Henry Sacheverell (; 8 February 1674 – 5 June 1724) was an English Anglican High Church clergyman who achieved nationwide fame in 1709 after preaching an incendiary sermon on 5 November. Sacheverell was subsequently impeached by the House of Commons of Great Britain and though found guilty, his light punishment was seen as a vindication and he became a popular figure in the country, contributing to the Tories' landslide victory at the 1710 British general election.
Early life The son of Joshua Sacheverell, rector of St Peter's, Marlborough, he was adopted by his godfather, Edward Hearst, and his wife after Joshua's death in 1684. His maternal grandfather, Henry Smith, after whom he was possibly named, may be the same Henry Smith who is recorded as a signatory of Charles I's death warrant.Geoffrey Holmes, The Trial of Doctor Sacheverell (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973), p. 4. His relations included what he labelled his "fanatic kindred"; his great-grandfather John was a rector, three of whose sons were Presbyterians. One of these sons, John (Sacheverell's grandfather), was ejected from his vicarage at the Restoration and died in prison after being convicted for preaching at a Dissenting meeting.Holmes, pp. 5-6.W. A. Speck, 'Sacheverell, Henry (bap. 1674, d. 1724)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn, Oxford University Press, September 2004, accessed 6 August 2010. He was more proud of distant relatives who were Midlands landed gentry that had supported the Royalist cause during the Civil War.Holmes, pp. 4-5.
The Hearsts were pious High Anglicans and were pleased with Sacheverell, who was "always retiring to his private devotions before he went to school".Holmes, p. 7. He was educated at Marlborough Grammar School from 1684 to 1689. He was sent to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1689, where he was a student until 1701 and a fellow from 1701 to 1713. Joseph Addison, another native of Wiltshire, had entered the same college two years earlier. It was at Sacheverell's instigation that Addison wrote his Account of the Greatest English Poets (1694) and he dedicated it to Sacheverell.Holmes, p. 8. Sacheverell took his degree of B.A. on 30 June 1693, and became M.A. on 16 May 1695.
The Bishop of Oxford, John Hough, ordained him deacon on 18 May 1695.Holmes, p. 9. However, when, in 1697, he presented himself to the Bishop of Lichfield, William Lloyd, with a reference from the dean of Lichfield, Lloyd complained of his grammatically incorrect Latin. Sacheverell, who had published several Latin poems, quoted Latin grammars to verify his Latin and apparently told Lloyd it was "better Latin than he or any of his chaplains could make". Lloyd sent his secretary to his library to prove Sacheverell wrong but failed to do so.
In 1696, he was appointed chaplain to Sir Charles Holte and curate for Aston parish church. However, when the Aston living fell vacant, Holte refused to appoint Sacheverell. Holte's wife years later claimed this was because Sacheverell "was exceedingly light and foolish, without any of that gravity and seriousness which became one in holy orders; that he was fitter to make a player than a clergyman; that in particular, he was dangerous in a family, since he would among the very servants jest upon the torments of Hell".Holmes, p. 10. Lancelot Addison, the dean of Lichfield and the father of Joseph, nominated him to the small vicarage of Cannock in Staffordshire and after an intense three-day examination, Lloyd was finally convinced Sacheverell was ready and accepted his nomination in September 1697. Sacheverell was threatened with prosecution for seditious libel after preaching a fiery sermon but this was dropped due to Sacheverell's unimportance.Holmes, pp. 10-11.
In July 1701, he was elected Fellow of Magdalen College but his overbearing, disrespectful self-confidence and arrogance won him few friends.Holmes, pp. 12-14. In 1709 before his two famous sermons, Thomas Hearne dismissed him as a loud-mouthed wine-soaker.Holmes, p. 13. However he was a hard worker and an active teacher, being promoted to a variety of offices. In June 1703, he was appointed to an endowed lectureship; in 1703 he was appointed College Librarian; in 1708 was appointed Senior Dean of Arts and in 1709 he became Bursar.Holmes, p. 16.
Sacheverell first achieved notability as a High Church preacher in May 1702 when he gave a sermon entitled The Political Union, on the necessity of the union between church and state, and denigrating Dissenters, occasional conformists and their Whig supporters. His peroration included an appeal to Anglicans not to "strike sail to a party which is an open and avowed enemy to our communion" but instead to "hang out the bloody flag and banner of defiance".Holmes, p. 17. Gaining a small London readership, Daniel Defoe labelled Sacheverell "the bloody flag officer" and in his The Shortest Way with the Dissenters he included in its subtitle an acknowledgement of "Mr Sach—ll's sermon and others". John Dennis also replied to Sacheverell in The Danger of Priestcraft to Religion and Government.
Roger Mander, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, appointed Sacheverell to preach the University Sermon on 10 June 1702, the date chosen by Queen Anne as a Fast Day for Heaven's blessing for British success in the new war against France.Holmes, pp. 16-17. In support of the Tory candidate at the 1702 English general election, Sir John Pakington, 4th Baronet, Sacheverell published The Character of a Low-Church-Man. This attacked William Lloyd and advised the clergy to be on the look out against "false brethren" within the Church. Pakington was grateful and recommended Sacheverell to Robert Harley as Speaker's chaplain. Harley, a moderate Tory with a Dissenting background, declined.Holmes, pp. 18-19.
