Revd Richard Enraght SSC (1837-1898): Brighton, Sussex, 1868-1872

'Prisoner of Conscience'

As the Vicar of Holy Trinity, Bordesley, Birmingham in 1880, Fr Enraght came to National and International prominence, when he was jailed for “Conscience Sake” under the Disraeli Government's Public Worship Regulation Act (1874).

“The Public Worship Regulation Act was avowedly passed with the intention of “stamping out” of the Church of England clergy and laity holding my principles - principles which we believe to be the most faithful embodiment of the Doctrine, Worship, and Discipline of the reformed Church of England”. (Revd R. W. Enraght., My Prosecution...., 1883)
*******

Fr Enraght SSC, served seven years of his ministry in the Diocese of Chichester,

from 1868 to 1872 as a Curate at St Paul's Brighton, from 1872 to 1874 as the Curate-in-Charge of St Andrew's Portslade, and from 1883 to 1884, he was back at St Paul's, Brighton,

all in the County of Sussex.

Fr Enraght returned to Sussex in 1883 after his release from prison and eviction from his Bordesley vicarage. The Enraght family lived in the Parish of St Michael & All Angels, Brighton, to recuperate for a year. Fr Enraght returned to St Paul's to assist his old friend, Fr Wagner while waiting for another Parish appointment. In November 1884, Fr Enraght left Brighton to take up a Curacy in what was reported as, 'the poorest Parish in the East End of London'.

Revd Richard Enraght B.A., SSC.
This photograph was reproduced by kind
permission of the Principal & Chapter
of Pusey House, Oxford
(Hall Collection 3/13, Pusey House Oxford)

*******

The Revd Richard William Enraght B.A., SSC [1] was the Curate-in-Charge of the new District Church of St Andrew's Portslade with St Helen Church, Hangleton from 1872 until 1874. He was an Irish born Church of England priest of the late nineteenth century who was heavily influenced by the Oxford Movement and is amongst the number of priests commonly called “Second Generation” Anglo-Catholics.

Coincidentally Richard’s father, the Revd Matthew Enraght, a Curate in the Church of Ireland, moved to England to serve in the Diocese of Chichester as Vicar of St Mary Magdalene, Lyminster from 1856 to 1873. Father and son lived just over 20 miles from each other in the County of Sussex.

Fr. Enraght’s belief in the Church of England's Catholic Tradition, his promotion of ritualism in worship, and his writings on Catholic Worship and Church-State relationships, led him into conflict with the Disraeli Government's Public Worship Regulation Act, for which he paid the maximum penalty under the Law, of prosecution, imprisonment and eviction with his family from the Holy Trinity Parish in Bordesley, Birmingham in 1880, for conscience sake.

Brighton and "the South Coast Religion"

The Anglican Church in Brighton was heavily influenced by the Oxford Movement to an extent unparalleled elsewhere in the country apart from London.[2]. In Anglo-Catholic circles Brighton would become known under the collective title of "London-Brighton and South Coast Religion", which was a play on an actual railway company’s name London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, this coincidently or otherwise, linked all the large and growing centres of Anglo-Catholic worship spreading from London to Brighton and then east and west along coast of Sussex to the neighbouring counties of Kent and Hampshire.[3]

copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
(Edwardian Postcard)
Fr Enraght served as a Curate at St Paul's Brighton
from 1868 to 1872.
This Church was built in 1848 as a mission church for
Brighton’s fishermen and their families.
In Victorian times this area was densely populated.
The narrow streets around the Church were lined
with small shops, fishersmen's cottages and slums.
St Paul's is now surrounded by Brighton's
modern high-rise buildings and on Brighton's premier road -
'West Street' - which links Brighton's Railway Station
with Brighton's Palace Pier and the Seafront.

Fr Wagner whom Fr Enraght served under as curate at the Church of St. Paul, Brighton, held Tractarian opinions since his time at Cambridge University and was the leading light of the Catholic Revival in Brighton with his prolific church and school building and generous charitable works of building 400 houses for the poor, all at his own expense.

Fr Wagner was the subject of critical debates in the House of Commons for his ritualist practices. Legislation was proposed to halt the Catholic Revival in Brighton by taking away Fr Wagner’s authority to install Anglo Catholic priests as Vicars in the five churches that he had financed.[4]

The atmosphere in Brighton, created by the local press and the Brighton Protestant Defence Association (the forerunner of the Church Association) was very hostile to ritualist priests. The Brighton Gazette was highly vitriolic towards any clergy that adhered to the English Catholic Tradition. The same newspaper in 1873 published a bias report that Fr.Wagner had refused in court to answer questions that would “involve him to breach the confessional”. As a result of this article, Fr. Wagner was brutally assaulted on the streets of Brighton.

His assailants went to prison but Fr. Wagner characteristically supported their wives and families at his own expense [5]. Fr Wagner was not the only priest to suffer violence in Brighton.

Fr Thomas Perry of St Michael & All Angels Church, stood alone at a Brighton public meeting and defended Fr Wagner’s cause. He too was to suffer at the hands of the mob by being beaten-up for his courageous stance near his Brighton church.

