Praying in Ordinary Time with USPG: 15 February 2023

The Revd Thomas Bray (1658-1730) … founder of SPG (now USPG) and SPCK, died on 15 February 1730

Patrick Comerford

These weeks, between the end of Epiphany and Ash Wednesday, are known as Ordinary Time. We are in a time of preparation for Lent, which in turn is a preparation for Holy Week and Easter.

Before today becomes a busy day, I am taking some time for prayer and reflection early this morning.

In these days of Ordinary Time before Ash Wednesday next week (22 February), I am reflecting in these ways each morning:

1, reflecting on a saint or interesting person in the life of the Church;

2, one of the lectionary readings of the day;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary, ‘Pray with the World Church.’

The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today commemorates both Sigfrid, Bishop, Apostle of Sweden (1045), and Thomas Bray, Priest, founder of the SPCK and the SPG (1730).

The Revd Dr Thomas Bray (1658-1730), an Anglican priest who spent time in Maryland as a missionary, was the founder of both the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG, now the United Society or Us) and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK). He is commemorated on this date [15 February] in several Churches in the Anglican Communion, including the Church of England and the Episcopal Church.

Thomas Bray was born into a humble Shropshire family in 1658 in Marton, near Chirbury, the son of Richard and Mary Bray. The house on Martin Crest is now known as Bray’s Tenement.

The local bishop took notice of young Thomas and felt that with his bright mind he should receive a good education. The bishop sponsored him and paid for his education. Thomas Bray He was educated at Oswestry School, matriculated at All Souls’ College, Oxford, as a ‘poor boy’ on 12 March 1675, and graduated BA in 1678. He later received the degrees MA at Hart Hall (now Hertford College) in 1693, and BD and DD at Magdalene College, Oxford, in 1696.

Thomas Bray was ordained priest in 1682, and he was curate at Bridgnorth before becoming a private chaplain and then Vicar of Over Whitacre and from 1690-1695 Rector of Saint Giles, Sheldon, in Warwickshire, in the Diocese of Lichfield. There he wrote his Catechetical Lectures, which was dedicated to William Lloyd, Bishop of Lichfield. While he was in Warwickshire, he married is first wife, Eleanor.

He appears to have been widowed by 1695, when the Bishop of London, Henry Compton, appointed him as his commissary to organise the struggling Anglican presence in the colony of Maryland.

But his visit to Maryland was long delayed by legal complications, and during that delay, the widowed Thomas Bray married Agnes Sayers of Saint Martin’s-in-the-Fields in Lincoln’s Inn Chapel, Holborn in 1698.

Thomas Bray eventually set sail for America in 1699 for his first and only visit. Although he spent only ten weeks in Maryland, Bray was deeply concerned about the neglected state of the Church in America and the great need for the education of the clergy, the laity people and children.

He radically reorganised and renewed the Church in Maryland, providing for the instruction of children and the systematic examination of candidates for pastoral positions. He also took a great interest in colonial missions, especially among the Native Americans.

At a general visitation of the clergy in Annapolis before his return to England, he emphasised the need for the instruction of children and insisted that no clergyman be given a charge unless he had a good report from the ship he came over in, ‘whether … he gave no matter of scandal, and whether he did constantly read prayers twice a day and catechise and preach on Sundays, which, notwithstanding the common excuses, I know can be done by a minister of any zeal for religion.’

As a result of his visit to Maryland, he proposed a successful scheme for establishing parish libraries in England and America. Bray’s vision was for a library in each parish in America, funded by booksellers and stocked with books donated by authors. These libraries were to encourage the spread of the Anglicanism in the colonies, and were primarily composed of theological works. It was a major endeavour, as at the time the only other public libraries in the American colonies were at a small number of universities.

Back in England, he raised money for missionary work and influenced young Anglican priests to go to America. But his efforts to secure the consecration of a bishop for America were unsuccessful.

In England, he also wrote and preached in defence of the rights of enslaved Africans, and of Indians deprived of their land. He also worked for the reform of prison conditions, and for the establishment of preaching missions to prisoners. He persuaded General James Oglethorpe to found a colony in Georgia for the settlement of debtors as an alternative to debtors’ prison.

In response to his experiences, Thomas Bray was instrumental in establishing both SPCK in 1699 and SPG in 1701.

From 1706 until his death in 1730 he was Vicar of Saint Botolph Without, Aldgate, London, where he continued his philanthropic and literary pursuits. He served the parish with energy and devotion, while continuing his efforts on behalf of African slaves in America and in founding parish libraries.