Only two other sermons in this period were printed: The Nature and Mischief of Prejudice and Partiality (1704) and The Nature, Guilt and Danger of Presumptuous Sins (1708). With two other Oxford dons he wrote The Rights of the Church of England Asserted and Proved (1705). The first sermon led to a further notice by Defoe that "Mr Sacheverell of Oxford has blown his second trumpet to let us know he has not yet taken down his bloody flag".Holmes, p. 20. During the "Church in Danger" scare of 1705-06 he preached a sermon in which he (according to Hearne) with "a great deal of courage and boldness" showed "the great danger the Church is in ... from the fanatics and other false brethren, whom he set forth in their proper colours".
In July 1708 he was awarded a Doctorate of Divinity, possibly due to his abilities as a preacher as well as for his teaching. In March 1709 a local brewer named John Lade suggested to Sacheverell that he put himself forward for the vacant office of chaplain at St Saviour's, Southwark.Holmes, p. 56. He campaigned for the post with such vigour that a fellow clergyman wrote "None is so much talked of as he all over the Town. I suppose we shall have him very speedily the subject of de Foe's Review, in which he has formerly had the honour of being substantially abused".Holmes, p. 57. His most notable backers were Lord Weymouth and Sir William Trumbull. News of his candidacy alarmed the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Tenison, and aroused opposition from the Dissenters, as Trumbull's nephew wrote: "[They] give out that if they can keep him out this time, they shall for ever keep him from coming into the City".Holmes, p. 58. However Sacheverell was appointed by 28 votes to 19 on 24 May. Tenison was "much troubled" by this.
Sacheverell soon stirred up more controversy by printing a sermon he had been invited to deliver at Derby Assizes on 15 August, entitled The Communication of Sin. The sermon was in the same vein as his previous ones but it was the dedication to the printed version (published on 27 October) that particularly antagonised the Whigs: Now, when the principles and interests of our Church and constitution are so shamefully betrayed and run down, it can be no little comfort to all those who wish their welfare and security to see that, notwithstanding the secret malice and open violence they are persecuted with, there are still to be found such worthy patrons of both who dare own and defend them, as well against the rude and presumptuous insults of the one side as the base, undermining treachery of the other, and who scorn to sit silently by and partake in the sins of these associated malignants.Holmes, p. 60.
The Perils of False Brethren
The new Lord Mayor of London, Sir Samuel Garrard, 4th Baronet, was a zealous Tory and it was his responsibility to appoint the preacher for the annual 5 November sermon to the City Fathers at St Paul's Cathedral to commemorate the failure of the Gunpowder Plot. Garrard later claimed no acquaintance with Sacheverell, knowing him only by reputation.Holmes, p. 61. Whigs later claimed that Sacheverell was hired as a tool of the Tory party to deliver the sermon. The historian Geoffrey Holmes claims there is no evidence for this as Sacheverell's papers were destroyed after his death but that it was in Sacheverell's character to deliver the sermon off his own bat.Holmes, p. 62.
Sacheverell's audience included thirty clergymen and a large number of Jacobites and Nonjurors.Holmes, p. 63. Prior to the sermon, prayers and hymns were delivered. A witness saw Sacheverell, sitting with the clergy, working himself up into an angry mood, describing "the fiery red that overspread his face ... and the goggling wildness of his eyes ... he came into the pulpit like a Sybil to the mouth of her cave". The title of his sermon, The Perils of False Brethren, in Church, and State, derived from 2 Corinthians 11:26.
The 5 November was an important day in the Whig calendar, both the day of the Gunpowder Plot of 5 November 1605 and William of Orange's landing at Torbay on 5 November 1688. Whigs claimed both these days as a double deliverance from "popery".Holmes, pp. 61-62. Sacheverell compared the Gunpowder Plot not to 1688 but to the date of the execution of Charles I, 30 January 1649. Sacheverell claimed that these two events demonstrated the "rage and bloodthirstiness of both the popish and fanatick enemies of our Church and Government... These TWO DAYS indeed are but one united proof and visible testimonial of the same dangerous and rebellious principles these confederates in iniquity maintain". The threat to the Church from Catholics was dealt with in three minutes; the rest of the one-and-a-half-hour sermon was an attack on Dissenters and the "false brethren" who aided them in menacing church and state. He claimed that the Church of England resembled the Church of Corinth in St Paul's days: "her holy communion ... rent and divided by factious and schismatical impostors; her pure doctrine ... corrupted and defiled; her primitive worship and discipline profaned and abused; her sacred orders denied and vilified; her priests and professors (like St Paul) calumniated, misrepresented and ridiculed; her altars and sacraments prostituted to hypocrites, Deists, Socinians and atheists".Holmes, pp. 64-65.