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(Illustration from the
Birmingham Daily Post 28th November 1880) |
Warwick Elwin
Warwick
was born in 1849 in Norfolk the son of the Revd
Whitwell Elwin, an influential Victorian man of letters, prose writer and editor of the Quarterly Review. The Revd Whitwell Elwin was a close friend of Charles Darwin and William Makepeace Thackeray.
The Pocahontas 'Connection'
Warwick
Elwin was a direct descendant of Pocahontas, John Rolfe and their
only son Thomas.
Pocahontas was the famous Native American woman
associated with the colonial settlement of Jamestown in Virginia who
met King James I in 1617 on a visit to London. Sadly
Pocahontas
died of an illness onboard a ship on the River Thames while passing
Gravesend in Kent on the return voyage to America.
Their young son, Thomas was also unwell and did not go to America with his father, Thomas was left with a guardian, Sir Lewis Stuckley, and in later years into the care of his uncle Henry Rolfe to bring up to adulthood.
Anne was the daughter of Thomas Rolfe by his first marriage in
England. After the death of his English wife shortly after giving birth to Anne, Thomas left Anne with a cousin to bring up to adulthood and journeyed to America where he was later to remarry.
Peter
Elwin (1623-1695) married Anne Rolfe the daughter of Thomas Rolfe and
the granddaughter of Pocahontas.
The direct and established family line from
Pocahontas
and granddaughter Anne Rolfe-Elwin
continued down over the
centuries
to the Revd Warwick Elwin (1849-1908).
The earliest oil painting of Pocahontas, a copy after Simon de Passe’s original 1616 engraving, was owned by the Elwin family from the early 18th century to the end of 19th century and hung in the Elwin’s Booton Hall in Norfolk (this portrait is now in the National Portrait Gallery in London).
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| copyright © D. Sharp Pocahontus is believed to be buried in a vault beneath St George’s Church in Gravesend. This statue in the churchyard dates from 1958. |
Market Harborough
Warwick
Elwin graduated B.A. (Senior Optime) at Pembridge College, Cambridge.
After ordination he served as a Curate in Market Harborough from 1872
until 1875.
Bordesley, Birmingham
In 1876 Fr
Elwin moved to Bordesley
in Birmingham to serve as Curate to the Revd Richard Enraght.
When
Fr Enraght was arrested
and imprisoned in November
1880, the Revd Warwick Elwin was left in sole charge of Holy Trinity,
Fr Elwin continued services at the Church in the exact ritualistic
(illegal) manner that Fr Enraght was prosecuted for.
Fr Enraght
and Fr Elwin were both dismissed from Holy Trinity by the Bishop of
Worcester in 1883.
The
English Church Union financially supported Fr Enraght and Fr Elwin
for many months until they were appointed to sympathetic Anglo-Catholic Parishes.
Booton, Norfolk
After
Fr Elwin dismissal from Birmingham, he moved to Booton in Norfolk to assist his father,
the Revd Whitwell Elwin in the Parish of St Michael’s & All
Angels while waiting for his next Church appointment. (Revd Whitwell
Elwin, a prolific writer, served for a period of 50 years as Vicar of Booton).
In August 1884 Warwick Elwin was the guest preacher at Walsingham Parish Church, on the occasion of the Norfolk Branch of the English Church Union annual meeting
The Lynn Advertiser reported on 13th September 1884, ‘ Walsingham - The annual harvest thanksgiving service were held on Sunday in the parish church, which was decorated with corn, fruit and flowers. The services were choral, and well rendered, and the sermon in the evening was preached by the Rev. Warwick Elwin. The collection, for equal benefit of the Norfolk & Norwich Hospital and the parish schools, amounted to £9 / 14s / 4d.’
Beckenham, Kent.
In late 1884 Fr Elwin was appointed Curate of St George’s Beckenham in Kent, where he was to stay until 1892.
While living in Beckenham, the Revd Warwick Elwin authored the following theological works:-
Confession and Absolution in the Bible. (1883) - (An evaluation of Old and New Testament scriptures to determine the biblical basis for private confession and priestly absolution.)
The
Minister of Baptism.
