The Reverend Ben-Oliel and the troubles at Addiscombe

Maxwell Mochloff Ben-Oliel is a name to invite curiosity. He was minister of St Paul's, now St Mary Magdalene, Addiscombe, from 1866 to 1872, and the controversy at Addiscombe was said to be a minor cause of Archbishop Longley's death in 1868. A brief account of what happened at St Paul's has most recently been told in the Book of Addiscombe, and it rates a mention in Pevsner's Buildings of England's volumes. Ben-Oliel was a converted Jew, (his Hebrew name means 'yoke of God'), who fell foul of the Archbishop and of the Reverend Henry Watson, the vicar of St James's in whose parish St Paul's was built as a district church but which under Ben-Oliel became an unlicensed chapel in effect outside the Church of England. Apart from the numerous editorials and letters in the local press, the controversy generated a huge correspondence with two successive Archbishops. The controversy was not so much important as complicated. So why recall it? Even his son doubted the use of raking up the troubles of a past generation for a new one? Yet the Croydon Chronicle concluded it was a story worthy of Trollope.

There are really two stories. Ben-Oliel's background is one, the Addiscombe controversy the other, and his subsequent career might be a third but will only be mentioned briefly here. The first is interesting partly because Jews converting to Christianity and becoming priests was a very unusual event in Britain and partly because his background, to his contemporaries, was exotic. His origins are not obscure. He was born in October 1832 at Tangiers in North Africa in the 'empire of Morocco' as Mejluf Ben-Oliel, the fifth of fourteen children of Samuel and Zahra Ben-Oliel, he of Dutch descent becoming physician, interpreter and general advisor to the Sultan of Morocco. Their eldest son was Abraham, and, as presumably his brothers would do, he learnt Spanish at home, Arabic out of doors, Hebrew and Chaldee at school, for he attended a rabbinical school as his younger brother would. There is no evidence that he became a rabbi. Not surprisingly some members of Maxwell's congregations believed he had been Muslim. Abraham came to England in 1847 and became a Christian, being baptised in Brentford. His letters to Mejluf converted him and he was baptised at Gibraltar at the Wesleyan chapel in 1851, taking the Christian name of Maxwell. As Abraham had been ordained a minister and then employed by the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews as a missionary to the Jews in north Africa, Maxwell accompanied him on some of his travels. The Society's journal was called the Jewish Herald but the society itself was interdenominational. It had been formed in 1842 but has had several name changes since and is now merged into the organisation known as Christian Witness to Israel.

Maxwell followed his brother to England and entered the British Society's own college, the Richmond Theological College. Like his brother, he was 'set apart' for missionary work among the Jews, in 1857 and travelled to Oran in Algeria. After a short time he resigned, becoming pastor of a Congregational chapel at Isleworth in Middlesex. Setting a pattern, he resigned again, this to enter St Aidan's Theological College at Birkenhead in 1860, a relatively new Church of England foundation for non-graduates. It closed in 1868 amid financial difficulties. The teaching appears to have been unsatisfactory. After one year at St Aidan's he left. He had already been three years at Richmond College but one year in an Anglican college was insufficient time to acclimatise himself to the Church of England.

While at Isleworth, but perhaps elsewhere and perhaps later, he made the acquaintance of the Duchess of Northumberland, formerly Eleanor Grosvenor, daughter of the Marquis of Westminster, then the wife of Algernon Percy, the 3rd Duke. She had apparently persuaded him to seek ordination in the Church of England. This was to have unfortunate consequences when he came to Croydon.

The Bishop of Carlisle ordained him in 1860. Later, when Ben-Oliel was at Addiscombe, the bishop was to write that Ben-Oliel made every kind of promise if he would ordain him. To the bishop he was obviously a man of ability but he also regarded him as 'unscrupulously ambitious and ostentatiously evangelical' (Carlisle and its bishops were evangelical). Neither the bishop nor anyone else involved in the Addiscombe affair referred negatively to his Jewish origins except possibly for the bishop's accusation that Ben-Oliel had ingratiated himself into the Duchess's favour and by implication into his own. Anti-Semitism was not apparently the issue.

