ABSTRACT
The first session of Parliament after Disraeli's victory in the general election of 1874 was to be dominated, not by any of the imperialistic adventures or social legislation for which his Ministry became famous, but by a bill to regulate the public worship of the established Church. The establishment was the constitutional embodiment of Archbishop Tait's desires. The Church Defence Institution was given official blessing when Archbishop Tait agreed to be its honorary president and all but five of the other bishops, honorary vice-presidents. The five dissidents, Fraser, Temple, Mackarness, Moberly and Hughes, were all Gladstone nominees. The first years of Gladstone's Ministry were marked by a rapid succession of blows like the Gorham judgment to high church susceptibilities: the Mackonochie judgment and Temple's nomination in 1869, the Education Act of 1870 which Denison took particularly hard, the Purchas judgment in 1871. The key man in determining the stand which the Liberal party would take was, of course, Gladstone.
