BULL, George (1634-1710)

Born into a mercantile family established in Somerset, the theologian George Bull was a fierce opponent of the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone. His doctrinal works were adopted in the nineteenth century by the Oxford Movement as part of the canon of Anglo-Catholic theology. Sheldon to Secker, 115-16, 141-2. Not elevated until he was 71 years old, his career in the House of Lords was brief.

Bull went up to Oxford in 1648 where he formed a close friendship with Thomas Clifford, later Baron Clifford of Chudleigh. Refusing the oath to the Commonwealth, he left university without his degree, but continued his studies and sought ordination from Robert Skinner, bishop of Oxford. He later claimed that he had hosted secret meetings of royalists planning to restore the king. Nelson, 14, 16, 25, 49-50. By 1663 Bull had acquired the patronage of William Nicholson, bishop of Gloucester. Jnl. Welsh Eccles. Hist. ix. 38; Add. 41667, f. 31v. Bull’s first treatise (Harmonia Apostolica), published in 1670, sparked a theological dispute which split eminent churchmen into two distinct camps over the question of whether it showed Bull to be socinian: Thomas Barlow, later bishop of Lincoln, George Morley, bishop of Winchester, and Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey, all opposed Bull, while his supporters included Gilbert Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury, John Fell, bishop of Oxford, