Death, Disputes, and the Churchyard Gate

The Burial Laws Amendment Act of 1880

The way we bury our dead might not seem like an obvious battleground for religious politics, but in 19th-century England, it became exactly that. Behind the stone walls of parish churchyards and newly opened cemeteries lay a story of faith, exclusion, and power struggles between the established Church of England and the country’s growing Nonconformist communities. It’s a chapter of history where personal grief and public protest often collided — and where one Act of Parliament, passed in 1880, tried to settle the matter.

The story of burial practices in 19th-century England is one of religious and political tension. At the heart of it was the long-running friction between the Church of England and the country’s growing Nonconformist communities. Many Nonconformists — including Baptists, Quakers, Unitarians, and others — wanted to create burial grounds free from the authority of the Anglican Church. This led to the introduction of the Burial Acts, which made sure that any cemetery established under these laws had to be at least half unconsecrated. That way, people could be laid to rest with funeral rites other than the Anglican service.

But this didn’t mean there was equal access to burial options everywhere. In many rural areas, the churchyard was the only available place for burial, and it was firmly under the control of the Church of England. According to Canon law, anyone not baptised in the name of the Trinity — as the Church required — could be denied a grave there. Some Anglican ministers took this rule to heart and used it against local Nonconformists, sometimes refusing to allow burials for members of groups like the Quakers or Unitarians.

It’s fair to say that relations between Anglicans and Nonconformists could be surprisingly bitter, both nationally and in local communities. The second half of the 19th century saw a string of high-profile disputes where Anglican vicars prevented certain burials from taking place. The controversy grew so intense that it came close to triggering the disestablishment of the Church of England itself. Nonconformists argued that if the established church wouldn’t allow them to bury their dead in the parish churchyard, it could hardly claim to be the national church for everyone.

We get an insight into these tensions from some verses that appeared in The Referee¹ newspaper in 1880.

THE BURIALS BILL²

This Bill involves the most serious consequences to the clergy of England, and may imperil the existence of the National Church. – The Bishop of Lincoln in the House of Lords.

Come hither, little Timothy, and sit upon my knee,
And gaze upon the wilderness where churches used to be;
And listen to the narrative prepared for little lads,
Of how the Church called National was ruined by the Rads³.

You’ve heard about Dissenters, boy, those very wicked men,
Who wandered from the Bishop’s flock and sought another pen;
They hatched a vile and wicked plot to bring the Church to grief:
It is a very woeful tale – get out your handkerchief.

There was an arch-conspirator, Lord Selborne⁴ was his name –
The Radicals they put him up to play their artful game;
He framed a bill which made it law that when Dissenters die
Their most infectious bodies may among dead Churchmen lie.

Then Lincoln’s Bishop⁵, holy man! with pale and ashen face,
He wept aloud and cried “Forbear our churchyards to disgrace!
Let one Dissenter’s body touch our consecrated ground,
And England’s Church lies doomed for aye.” Here Lincoln paused and frowned,

His warning words all idly fell on irreligious ears:
The law was passed, and justified the holy Bishop’s fears.
They brought a dead Dissenter’s corpse within churchyard gate;
And now look round, dear Timothy, and see the Church’s fate.

The moment his polluting dust had touched our sacred soil
Volcanic flame the churchyard filled, the earth was on the boil.
A stream of lava swept the tombs before it in a heap,
The lightning played about the skies, the thunder’s voice was deep.

The church, though built of brick and stone, now trembled like a child,
And seemed to shrink as though it felt its honour was defiled.
The walls went first, the steeple next, and then the pulpit, fell,
And all the pews went down in fear, and lay about pellmell⁶.

Through all the land that fatal day the churches felt the blow,
St. Paul’s Cathedral was among the very first to go;
The dead Dissenter’s body wrought the mischief prophesied,
And soon our old Established Church was ruined far and wide.

The Church of England, Timothy, is ruined now for aye,
Dissenting chapels reign supreme throughout the land today,
And Wordsworth, whose prophetic eye foresaw the prospect drear,
With Mother Shipton now divides the laurels of the seer.

In the end, a compromise was reached. The Burial Laws Amendment Act of 1880 allowed ministers from any denomination to conduct funeral services in the parish churchyard. While this was a step forward, it didn’t always go down smoothly at a local level. Some Anglican clergy and landowners who had donated land for churchyard extensions resisted the idea, sometimes subtly evading the new rules.