Ambitious or not, Ben-Oliel's first post was as curate of a small chapel at Barbon deep in rural Westmorland, a cold and inhospitable place, so cold that he was often ill, and he gave the bishop no peace until he released him from his curacy after being there less than nine months. In 1862 he was a curate at St Mary's, Edge Hill, in Liverpool, but his stay was at least as short for he moved to St Mary's and Holy Trinity, Leamington, another cold place, for a relatively short time as a curate in 1862 and 1863. There, apparently, his popularity incurred the incumbent's envy and Ben-Oliel moved to the chapel of the Holy Trinity in the same town for a further year before throat problems forced him to quit. Then followed another short curacy at Christ Church, Pentonville, thus achieving an ambition of moving to London, but it was not a flourishing church: the congregation dwindled away after he left and the church closed. The incumbent had refused to let him, still only a curate, preach regularly at the two main Sunday services, only offering him the opportunity to preach at the barely attended Sunday afternoon service, an offer Ben-Oliel declined. As no doubt before and certainly at Croydon his preaching and personality won him devoted followers who found in him rather than in the incumbent the spiritual guidance they needed.

While he was at Pentonville the Church Standard, a newspaper the bishop of Carlisle referred to dismissively as a 'penny puff', published a very long front page article about Ben-Oliel's life so far. The editor had written to him requesting answers to a number of biographical questions. He must have been taken with Ben-Oliel for the article as it appeared might have been designed for a future bishop rather than for a mere curate in an unfashionable downtown district of London. That it was reproduced in the Islington newspapers cannot have helped. An incumbent near Barbon later wrote to Archbishop Longley pointing out several distortions of the truth in the article caused by Ben-Oliel's desire for self-promotion. It need not be surmised he was just self-serving and mercurial. A more charitable explanation is that he was lionised as he received several offers of curacies because he was a fine preacher with a melodious voice. Such popularity and self-advertisement arouses jealousy.

Once again Ben-Oliel resigned. Over the winter of 1864/5 he was morning minister of the Brompton Episcopal Chapel in Brook Street, a minor appointment without pastoral responsibilities it seems. However he was not without friends. While he was at the Brompton Chapel the editor of the Church Standard had been actively promoting his career, and a Frederick Castle responded with an offer of land at Dagnall's Park, now better known as Selhurst, in Croydon, for a church to be erected for Ben-Oliel's benefit. This was in the parish of St James's, and its incumbent Henry Watson made enquiries of the Chapel which were satisfactory. Nothing came of the venture as not enough money could be raised to build a church.

Now the Duchess of Northumberland also intervened. Before the year 1864 had run its course he had become the Duchess of Northumberland's domestic chaplain. The following year her husband died, and his death occasioned Ben-Oliel's first published work, a sermon on the death of the Duke. The Dowager Duchess herself died soon afterwards but not before asking Archbishop Longley to promote his career. Ben-Oliel understood a promise had been made. This was to serve as the first major misunderstanding to bedevil his career at Addiscombe.

Ben-Oliel next took a temporary curacy at St Matthew's, then in George Street, in Croydon. Perhaps it was while he was there that he met his future wife, Harriette, the sister-in-law, of a London merchant based in Bishopsgate. He was Robert Parnall (without an 'e') who was himself living at Cornwell House in Addiscombe within the parish of St James's in what was to become West Croydon. Cornwell House can still be seen on the corner of Addiscombe Road and Havelock Road. Addiscombe was the site of the former East India Company's college and some of the properties built in its place were substantial. The number of houses was rapidly growing, many occupied by 'City men', some, like Parnall quite wealthy, and they found the distance from where they lived to St James's inconvenient, at least in winter. Henry Watson recognised the need to have a district church within the parish at Addiscombe.

Thus arose the second major misunderstanding. Watson had agreed to let the principal residents of Addiscombe select the clergyman of their choice provided that he, Watson, approved of his principles. No doubt they already had Ben-Oliel in mind for they promptly asked him as they had acquired the disused Havelock Hall, the former gymnasium of the East India Company, which the Trinity Presbyterian Church had occupied before moving to new permanent premises nearby. It was in August 1866 when they invited him in recognition of the 'earnest, zealous and effective manner' in which he had carried out his duties at St Matthew's. This was relatively sober praise, for after his death Ben-Oliel was remembered as being as winning as a woman, handsome, with a rich and entertaining voice, who evoked a kind of personal worship. Believing that Watson had already approved of him when it had been proposed to build a church at Dagnall's Park, Ben-Oliel accepted the invitation but so reluctantly that he claimed he was forced into accepting it.

