In the Spirit of St George
Only one wedding of a United States President is known to have occurred overseas. This was the marriage of Theodore Roosevelt to Edith Kermit Carow on December 2, 1886 just under fifteen years before he became the 26th President upon the assassination and death of Wiliam McKinley on September 14, 1901.[1] That wedding[2] took place in St George’s Hanover Square in Mayfair, London, a parish to which I have long had a connection and where I shall be this weekend to observe the 300th anniversary of its consecration. The proceedings will be led by Lord Richard Chartres, the Bishop emeritus of the Diocese of London, who looks forward to visiting The Church of the Advent next year.
St George’s parish is one with many American connections, as the Embassy of the United States was within its boundaries for over 75 years, as is the Memorial Garden today, commemorating the sad events of 9/11. John Adams, the first American Ambassador to the Court of St James, lived close by in Brooke Street (not far from the house at 17 Bruton Street where Queen Elizabeth II was born). During the two world wars, a great many American Service men and women worshiped at St George’s.
St George’s was also the church where George Frederick Handle worshipped – and indeed examined candidates who applied as organist. It was observed of him that “For the last two or three years of his life he was used to attend divine service in his own parish church of St George’s, Hanover Square…….expressing by his looks and gesticulations the utmost fervour of devotion.” The parish’s strong musical heritage brings another link to America now, in the form of the organ, which is in the original case going back to 1725: commissioned from Richards, Fowkes & Co of Ooltewah, Tennessee. It was the first American-built organ in London.
The parish had its origins in the rapid westward expansion into the countryside of the original city of London in the 18th century, construction made possible through the Act for the building of Fifty New Churches passed in 1711 by the British Parliament. Eventually, a plot of land was given for the Church by General the Hon. William Steuart, Queen Anne’s Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, and it was to him therefore that the honor of laying the foundation stone was given. This he did in 1721, and having done this, he struck it with a mallet, and poured a libation of wine accompanied by the words: “The Lord God of Heaven preserve the Church of St George.”
The architect entrusted with the design was John James, who has remained somewhat overshadowed by his contemporaries, Gibbs and Hawksmoor. The son of clergyman, he began his career working for Sir Christopher Wren before becoming assistant Clerk of the Works at the Royal Hospital Greenwich and then Surveyor to St. Paul’s Cathedral. St George’s remains his most notable achievement, a success all the more remarkable given the narrow confines of the site and the eventual, and rather severe, restriction made upon the cost to no more than £10,000.
The church, upon completion, was consecrated by Edmund Gibson the Bishop of London and Dean of the Chapels Royal on March 23, 1725. Bishop Gibson had started his career as Lambeth Palace Librarian and was by disposition the very embodiment of Anglican moderation, being by turns as opposed to lukewarmness as he was also to enthusiasm. Thus, while disapproving of the innovations of Methodism, he also opposed Horace Wallpole’s Quakers Tithe Bill of 1736, and he still found time to write a handy three volume Preservative against Popery in 1738.
But as a Church scholar, his most notable achievement was his Codex juris ecclesiastici Anglicani, published in two folio volumes in 1713. This formidable work remains one of the most learned and extensive accounts of the legal rights and duties of the English clergy, as well as of the constitution, canons and articles of the English Church. Yet he was also a man of practical charity and action. Thus, Bishop Gibson was Founding Governor of the Foundling Hospital which was an orphanage first established by Captain Thomas Coram. He was central in obtaining a Royal Charter for that institution, which remains active to the present day.
The parish’s role in ministering to the poor and needy (often as the sole purveyor) led to a remarkable number of other major educational and charitable institutions being founded. These include St George’s University Hospital, which now has multiple sites and employs over 10,000 people.
A further complex legacy is the London Borough of Westminster City itself, much of which for the first 175 years of the parish’s life was administered from the St George’s Vestry. Of this body there were a hundred and one members. Included among them were seven dukes, fourteen earls, seven barons, and twenty-six other persons of title. These Vestrymen were originally responsible not only for the church’s affairs, but also for the local government of an area comprising 993 acres upon which stood Buckingham Palace, The Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, 10 Downing Street, Whitehall and Trafalgar Square.
Yet in all of this, it was the spirit of St George himself that served as inspiration for the Church’s fundamental role as a witness to Christ. St George was one of the most venerated of the early martyrs. Tradition holds that he was a native of Cappadocia in Asia Minor and an officer of the Imperial Army. This figure was later linked to one mentioned in the 4th century Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, who, in the year 303 at Nicomedia, tore down the Emperor Diocletian’s Edict against Christians.
For this he was severely tortured, yet he refused to renounce his Christian beliefs. In the end he was put to death by burning. His relics were conveyed to Lydda in Palestine, where his mother owned property and a church was subsequently erected over his tomb – with many others soon built in his honour. A Council of Pope Gelasius in 494, while condemning the legends contained in the compilation called “The Acts of St George,” asserted that he was nonetheless a real martyr and worthy of reverence; the eastern Church came to regard him as a “Great Martyr.”
Ironically, after the Reformation, both Calvin and the later Roman Catholic Church rejected or downgraded St George (from duplex to a simple Feast, and then from a Commemoration to an “optional memorial” in the Roman case) but Anglicans, the Orthodox and Oriental churches have all sustained the devotion to a Saint who is indeed the Patron Saint of England, as also of Ethiopia and Georgia in the Caucasus, as well as the region of Aragon in Spain and of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, England’s premier Order of Chivalry.
It is no less than Shakespeare who offers us the simplest and most powerful invocation:
Cry God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’ – Henry V, Act III, 1598.
While the Rectors of the Parish of St George may not have had to slay literal dragons, they have certainly exhibited a singular and distinguished dedication in service to the parish – all points of which the forty-five year tenure of the late Prebendary, William Atkins was illustrative. Indeed, such was his commitment that when – upon reaching his fortieth year in office – the Bishop of London enquired tentatively if he had “ever contemplated retirement?” He received the immediate reply: “No, I have never regarded this as a temporary appointment.”
Such a legacy and commitment should be an inspiration to us all.
The Rev. Canon Alistair Macdonald-Radcliff
Rector
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The Wardens of the Parish of the Advent will no doubt be interested to know that the Wands of Office which they carry on ceremonial occasions (and most recently thus at my ceremonial installation) have equivalents at St George’s Hanover Square. There, however, they comprise two very tall “Beadles’ staves” which date back to 1804. These tall and stout ebony wands are crowned with substantial yet detailed silver sculptures of St George and the Dragon. Such is their heft that, congenially for the bearer perhaps, they must tend to militate against contradiction.
[1] President McKinley died of gangrene after being shot twice on 6th September 1901, in the “Temple of Music” at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, by the Anarchist Leon F. Czolgosz. Czolgosz was tried and sent to the electric chair for his crime on 29th October of that same year. An historical curiosity of this was that Buffalo was where the electric chair seems largely to have been invented. Initial expertise and research was contributed there by the physician George Edward Fell who was assisted by Alfred Porter Southwick a local inventor and dentist who evidently found the design of a dentist’s chair most satisfactorily adaptable to the needs of an execution.
[2] A few of the many other notable weddings included those of Emma Hamilton, Percy Bysshe Shelley, George Eliot, as well as those of the British Prime Ministers Benjamin Disraeli, Arthur J. Balfour, W.E Gladstone, and H.H Asquith. Both Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Bernard Shaw placed weddings in the church in their works.