high‐church movement

high‐church movement, a movement common (though with different emphases) to the Church of England and Church of Ireland of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, which sought to restore the traditional prerogatives of the established church. As such it appealed to clergy alarmed at the erosion of the church's power to regulate morals and behaviour, the rise of deism and infidelity, and the growing influence of dissent. High‐church writers also restated the traditional Anglican concept of a divinely appointed monarchy working in close partnership with the church, making them natural allies of the Tory Party, and leading to accusations of Jacobitism from opponents.

As in England, Irish high churchmen looked to convocation to reassert the church's traditional prerogatives and disciplinary powers. They fiercely defended the sacramental test as an essential defence against the numerical and organizational strength of Presbyterianism, supported the withdrawal of the regium donum in 1714, and successfully resisted the introduction of a Toleration Act until 1719.

The movement's concept of the church, emphasizing its divine origins, its sacramental system, and its due place in the life of the state, was an exalted, ‘high’ one, but its expression was primarily political. In this it contrasts with the 19th century, when ‘high church’ came to denote in common parlance an emphasis on ritualism in worship.

Kenneth Milne