Catalogue description Newspapers, pamphlets and correspondence concerning the Rev. J.M. Neale and Sackville College Chapel, East Grinstead

The letters are chiefly between Bishop Gilbert, Richard Whately (Archbishop of Dublin, 1831-63), Samuel Wilberforce (Bishop of Oxford, 1845-69), Charles James Blomfield (Bishop of London, 1828-56), Henry Philpotts (Bishop of Exeter, 1831-69), the 5th Earl and Countess De La Warr, John Mason Neale (warden of Sackville College, 1846-66), his wife, John Netherton Harward (vicar of East Grinstead, 1848-63), Thomas Palmer Hutton (perpetual curate of Lingfield, 1846-55), Henry Garrett Newland (vicar of Westbourne, 1834-56). Benjamin Webb (curate of Christ Church, St. Pancras, London, 1847-9, and co-founder with Neale of the Cambridge Camden Society), Joseph Adkins Beckett (vicar of Forest Row, 1849-73), William Russell (rector of Shepperton, Middlesex, and Neale's guardian) and Richard Walker Nourse, youngest son of William Nourse (rector of Clapham, 1821-71); he was his father's curate at Clapham, 1849-50 when he died at Brighton. In 1848 he was looking after East Grinstead during the vacancy between C. Neville and J.N. Harward. The documents relate to the numerous personal disputes between Harward and Neale, to popular demonstrations against Neale in East Grinstead, to Neale's inhibition by Bishop Gilbert in 1847, to the case Freeland v. Neale in the Court of Arches, 1848, because of Neale's defiance of the inhibition, and intercessions to the bishop on Neale's behalf, especially by Lord De La Warr and Bishop Wilberforce, for removal of the inhibition, which was not formally withdrawn until 1863. The correspondence of 1847 includes references to matters in Ep/I/48/6.

For expositions of Neale's case, see E. A. Towle, John Mason Neale, D.D., A Memoir (1906), Mary Sackville Lawson (ed.), Letters of John Mason Neale (1910), and A.G. Lough, The Influence of John Mason Neale (1962).