By the time he died on 15 February 1730 at the age of 74, Bray had succeeded in establishing 80 libraries in England and Wales and 39 in America.

Thomas Bray’s most widely circulated work is his four-volume A Course of Lectures upon the Church Catechism, published in 1696.

Thomas Bray was Vicar of Saint Botolph Without, Aldgate, London, from 1706 until his death in 1730 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 8: 22-26 (NRSVA):

22 They came to Bethsaida. Some people brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him. 23 He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, ‘Can you see anything?’ 24 And the man looked up and said, ‘I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.’ 25 Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 Then he sent him away to his home, saying, ‘Do not even go into the village.’

All Souls’ College, Oxford … Thomas Bray matriculated as a ‘poor boy’ in 1675 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

USPG Prayer Diary:

The theme in the USPG Prayer Diary this week is ‘Bray Day.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by Jo Sadgrove, USPG’s Research and Learning Advisor, who shared the challenges of uncovering USPG’s archives.

The USPG Prayer Diary today invites us to pray in these words:

We pray for all who live with the shadow of the slave trade. May we work tirelessly to understand and dismantle its legacy.

Additional Prayer:

O God of compassion, who opened the eyes of your servant Thomas Bray to see the needs of the Church in the New World, and led him to found societies to meet those needs: Make the Church in this land diligent at all times to propagate the Gospel among those who have not received it, and to promote the spread of Christian knowledge; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever..

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

The Willow Pattern: a childhood memory and renewed popularity

The Willow Pattern … has regained the popularity it once lost (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

Unexpected and sudden smells, sounds or sights can take us make immediately to past places, bringing back memories that we think are long-forgotten.

Twice in recent weeks, walking through the narrow aisles of shops I would never plan to visit – once in Foxford, Co Mayo, last month and then once again last week in Bray, Co Wicklow – I found myself face-to-face with displays of Willow Pattern plates and platters, mugs and cups.

And I realised I was startled … not by their sudden appearance but by the sudden recall of houses I had lived in as a child.

In quick, short bursts of recollection, I recalled my grandmother’s farmhouse in Co Waterford, and a childhood home in Dublin.

I thought the Willow Pattern had so gone out of fashion that it was no longer on sale. Perhaps it survived in a lonely, isolated surviving plate here and there. And then I realised how popular it was on ceramic and popular kitchen ware, and must have been commonplace in every family home in England and Ireland well into the 1950s, perhaps even the 1960s.

I remember Willow Pattern plates and platters on dressers in our own family homes, and then I recalled being told the story or the fable that embellished and decorated the cups and saucers. Not once but twice these memories came back in a sweet rush, and I remembered being told those stories with assurances of affection and love.

But as I looked into the story of the Willow Pattern, why was I surprised too to find that there was a thread that lead me back to Pugin, the Gothic revival and the intellectual circles in the English Midlands in the late 18th and early 19th centuries?

The Willow Pattern is an oriental pattern, most often seen in blue and white, that features common elements from manufacturer to manufacturer. These elements are a willow tree, an orange or apple tree, two birds, people on a bridge, a fence, a boat and a teahouse or pagoda.

The Willow Pattern has been made by hundreds of companies (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The Willow Pattern has been made by hundreds of companies in dozens of countries, and in colours from the most-seen blue, to red, green, gold, yellow, purple, black, brown, multi-coloured and the list goes on with combinations.

Some accounts say the Willow Pattern was first designed by Thomas Turner of Caughley in Shropshire in 1780. Others say it was created ten years later by Josiah Spode or that it was the work of Thomas Minton around 1790.

Thomas Turner (1747-1809) was the eldest son of the Revd Richard Turner (1724-1791), vicar of Elmley Castle, Worcestershire. It has been supposed that Thomas was brought up as a silversmith. He was involved in porcelain manufacture, and was a skilful draughtsman, designer, and engraver, as well as being an accomplished musician. He was a magistrate for Shropshire and Staffordshire, and a freeman of Worcester, Much Wenlock, and Bridgnorth.

In 1772, he succeeded his father-in-law at his pottery works at Caughley, known as The Salopian China Warehouse.

After visiting France in 1780, he introduced the Willow Pattern to England. He died in 1809, and the business was finally abandoned in 1814 or 1815.