After the Burials Act came into force, the Church of England adopted a different approach, suggesting that there were very few burials taking place under the provisions of the Act. William Connor Magee, Bishop of Peterborough was reported in the Northampton papers.

THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH AND THE BURIALS ACT.⁷

The following statistics have been collected by the Bishop of Peterborough, showing the number of funerals in the three archdeaconries of the diocese during the first 16 months after the passing of the Burials Act and the proportion under the provisions of that measure:
Archdeaconry of Northampton, 2194; under the Act, 47.
Archdeaconry of Oakham, 1608; under the Act, 53.
Archdeaconry of Leicester, 3058; under the Act, 63.
Total of funerals, 6859; under the Act, 163.

Bishop Magee’s figures were disputed in the national press by Mr J Carvell Williams⁸ a prominent Congregationalist (nonconformist) and later MP for Nottingham South (1885-6) and Mansfield (1892-1900).

THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH AND THE NEW BURIAL ACT⁹

A NONCONFORMIST REPLY

Mr. J. Carvell Williams writes to the Daily News respecting Bishop Magee’s statistics of funerals under the Burial Act. He says : “Not having access to his lordship’s statistics, I am at a great disadvantage in dealing with them. I cannot ascertain, for instance, how far the fewness of Nonconformist burial services is the result of the fact that cemeteries and chapel burial grounds are available for the use of Nonconformists. Nor do we know how many unbaptised persons have been buried by the Established clergy with the special service provided for by the Act of 1880. But, accepting the Bishop’s figures without any question, I may refer to some facts which find no place in the Bishop’s schedules, but which throw some light upon their contents. 1 venture to say that they make no reference to such matters as clerical refusals to allow the tolling of the bell at Nonconformist burials, or the use of the parish bier and ropes; or to objections to burials under the Act in the case of non-parishioners; or the refusal of permission to bury on Sundays ; or to quibbling objections to the required notices ; or to the demand for the customary fees, even when no service is rendered in return. I am repeatedly hearing of cases where the relatives of deceased persons, either fearing such annoyance or shrinking from an inopportune conflict with incumbents, have reluctantly allowed burials to take place in accordance with the old law, when they would have greatly preferred to avail themselves of the new. It is, however, not necessary to fall back upon such pleas as these, when it may be contended that the rights of even so small a number as 162 Nonconformist families in the diocese of Peterborough ought to be respected. The Bishop sneers, or seems to do so, at the “distressed consciences of Dissenters;’’ but he ought to be well-informed enough to know that the demand of Dissenters was not based on conscientious objections to either the Burial Service or the clergy of the Church of England, but was a demand for liberty—liberty to avail themselves of the services of their own ministers, and to adopt burial rites of their own choice, instead of being bound by the rigid uniformity of the Establishment.”

Parish burial registers from this period occasionally reflect these uneasy compromises. You might come across a note that a burial took place ‘under the Burial Laws Amendment Act’, or some similarly terse comment — a quiet but telling indication that a nonconformist minister had taken the service.

It’s a reminder that even in death, questions of belonging and belief could stir up remarkable tensions — and that a simple burial service could carry enormous symbolic weight in Victorian England.

1. The Referee was a British weekly newspaper published on Sundays from 1877 to 1939 when it was merged with the Sunday Chronicle.
2. The Referee, 6 June 1880, page 7
3. Rads: – Radicals, a loose parliamentary political grouping in Great Britain and Ireland in the early to mid-19th century who drew on earlier ideas of radicalism and helped to transform the Whigs into the Liberal Party.
4. Lord Selbourne: Roundell Palmer, 1st Earl of Selborne was Lord Chancellor under Prime Minister William Gladstone (Liberal) 1872-74 and 1880-1885. He held strong views on Irish and Church issues.
5. Bishop of Lincoln: Christopher Wordsworth, born in London, the youngest son of Christopher Wordsworth, Master of Trinity, who was the youngest brother of the poet William Wordsworth. Thus, Wordsworth was a nephew of the celebrated poet.
6. Pellmell: in mingled confusion or disorder
7. Northampton Chronicle and Echo – Saturday 14 October 1882, p 3
8. John Carvell Williams was a Nonconformist and campaigned against the privileged status of the Church of England. From 1847 to 1877, he was secretary to the “Liberation Society” and was Parliamentary chairman of the society. He authored works on disestablishment and other ecclesiastical subjects. He was also a Director of Whittington Life Insurance Company.
9. Northampton Mercury – Saturday 21 October 1882, p 13

© Copyright : Graham Ward. All rights reserved.