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ADDITIONAL HISTORY At the Synod which created the Free Protestant Episcopal Church of
England on 2 November 1897, Bishop James Martin of the Nazarene Episcopal Ecclesia
assisted Archbishop Leon Checkemian of the Free Protestant Church of England
and Archbishop Charles Isaac Stevens of the Ancient British Church in
consecrating Bishops Frederick W. Boucher, George W.L. Maeers, and Andrew
Charles Albert McLaglen. Bishop Martin immediately after these consecrations
was sub conditione consecrated by the other five as Mar Jacobus I Antipas and
was given the ecclesiastical position of Archbishop of Caerleon-upon-Usk. The
location of this Synod where the Free Protestant Church of England, the
Ancient British Church, and the Nazarene Episcopal Ecclesia merged into the
FPEC was St. Stephen's Church, Shrewsburg Road, East Ham, London. The church
was an iron building just built in 1897 and served as the pro-cathedral of
the FPEC until 1909 when it was sold to a group of Spiritualists. Bishop
George Walter Lewis Maeers (born in 1855 in Kent) was consecrated to be an
assistant bishop to the Reformed Episcopal Church in Spain and nothing more
is known of him. Bishop Boucher appears to have been consecrated for an
independent ministry. Both these two bishops were never counted as bishops of
the FPEC as their names are not on the official listing of Bishops of the
Church. Bishop McLaglen was consecrated to be the FPEC Missionary Bishop for
Cape Colony based in Cape Town with the title of Bishop of Claremont. By 1901
he and his family were back in England, living in the Limehouse district of
London. Bishop McLaglen was slightly mifed that his eldest son, Victor, had
joined the British army in the Boer War, and after getting the son out of the
forces, thought best for his family to move back to England. Bishop Frederick William Boucher Sr. (surname legally spelled Baucher)
was born in 1855 in St. Helens, Lancashire. His secular employment was that
of engineer's foreman in a factory pattern maker's department in Liverpool.
His probable employer was the Mersey Iron Foundry of Liverpool, who built the
first cast iron church in the world in 1814. Boucher most likely had a hand
in the design of St. Stephen's Church and the resulting contact with the
bishops of the FPEC lead to his consecration. By the time his daughter Bertha
married Lance-Sergeant Arthur William Martin of the Second Battalion,
Scottish Rifles on 17 March 1914, he apparently had retired from secular
employment as Bertha stated on the marriage certificate that her father's
occupation was that of "clergyman". He died in 1928 at Ormskirk,
Lanc. In 1909 Primus C.I. Stevens relocated the pro-cathedral of the FPEC to
the Church of Martin Luther, located at 26 Speldhurst Road, South Hackney
where it remained so until 1919. In 1919, upon Bishop McLaglen becoming
Primus, his mission church of St. Andrew's at Retreat Place, Hackney served
as the pro-cathedral until 1936 when it was demolished as part of a city
redevelopment project. In 1928 Dr. McLaglen died and he was succeeded as
pastor at the Retreat Place church by the Rev'd William Hall. Also in 1936
the Stonebridge Road Methodist Church in South Tottenham was acquired by the
Rev'd Mr. Hall for the FPEC. This red brick chapel was built in 1882 and was
re-dedicated as St. Andrew's Church. In 1954 it was registered as St Andrew's
Collegiate Church. It served as the pro-cathedral until 1967 when it was sold
to the Church of God congregation and later became part of a housing
development. On 25 July 1916 Dr. Martin consecrated Benjamin Charles Harris as FPEC
Bishop of Essex and Ernest Mumby as FPEC Bishop of Caer-Leirion, and as
Chancellor of the Nazarene College, granted both new bishops doctor of
divinity degrees. Benjamin Charles Harris was born in 1884 in Essex, England.
On 25 July 1915 he was ordained a presbyter, as was also William Hall, by Dr.