In another Parish in Brighton, the Curate of St James' Church, Fr John Purchas (1823-1872), the former editor of the Directorium Anglicanum, was prosecuted for using vestments and the eastward position in 1871. The case took three years to conclude and resulted in the Church of England paying £7,661 in legal costs, Fr Purchas had placed his property in his wife's name so unable to pay the legal costs himself. [6]. To appreciate the scale of these legal costs, a small terraced house in Brighton could be rented for £16 per annum in 1871. Fr Purchas was removed from his Parish and some commentators believe his persecution led to his early death in October 1872.

'The Chichester Extinguisher' from Punch, 24 October 1868
Caption:-
Bishop of Chichester. "GO! GO! YOU INSOLENT,
REBELLIOUS BOY. WHAT WITH YOUR NONSENSE
AND INCENSE AND CANDLES YOU'LL BE SETTING
THE CHURCH ON FIRE."
Master P-cu-s. "JUST WHAT I'D LIKE TO DO. THERE!"
(The Bishop of Chichester is holding a fire-beater with the
words 'Thirty-Nine Articles' written on its side,
Fr John Puchas is holding a thurible)

While serving under Fr Wagner at St Paul's Brighton and sharing his Anglo-Catholic views, Fr Enraght wrote the pamphlet, which was published nationally on the subject "Who are True Churchmen and Who are Conspirators ?" (his exposition on The Last Settlement of English Reformation in 1662), he stated in his conclusion he had proved that the English Church was both Catholic and Reformed. Fr Enraght's pamphlet was clearly aimed at the Church Association to counter their campaign of miss-information to the general public:-

copyright © D. Sharp
The former Brighton home of
Fr Richard & Dorothea Enraght
at 36 Russell Square
(originally numbered 42)
from 1869 until 1872, where
their children, Ellen and Hawtrey
were born.
Their son, William was born
at their previous address at
5 Queens Square, Brighton
in 1868.

"I have now, then, I think, sufficiently demonstrated what I undertook to prove. I have proved that the last Revision and Settlement in 1662 of the Formularies of the English Church, by which the Bishops and Clergy are bound, both by their Ordination promises and by Act of Parliament, was distinctly Catholic.

I have proved, therefore, that the Catholic-minded clergy of the English Church alone are in the right, that the charge of “Romanizing” and unfaithfulness to their Church, so persistently brought against them because of their faithful adherence to Catholic truth and practice, is a grievous slander, and that the only consistent course for their opponents to adopt—in order, if they can, to put themselves in the right—is to endeavour to get the Formularies of the Church altered in a “Protestant” direction, and so to alter the basis on which we now stand".

"Puritans ever since the first dawn of “the Reformation,” have been in the Church of England only on sufferance. If any are to be restrained, it must not be those clergy who loyally carry out the principles of the Church which the Revisers of 1662 so strenuously maintained against all attacks, but any who (although many of them holding position and preferment within the Church) use their position and influence, contrary to their Ordination promises, to carry out the work of the Nonconformists of 1662, and undermine the Reformation principles for which the Revisers of 1662 contended, and which they have preserved in the Formularies of the Church." [8]

Fr Enraght's fearless writings of confronting the architects of the forthcoming Public Worship Regulation Act by using the Book of Common Prayer to prove that the Church of England has an unbroken Catholic Tradition no doubt marked him out as a future target for the attentions of the Church Association and its lawyers.

The Brighton Gazette reported that Fr Enraght, formerly the 'Travelling Secretary' of the National Association for Freedom of Worship, gave a 50 minute lecture on the subject of 'The Freedom of Worship' at Brighton’s Town Hall in December 1871

*******

In the winter of 1874 Fr Enraght left St Paul's Brighton to take on a new challenge at the six years old District Church of St Andrew's, 4 miles along the coast in Portslade, where he would have sole control as Curate-in-Charge.

See the Revd Richard Enraght in Portslade for 1874 - 1876:-

*******

***Notes Concerning the Timeline of the above Revd Richard Enraght text appearing on the Internet.

The above article on the Revd Richard W Enraght was first written in 2001 and uploaded to the Parish of St Nicolas & St Andrews Portslade’s Btinternet website. (See Internet Archive's Wayback Machine for confirmation)

In 2007, six years after the article appeared on the 'St Nicolas & St Andrew’s Portslade’s website' a brief section of the above text was uploaded to Wikipedia to create a new Richard W Enraght Wikipedia page, by the author of this above text. Over the years, the Wikipedia page for Richard Enraght has been greatly edited (with some errors) and now differs substantially with the above Enraght text.

Unfortunately in 2010, BT shut down all free of costs websites for Churches, therefore this Enraght page moved to a new St Nicolas & St Andrew Blogspot Parish website, again this website was shut down in 2013 and a small section of the above Enraght page moved to the present website of the Parish of Portslade & Mile Oak in 2016.
In 2025 the above Biography article was greatly expanded from the original 2001 Biography text by new updated research.

*******

Above Text & Page Design by dave-portslade