The Remarkable Lushington Family. David Taylor

College, Oxford. The topics covered the biblical research of the German critics, the evidence for Christianity, religious thought in England, and the cosmology of Genesis. In essence, it summed up a three-quarter century-long challenge to biblical history and prehistory.

      Publication of Essays and Reviews was seen as an attack on the fundamental truths of the Christian religion. It caused a great outcry in more conservative and evangelical church circles contributing to a period of religious doubt in which two of Lushington’s sons were caught up. In 1862, Lushington wrote:

      The argument in Essays and Review is concluded, having occupied nearly 10 days. The counsel very handsomely returned thanks to me for my so patiently hearing the case. This is consoling but alas my trials now commence for I have to write my judgement.²⁴

      As such, Lushington found it necessary to condemn two of the essayists. Although his decision was later overturned, it was an action with which Lushington, whose personal views inclined to those of the more liberal Broad-Church party, privately agreed.

      F. D. Maurice, who had been driven from his Chair at King’s College, London, on the issue of eternal judgment, considered resigning his benefice in consequence of the original judgment and wrote to Charles Kingsley:

      

      I know well that my dear and honoured friend Dr Lushington, who I love as much as almost any man of his age that I know, has no purpose of working this mischief to the Church or to mankind. He will be a worker of good, as he ought to be, if his simple blunders lead to the result I have supposed.²⁵

      In 1867, Lushington suffered what might a been a slight stroke and resigned his judicial offices but retained the administrative office of Master of the Faculties until his death, still hearing disputed cases at his house in his ninety-first year. He spent his remaining years at Ockham surrounded and supported by his adoring family. He continued equestrian pursuits and, on his ninetieth birthday, his sons presented him the gift of a new horse.

      In December 1872, after travelling to Oxford to vote for Dean Stanley as Select Preacher for the University, he became ill and suffered a bad bout of bronchitis from which he did not recover. He died on 18 January 1873. Lord Justice James wrote to Vernon Lushington:

      Your father’s last public act may have accelerated his death—but it will always be an agreeable memory for his family and his friends that it was an act of great pubic duty, well closing his life in vindication of those great principles of liberty to which throughout that long life he had shown so zealous and unswerving attachment.²⁶

      Lushington was buried in the churchyard of Ockham parish church where he had worshipped for many years. Dean Stanley traveled from London to officiate at the funeral and later, preaching at the University Church in Cambridge, paid a fitting tribute to his old friend describing him as:

      A venerable judge whose career . . . was fired from first to last by a generous sympathy with human suffering, by noble indignation against wrong, by a firm persuasion of the indissoluble bond between what was highest in religion and what was greatest in morality.²⁷

      NOTES

      1. S.M. Waddams, Law, Politics and the Church of England. The Career of Stephen Lushington 1782–1873 (Cambridge University Press, 1992).

      2. “Forty-shilling freeholders” were people who had the parliamentary franchise to vote by possessing freehold property of an annual rent of at least forty shillings (i.e., £2), clear of all charges.

      3. Richard M. Bacon, A Memoir of the Life of Edward, Third Baron Suffield (Norwich, 1838), p. 28.

      4. Ibid.

      5. Lushington was appointed as one of the guardians of Lord Suffield’s children. Suffield clearly held Lushington in high regard as, when considering, his children’s education, he wrote “his judgement on the matter will decide my course in the dilemma for such I must consider it. I am grateful to Jane Weare for this and other information regarding the relationship of the Suffields and Lushington.”

      6. House of Commons Debate February 23, 1807.

      7. Obituary of Stephen Lushington in Guy’s Hospital Gazette 1873.

      8. Mirror of Parliament, June 12, 1839.

      9. Stephen Lushington, www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume1790-1820.

      10. Lushington later represented the constituencies of Tregony, Winchelsea, and Tower Hamlets.

      11. Henry Lushington to Stephen Lushington, May 7, 1832. SHC 7854/1/2/1a-b.

      12. George Stephen, Anti-Slavery Recollections (Thomas Hatchard, 1854), pp. 67–68.

      13. Charles Buxton (ed.) The Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton (John Murray, 1849).

      14. Stephen, Anti-Slavery Recollections, pp. 66–67.

      15. Frank J. Kingberg, “The Lady Mico Charity Schools in the British West Indies, 1835–1842,” Journal of Negro History Vol. 24, no. 3 (July, 1939), pp. 291–344.

      16. For more on Stephen Lushington’s role in this campaign see Betty Fladeland, Men and Brothers. Anglo-American Antislavery Cooperation (University of Illinois Press, 1972).

      17. Edward Lillie, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner: 1845–1860 (Roberts Brothers, 1877), p. 593.

      18. Stephen Lushington to Charles Sumner, July 9, 1857, and October 27, 1859. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Charles Sumner to Stephen Lushington, 26 October 1859, SHC7854/1/5/33.

      19. Diary of Charles Buxton, October 30, 1859. BL. Add Ms 87180. Buxton recorded how Sumner “gave an interesting account of his visit to Tennyson: who was at first very cold & gruff so that he felt himself ‘de trop’ (he had an introduction from the Duchess of Argyle). Mrs Tennyson however very cordial & agreeable & after a while a picture of Dante started Sumner on poets, & Tennyson became communication & friendly—& talked freely of his own poetry. He complained of Maud being misunderstood. Mrs T devoted to him, & they are most happy. S said it was the happiest home he had seen ‘even among the happy homes of England.’”

      20. Mirror of Parliament 1831, April 21.

      21. Ibid., 14 July 1831.

      22. In 1866, Lushington was called upon to pass judgement on a matter relating to the seizure of seven Confederate ships. In this case, his son Vernon came before him to represent the U.S. government.

      23. Journal of Queen Victoria (on line).

      24. Stephen Lushington to Alice Lushington, January 16, 1862, SHC7854/1/8/44.

      25. Frederick . D. Maurice to Charles Kingsley, October 12, 1862, in F. Maurice, Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, Chiefly Told in his Own Letters (London, 1885).

      26. Lord Justice James to Vernon Lushington, January 20, 1873. SHC785/3/1/19.

      27. A.P. Stanley, Purity and Light. A Sermon Preached before the University of Cambridge, Feb. 2. 1873 (Macmillan and Co., 1873).

Part II

       VERNON

       (1832–1912)

      He is thoroughly frank, open and sailor like, earnest and enthusiastic, extremely Radical, but not wildly, taking a great interest in all questions of political economy and moral philosophy, an ardent admirer of Plato, Wordsworth, and especially Ruskin.

      —Wilfred Heeley in Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, Lady-Burne-Jones (Macmillan, 1912), p. 125

      Fascinating Mr Lushington, with dove’s eyes and without two fingers who come here now to take tea very often.

      —Jane Welsh Carlyle to Kate Sterling