A statue and small square in Athens honour George Canning, ‘an Irishman born in London’

The statue of George Canning in Πλατεία Κάνιγγος or Canning Square in central Athens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

Akadimias Street (Οδός Ακαδημίας) in Athens, which runs parallel to Panepistimiou Street and Stadiou Street, runs for more than 1 km from Vassilissis Sofias Avenue at its south-east end in the Kolonaki district, to the junction of Kaningos Square and Tzortz Street in the Exarcheia district at its north-west end.

Following my visit to the Acropolis and the Parthenon at the weekend, I visited Tzortz Street, which is named after the Irish Philhellene, Sir Richard Church, and Tzortz is a poor Greek transliteration of Church.

This street leads off Πλατεία Κάνιγγος (Plateía Káningos) or Canning Square, which I also visited at the weekend. Plateía Káningos is named after George Canning in appreciation of his support of Greece during the Greek War of Independence (1821-1830).

George Canning, who was Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, once described himself as ‘an Irishman born in London.’ He was born in London on 11 April 1770, and both his father and his mother were Irish-born.

His father, also George Canning, from Garvagh, Co Derry, was a gentleman of limited means, a failed wine merchant and barrister, who was disowned by his own father and renounced his right to inherit the family estate in exchange for the payment of substantial debts. George senior eventually abandoned the family and died in poverty in London on 11 April 1771, his son’s first birthday.

His mother, Mary Ann Costello (1747-1827), an actor, was born in Caher, Aghamore, Co Mayo. Her father, Jordan Costello, has been described as a Connacht squire. Mary Ann was apparently orphaned at an early age, and was brought up by her maternal grandfather in London.

Penniless but renowned for her beauty, she married George Canning in 1768. Their first child, a daughter, died within a few months. On 11 April 1770, Mary gave birth to a son, named George after his father.

When George senior died, Mary was pregnant and penniless again. To support herself and her small child, she became an actress and had her debut in Jane Shore at Drury Lane in November 1773. She toured provincial theatres with Samuel Reddish, and together they five children, including two sets of twins. Although there is no evidence they married, she called herself as Mrs Reddish.

Young George was taken from Mary and was made the ward of his wealthy uncle, Stratford Canning, a Whig banker also from Garvagh. She did not see him for eight years. In February 1783, she married her second or third husband, Richard Hunn, an unsuccessful silk mercer from Plymouth, and had five more children, including another set of twins.

Her career on stage continued to cause public scandal, and at the age of 12 George was told that his mother was unfit for respectable society.

The young George Canning was sent to Eton and then to Christ Church, Oxford. His time at Eton has been described as ‘a triumph almost without parallel. He proved a brilliant classicist, came top of the school, and excelled at public orations.’ In 1789, he won a prize for his Latin poem, The Pilgrimage to Mecca, which he recited in the Oxford Theatre.

At Eton and Oxford, he was acutely aware of his modest beginnings and his mother’s career. Perhaps as compensation, he developed early political ambitions, trained as a lawyer, and became an MP at the age of 23, under the patronage of the Tory Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger.

He advocated amending the Corn Laws, Catholic emancipation and abolishing slavery. His first ministerial appointment came in 1795 as Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. During the Napoleonic Wars, he was Paymaster of the Forces (1800-1801), Treasurer of the Navy (1804-1806) and Foreign Secretary (1807-1809).

While he was Foreign Secretary, Canning disagreed openly with the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Lord Castlereagh. When Castlereagh learned that Canning was plotting to have him dismissed, he challenged Canning to a duel. The two men faced each other at dawn on 21 September 1809 on Putney Heath. Canning had never before fired a pistol, and Castlereagh wounded him in the thigh.

King George III was furious and both men were forced to resign. Canning was generally blamed for the duel, and remained out of office for many years.

When Lord Liverpool became prime minister in 1812, he offered Canning the post of Foreign Secretary. Canning declined, because he wanted to be Leader of the House of Commons, a post held by Castlereagh. Instead, Canning accepted a diplomatic appointment to Portugal.

When Canning returned to London in 1816, he became president of the Board of Control. He resigned in 1820 in opposition to King George IV’s attempt to divorce Queen Caroline. Canning was her friend and adviser, and may have been her lover, but he was also out of sympathy with government policies on Europe.