He cannot have been too reluctant to accept such an offer. As a non-graduate from an undistinguished college and with no influential relatives, Ben-Oliel was, after only six years, being offered what might be a permanent appointment. On the credit side he had the advantage of being a newsworthy clergyman whose sermons drew an audience but on the debit side he had made so many moves and incurred so much displeasure among the incumbents he had served as an assistant curate that it is open to question whether he was now in a more or less favourable position than other non-graduate curates. The Church of England had more curates than benefices, and many curates spent many years in relative poverty before finding an incumbency. Much therefore depended on what happened at Addiscombe.

Watson did not rubber-stamp the appointment. He made enquiries and he found them unsatisfactory. These do not survive but Archbishop Longley made his own. The bishop of Carlisle, although he had no reason to doubt Ben-Oliel's moral character and soundness of doctrine, concluded that he was very glad that he no longer had any responsibility for Ben-Oliel. Backed up by the Archbishop, Watson declined to appoint Ben-Oliel and furthermore refused to make public the confidential answers he had received. It was too late, for the principal residents had already acted upon the freedom of choice they believed Watson had agreed to. But he had not consented and therefore neither Archbishop Longley nor his successor Archbishop Tait would or could license Ben-Oliel or consecrate the church. This was the bottom line. The incumbent's consent is a legal requirement which cannot be overruled even by an Archbishop, who was of course Ben-Oliel's diocesan bishop as Croydon was the Archbishops' peculiar. None the less the residents went ahead and, despite receiving an injunction from Archbishop Longley prohibiting him from officiating at the temporary chapel of St Paul's, Ben-Oliel disregarded it. He began his duties in the late summer of 1866. The die was cast.

Ben-Oliel might still have extricated himself from this dilemma, but he only made matters worse by accusing the Archbishop of a breach of promise, reminding him of what he had promised the late Dowager Duchess. As if this were not enough, Ben-Oliel's relative by marriage, Robert Parnall, funded the building of a permanent church, the present St Mary Magdelene, then called St Paul's. From this three things followed. Firstly, both the church and the neighbouring parsonage were private property involving large sums of money and legal contracts; secondly, being unlicensed, Ben-Oliel could not properly call himself the incumbent, and, thirdly, the church not being consecrated was technically outside the Church of England and therefore properly-speaking a dissenting place of worship that ought to have been registered as such with the Registrar-General. If these three things had been recognised by all, the matter might more speedily have been resolved, but Ben-Oliel insisted that he was a minister of the Church of England and observed its doctrines and ceremonies. His church, he conceded, might be called a Free Church of England place of worship. Of course there is no such thing. He continued to call himself the incumbent or sometimes to placate the Archbishop the incumbent-minister, a distinction without a difference. The congregation accepted him as a minister of the Church of England and continued to flock to his services which were conducted according to the Book of Common Prayer as in every parish. At this stage the type of churchmanship was not an issue as services were conducted as normal.

Normal the relationships were not. Archbishop Longley was aggrieved at being accused of a breach of promise. When the principal inhabitants of Addiscombe petitioned him at a later date to license Ben-Oliel, he replied that Ben-Oliel's accusation was unscrupulous and that, if he were to license Ben-Oliel, 'I should enable him to profit by his own wrongs'. In Longley's view Ben-Oliel had disregarded the solemn obligations he had made at his ordination. When Longley was ready to offer a curacy to Ben-Oliel, he reminded the Archbishop that the Dowager Duchess would hardly have stooped to beg for a mere curacy. He even intimated he would take legal action. His letters to the Archbishop ran to eight or more closely written pages. Yet they were not so much intemperate in tone as self-justifying. At one point he asks the Archbishop to make allowances for his warm and sensitive nature. Ben-Oliel continued to hope, and certainly led his congregation to believe, that the Archbishop would come round, while Parnall even suggested to him that Watson should be moved from Croydon since it was his veto that was the cause of all the difficulties.