(1889) - (A
history of Church opinion from the time of the apostles, especially
with reference to heretical, schismatical and lay
administration).
In 1891 Warwick
Elwin published The
Mixed Chalice.
The following quote is from the Beckenham Journal in June 1908 :- "the late Archbishop Benson having told the writer (Warwick Elwin) that he was the greatest theologian in his Diocese"
Worthing, Sussex.
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| copyright © The Parish of St Andrew the Apostle, Worthing. The Church of St Andrew the Apostle, Victoria Road, Worthing, West Sussex. |
In 1892 Fr Elwin moved to Worthing to take the post of Vicar of St Andrew’s. Warwick was appointed to take over at St Andrew’s from the retired Fr Gilbert Moor, who had been the first ever Vicar of the Worthing Parish.
The
Worthing Gazette reported on 17th
August 1892, “The following paragraph is from the
Protestant Notes in the current issue of the English
Churchman magazine :- We
cannot congratulate the Protestants of Worthing on the appointment of
the Rev. W. Elwin to the vacant Vicarage of St Andrew’s Worthing.
Mr Elwin was formerly Curate of Holy Trinity, Bordesley, under the
Rev. R. W. Enraght, and actively assisted the latter gentleman in his
rebellion against the decisions of the Ecclesiastical Courts. He
is a member of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, and
of the English Church Union, and has signed three petitions in
support of ritualism.
Mr. Elwin has written a thick volume in
favour of auricular confession and priestly absolution, both of which
he professes to have discovered in the Bible.
Since 1884, he
has been Curate of St George’s Beckenham, where the ritual is of an
advanced Romanising character.”
The
Worthing Gazette
reported on the 11th
January 1893, on the first
introduction of incense at St Andrew:- “ In the course of
the service there was a solemn procession, in connection with which
incense was used, this advanced ritual having been introduced at St
Andrew’s for the first time on Friday evening. As the basis of his
discourse, the Vicar, the Rev. Warwick Elwin chose a portion of the
eleventh verse of the second chapter of St. Matthew. In this
chapter it is set forth how wise men of the East were directed to
Christ by a star, and the selected words tell that ‘They presented
unto Him gifts ; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh’. Said the
preacher.”
In 1893 there was a Typhoid Epidemic in Worthing when a new well at Lyons Farm was contaminated by the sewage system. 1,400 residents were ill and nearly 200 people died. In October, Fr Elwin writing in the St Andrew’s Parish Magazine, said the Parish was too busy in helping the sick to get involved in Local Politics, but he earnestly called for the cutting of Local Government ‘red-tape’ and the intervention of National Government experts to solve Worthing’s water supply problem.
While Vicar of St Andrew’s, Fr Elwin invited his friend, the Revd Richard Enraght from his East End of London Parish to St Andrew’s in November 1893 to give a lecture on ‘The Last 50 years of the Church of England (1837-1887)’
Booton, Norfolk
In
January 1900 the Rev. Warwick Elwin, Vicar of St Andrew’s announced
his resignation. He was leaving Worthing for Booton in Norfolk, which
was described as “a family living”, his father, the Revd Whitwell
Elwin who had recently died was Rector of Booton for fifty
years.
While living in Booton in 1902, Warwick Elwin, edited his father's, the Revd
Whitwell Elwin's, Some
18th Century Men of Letters.,
(two large biographical volumes) for publication.
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
The
Revd Warwick Elwin died in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1908, where
he was staying for health reason. After a funeral service at the
Church of England’s Holy Trinity Church in Las Palmas, he was laid
to rest in the nearby British Cemetery.
Obituary
The
Late Rev. Warwick Elwin - Beckenham Journal –
Saturday 6th June 1908 :-
Some of
the older inhabitants of Beckenham, and certainly all who knew him,
will hear with regret and probably unpreparedness of the death of the
Rev. Warwick Elwin.
He graduated B.A. Senior Optime at Pembridge College, Cambridge, in 1872, and was Assistant Curate of Holy Trinity, Bordesley from 1876 to 1883, and on the staff of Beckenham Parish Church from 1884 to 1892, which work he left to take up the more important duties of St Andrew’s Worthing, of which he was appointed Vicar and where he laboured from 1892 to 1900.