Lord Liverpool wanted Canning back in the Cabinet, and in June 1821 tried to offer him the Admiralty or the Home Office to Canning. But King George IV refused, and wanted to get Canning out of the way by appointing him Governor-General of India.

Castlereagh – who was then foreign secretary – completed suicide on 12 August 1822. A month later, despite the king’s objections, Canning became Foreign Secretary and leader of the Commons.

Although Canning was a Tory, his foreign policy alarmed his conservative colleagues. After the Congress of Verona in 1822, he declined to take part in any further European Congresses. He boasted he had frustrated the ambitions of the continental powers, but the Duke of Wellington thought that Canning was trying to destroy the alliance on which the peace of Europe depended.

However, Canning was no forerunner of today’s ‘Brexiteers.’ On the contrary, he encouraged liberal and constitutional movements abroad, and his policies prevented any general interference by the reactionary powers with the development of liberty and national freedom in Europe and overseas.

Canning opposed the 1823 French invasion of Spain, was determined to keep France out of Spain’s Latin American colonies, and advocated the independence of Spain’s colonies, to the point of threatening to resign if Britain did not recognise the new republics. Although most of his colleagues disliked him and King George IV hated him, the Tories found they could not stay in power without him.

When Lord Liverpool suffered a stroke in February 1827 and resigned, Canning was the most senior minister in the Commons and was popular with the public. On 10 April 1827, George IV asked Canning to form a government. Once again, the snobbery about his humble origins surfaced, with Lord Grey remarking that ‘the son of an actress is, ipso facto, disqualified from becoming Prime Minister.’

The Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel and five other members of Liverpool’s cabinet declined to serve under Canning, and many other Tories joined them in opposition. The Tories were split between the ‘High Tories’ and the moderates supporting Canning. Canning found it difficult to form a government and invited a number of Whigs to join his Cabinet, including Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Lord Lansdowne (and 4th Earl of Kerry).

Canning initiated a programme of progressive reforms, but he could not see them through. He was already ill when he took office, and he died in London 190 years ago on 8 August 1827. He was 57. He was Prime Minister for just 119 days – the shortest tenure of any British Prime Minister. Huge crowds attended his funeral at Westminster Abbey, where he is buried.

Canning gave diplomatic support to the Greeks in the struggle against the Turks for freedom, and ensured the eventual creation of an independent Greek state. In 1823, he extended recognition to the Greeks as belligerents, giving them rights in international law.

In 1827, he signed the Treaty of London with Russia and France, with the object of securing Greek independence. The treaty isolated Austria and put a check on Russian ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Two months after his death, Canning’s policy of ‘peaceful interference’ in the Greek War of Independence brought about the eventual destruction of the Turkish and Egyptian fleets by a combined British, French, and Russian fleet at the Battle of Navarino in October 1827.

This was the last great naval battle of the age of sail and was instrumental in ensuring that an independent Greece came into existence, although its precise borders took some years to negotiate.

Canning’s successor as Prime Minister, the Dublin-born Duke of Wellington, tried to undo his work by making a truce with Turkey, but the Treaty of London had secured Greek independence.

The statue of George Canning has a simple inscription: ‘George Canning 1770-1827’. It was unveiled by the Greek Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, on 6 April 1931, at a ceremony attended by Sir Patrick Ramsay, the British ambassador, and the English builder and developer Charles Boot (1874-1945), who donated the statue to the Greek nation.

Canning’s statue in Kaningos Square is carved in white Carrara marble and is the work of Sir Francis Chantrey. Perhaps Chantrey’s most famous works is ‘The Sleeping Children,’ a monument in Lichfield Cathedral to two girls of the Robinson family asleep in each other’s arms. Chantrey is also sculptor of the statue of Canning in the north transept in Westminster Abbey.

On the left side of the statue in Athens, under Canning’s books, is the discreet signature of the sculptor, ‘Chantrey Sculptor 1834’.

Why did Charles Boot donate the state to the Greek nation? The statue had been commissioned by the Duke of Sutherland, who had served in Canning’s statue. It remained at the Trentham estate until Boot bought it around the same time as his firm opened offices in Athens in 1920. One of the largest contracts his firm received was a £10 million Greek irrigation contract, awarded in 1927.

