142 The Nineteenth Century (1815 -

altogether solved even today. This first became apparent in
the years after the enactment of Catholic emancipation had
demonstrated the state's decision to enforce total formal toler-
ance, as a study of the early days of the ecclesiastical com-
missioners makes plain.** Questions of patronage often dis-
turbed the relations between the queen and her ministers.901
Much less certain is the degree to which the revived Church
penetrated the whole nation: Inglis documents both the efforts
of the clergy to bring the gospel to the ghastly industrialized
towns, and the very limited success they enjoyed.902 Best
finds popular beliefs hostile to the elevated formalism favoured
by some of the most zealous clerics.903 Some historians would
actually consider that the masses were3 at the height of
Victorian piety, essentially alienated from the Church. Later
in the century, their betters began to follow them,904 and the
declining authority of the Church was firmly underlined when
those parts of the realm which could not be considered even
technically anglican refused any longer to support its main-
tenance.905

Halevy believed, without offering much proof, that the

nonconformists harvested better, and this may be so; but the

only substantial work on the dissenting Churches concentrates

on politics and on contributions to the solution of social prob-

lems.906 To Machin the activities of these groups seem less

*oo 0iive j. Brose, Church and Parliament: the reshaping of the Church of

England, 1828-1860. Stanford UP: 1959. Pp. vii, 239. See also

remarks in Gash, n. 643.

901 D. W. R. Bahlman, "The queen, Mr Gladstone, and Church
patronage', VS 3 (1959-60), 349-80.

902 K. S. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England.
L: Routledge: 1963. Pp. viii, 350. Rev: EHR 80, 427.; EcHR* 17,

*°* Geoffrey F. A. Best, 'Popular protestantism in Victorian Britain*,

Kitson Clark Ft (n. 137), 115-42.
*°* P. T. Marsh, The Victorian Church in Decline: Archbishop Tail and the

Church of England 1868-1882. L; Routledge: 1969. Pp. x, 344,

Rev: HJ 12, 7188!

»* P. M. H, Bell, Disestablishment in Ireland and Wales. L: SPCK: 1969.
m Raymond G. Cowherd, The Politics of English Dissent: the religious

aspects of liberal and humanitarian reform movements from 1815 to 1848.

New York UP: 1956. Pp, 242. Rev: EHR 73, i68f.