- Beilby Porteus
Beilby Porteus or Porteous (
May 8 ,1731 –May 13 ,1809 ), successivelyBishop of Chester and of London was anAnglican reformer and leading abolitionist in England. He was the first Anglican in a position of authority to seriously challenge the Church's position onslavery .Early life
Beilby Porteus was the son of Robert Porteus, a native of
Virginia in British America, who had returned to England in 1720. Educated atYork andRipon , he was a classics scholar at Christ's College, Cambridge, becoming a fellow in 1752. In 1759 he won theSeatonian Prize for his poem "Death: A Poetical Essay", a work for which he is still remembered.He was ordained as a
priest in 1757, and by 1762 had been appointed domesticchaplain toThomas Secker ,Archbishop of Canterbury and, from 1769, chaplain to King George III. He is listed as one of thelent en preachers at theChapel Royal , Whitehall in 1771, 1773 and 1774. [LondonGazette|issue=11115|startpage=1|date=2 February 1771 |accessdate=2008-06-02] [LondonGazette|issue=11326|startpage=1|date=9 February 1773 |accessdate=2008-06-02] [LondonGazette|issue=11427|startpage=1|date=29 January 1774 |accessdate=2008-06-02] He was alsoRector ofLambeth (a living shared between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Crown) from 1767–1777. [ [http://www.theclergydatabase.org.uk/cce/apps/DisplayAppointment.jsp?CDBAppRedID=257020 Appointment Record for Lambeth] from theClergy of the Church of England Database . Retrieved2008-06-02 ] [LondonGazette|issue=11744|startpage=2|date=11 February 1777 |accessdate=2008-06-02]The fight against slavery
In 1776, Dr Porteus was nominated as
Bishop of Chester , taking up the appointment in 1777. [LondonGazette|issue=11737|startpage=1|date=18 January 1777 |accessdate=2008-06-02] He took a keen interest in the affairs of theSociety for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts .As Bishop of Chester, Porteus became known as a noted abolitionist. He took a deep interest in the plight of West Indian slaves, preaching and campaigning actively against the
slave trade and taking part in many debates in theHouse of Lords .Renowned as a scholar and a popular
preacher , it was in 1783 that the young bishop was to first come to national attention by preaching his most famous and influentialsermon .The Anniversary Sermon
Porteus used the opportunity afforded by the invitation to preach the 1783 Anniversary Sermon of the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) to criticise the Church’s role in ignoring the plight of the 350 slaves on its Codrington Estates inBarbados , and to recommend means by which the lot of slaves there could be improved.It was a well-reasoned and much-reprinted plea for "The Civilisation, Improvement and Conversion of the Negroe Slaves in the British West-India Islands Recommended", and was preached before forty members of the society, including eleven
bishop s of the Church of England. When this largely fell upon deaf ears, Porteus next began work on his "Plan for the Effectual Conversion of the Slaves of the Codrington Estate", which he presented to the SPG committee in 1784 and, when it was turned down, again in 1789.These were the first challenges to the establishment in an eventual 26 year campaign to eradicate slavery in the British West Indian colonies. Porteus made a huge contribution and eventually turned to other means of achieving his aims, including writing, encouraging and aiding the political initiatives of
Thomas Clarkson ,William Wilberforce and others, and supporting the sending of mission workers to Barbados andBermuda .He was active in the establishment of
Sunday School s in every parish, an early patron of theChurch Missionary Society and one of the founder members of theBritish and Foreign Bible Society , of which he became vice-president.Bishop of London
In 1787, Porteus was translated to the bishopric of London [LondonGazette|issue=12938|startpage=533|date=
13 November 1787 |accessdate=2008-06-02] on the advice of William Pitt (the Younger), a position he held until his death in 1809. As his customary, he was also appointed to the Privy Council, andDean of the Chapel Royal . [LondonGazette|issue=12944|startpage=570|date=4 December 1787 |accessdate=2008-06-02]In 1788, Porteus supported