Boot donated the statue to the Greek nation, the Greek sculptor Dimitrios Perrakis (1893-1965) designed a new podium and plinth, and the statue was unveiled on 6 May 1931 as part of the celebrations of the centenary of the modern Greek State.

However, due to problems in the Greek economy and World War II and the Greek Civil War, Boot’s contract was not completed until 1952, seven years after he had died.

Today the plinth is covered in graffiti, but it is possible to pick out the name of Walter Reginald Basil Long (1918-1941) in a later, smaller inscription below Canning’s name: ‘Walter Reginald Basil Long 1918-1941 Τρισεγγονοσ του Καννιγκ Επεσεν υπερ τησ Ελλαδοσ’. Long was a lieutenant in Royal Artillery, and during World War II he was drowned in Greece on 28 April 1941 during the evacuation of British troops from mainland Greece.

Words at the back of the statue read: ‘Εισ τον Γεωργιο Καννιγκα 1770-1827 εκ των πρωτεργατων τησ Ελληνικησ Ελευθεριασ επι Δημαρχου Σπυρου Μερκουρη 1931,’ ‘In memory of George Canning 1770-1870, Champion of Greek Independence, [unveiled] by the Mayor, Spiros Mercouri, 1931.’

Spyridon Mercouris (1856-1939) was a long-time Mayor of Athens in the early 20th century. He was born into a prominent family that had taken part in the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s.

He became Mayor of Athens in 1899, and held the post until 1914. He was a right-wing conservative royalist, and was accused of complicity in riots in 1916. He was sentenced to death, but this was commuted by the Venizelist government to exile in Corsica in 1917. He was released from prison in 1920, was elected to Parliament in 1928, and was re-elected Mayor of Athens in 1929. He continued as Mayor of Athens until 1932, and died in 1939.

His granddaughter, the actor Melina Mercouri (1920-1994), was Minister of Culture and Tourism (1981-1989, 1993-1994) in the governments of Andreas Papandreou. She was a strong advocate for the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Athens from the British Museum in London. Her statue stands on Leoforos Vasilissis Amalias (Queen Amalia Avenue), near the entrance to the Acropolis and on the edges of the Plaka.

The statue of Melina Mercouri near the Acropolis … her grandfather unveiled the statue of George Canning (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

The Irish priest, the wafer and ‘the truly aggrieved’ who were ‘left as sheep without a shepherd’

Father Richard Enraght (Wikipedia, reproduced by kind permission of the Principal & Chapter of Pusey House Oxford; Hall Collection 3/13, Pusey House Oxford)

Patrick Comerford

Last week, while I was staying in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, I wrote [31 August 2016] about the Revd Thomas Pelham Dale (1821-1892), a pioneering 19th century Anglo-Catholic who had been a Fellow of Sidney Sussex and was who was jailed for his ‘ritualistic’ high church practices.

A friend from Lichfield Cathedral, Stephen Wright, commented on my Facebook link: ‘Possibly worse was the case of Fr Richard William Enraght of Holy Trinity Bordesley Birmingham. This was known as the Bordesley Wafer Case. The follow-on from this case, where the wafer was evidence, is particularly interesting from the ritualistic angle.’

Then, four days later, as I travelled through Moneymore, Co Derry, on Sunday afternoon [4 September 2016], from the ordination of the Revd Suzanne Cousins in Saint Columb’s Cathedral, Derry, to the ordination of three deacons in Saint Gobhan’s Church, Seagoe, Co Armagh, I was reminded once again of the story of Richard Enraght and the ‘Bordesley Wafer Case.’

The Revd Richard William Enraght (1837-1898) was an Irish-born Anglican priest and one of the Anglo-Catholic priests who were prosecuted and jailed in the 19th century for their ritualism. Like Thomas Pelham Dale, Richard Enraght was prosecuted by the Church Association’s lawyers and jailed by Lord Penzance. He refused to attend his own trial on grounds of conscience, was found guilty under the Public Worship Regulation Act and received the maximum penalty: arrest, imprisonment and dismissal from his parish.