The potter Josiah Spode (1733-1797) was the founder of the Spode pottery works and is often credited with the establishment of blue underglaze transfer printing in Staffordshire in 1781-1784, and is said to have designed the Willow Pattern from a pattern called Mandarin in about 1790.

The potter Thomas Minton (1765-1836) founded Thomas Minton & Sons in Stoke-on-Trent, which grew into a major ceramic manufacturing company.

In the early 1780s, Minton was an apprentice engraver at the Caughley Pottery Works in Shropshire, working under Thomas Turner, working on copperplate engravings for the production of transfer-wares. The Caughley engraver Thomas Lucas went to work for Josiah Spode at Stoke-on-Trent in 1782, taking some elements of the fashionable chinoiserie patterns with him. At Caughley, it is claimed, Minton worked on the original design of the true willow pattern, and prepared the first copperplates of it.

After Minton left Caughley in 1785, variations of the original design were acquired by Spode, Wedgwood, Adams, Davenport and others. He worked for Josiah Spode, and it was for him that he engraved a new version of the willow pattern.

In 1793, Minton established his own pottery factory in Stoke-upon-Trent, where his products included the Willow Pattern, and fine ornamental chinaware.

When Minton died in 1836, he was succeeded by his son Herbert Minton (1793–1858) who developed new production techniques and took the business into new fields, including decorative encaustic tile making, through his association with leading architects and designers including the Gothic Revival architect AWN Pugin.

Pugin worked closely with Herbert Minton and John Hardman (1811-1867), the Birmingham metalwork manufacturer, in carrying out his great building and decorative schemes, from the Palace of Westminster to small country churches and houses, and Pugin’s own family home at Ramsgate.

Between 1844 and 1854, Herbert Minton presented encaustic floor tiles to a total of 46 churches and vicarages in Staffordshire, and over 150 churches in the Diocese of Lichfield were supplied with Minton pavements by 1859. They included Lichfield Cathedral. There are Minton tiles too in many of Pugin’s Irish churches and cathedrals, including Saint Aidan’s Cathedral, Enniscorthy, Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Killarney, and Saint Mary’s Church, Tagoat.

Romantic tales may have evolved in the efforts to increase sales of the Willow Pattern (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

In order to sell Minton’s Willow Pattern, stories were invented to fit the design, and despite the legends, the story is completely English in origin, and has no links to China. Nonetheless, the romantic fable is worth telling.

Once there was a wealthy Mandarin, who had a beautiful daughter called Koong-se. She had fallen in love with her father’s humble accounting assistant, Chang. But her father was angry for it was inappropriate for them to marry because the difference in their social class.

The father sacked young Chang and built a high fence around his house to keep the lovers apart. The Mandarin was planning to marry Koong-se off to a powerful Duke. The Duke arrived by boat to claim his bride, bringing a box of jewels as a gift. The wedding was to take place on the day the blossom fell from the willow tree.

On the eve of Koong-se’s wedding, Chang dressed himself up as a servant and slipped into the palace unnoticed. As the lovers escaped with the jewels, the alarm was raised. They ran over a bridge, chased by the Mandarin, with a whip in his hand.

Eventually the two lovers escaped on the Duke’s ship to safety on a secluded island, and there they lived happily for years.

However, the Duke learned one day that they had been found on the island. Seeking revenge, he sent soldiers, who captured the lovers and put them to death. But the gods were moved by their plight and turned the lovers into a pair of doves. And so, although they both perished, the gods were touched by their love and immortalised them as two doves, eternally flying together in the sky.

There is an old poem:

Two birds flying high,
A Chinese vessel, sailing by.
A bridge with three men, sometimes four,
A willow tree, hanging o’er.
A Chinese temple, there it stands,
Built upon the river sands.
An apple tree, with apples on,
A crooked fence to end my song.

Thomas Minton’s design has been followed by Royal Worcester, Spode, Adams, Wedgwood, Davenport, Clews, Leeds and Swansea. But there have been changes to the Willow Pattern over the years.

The original Chinese Willow by Minton had no bridge with people crossing over, and it is not sure whether the stories connected with it originated in China or England. The original did not have the apple-tree or the two doves. These were added later. Other differences include the treatment or the fretted border, with either a lattice work or conventional butterfly, and details of the fence in the foreground.

For a century and a half, the Willow Pattern has been the stock-pattern of nearly every British pottery manufacturer. Although its popularity has waned at times, I realised after seeing it once again in Bray and Foxford that it has returned to favour once again and is as popular as it ever was.