Martin exactly a year before being raised to the episcopate. Dr. Harris
throughout his ministrial career served as a minister for various
non-conformist churches. From 1927 to 1929 he was the pastor for Romford
Evangelical Free Church in Romford, Essex. In 1929 he left Essex for
Hertfordshire when he became minister for New Barnet Baptist Church. He later
became the non-conformist chaplain to the Mental Hospital in Abbots Langley,
Herts., in which town he died on 9 November 1946. Bishop Mumby worked in the hotel industry for many years and appears
not to have exercised much of a ministry. He died on 12 September 1939 in
Blackpool, Lanc., at the age of 53 years. The General Synod of the FPEC as of
21 April 1917 consisted of the following: Most Rev'd James Martin, D.D.,
LL.D. (Caerleon-on-Usk, etc.), Archbishop & Patriarch; Rt. Rev'd Ernest
Mumby, D.D. (Caer-Leirion) and Rt. Rev'd B. Chas. Harris, D.D. (Essex),
Bishops; Rev'd William Hall, Bishop's Chaplain; B.A. Surridge, Registrar;
E.P. Woodcock, V.D.M. [Verbi Dei Minister], Herald; and Venable Ernest A.
Asquith, Ph.D., Archdeacon. Here is a brief description of the organisation of the FPEC at that
time. The laws for the proper self-government of the FPEC were contained in
its Canons Ecclesiastical. The Bishops were the chief executive officers, and
with the Archdeacon formed the General Standing Committee. It was the duty of
the Bishops to exercise oversight over all the ministers and congregations
within their respective jurisdictions, and have the right of entry, at all
reasonable times, into any church for the purposes of preaching, enquiry,
counsel and performing such other duties as pertain to their office; they
administer the right of confirmation and confer Holy Orders. The supreme
legislative and administrative authority of the Church was vested in the
General Synod, composed of Bishops and Clergy, together with not more than
two lay representatives (Synodsmen) from each organised congregation. This
Synod met quarterly, and for the due transaction of its business appointed
annually a Treasurer, Registrar, and such other officers or sub-committees as
it deemed necessary. It also had the power to add to the General Standing
Committee. "The Church Times", of 28th April 1922, devotes practically
a whole page to an article, "A Chapter of Secret History". It gives
a somewhat detailed account of the background of the Order of Corporate
Reunion and the bishops consecrated for that organisation, which was in the
episcopal lineage of Archbishop Charles Isaac Stevens and the passing on of
that succession to the FPEC. The Author of this article adds the following:
"It is interesting, and may be of future importance to note that the
orders possessed by these Protestant bodies conferred through Checkemian,
MacLaglen (sic) and their co-adjutors are free from the objections alleged
against Anglican Orders by the Roman Catholic Controversialists". Dr. Herbert James Monzani Heard, during his time as Primus of the FPEC
and afterwards, began the spreading of the Orders of the FPEC into other
independent church groups. He consecrated Bishops Victor Alexander Palmer
Hayman (20 April 1930), Frederick Charles Aloysius Harrington (13 June 1938),
James Dominic Mary O'Gavigan (20 May 1940), and William Bernard Crow (13 June
1943) for their respective jurisdictions. He also consecrated his successor
as Primus of the FPEC, the Rev'd William Hall on 18 May 1939 in St. Andrew's
Church, Stonebridge Road, Tottenham, London, N.15. Dr. Monzani Heard disliked
the name FPEC and introduced The Episcopal Apostolic Church of England at the
time he consecrated +Harrington as an alternative title for the jurisdiction.