Saint John’s Church, Desertlynn, where the Revd Matthew Enraght was a curate (Photograph: Kenneth Allen/Wikipedia)

Enraght was born on 23 February 1837 at Moneymore, Co Derry, where his father, the Revd Matthew Enraght (1805-1882), was the Curate of Saint John’s, Desertlynn.

Matthew Enraght was born in Limerick, while Richard’s mother Sarah was the daughter of Henry Thomas Houghton of Kilmanock House, Arthurstown, Co Wexford. Soon after Richard’s birth, Matthew Enraght moved from the Diocese of Armagh to Dublin, where he became the curate of Donnybrook and Booterstown. Richard’s mother died while he was still an infant, and his father married Maria Massey in 1843.

When Matthew Enraght later moved to England, to parishes in the dioceses of Canterbury and Chichester, Richard remained in Ireland and in 1860, at the age of 23, he graduated BA from Trinity College Dublin. He then moved to England, and in 1861 he was ordained deacon in Gloucester Cathedral by the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. He became a curate at Saint Bartholomew’s in Corsham, Wiltshire, and was ordained priest in 1862.

After three years, Enraght moved to Saint Luke the Evangelist in Sheffield in 1864. There he showed his Anglo-Catholic sympathies in a pamphlet, To The Poor The Gospel is Preached, in which he criticised the pew rent system for barring the poor from churches and criticised a ‘Bible-Ritualism’ that over-relied on scriptural authority for what is permissible in liturgical ceremonial.

He moved to a parish in Lincolnshire for a year in 1866, and then in 1867, he moved to Brighton as curate to the Revd Arthur Wagner, the Tractarian vicar of Saint Paul’s and the ‘Father’ of the Catholic Revival in Brighton.

Wagner held Tractarian views since his student days at Cambridge. He built churches and schools in Brighton and also built 400 houses for the poor, all at his own expense. But he was criticised in the House of Commons for his liturgical practices and for appointing Anglo-Catholic priests as vicars in the five churches he had financed.

In 1873, the Brighton Gazette reported that Father Wagner had refused to answer questions in court that would ‘involve him to breach the confessional.’ Following this report, Wagner was assaulted on the streets of Brighton. At another Brighton parish, Father John Purchas of Saint James’s was prosecuted for using vestments and the eastward position, but he refused to attend his trial or to pay the costs of £2,096 the court awarded against him.

At Brighton, Enraght shared his Anglo-Catholic views in two pamphlets, Who are True Churchmen and Who are Conspirators? and The Last Settlement of English Reformation in 1662.

In 1871, Enraght was appointed priest-in-charge of Saint Andrew’s Church, Portslade-by-Sea, with Saint Helen’s Church, Hangleton. Portslade was just three miles from Brighton and Enraght was able to continue his role in the Brighton branch of the Society of the Holy Cross, to publish pamphlets and to write letters to the Brighton Gazette. His pamphlets there included Catholic Worship and The Real Presence and Holy Scripture.

The Brighton Gazette accused Enraght of Puseyism and of trying to turn Saint Nicholas Church School in Portslade into a Puseyite school, and attacked his plans for a retreat at Lancing College. When the Disraeli Government passed the Public Worship Regulation Act in 1874, the Brighton Gazette called for his prosecution.

Holy Trinity Church, Bordesley (Photograph by Phyllis Nicklin 1954, from the University of Birmingham ePapers; reuse permitted under Creative Commons licence Attribution)

Later that year, Enraght moved to Birmingham as Vicar of Holy Trinity, Bordesley, where he succeeded the Rev Dr Joseph Oldknow, Birmingham’s first Anglo-Catholic priest, and he found friends in two neighbouring Irish-born priests in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, the brothers James and Thomas Pollock, both graduates of TCD and both priests at Saint Alban the Martyr in Highgate.

An indication of Enraght’s popularity was the attendance at the Sunday Eucharist, with a congregation of between 400 and 500. The Sunday Evensong with sermon regularly attracted 700 to 800 people. With his parish’s support, Enraght introduced weekday celebrations of the Eucharist. His practices at Holy Trinity included the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, candles on the altar, wearing a chasuble and alb, using wafers at the Eucharst, mixing water with the wine, making the sign of the Cross, bowing during the Gloria, and allowing the choir to sing the Agnus Dei.

