Henry Phillpotts - Legacy

Legacy

Phillpotts' position was that of the traditional High Churchman, with little sympathy either with the evangelicals or with the Tractarians, although he was considered to represent the conservative high church wing of the Oxford Movement and emphasized liturgical forms of worship, episcopal government, monastic life, and early Christian doctrine as normative of orthodoxy.

On the one hand, the famous Gorham judgment was the outcome of his refusal to give the living of Brampford Speke to George Cornelius Gorham (1787–1857]), who had expressed disbelief in baptismal regeneration; on the other hand, he denounced the equally famous Tract XC in his episcopal charge of 1843.

Phillpotts was generous in his gifts to the church, founding the theological college at Exeter and spending large sums on the restoration of the cathedral.

An allegation made at the General Synod in 2006 claimed that Phillpotts was paid almost £13,000 (£12,729.5s.2d) in 1833, under the terms of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, as compensation for the loss of slaves from the Codrington Plantation in Barbados that belonged to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel when they were emancipated. The compensation was paid for 665 slaves that Phillpotts held in joint ownership with three business colleagues to work on a plantation in Jamaica. It is not established what share of such funds, equivalent to more than one million pounds sterling in present day value, went to Phillpotts and it has not been established what he might have done with the funds but Exeter Cathedral states that Phillpotts was able to restore the Bishop's palace in a "most creditable manner". Both the office of the present Bishop of Exeter, Michael Langrish, and the Devon County Library (which holds Diocesan records), have stated that they hold no record of any further involvement in the slave trade by Phillpotts aside from his joint holding of the 655 slaves.

His biographer sums up his legacy thus:

"The champion of lost causes, his attitude, his policy, and even his virtues became increasingly inappropriate. Loyal and even tender in family relationships; staunch in friendships; violent in controversy; brilliant in debate, he certainly deserves to be commemorated as one of the outstanding figures on the Bench during the nineteenth century"

The church tower at St. Marychurch was restored in 1873, at a cost of £3,500, in the bishop's memory.

The Bishop Phillpotts Library in Truro, Cornwall, founded by the bishop in 1856 for the benefit of the clergy of Cornwall, continues to be an important centre for theological and religious studies, with its more than 10,000 volumes, mainly theological, open to access by clergy and students of all denominations. It was opened in 1871 and almost doubled in size in 1872 by the bequest of the collection of Prebendary Ford.