On 15 July 1949 the Rev'd Frederick C. King (1917 to 1985) and his
wife the Rev'd Karla King (deaconess) (1920 to 1999) incorporated in
California The Anglican Apostolic Church Of England as a USA affiliate to the
EAC/FPEC with its headquarters in Sunland, California. In 1963 Dr. F. C. King
was raised to the episcopate by FPEC Archbishop of the USA Dr. E. N. Enochs
(see below). In 1922 a schism occurred in the Reformed Episcopal Church of England
when five churches in its northern diocese left that group, and along with
several independent Anglican congregations, formed the Evangelical Church of
England, appointing two presbyters (Rev'ds John Pownal Hodgkinson and Charles
Edmund Wincott) as its first bishops. In 1930 the Rev'd William Newton was also consecrated by presbyters as
the bishop for this church. The Rev'd Charles Leslie Saul (southern England
based in London) and the Rev'd Gordon Pinder (northern England based in
Preston) were in 1936 consecrated by +Newton as his successors with +Pinder
taking the office of primus. Bishop Saul was determined to obtain the formal
English episcopal succession for this church and he petitioned Dr. B. Charles
Harris to bestow it. Finally, on 17 September 1944 Dr. Harris served as chief
consecrator when he sub-conditione consecrated Primus Pinder and Bishops Saul
and K. C. Pillai (who had been cons. in 1937 by +Pinder and +Saul) to the
episcopal bench. This event annoyed Primus Hall, who was Anglo-Catholic in
orientation and ironically as head of the FPEC, disapproved of such a
protestant church group as the ECofE obtaining the Holy Orders of the Free
Protestant Episcopal Church. In September of 1945 the ECofE split into two rival sections with
Primus Pinder continuing as head until his death in January of 1950 of the
ECofE and Bishop Saul becoming Primus of the English Episcopal Church and
continued as that church's leader (under several name changes) until his
death in June of 1991. Another irony to this story was that on 24 July 1959,
Primus Hall himself sub-cond. cons. the Rt. Rev'd James Ormerod, the Primus
of the continuing ECofE, probably to tick off Dr. Saul! By 1949 the FPEC had
almost ceased to function. Bishop Mumby had died in September 1939;
Archdeacon Asquith in June 1942; Bishop Harris in November 1946; and former
Primus Monzani Heard in August 1947. Then entered Dr. C. D. Boltwood. Charles Dennis Boltwood (30 August
1889 to 3 July 1985), a native of Essex, was a noted Spiritualist. Between
1937 and 1941, using the pseudonym "Crusader", he published six
"spirit revealed" books supposably by the Victorian social reformer
Charles Kingsley. These books were printed at a small press in the town of
Thorpe-le-Soken, Essex, which was probably also the residence of the Boltwoods
during those years. In 1942 Boltwood founded the College of Spiritual
Science, a correspondence school with courses for the training of
"Spiritual Healers, Psychotherapists, and Thalamopathists". By 1949 Dr. Boltwood was already a bishop in the Catholicate of the
West under Mar Georgius de Wilmot Newman when he took a Bachelor of Divinity
course through Nazarene College under Dr. Hall. The FPEC was very much part
of Primus Hall's life and he was anxious that the Church would not die with
him. As a boy he had served as a choir boy in St. Stephen's FPEC
Pro-Cathedral. In 1913 he was ordered a deacon by +Stevens and in 1915 he was
ordained a presbyter by +Martin and appointed Bishop's Chaplain in 1917 in
which office he served until he assumed the headship of the Church in 1939.
He asked Dr. Boltwood to formally joined the FPEC while maintaining his
connexion to +de Wilmot Newman's organisation. However, Dr. Hall was a
stickler for the Holy Orders of the FPEC and made Dr. Boltwood a deacon (17
Dec. 1950), a presbyter (3 May 1951), and a bishop (6 April 1952) rather than
accept him as a bishop as far as the FPEC was concern. In 1954 Dr. Hall underwent an operation for colon cancer and before
this happened he appointed Dr. Boltwood his successor as primus on 25 March
of that year and also transferred control of St. Andrew's Church to Bp.
Boltwood which was renamed as St. Andrew's Collegiate Church. Dr. Boltwood
became the Principal of Nazarene College under the Patronage of Dr. Hall as
Primus, continuing to train by post, various persons around the world in
Philosophy and Theology. On 5 July 1955, Nazarene College was merged with St.