On 9 February 1879, one of Enraght’s churchwardens, John Perkins, came forward for Holy Communion but took a Consecrated Wafer to use as an exhibit in court as evidence of the use of wafer-bread. The incident created intense horror and indignation as it became known.

Henry Philpott, Bishop of Worcester, had prohibited the actions, but Enraght refused to attend his own trial on 12 July 1879. He claimed Lord Penzance and the Court of Arches derived their authority not from ‘this Church and Realm’ but from an Act of Parliament, and so had no ‘spiritual jurisdiction over me …’

The Consecrated Wafer Perkins had taken deceptively was produced in court as evidence, marked with pen and ink and filed as an exhibit. The case became known nationally as the ‘Bordesley Wafer Case.’

In his absence, Enraght was convicted on 9 August 1879 on 16 counts. On 31 August 1879, he denounced Perkins from the altar. At the next vestry election, the indignant parishioners rejected Perkins when he was nominated as churchwarden.

A cartoon in the Birmingham ‘Daily Post’ on 26 November 1880 showing Richard Enraght entering Warwick Prison in chains

Eventually, Enraght was arrested at his vicarage on 27 November 1880 and he was taken to Warwick Prison to serve his sentence. Four other priests in England were jailed around the same time under this legislation: Arthur Tooth, Thomas Pelham Dale, Sidney Faithorn Green and James Bell Cox.

Meanwhile, thanks to the English Church Union, the Consecrated Wafer was recovered from the court and given into the care of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who reverently consumed the host in his private chapel at Addington on 12 December 1879.

During the two months Enright spent in prison, there were protests throughout England and in the US. Edward Bouverie Pusey wrote to The Times in defence of Enraght and others: ‘They have not been struggling for themselves but for their people. The Ritualists do not ask to interfere with devotion of others … only to be allowed, in their worship of God, to use a Ritual which a few years ago no one disputed.’

Enraght spent that Christmas in prison. He was released after 49 days when the Court of Appeal ruled on a technicality in the writ for committal. The prosecutor tried to have Enraght returned to jail, but the English Church Union forestalled this attempt with its own legal actions.

When an appeal to the House of Lords failed in May 1882, Enraght was liable to another term in prison, and the parish of Holy Trinity, Bordesley, was declared vacant three months later. Meanwhile, Enraght’s father, the Revd Matthew Enraght, died at Clifton in Bristol on 13 August 1882.

In March 1883, Bishop Philpott revoked Enraght’s licence and appointed another priest to the benefice, against the wishes of the congregation. When Bishop Philpott preached at Holy Trinity two months later on 6 May 1883, the churchwardens handed him a formal protest, saying: ‘We, the truly aggrieved, have been left as sheep without a shepherd.’

However, a Royal Commission report that year marked a turning point, and the repression of ritualism in the Church of England was soon abandoned.

After Enraght was evicted from Holy Trinity, Bordesley, he worked for the next nine years in East London at Saint Michael’s, Bromley-by-Bow (1884-1888) and Saint Gabriel’s, Poplar (1888-1895). In this period of hardship, the Church Union’s Sustentation Fund supported the Enraght family.

In 1895, he was presented to Saint Swithun’s Church, Bintree, and he ended his ministry and life in that quiet country parish in Norfolk. He died on Saint Matthew’s Day, 21 September 1898, and was buried at the south-east end of Saint Swithun’s churchyard, Bintree.

Richard and Dorothea Enright were the parents of seven children. Their second son, Canon Hawtrey Enraght, was ordained priest in Norfolk in 1896, and their son-in-law, the Revd Edgar Reeves, became the Vicar of Walsingham.

Ten years ago, in February 2006, Brighton and Hove City Council erected a blue plaque at his former home in Station Road, Portslade, to honour Richard Enraght as a ‘Priest, fighter for religious freedom.’ Later that year, Brighton and Hove Bus and Coach Company named one of its new fleet buses, No 905, after Father Richard Enraght. Holy Trinity Church in Bordesley has long been closed, and the building was sold by the Diocese of Birmingham.