Sir William Dolben ’s Slave Trade Bill from the bench of bishops, and over the next quarter century he became the leading advocate within the Church of England for the abolition of slavery, lending support to such men as Wilberforce,Granville Sharp , Henry Thornton andZachary Macaulay to secure the eventual passage of the Slave Trade Bill in 1807.In view of his passionate involvement in the anti-slavery movement and his friendship with other leading abolitionists, it was especially appropriate that, as Bishop of London, he should now find himself with official responsibility for the spiritual welfare of the British colonies overseas. He was responsible for missions to the
West Indies and published volumes of sermons and tracts.During much of the following 20 years—a time of huge national and international political upheaval, Porteus was in a position to influence opinion in the influential circles of the Court, the government, the
City of London and the highest echelons of Georgian society.Other reforms
Porteus did this, partly by encouraging debate on subjects as diverse as the slave trade,
Catholic emancipation , the pay and conditions of low-paidclergy , the perceived excesses of entertainment taking place on Sundays—and by becoming a vocal supporter of William Wilberforce,Hannah More and theClapham Sect of evangelical social reformers. He vigorously opposed the spread of the principles of theFrench Revolution as well as the doctrines ofThomas Paine 's "Age of Reason". He was also appointed as one of the members of the "Board for Encouragement of Agriculture and internal Improvement" in 1793. [LondonGazette|issue=13564|startpage=738|date=27 August 1793 |accessdate=2008-06-02]In 1788, George III had again lapsed into one of his periods of mental derangement (now diagnosed as
Porphyria ), after which there was a Service of Thanksgiving for his recovery in 1789 inSt Paul's Cathedral , at which Porteus himself preached.The war against
Napoleon began in 1794 and was to drag on for another twenty years. Porteus' tenure as Bishop of London saw not only services of thanksgiving for British victories at the Battles of Cape St. Vincent, the Nile and Copenhagen, but the great national outpouring of sorrow at the death of Nelson in 1805, and hisstate funeral service in St Paul's Cathedral in 1806. As Bishop of London, Porteus may have officiated at some of these services, although it is unlikely that he did so at Nelson's funeral, because of the Admiral's reputation as an adulterer.Bishop Porteus died at
Fulham Palace in 1809 and, according to his wishes, was buried at Sundridge inKent - a place to which he had frequently loved to retire every autumn.ee also
*
Porteous family External links
* [http://www.brycchancarey.com/abolition/porteus.htm Beilby Porteus from Brycchan Carey's listing of British abolitionists]
* [http://porteous.org.uk/beilby_porteus.html Bishop Porteus biography from Porteous Research Project]
* [http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC38163806&id=1L4OAAAAIAAJ&dq=Beilby+Porteus&hl=nl Works of the Right Reverend Beilby Porteus, Late Bishop of London: with his life Door Beilby Porteus, 1823]
* [http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC01464049&id=kZUMAAAAIAAJ&dq=Beilby+Porteus&hl=nl A Letter to the Governors, Legislatures, and Proprietors of Plantations, in the British... Door Beilby Porteus, 1808]References
* Hodgson, Robert. "The Life of Beilby Porteus" (1811)
* Overton, John Henry. "Beilby Porteus",Dictionary of National Biography , vol XVI, pp. 195-197 (1896).
* McKelvie, Graham. "The Development of Official Anglican Interest in World Mission 1783-1809: With Special Reference to Bishop Beilby Porteus", PhD diss. (U. Aberdeen, 1984)
* Tennant, Bob. "Sentiment, Politics, and Empire: A Study of Beilby Porteus’s Antislavery Sermon", in "Discourses of Slavery and Abolition: Britain and its Colonies, 1760-1838", ed Brycchan Carey, Markman Ellis, and Sara Salih (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)
* Robinson, Andrew. " [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22584 Beilby Porteus] ", "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ",Oxford University Press (2004), doi|10.1093/ref:odnb/22584. Retrieved2008-06-02 .External links
* [http://www.theclergydatabase.org.uk/cce/apps/bishops/DisplayBishop.jsp?ordTenID=143 Porteous, Beilby] as Bishop of Chester in the
Clergy of the Church of England Database . Retrieved2008-06-02
* [http://www.theclergydatabase.org.uk/cce/apps/bishops/ Porteous, Beilby] as Bishop of London in theClergy of the Church of England Database . Retrieved2008-06-02
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.