Andrew's Correspondence College (Tottenham) Ltd. when that organisation was
incorporated. On 27 August 1966 the final graduation dinner for this College
was held at the Bonnington Hotel, London, when the College was closed down
and its records lodged at Somerset House in anticipation of the sale of the
pro-cathedral in the following year. (A curious by path to this story is that
another "Nazarene College" came into existence, claiming to be the
continuation of Dr. Martin's original. On 29 January 1945 Dr. Monzani Heard retired as Patriarch of the
Ancient British Church, appointing Mar Georgius de Wilmot Newman as his
successor. Mar Georgius assumed that the the deed of the college went with
the Ancient British Church instead of the FPEC in which it was vested by the
Nazarene Episcopal Ecclesia at the time of the 1897 union. Stating that the
college was long dormant, on 25 October 1953 he appointed Bishop Ronald
Powell (Richard, Duc de Palatine) as the president of the college when he
consecrated the latter to the episcopalate. Bishop Powell then made this
"Nazarene College" part of his newly established Pre-Nicene
Catholic Church which still exists to this day under Bishop George William
Boyer of London.) Harry Kenneth Means (27 Nov. 1919 to 19 Apr. 2004) was an former
Universalist minister who was the leader of a group of 14 parishes in the
Christian Universalist Church of America. From March to October of 1964 he
and his wife Rita went to Europe on church business and to research on church
history in the British Museum Reading Rooms and at Ashmolean in Oxford. On 16
August of that year he was consecrated in St. Andrew's Collegiate Church by
+Boltwood, assisted by FPEC bishop Dr. Francis Thomas, and Old Catholic
bishop Albert Dunstan Bell of the USA. Courtesy of friends in the North
American College at Rome, Italy, Dr. Means was able, by virtue of his FPEC
episcopal standing, to have open access to the Vatican Library. On 14 October Dr. Means attended a Papal Audience held at 5 pm that
day in St. Peter's where his Episcopal ring and Pectoral Cross were blessed
by Pope Paul VI! Bishop Means was also given VIP seating at St. Peter's when
he was present on 18 Oct. for the Canonization Service of the Ugandan Martyrs
- this service featured the use of the Coptic liturgy and the release of
white doves. Bishops consecrated by CHARLES DENNIS BOLTWOOD Grant Timothy Billet 25 Dec
1950 Nestor Joseph Emile Antoine Frippiat
02 Sept 1956 Walter Joseph Hendrik Van Den Berghe
02 Sept 1956 Emmet Neil Enochs 02 June 1957
(1st cons) & 31 Aug 1958 (2nd cons) James Burrows Noble 04 Sept
1957 Reginald Benjamin Millard 15
Apr 1958 Emmanuel Samuel Yekorogha 06
June 1958 Benjamin Charles Eckhardt 16
Aug 1958 Charles Kennedy Samuel Moffatt
24 Aug 1958 John Marion Stanley 03 May
1959 Eric Daenecke 12 Dec 1960 John Trollnas early 1961 Francis Thomas 04 July 1961 William Charles Cato-Symonds
15 Apr 1962 Harry Kenneth Means 16 Aug
1964 James Everard Thornhill 24 Apr
1966 Arthur Olawale Nelson-Cole 29
May 1966 Albert John Fuge, Sr 16 Oct
1966 Edwin Duane Follick 28 Aug
1968 EJ Evans summer 1968 Gordon Albert Da Costa 18 June
1971 William Elliot Littlewood 19
June 1971 Russell Grant Fry, Jr 19 June
1971 Horst Karl Frederick Block 09
Aug 1971 (1st cons) & 26 March 1972 (2nd cons) Robert Randolph Rivette 19 Oct
1971 Bishops consecrated by others on Authority of Primus C.D. Boltwood Frederick Charles King 19 May
1963 by Archbishop Emmet Neil Enochs Donald Jay Foard early 1964 by
Archbishop Emmet Neil Enochs Samuel Richard Acquah, Sr. 19
July 1964 by Archbishop Emmanuel Samuel Yekorogha William Carson Thompson between
Sept. 1968 & June 1971 by Archbishop Albert John Fuge, Sr. Ernest Percival Parris spring
1970 by Archbishop Albert John Fuge, Sr. John Lawrence Brown 21 May
1972 by Archbishop Albert John Fuge, Sr. The Free Protestant Episcopal Church, Diocese of Texas was
incorporated in the State of Texas on 25 April 1972 by Bishop Robert R.
Rivette, the only example of the official FPEC ever being incorporated in the
USA. This charter is in good standing. On 2 March 1970 the Free Protestant
Episcopal Christian Church, Inc. was incorporated in New Jersey with the Rt.
Rev'd Willard D. Mayo, D.D., Ph.D. of East Orange, NJ as its Primus. Bishop
Mayo was most likely consecrated in January of 1970 by Dr. Eric Daenecke
(1914 to 1994), FPEC bishop of New York from 1960 to 1966. By 1969 Dr.
Daenecke was living in New Jersey. This independent branch of the FPEC seems
to have died with Dr. Mayo in 1997. |
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