The Free Church of England
The Free Church of England has its origin within Ecclesia Anglicana, while the implicit Common Law Trust dates from 1844, and the civil constitution was registered with the Court of Chancery on August 31st, 1863.
The Free Church of England arose due to the Dr Philpotts, Bishop of Exeter withdrawing the licence of the Revd James Shore, a successful evangelical curate of ten years standing in Bridgetown. Dr Philpotts declined to give any explanation.
The Duke of Somerset who had recently built a new church for his tenants tried for six months to get an explanation or conciliation, but got neither. The Duke then consented to the wish of his tenants to allow the Church to open outside the established Church this was done on April 14th, 1844.
Dr Philpotts was the Tractarian, whose inquisitorial examination and rejection of an eminent evangelical scholar for a living in his diocese, led to the famouse Gorham case. After being over-ruled by the Archbishop of Canterbury on that occasion, Dr Philpotts declared himself to be out of communion with the Archbishop.
In 1876, the Free Church of England received its orders from the Reformed Episcopal Church which originated when the Rt Rev George Cummings withdrew from the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1873. The two churches united in 1927.
Rt Rev George Cummings
The story of Bishop Cummings withdrawal is told by Revd Dr William Wilson Manross in his History of the American Episcopal Church, (1959). After describing Cummings' irenic resolution of 1865, following the Civil War [p292/3] the author goes on to give us the picture of a peace loving evangelical who was forced by his conscience to go a separate way:
"The Evangelicals were greatly disappointed by their failure to obtain any definite action against Ritualism at this Convention [1871], and some of them began to despair of the Protestantism of the Episcopal Church altogether. Of this group the most prominent member was the Right Rev. George David Cummins, Assistant Bishop of Kentucky. Cummins, whose honorable contribution to the reunion of the Church after the Civil War we have already noted, had had a brilliant career as a preacher which had brought him into prominence at an early age. A consistent Evangelical, he was greatly distressed by the ritualistic practices that Bishop Smith tolerated in some of the parishes in Kentucky, and he also became involved in one or two disputes with Bishop Whitehouse of Illinois, who was especially bitter against the Evangelicals and who twice tried to prevent Cummins from preaching in his diocese. Cummings appears to have received the first suggestion of a separation from the Episcopal Church from Mason Gallagher in 1869, but at that time he thought the measure premature.
In 1872 Bishop Smith went to live at Hoboken, New Jersey, for his health, and the diocese of Kentucky adopted the unprecedented measure of asking him to exercise jurisdiction in absentia instead of allowing it to devolve on the assistant bishop. This naturally aroused Cummins' resentment, but the last straw was furnished by the criticism aroused by his receiving Communion and preaching in a non-Episcopalian Church in New York City on October 12, 1873. No canonical proceedings were taken against him for this act, but the controversy which it caused made him feel that his liberty within the Protestant Episcopal Church was too restricted. On November 10, 1873, he wrote to Bishop Smith, who was Presiding Bishop as well as his immediate superior, expressing his intention of leaving the Church because of conscientious difficulties he felt about visiting ritualistic parishes in Kentucky, his loss of hope that the "system of error" prevailing in the Anglican Communion would ever be eradicated, and the storm aroused by his communing with members of other denominations.
He was followed in his departure from our communion by a number of the more radical Evangelicals, and on December 2, 1873, ... [they] organized the Reformed Episcopal Church."[pp298/9].
Alan Bartley, BSc, ARCS.
Links:
The Free Church of England: http://www.netministries.org/see/churches/ch04119
The Reformed Episcopal Church (US): http://www.recus.org/
Sources: