Nathaniel Woodard
There have been plenty of turbulent priests in the history of the Church of England, and it wasn’t long after taking up his Bethnal Green curacy that Essex man Nathaniel Woodard found himself at the centre of the arguments rocking the Victorian Anglican church.
Nathaniel was born at Basildon Hall, on the site of the present new town, in 1811. His father was an impecunious country squire, and the boy was educated at home by his mother - it was an experience that would later fire his astonishing impetus to provide schools for the impoverished middle classes. Mrs Woodard did a good enough job for her son to win a place at Magdalen Hall (later to become a part of Hertford College) at Oxford University.
In 1840, Woodard left Oxford with his degree, a new wife, and set off on a religious journey that was to take him a long way from his pious, Evangelical mother. The University was at the heart of a movement rocking the Anglican Church, following the publication of the ‘Tracts for the Times’ between 1833 and 1841 by a a group of Oxford intellectuals (or Tractarians) including Edward Pusey, John Henry Newman, John Keble, Henry Manning and Gerard Manley Hopkins. The group of young Fellows, grouped around the slightly older Keble, were outspoken about the shortcomings of the Church of England and its ’secularisation’. They proposed revitalising the Church by instigating a Catholic revival - putting the Anglican church back in touch with its Roman roots.
The hierarchy of the C of E were appalled at this ‘Oxford Movement’. So was the Government, with whom the Church was so closely aligned (another source of suspicion for the Tractarians, who saw priests serving politics rather than the Church). Young Tractarian priests found it hard to get parishes as Canterbury sought to strangle the movement and deny its proponents a pulpit from which to preach the dangerously ‘Romanising’ message. The only livings the Oxford men could get were in the poorer parishes. And so, almost by default, Tractarians became missionaries to the slums of the East End. The Oxford Movement may have had its roots in the abstract areas of theology and politics, but its graduates were rolling up their sleeves and effecting real change in the East End, starting schools, youth clubs, social clubs, and helping young East Enders escape the traps of poverty.
The churches themselves were changing too. A casual visitor to St George in the East, on Cannon Street Road, during the 1840s, might think they had stepped into a Roman Catholic church, as thuribles were swung, genuflection was encouraged and the sign of the cross freely made. In that light, Woodard’s sermon to his parishioners at St Bartholomew’s, Bethnal Green, where he argued that the Book of Common Prayer should have sections for confession and absolution, might seem mild stuff. Although Nathaniel had done sterling work at St Bart’s, starting a school for the children of poor parishioners, he was abruptly moved on: not quite cast into the outer darkness but to St John’s, Clapton … which was close.
But Woodard was already recognising a new vocation. The way forward was to come through education … not just of the poor though. Shunted on again, this time to New Shoreham, near Brighton, he realised that his middle class parishioners were struggling to get their children a decent education. He could identify with the problem from his own childhood but he went further, declaring ’till the Church educates and trains up the middle classes, she can never effectually educate the poor.’ He saw an opportunity for real social change. Nathaniel filled the gap, starting a day school in the vicarage, then founding St Nicholas School, which today is the independent school, Lancing College. The problem parson resigned his curacy in 1850 and set to education full time.
During his life, Woodard started 11 ‘Woodard Schools’ under the motto ‘Faith, Unity and Vision’, the biggest single grouping of C of E schools. Hia alma mater recognised Nathanial’s tireless work in 1870, making him Doctor of Civil Law, an honorary degree traditionally reserved for heads of state (the Queen is a current holder). Prime minister WE Gladstone was a fan, and made him Canon of Manchester Cathedral.
By the time of his death, in 1891, Nathaniel’s trust had raised half a million pounds, and the work of the Woodard Corporation persists to this day - with 23 thriving schools under its umbrella. In a serendipitous stroke of fate, the Church’s attempts to shut up a troublesome East End priest had given a huge boost to England’s education system.