Autograph letter from Joseph Blanco White to Edward Copleston, Bishop of Llandaff, 9th March 1830. WITH: Pre-Tractarian Oxford: A Reminiscence of the Oriel “Noetics”

Description

One-page autograph letter from Joseph Blanco White (1775-1841) to Edward Copleston, Bishop of Llandaff (1776-1849). Addressed to ‘The Right Revd. the Lord Bishop of Llandaff / Deanery / St. Pauls’ on one side, with text of letter on reverse. Considerable edgewear, though no significant loss to text. Four folds, with splitting (c. 7cm) to one fold. Text of letter: ‘My dear Lord, / I have been in town since Saturday night; but the distance at which we live has prevented my calling up you. As I think you will take some interest in the new Emancipation Statute I send a copy which I borrowed from Whately. It seems doubtful whether it will pass. / I am here to act as interpreter to a Spanish Priest who is to abjure next Friday at St Martin’s. From what I hear of him he appears to me a promising and hitherto useful convert. He has been preaching in Spanish to the Refugees, and made six or seven converts. / Believe me / My dear Lord / Yours ever faithfully / J. Blanco White / 10 St George’s Place / Hyde Park Corner/ March 9th 1830 (?)’. Final numeral in ‘1830’ is smudged, but is likely a zero, in which case the ‘new Emancipation Statute’ White refers to is presumably Robert Grant’s ‘bill for the emancipation of His Majesty’s subjects professing the Jewish religion’, which proposed, referencing the 1829 Catholic Relief Act, that ‘the Subjects of His Majesty professing the Jewish Religion be placed in the same state and condition, as to all civil rights and privileges, as His Majesty’s Roman Catholic subjects’ (Abrahams, “The Text of Mr. Robert Grant’s Bill, 1830”, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, 6 (1908-10), 250-53). Grant’s bill was defeated at its second reading in the Commons on 17 May 1830. Despite several later attempts to reintroduce the bill, it was not until 1858 that British Jews gained full civic participation, finally securing the right to become MPs. Both White, Copleston, and the other Oriel Noetic mentioned in this letter, Richard Whately, had supported Catholic Emancipation in 1829, although this represented a change of heart on the part of Copleston and White. A convert to Anglicanism, White was born in Seville, where he was originally ordained as a Catholic priest. He moved to England in 1810 and ‘after long reading and consideration’ (Tuckwell 237) joined the Anglican communion in 1812; his anti-Catholic writings in the 1820s were largely responsible for Oxford University, ‘on the initiative’ of Copleston (ONDB), conferring an MA on him in 1826. White became an honorary Fellow of Oriel college and found an intellectual home among the Oriel Noetics, including Copleston and Whately – it was the influence of the latter that was largely responsible for White’s eventual support of the 1829 Catholic Emancipation Act. Given this, it is intriguing to see all three taking an active interest in the attempt at a Jewish Emancipation Act a year later. The paths of the three friends were later to diverge. Copleston remained Bishop of Llandaff; Whately became Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin. White, who accompanied Whately to Ireland as tutor to his son, finally made his longstanding Unitarian sympathies public in 1835 and moved to Liverpool rather than compromise Whately (who continued, however, their personal friendship and correspondence, as well as providing White with an annual subsidy). White, who found ‘peace such as he had never known before’ at the end of a ‘long remonstrant struggling life’ (Tuckwell 256-57) as a member of a Unitarian community, died in Liverpool in 1841. Blanco White, Life and Letters, 1845. WITH copy of Tuckwell’s Pre-Tractarian Oxford in full red cloth, black lettering to front board, gilt lettering to spine. Minor ink spots and sunning to spine. Adhesive trace to front board. Scattered foxing. Obituary of Tuckwell tipped in to front free endpaper, noting that he could write of the 1830s from personal experience. With a chapter on Blanco White. Robust packaging. Tracking can be added to overseas orders on request. Used books are exempt from USA tariffs.