Everything about Beilby Porteus totally explained
Rt Rev Beilby Porteus, DD, Bishop of Chester and London (
May 8,
1731 –
May 13,
1809) was an
Anglican reformer and leading
abolitionist. He was the first Anglican in a position of authority to seriously challenge the Church's position on
slavery.
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 at
York and
Ripon, he was a classics scholar at
Christ's College,
Cambridge, becoming a fellow in
1752. In
1759 he won the
Seatonian Prize for his poem
Death: A Poetical Essay, a work for which he's still remembered.
He was ordained as a
priest in 1757, and by 1762 had been appointed domestic
chaplain to
Thomas Secker,
Archbishop of Canterbury and, from
1769, chaplain to
King George III.
The fight against slavery
In 1776, Dr Porteus was appointed
Bishop of Chester, taking a keen interest in the affairs of the
Society 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 the
House 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 influential
sermon.
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 in
Barbados, 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
bishops 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 and
Bermuda.
He was active in the establishment of
Sunday Schools in every parish, an early patron of the
Church Missionary Society and one of the founder members of the
British and Foreign Bible Society, of which he became vice-president.
Bishop of London
In 1787, Porteus was translated to the
bishopric of London on the advice of
William Pitt (the Younger), a position he held until his death in 1809.
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 and
Zachary 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-paid
clergy, the perceived excesses of entertainment taking place on Sundays - and by becoming a vocal supporter of
William Wilberforce,
Hannah More and the
Clapham Sect of
evangelical social reformers. He vigorously opposed the spread of the principles of the
French Revolution as well as the doctrines of
Thomas Paine's
Age of Reason.
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 in
St. 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 his
state funeral service in St. Paul's Cathedral in 1806. As Bishop of London, Porteus may have officiated at some of these services, although it's 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 in
Kent - a place to which he'd frequently loved to retire every autumn.
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