Matters were made still more complicated when Watson, who no longer regarded St Paul's as an Anglican church and therefore no longer his responsibility, had an iron church built in Addiscombe as a temporary place of worship to which he appointed the Rev. Thomas Morse as minister in charge. St Mary Magdalene opened in August 1868 but it did not draw away any of Ben-Oliel's congregation. Indeed Morse begged the recently appointed Archbishop Tait to do something so that Ben-Oliel's congregation would swiftly recognise the anomaly of their position. Morse had another reason for anxiety. As his congregation remained so small, so did his income. He reckoned that Ben-Oliel's income was as much as £500 to £600 compared to his own £400. In those days a clergyman's income came from the Easter offering and from pew rents. Those of the newly built St Paul's produced something like £900 a year, a portion of which the trustees would assign to Ben-Oliel.

The new church of St Paul's, designed by Edward Buckton Lamb and costing about eleven thousand pounds, was due to open in 1869. Ben-Oliel desperately wanted Archbishop Tait to consecrate it. Tait himself was well aware of the need to act cautiously. One consideration may have had some weight. Unless the church was consecrated no parish could be created for it and so Ben-Oliel would not be able to become its incumbent and so independent of Watson. Tait was ready to consecrate it if Ben-Oliel retired from St Paul's. Ben-Oliel took this to mean leaving Addiscombe temporarily for some weeks: he would then return for the consecration and stay at St Paul's. This, too, was a misunderstanding; so Tait sent his secretary and his chaplain to explain that to retire meant to resign. Watson suggested that, if Ben-Oliel were willing to serve a curacy elsewhere for two years, he could return to St Paul's with his consent. Ben-Oliel agreed to neither. His congregation, he said, expected him to stay and the new church required his constant attention. To resign would be to break up the congregation and to deprive him of his livelihood. Tait was willing to find him a benefice elsewhere but those few that were found were either in the cold north or less valuable. Parnall refused to sell the church anyway. He preferred to open the new church as a Free Church of England place of worship if Tait would not consecrate. He had no intention of sacrificing Ben-Oliel. There for the time being the matter rested if only because Tait refused to continue the correspondence. Only if Ben-Oliel agreed to be guided entirely by him could there be any progress.

Towards the end of 1871 Ben-Oliel was beginning to yield 'for peace's sake' and he wrote in confidence to the Archbishop in November. St Paul's was, he recognised, in a 'state of schism', and it was a situation some members of his congregation were beginning to recognise for themselves if they had children needing to be confirmed as it was impossible for them to be confirmed as members of the Church of England at St Paul's while it was not consecrated. At this juncture, at the end of November, no changes to the services or ceremonial had taken place and Ben-Oliel claimed that Morse's successor at St Mary Magdalene, Henry Glover, had made no dent in the numbers attending St Paul's. Thus, after Christmas, Ben-Oliel told Tait he was ready to cease officiating 'at once'. He was not, however, ready to resign and leave. He vainly suggested the Archbishop appoint and license a curate to officiate if he himself could not be licensed, but he added that it was impossible to expect him to give up his home, his rights of property and the fruits of years of toil.

Since Ben-Oliel was ready to submit to the Archbishop, it seemed as if the problems at Addiscombe were about to be resolved. So it seemed they were but not in the manner expected. About this time, perhaps as late as the spring or early summer of 1872 but perhaps even before November when he wrote to the Archbishop, Ben-Oliel had another change of heart. Up to this time he had been an evangelical dedicated to plainness in the services and giving priority to the pulpit. Then in May or early June he announced to his congregation that he had come to believe that Christ was 'verily and really present in the Sacrament' and he invited them to 'partake of the Body and Blood of Christ fasting'. Moreover he introduced the surplice and altar lights, clear indications that he was in sympathy with the High Church party then enjoying some public notoriety but also some success in law. He had already at Eastertime abolished pew rents in his church and introduced the principle of voluntary giving, the weekly offertory. His congregation rapidly diminished, for as he woefully admitted to the Church Times his congregation had rebelled against free and open seats and neither Addiscombe nor Croydon was prepared for Catholic doctrine and ritual.

