19 March 1783 A.D. Frederick Cornwallis Dies at Lambeth—87th of 105 Archbishops of Canterbury; A Georgian Aristocrat & Gentleman
19 March 1783 A.D. Frederick Cornwallis Dies at Lambeth—87th of 105 Archbishops
of Canterbury; A Georgian Aristocrat
& Gentleman
Ditchfield, G. M. “Cornwallis, Frederick (1713–1783).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008). http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6340. Accessed 7 June 2014.
Ditchfield, G. M. “Cornwallis, Frederick (1713–1783).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008). http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6340. Accessed 7 June 2014.
Frederick Cornwallis (1713–1783),
by Nathaniel Dance, 1768
Cornwallis,
Frederick
(1713–1783), archbishop of Canterbury, was born in
London on 22 February 1713, the seventh son of Charles, fourth Baron Cornwallis
of Eye (1675–1722), politician and army officer, and his wife, Lady Charlotte
Butler (d. 1725), daughter of Richard Butler, first earl of Arran. He
was the twin of the military commander Edward Cornwallis
(1713–1776).
After an education at Eton College (1725–8) he matriculated at Christ's
College, Cambridge, in 1732 and graduated BA in 1737. In 1739 he was ordained
deacon and became a fellow of his college; he was ordained priest in 1742. At
Cambridge, according to a contemporary source, he was not only a ‘studious
man’, but ‘always consistent, decent and beloved’ (Kentish
Parson, 40). He clearly adapted well to the effects of a palsy that
deprived him of the use of his right hand and he graduated DD at Cambridge in
1748; according to one source, he came close to election as master of Christ's
College (ibid., 73–4).
Meanwhile, Cornwallis's aristocratic connections had assisted him to a series of ecclesiastical preferments. He became rector of Chelmondiston, Suffolk, in 1740, and of Tivetshall in Norfolk two years later. Proof that he was a rising clergyman came in 1746 when he was made chaplain to George II and a canon of Windsor. He became a prebendary of Lincoln in 1747, canon of St Paul's Cathedral in 1750, and dean of the cathedral in 1766. His geniality of manner and avoidance of theological controversy helped to make him a suitable candidate for the bench, and in 1750 he became bishop of Lichfield and Coventry through the patronage of the duke of Newcastle. On 8 February 1759 Cornwallis married Caroline, daughter of William Townshend and granddaughter of Charles, second Viscount Townshend. She shared his intellectual interests. There were no children and she died on 5 January 1809.
Cornwallis's attempts to obtain translation to Worcester or Salisbury were unsuccessful, but friendship with the duke of Grafton helped to secure his nomination as archbishop of Canterbury in 1768 on the death of Thomas Secker. He immediately won popularity among his diocesan clergy by his conviviality. A letter to the Gentleman's Magazine immediately after his death, from a Kentish vicar (Samuel Denne), praised his ‘liberality of soul’ in abolishing ‘that odious distinction of a separate table for the chaplains’ (GM, 1st ser., 53, 1783, 280) for clergy dinners at Lambeth Palace. He displayed a similar gregariousness in his diocesan visitations. There were some, indeed, who believed that he carried merriment too far and George III, apparently prompted by the evangelical countess of Huntingdon, chided him for proposing to hold a ‘rout’ at Lambeth (Rowden, 331). As archbishop, Cornwallis played little part in debates in the House of Lords, though he lent consistent support to Lord North's administration. He expressed sympathy with some of the campaigners for amendment to the Thirty-Nine Articles test for clerical and university subscription, but consultation with his fellow bishops convinced him that he should not endorse the Feathers tavern petition of 1772. He led the episcopal contributions to the fund for the dispossessed American Episcopalian clergy in 1776 and gave general succour to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. One of his very few publications was a sermon to that society preached on 20 February 1756, in which he expressed the standard fears about the subversion of the American colonies by Spanish Catholicism. However, he did not share the contemporary paranoia over ‘popery’ and on 6 June 1780 Lambeth Palace was in some danger from the Gordon rioters.
