Page:The life and times of King Edward VII by Whates, Harry Richard 1.djvu/26

8 8 LIFE AND TIMES OF EDWARD VII. choice of sponsors for the baptism arose from the circumstance that England was at the time deeply stirred by the Trac- tarian Movement and the Romeward tendency of religious thought in the Established Church. The air was charged with apprehensions that the High Church party were deliberately leading the nation back to Roman Catholicism ; the storm BUCKINGHAM Roman doctrine and ritual, were en- gaged in fierce controversy. The influ- ence of the Court, almost of necessity as well as from personal predilections of the Queen and the Prince Consort, was not with the Tractarians. Indeed, the Queen was Protestant in every fibre of her mental being. Even had it been otherwise it might have been impolitic PALACE raised by John Henry Newman's famous Tract No. 90 an argument that the Thirty-Nine Articles do not debar their subscribers from belief in tenets regarded as distinctively Roman Catholic was at its height in the year of the Prince's birth. The new Anglican party, who detested the word " Protestant," and decried the Reformation as a thing of evil, and the great body of Protestants, who detested anything savouring of OF EDWARD VII. in the controversial circumstances of the time, to invite a prince suspect of Romish views ; and the number of Protestant princes of the first rank in Europe was, and is, limited. The field of choice was narrow, and it was deemed advisable to have sponsors whose names and views woxild emphasise the Protestant character of the service. King Frederick William of Prussia was therefore invited to act as chief sponsor. " The notion of the