What Tait made of this is not recorded but he must have been bemused. Paradoxically, while Ben-Oliel's new Anglo-Catholicism made him more ready to submit obediently to his bishop, Tait himself was preparing legislation against ritualists. However, on June 19, 1872 Ben-Oliel submitted to the Archbishop, placing his future entirely in Tait's hands. Tait accepted the submission 'with thankfulness'. Ben-Oliel then closed St Paul's. The church bells fell silent but he himself was unwilling to resign until his own future and the future of St Paul's were clarified. Once again there was a misreading of the situation, for Ben-Oliel expected more than what the Archbishop was willing to or even could give. Ben-Oliel expected the Archbishop to be gracious, to forget the past and ensure he would not be disadvantaged now that he had made his submission and had acknowledged by 'an act of reparation' that he had done wrong. He expected the Archbishop to resolve his remaining difficulties. As it happened, they were considerable and distressing and troubled him for a further two years at Addiscombe and then beyond.

There were, after all, two churches in Addiscombe very close to each other, St Paul's and St Mary Magdalene, and each entitled to be the nucleus of a new parish because of the rapidly increasing population of the area, but St Mary Magdalene was still only a small temporary iron chapel while the much larger St Paul's, with sittings for nearly a thousand worshippers, was still in private hands. Parnall had built it at a cost of about eleven thousand pounds and was estimated to be now worth nearer sixteen. The parsonage, now called St Paul's Lodge, was Ben-Oliel's home and he had invested his own money in its building. Both Ben-Oliel and Glover applied to the Ecclesiastical Commission for districts to be assigned to them, but the Commissioners required Tait's consent and he would not give it because he claimed he was not convinced that there was a sufficient population to make either of them financially viable or to meet the requirements of the law. Moreover, he added, it would be 'indecorous' to Archbishop Longley's memory for Ben-Oliel to be the first incumbent of any new district. Like Ben-Oliel Tait was waiting to see what was to happen to the church that was St Paul's.

Since closing St Paul's Ben-Oliel had lost his income and needed to borrow money to meet household expenses. To safeguard his livelihood he threatened to sell the church to the highest bidder even if it were to a nonconformist church. It appears he had at least two bids, one from a nonconformist church, not named, and another from a monastic order, namely, from Father Ignatius, the idiosyncratic reviver of the Benedictine Order in the Church of England, now settled at Llanthony Abbey in Wales. At the end of December 1873 it seemed certain that he was going to take over the former St Paul's in January but either he or Ben-Oliel may have had second thoughts and the church remained closed. Almost certainly Tait objected and Ben-Oliel obeyed as he had promised. Meanwhile the congregation of St Mary Magdalene needed new accommodation and wished to head off any rival but being a small congregation they could only offer Ben-Oliel £5000. To his credit he was willing to accept instalments, still preferring his church to remain in, or return to, the Church of England, so the offer was raised to £7000. It was still not enough. Following legal advice Ben-Oliel refused to accept.

The stress he was undergoing shows in his letters to the Archbishop. They were no longer neatly written and they unfortunately lapsed into bitterness, accusing Tait of being treacherous and tyrannical. Tait called them abusive and Ben-Oliel tried to mollify Tait by saying he had written 'in the bitterness of disappointment' as he had been left eighteen months 'virtually suspended from my high calling'.

Relief came in January 1874. He was able to obtain a curacy in Brighton, Tait placing no obstacles to prevent the Bishop of Chichester appointing him. To Brighton he went but he still carried the burden of the unsold former church and parsonage. Not only he but also Glover was facing difficulties. Those of Glover's were sufficiently painful for him to request a transfer elsewhere. Members of his congregation were objecting on principle to buying the former St Paul's 'out of spite', so much so that the meeting of the vestry at Easter, attended by 'men of awkward temper' was 'of such a nature' that Glover could bear it no longer. He asked Tait to write in support of their purchasing the former St Paul's, for it made no sense to build a new church when there was an empty one within two hundred yards. It was not that the estimates for the proposed new church had risen but that Glover knew that Ben-Oliel could no longer afford to hold out. Tait's intervention had its effect. So in July the former St Paul's church was sold for £7000 and became, with Glover in charge, the permanent St Mary Magdalene.

