Edward Bouverie Pusey was second only to John Henry Newman as a leader of the Tractarian, or Oxford, Movement in the Church of England, a movement that began on 14 July 1833, when John Keble, professor of poetry, preached his Assize Sermon, titled "National Apostasy," at St. Mary's Church, Oxford. The convocations of Canterbury and York, the provincial assemblies of the clergy of the Church of England, had not met since 1717 when, in 1833, Parliament passed the Irish Temporalities Bill, which reduced the number of bishoprics in Ireland. Keble charged in his sermon that with the passage of the bill the State was interfering with the apostolic rights of the Church. In 1834, Pusey joined the Oxford Movement by writing Tract 18, Thoughts on the Benefits of the System of Fasting, Enjoined by Our Church, the first of the movement's Tracts for the Times to bear the signature of its author. Pusey's importance...