A Nutshell Biography.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 7, 13 February 1902, Page 2

A Nutshell Biography.

The conversion of Dr. Lee has naturally excited a good deal of attention in England. The Manchestei Guardian con-

ains a brief biographical notice of the neo-convert which, though not accurate at all points, is worth reproducing. It 9ays : 'The announcement that Dr. Frederick George Lee has been received into the Church of Rome closes a curious chapter in ecclesiastical history. F. G. Lee was educated at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, wop the Nevvdigate Prize in 1854, was ordained deacon in the same year and priest in 1856. He be-^ came an " honorary D.D. of the University of Washington* and Lee, Virginia,'' in 1879, an<^ was vicar of All Saints',^ Lambeth, from 1867 to 1899. Dr. Lee was from the first an extreme High Churchman of the Tory and Cavalier school. He deeply lamented our severance from the " Roman patriarchate," and he was one of the original members of the Association for Promoting the Unity of Christendom, which was founded in 1857, and consisted of Anglicans, Romans, and Orientals. Dr. Lee's confidence in Anglicanism was deeply disturbed by the Public Worship Act of 1874, and the docility with which the English episcopate accepted that Act seems to have made him distrust the reality of their episcopal position. Accordingly, he engaged with three intimate friends — T. Mossman, a Lincolnshire vicar; G. Nugee, who ran a curious monastery in South London ; and a clever layman called Grant — in a desperate attempt to "regularise " the Orders of the Church of England. These gentlemen, with some liberalminded friends, formed themselves into a society called "The Order of Corporate Reunion." It was reported that they persuaded three persons in episcopal Orders — a Roman, an Oriental, and a Jansenist — to consecrate Mr. Lee, Mr. Mossman, and Mr. Nugee to the office of Bishop, and these new prelates, it was understood, were really to reordain conditionally any English priests who were dissatisfied with their Anglican Orders. The whole affair was studiously shrouded in mystery, but it is believed that the consecration of the three Bishops took place on the high seas, so as to avoid any question of conflicting jurisdictions. The establishment of theO.C.R.was proclaimed to the world in 1877 in a document said to have been read at midnight from the steps of St. Paul's and afterwards printed. It purports to be " drawn up, approved, ratified, confirmed, and solemnly promulgated in the divinely protected city of London (which God pardon for its sins and still mercifully protect) on the eighth day of September, being the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady Saint Mary, the Blessed Mother of God, in the year of Our Lord and of the world's redemption one thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven. 1 ' It is impossible to know how many people joined the Order of Corporate Reunion or how many English clergymen were reordained. But I believe they were very few, and those few without exception "cranks." Mr. Mossman and Mr. Grant both joined the Church of Rome before they died. Mr. Nugee is also dead. Dr. Lee's Church in Lambeth was lately destroyed in order to make room for the enlargement of Waterloo Station, and now he has followed his friends across the border. It will be curious to see if the Roman authorities recognise his episcopal Orders as valid though irregular, or whether they condemn the whole business of the O.C.R. as a delusion. Meanwhile they gain in Dr. Lee a man of varied and curious learning, a pungent controversialist, and a writer of much melodious verse.'