But not the former parsonage. This still remained unsold in 1876 because, so Ben-Oliel believed, potential buyers were being put off by the present members of the congregation of the now named St Mary Magdalene telling them that Tait would object. Again Tait intervened to make clear there was no such objection and also perhaps to prevent Ben-Oliel carrying out a threat to return to the empty house.

His curacy at St Michael's, Brighton being at an end, Ben-Oliel moved to another curacy at St Michael and All Angels, Chiswick in 1876. He was still without preferment but a chance meeting with Tait at the Church Congress meeting in Croydon reopened their correspondence. Ben-Oliel was glad of the opportunity to be reconciled with the Archbishop but also to plead once again for preferment to a permanent position within the Church of England. His income now averaged only £50 a year, considerably less than the average for a curate. He himself had lost £2000, his brother-in-law up to £6000 over the sale of St Paul's. His desperation was such that he told the Archbishop he was even considering returning to his Jewish people or joining in the cry for the disestablishment of the Church of England. 'You little know the losses and troubles you have brought upon me since the day I trusted myself in your Grace's hands. I hope one day justice will be done.'.

Tait held out no hope of preferment. Archbishops of Canterbury had about two hundred livings at their disposal as patrons. Compared to the total of over ten thousand parishes in England, more than half under private and Crown patronage, this number was insignificant. If Ben-Oliel could find a suitable post, Tait would willingly see him employed in his diocese but he could not expect to take priority over those who had never placed themselves in an illegal position by resisting the injunctions of an archbishop. Ben-Oliel did subsequently find employment in several churches in London but all were short-lived, presumably temporary, positions. A ten year gap in the Clergy List between 1881 when he was a minister in South Kensington and 1891 when he was a rector at West Berkeley in California suggests he held no post within the Church of England whatsoever in that period. It seems likely he took his family abroad after leaving South Kensington as the 1881 census does not record any Ben-Oliel. His last position was as a Sunday preacher or lecturer at Streatham in 1896, but he died in 1907 at Hove where poignantly his address is given as St Paul's Lodge. His son John Bernard Ben Oliel, an actor, wrote to the Croydon Guardian announcing that his father had died, after much suffering, on Friday March 8, aged 74.

It is ironic that the one relatively permanent post that Ben-Oliel had, lasting six years at Addiscombe, should be the one which seems to have debarred him from finding any other permanent position within the Church. Undeniably he had faults of character but none which under normal circumstances would have denied other such curates from eventually finding a permanent position. There was a superfluity of curates in the Church of England and whatever chance of preferment he had were blighted by his not obeying Longley's injunction. His invidious position gave rise to strong feelings as is evidenced in the local press. To some extent the fault lay in his lack of familiarity at the start of his ministry with the way the Church of England was governed, spiritual and temporal, clerical and lay interests being so enmested in its structure, patronage and methods of appointment. Ben-Oliel was lionised too early and, other than being an exceptionally gifted preacher, he seems to have had no outstanding abilities. He was not, as is sometimes said, academically brilliant, and he certainly wrote no theological treatises as the Reverend J. Wright claims (probably following Ben-Oliel's son's information) in his history of Addiscombe parish church, published in the 1920s. He had some publications to his name, a few sermons and a set of addresses about Old Testament prophecies, fulfilled or unfulfilled. However, his memorial is the timber-roofed and marble-columned St Mary Magdalene, for Ben-Oliel co-operated closely with the architect to introduce Hebraic features, being fascinated, for example, by the 'mystic numbers' of three, five, seven and twelve, instanced by the sequence of five and seven steps rising up to the chancel. Idiosyncrasy characterises the church and the man.

Brian Lancaster

Sources
The principal primary sources are the Tait papers (which also include Longley's correspondence with Ben-Oliel) at Lambeth Palace Library, the Croydon Chronicle, the Croydon Advertiser, the Church Times, the Clerkenwell Dial, the Jewish Herald, the annual Clergy List, and the Ben Oliel and Seeley papers, mainly referring to the descendants of Abraham Ben-Oliel, in Family History Tract 77 at the Society of Genealogists. The principal secondary sources used are Alan Haig's The Victorian Clergy, Croom Helm, 1984 and Bridget Cherry's and Nicholas Pevsner's London 2: South, Penguin Books, 1981.

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