think that he would have shrunk from any step only because it was bold.  He had sympathy for courage and genius, and he had knowledge and authority which would have commanded respect for his judgment and opinion.  But it is too much to say either that the movement could not have been without him, or that it was specially his design and plan, or that he alone could have given the impulse which led to it; though it seemed at one time as if he was to be its leader and chief.  Certainly he was the most valuable and the most loyal of its early auxiliaries.

Another coadjutor, whose part at the time also seemed rather that of a chief, was Mr. William Palmer, of Worcester College.  He had been educated at Trinity College, Dublin, but he had transferred his home to Oxford, both in the University and the city.  He was a man of exact and scholastic mind, well equipped at all points in controversial theology, strong in clear theories and precise definitions, familiar with objections current in the schools and with the answers to them, and well versed in all the questions, arguments, and authorities belonging to the great debate with Rome.  He had definite and well-arranged ideas about the nature and office of the Church; and, from his study of the Roman controversy, he had at command the distinctions necessary to discriminate between things which popular views confused, and to protect the doctrines characteristic of the Church from being identified with Romanism.  Especially he had given great attention to the public devotional language and forms of the Church, and had produced by far the best book in the English language on the history and significance of the offices of the English Church—­the Origines Liturgicae, published at the University Press in 1832.  It was a book to give a man authority with divines and scholars; and among those with whom at this time he acted no one had so compact and defensible a theory, even if it was somewhat rigid and technical, of the peculiar constitution of the English Church as Mr. Palmer.  With the deepest belief in this theory, he saw great dangers threatening, partly from general ignorance and looseness of thought, partly from antagonistic ideas and principles only too distinct and too popular; and he threw all his learning and zeal on the side of those who, like himself, were alive to those dangers, and were prepared for a great effort to counteract them.

The little company which met at Hadleigh Rectory, from 25th to 29th July 1833, met—­as other knots of men have often met, to discuss a question or a policy, or to found an association, or a league, or a newspaper—­to lay down the outlines of some practical scheme of work; but with little foresight of the venture they were making, or of the momentous issues which depended on their meeting.  Later on, when controversy began, it became a favourite rhetorical device to call it by the ugly name of a “conspiracy.”  Certainly Froude called it so, and Mr. Palmer; and Mr. Perceval wrote a narrative to answer the charge.  It was a “conspiracy,” as any other meeting would be of men with an object which other men dislike.