Yorkshire Philosophical Society

Event Information

ARCHBISHOP VERNON-HARCOURT, Archbishop of York 1807-1847

Tony Vernon, Lord Vernon

As the third surviving son of the first Lord Vernon, Archbishop Vernon-Harcourt depended on good family and political connections to make progress in the Church and to provide for a family of sixteen children. Appointed Bishop of Carlilse with the help of his father-in-law, the Marquess of Stafford, at the age of 34, he was made Archbishop of York at the age of 50 and remained in post till his death aged 90 in 1847. He had to combine responsibility for one of the largest dioceses in the Church of England with his duties in parliament and at court. More supportive of reform of both parliament and the church than most of his fellow bishops, he took steps to improve the training of ordinands in the diocese of York and encouraged the building of over 100 new churches to cope with population growth in the industrial towns of the West Riding. He played a leading role in the development of the Yorkshire Music Festivals.

The Archbishop was a Patron of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society and laid the foundation stone of the Museum. He was a member from 1822 till his death in 1847. Five of his sons were members including William Vernon-Harcourt, who played a key role in the early years of the YPS.

The speaker is the Archbishop’s great-great-great grandson and the 11th Lord Vernon and has written a biography of the Archbishop.

2.30pm in the Tempest Anderson Lecture Theatre in the Yorkshire Museum

All welcome.  This is a free event although donations are also welcome.

Image by Thomas Phillips – artuk.org, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53688746

Member’s report

Tony Vernon provided the society with an entertaining and informative assessment of the career of his ancestor, who was archbishop of York from 1807 until his death, aged 90 in 1847.

These were years of significant political and social change, especially in the industrial regions which were found in large parts of the archbishopric. In such changing times it is not surprising to find that the archbishop, an aristocrat and appointed by a famously conservative government, has had a mixed reception from historians, notwithstanding the gracious obituaries published at his death. One scholar, writing in 1967, described Harcourt’s four decades at York as ‘years of episcopal stagnation’, while a more recent historian has described him as ‘scrupulously attentive to the duties of the primacy’. It was to these issues that the lecture was addressed.

Tony Vernon had no difficulty dismissing the former judgement, showing Harcourt to have been assiduous in his visitation responsibilities, at least in the first two decades of his time in office, and a supporter of parliamentary reform and church extension in the growing industrial towns during the years after 1830. He was also a vigorous supporter of the York Music Festivals, held in the Minster, and played an important background role in reviving Anglican church services through the introduction of hymn singing. The case for Harcourt’s conscientiousness was well made, but how ‘scrupulously attentive’ he was is less clear. Notwithstanding the contentious visitation of York Minster in 1841 following the fire of the previous year, there is no doubt that there was a falling off in diocesan visitation after 1827. This may have owed as much to the ecclesiastical system as to any personal qualities of the archbishop; Harcourt was 70 and already an old man in 1827, and although he employed other bishops to conduct confirmations and consecrate churches thereafter, there was no institutional provision for covering the inevitable consequences of ageing. The diocese, both clergy and laity, saw less of their archbishop. This sense of absence was compounded by the very obvious presence of members of his family (he was the father of 16 children) in well-paid public roles within the diocese. This was not unusual in the Church of the day, but the number made Harcourt’s case exceptional and his family had already come to notice in a critical pamphlet, The Poor Man’s Guardian, of 1832 when the writer listed all the posts held by family members, calculating that they amounted to an accrued revenue of £751,000, and an annual income of £37,000 at that date.

One of these was William Vernon Harcourt, rector of Wheldrake and Canon of the Minster, whose posts gave him the leisure and means to pursue his scientific interests. He was, of course, a founder of our society and its first President as well as, later, a founder of the British Association for the Advancement of Science which came to York for its first meeting in 1831.  In his case at least, it can be said that the profits of the church were used in the advancement of learning!

Bill Sheils