Connop Thirlwall - Bishop of St David's

Bishop of St David's

In 1840 Thirlwall was raised to the see of St David's. The promotion was entirely the act of Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, an amateur in theology, who had read Thirlwall's introduction to Schleiermacher, and satisfied himself of the propriety of the appointment. "I don't intend to make a heterodox bishop if I know it," he said. In most essential points he was a model bishop, and he acquainted himself with Welsh, so as to preach and conduct services in that language. He was not greatly loved by his clergy, who found him both taciturn and sarcastic. The great monument of his episcopate is the eleven famous charges in which he from time to time reviewed the position of the English Church with reference to whatever might be the most pressing question of the day—addresses at once judicial and statesmanlike, full of charitable wisdom and massive sense.

His attempts to allay ecclesiastical panic, and to promote liberality of spirit, required no ordinary moral courage. He was one of four prelates who refused to prevent Bishop Colenso from preaching in their dioceses, and the only one who withheld his signature from the addresses calling upon Colenso to resign his see. He took the liberal side in the questions of Maynooth, of the admission of Jews to parliament, of the Gorham case, and of the educational conscience clause.

He was the only bishop who voted for the disestablishment of the Irish Church, though a scheme of concurrent endowment would have been much more agreeable to him. He would have made an admirable successor to Howley in the primacy, but such was the complexion of ecclesiastical politics that the elevation of the most impartial prelate of his day would have been resented as a piece of party spirit.