Cornwallis died after a short illness on 19 March 1783 at Lambeth Palace and was buried in Lambeth church eight days later. He was a conscientious administrator and an entirely conventional Georgian churchman. A recent historian has observed: ‘As a consequence of the complaisant Establishmentarianism of the likes of Cornwallis, the Church would lay itself open to the incursions of Evangelical thought and the reaction of “Orthodoxy” which culminated in the Oxford Movement’ (Young, 79). That he published little, however, did not reflect a lack of intellectual interests, and both he and his widow bequeathed valuable items to the archiepiscopal palaces at Lambeth and Croydon. Perhaps his most appropriate epitaph was provided by the Revd John Denne of Maidstone who, on Cornwallis's translation to Canterbury, commented: ‘We have now got what we wanted—a gentleman’ (Kentish Parson, 124).
G. M. Ditchfield
Meanwhile, Cornwallis's aristocratic connections had assisted him to a series of ecclesiastical preferments. He became rector of Chelmondiston, Suffolk, in 1740, and of Tivetshall in Norfolk two years later. Proof that he was a rising clergyman came in 1746 when he was made chaplain to George II and a canon of Windsor. He became a prebendary of Lincoln in 1747, canon of St Paul's Cathedral in 1750, and dean of the cathedral in 1766. His geniality of manner and avoidance of theological controversy helped to make him a suitable candidate for the bench, and in 1750 he became bishop of Lichfield and Coventry through the patronage of the duke of Newcastle. On 8 February 1759 Cornwallis married Caroline, daughter of William Townshend and granddaughter of Charles, second Viscount Townshend. She shared his intellectual interests. There were no children and she died on 5 January 1809.
Cornwallis's attempts to obtain translation to Worcester or Salisbury were unsuccessful, but friendship with the duke of Grafton helped to secure his nomination as archbishop of Canterbury in 1768 on the death of Thomas Secker. He immediately won popularity among his diocesan clergy by his conviviality. A letter to the Gentleman's Magazine immediately after his death, from a Kentish vicar (Samuel Denne), praised his ‘liberality of soul’ in abolishing ‘that odious distinction of a separate table for the chaplains’ (GM, 1st ser., 53, 1783, 280) for clergy dinners at Lambeth Palace. He displayed a similar gregariousness in his diocesan visitations. There were some, indeed, who believed that he carried merriment too far and George III, apparently prompted by the evangelical countess of Huntingdon, chided him for proposing to hold a ‘rout’ at Lambeth (Rowden, 331). As archbishop, Cornwallis played little part in debates in the House of Lords, though he lent consistent support to Lord North's administration. He expressed sympathy with some of the campaigners for amendment to the Thirty-Nine Articles test for clerical and university subscription, but consultation with his fellow bishops convinced him that he should not endorse the Feathers tavern petition of 1772. He led the episcopal contributions to the fund for the dispossessed American Episcopalian clergy in 1776 and gave general succour to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. One of his very few publications was a sermon to that society preached on 20 February 1756, in which he expressed the standard fears about the subversion of the American colonies by Spanish Catholicism. However, he did not share the contemporary paranoia over ‘popery’ and on 6 June 1780 Lambeth Palace was in some danger from the Gordon rioters.
Cornwallis died after a short illness on 19 March 1783 at Lambeth Palace and was buried in Lambeth church eight days later. He was a conscientious administrator and an entirely conventional Georgian churchman. A recent historian has observed: ‘As a consequence of the complaisant Establishmentarianism of the likes of Cornwallis, the Church would lay itself open to the incursions of Evangelical thought and the reaction of “Orthodoxy” which culminated in the Oxford Movement’ (Young, 79). That he published little, however, did not reflect a lack of intellectual interests, and both he and his widow bequeathed valuable items to the archiepiscopal palaces at Lambeth and Croydon. Perhaps his most appropriate epitaph was provided by the Revd John Denne of Maidstone who, on Cornwallis's translation to Canterbury, commented: ‘We have now got what we wanted—a gentleman’ (Kentish Parson, 124).
G. M. Ditchfield
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