophecy, and even there Butler confines himself to some judicious remarks on the logical character of the arguments, especially with regard to miracles. In general, Butler presents revelation as wholly consistent with, but also genuinely supplemental of, natural knowledge. Hume says he castrated his Treatise of Human Nature (1739/1740) out of regards for Butler. But based on the texts that survive, there is no reason to think Hume would have gotten the better of the argument. Charles Babbage (1837) eventually showed why Hume had no valid objection to Butler.

Unfortunately, Butler’s account of scripture is entirely two-dimensional. He does not doubt the point that scripture was written in terms properly applicable to a previous state of society, but he has little sense of the canonical books themselves being redactions of a multitude of oral and literary traditions and sources.

7. Public Institutions as Moral Agents

In the six sermons preserved from the years he served as the Bishop of Bristol, Butler defends the moral nature of various philanthropic and political institutions of his day. And in his Charge to the Clergy at Durham, he presents a concise rationale for the Church.

8. Butler’s Influence

Ernest Mossner (1936) is still the most useful survey of Butler’s influence. Mossner claims that Butler was widely read in his own time, but his evidence may be insufficient to convince some. However that may be, there is no doubt that by the late eighteenth century Butler was widely read in Scottish universities, and from the early nineteenth century at Oxford, Cambridge and many American colleges, perhaps especially because the Scottish influence was so strong in America. Butler’s work impressed David Hume and John Wesley, and Thomas Reid, Adam Smith and David Hartley considered themselves Butlerians. Butler was a great favorite of the Tractarians, but the association with them may have worked against his ultimate influence in England, especially since Newman attributed his own conversion to the Roman Church to his study of Butler. S. T. Coleridge was among the first to urge study of the sermons and to disparage the Analogy. The decline of interest in the Analogy in the late nineteenth century has never been satisfactorily explained, but Leslie Stephen’s critical work was especially influential.

The editions most frequently cited today appeared only after wide interest in Butler’s Analogy had evaporated. The total editions are sometimes said to be countless, but this is true only in the sense that there are no agreed criteria for individuating editions. The numerous ancillary essays and study guides are still useful as evidence of how Butler was studied and understood. At its height, Butler’s influence cut across protestant denominational lines and party differences in the Church of England, but serious interest in the Analogy is now concentrated among certain Anglican writers.

9. References and Further Reading

Butler’s first biography appeared in the supplement to the Biographia Britannica (London, 1766). The most frequently reprinted biography is by Andrew Kippis and appeared in his second edition of the Biographia Britannica (London, 1778-93). This second edition is often confused with the supplement to the first edition. The only full biography is Bartlett (1839).

The best modern edition of Butler’s works is J.H. Bernard’s, but it is a modernized text, as of 1900, and contains errors. Serious readers may consult the original editions, now available on microfilm.

a. Works by Butler

• Several Letters to the Reverend Dr. Clarke. London: Knapton, 1716.
• Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel. London: second edition, 1729; six sermons added in the 1749 edition.
• Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Nature. London: Knapton, 1736.
• Charge Delivered to the Clergy. Durham: Lane, 1751.

b. Secondary Literature

• Babbage, Charles. Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. London: J. Murray, 1837.
• Babolin, Albino. Joseph Butler. Padova: LaGarangola, 1973. 2 vols.
• Baker, Frank. “John Wesley and Bishop Joseph Butler: A Fragment of Wesley’s Manuscript Journal 16th to 24th August 1739.” Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society. 42 (May 1980) 93-100.
• Bartlett, Thomas. Memoirs of the Life, Character and Writings of Joseph Butler. London: John W. Parker, 1839.
• Beck, Lewis White. “A Neglected Aspect of Butler’s Ethics.” Sophia 5 (1937) 11-15.
• Butler, J.F. “John Wesley’s Defense Before Bishop Butler.” Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society. 20 (1935) 63-67.
• Butler, J.F. “John Wesley’s Defense Before Bishop Butler: A Further Note.” Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society. 20 (1936) 193-194.
• Chisholm, Roderick. “Self-Profile” in Roderick M. Chisholm, ed. Radu J. Bogdan. Dordrecht:Reidel, 1986.
• Cunliffe, Christopher, ed. Joseph Butler’s Moral and Religious Thought: Tercentenary Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
• Darwall, Stephen. The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’ 1640-1740. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
• Mossner, E.C. Bishop Butler and the Age of Reason. New York: Macmillan, 1936.
• Penelhum, Terence. Butler. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.
• Stephen, Leslie. “Butler, Joseph.” Dictionary of National Biography, 1886.
• Sturgeon, Nicholas L. “Nature and Conscience in Butler’s Ethics.” Philosophical Review 85 (1976) 316-356.
• Sykes, Norman. “Bishop Butler and the Primacy” Theology (1936) 132- 137.
• Sykes, Norman. “Bishop Butler and the Primacy” (letter) Theology (1958) 23.

Author Information

David E. White
Email: david@bishopbutlersociety.org
St. John Fisher College
U. S. A.