Although a theologian of considerable eminence (the late Archbishop Benson having told the writer that he was the greatest theologian in his Diocese), he was author of only two works, “Confession and Absolution in the Bible,” 1883, and the “Minister of Baptism,” 1898.
In 1900 he left Worthing, considerably broken in health, to take up the family living of Booton (near Norwich), where he succeeded his father, the Rev. Whitwell Elwin, himself a litterateur of no mean order.
A few months ago Mr. Elwin broke down completely from nervous disorder, which rendered him entirely unfit for carrying out his duties, and he resigned Booton and went to Las Palmas under medical advice. There he unhappily contracted enteric fever, and yesterday his relatives and friends sorrowfully heard of his death.
He was a man of singular character, highly strung, and nervous almost to shyness, but that he could act promptly and bravely was shown by his resistance (when his Vicar was in prison for disobeying the now generally discredited “Privy Council Law” ) to the Bishop of Worcester, who uncanonically endeavoured to intrude a stranger upon the parish with a view to the enforcement of those decrees.
It was he, also, who was the celebrant at the time of the well-known “Bordesley Outrage,” the sacrilegious particulars of which will be remembered by older Churchmen, but which had better be resigned to oblivion, except perhaps to mention the noble action of the Archbishop of Canterbury (Tait) in the matter.
A
great deal more could be said of Mr. Elwin’s gentle and loving
character, but the writer, who has had over a quarter of a century’s
uninterrupted friendship with him, knows full well it would be
against the wishes of the departed. RIP.
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Eastern Daily Press - Tuesday 9 June 1908 :- The Late Rev. Warwick Elwin - Memorial Service at Booten
The remains of the late Rev. Warwick Elwin will not be brought to England, but were interred at Las Palmas, Canary Islands, where he died. A memorial service was held in Booton Church on Friday evening, conducted by the Rev. J. Harry Buchanan, who in his address referred to the life of the deceased gentleman.
Amongst
those present were, Mr and Mrs F. Elwin, Miss E. Elwin, Miss E.
Holley, Mrs. Owen, Miss Wilkinson, Miss Bechanan, Dr. Perry, Mr. F.
Richmond, Mr. C. Barrett, Mr. Horace Howard, and Mr. Goff.
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Yarmouth
Independent – Saturday 15 August 1908 :- The Will of the
Rev. Warwick Elwin
The Rev. Warwick Elwin M.A. lately rector
of Booton. Near Great Yarmouth, who died at Las Palmas on 3rdJune last, son of the Rev. Whitwell Elwin, editor of the “Quarterly
Review,” left an estate of the gross value of £13,627 1s 9d., of
which the net personalty has been sworn at £13,556 15s 7d.
Probate
of his Will. Dated 9th December last, has been granted to
his niece, Miss Emma Elwin and Mr. Richard Lewis James, dairyman,
both of 246, Upper Richmond Road, East Sheen, S.W.
The
testator left £500 to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel,
£500 to the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa, £500 to the
Society of St John the Evangelist, Cowley, Oxford.
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The following text is from the What is the Use ? 'poster' affixed to the prison wall in the above 1880 Birmingham Daily Post illustration of Fr Enraght handing a bag of 'Paraphernalia of Ritualism' to his Curate Fr Elwin in Warwick Prison:-
What is the Use ?
The prosecutions must prove futile, because the doctrines aimed at, may be legally taught by ministers of the Church of England. It has been decided that baptismal regeneration may be lawfully taught; it has also been decided that a real presence in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper may also be lawfully taught. As to the assertion of a priesthood, the Prayer Book is full of it; and the Low Churchmen are conscious of the difficulty of explaining it away. If then, the doctrine remain and must remain --- for no one seriously propose to expunge it by legal process --- of what use is it to go on prosecuting and imprisoning clergymen who insist upon the use of symbols as a means of enforcing a doctrine which they may preach without legal hindrance, from one end of the year to the other
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("Revd Warwick Elwin" research written and compiled from many newspaper articles and church publications by D. Sharp)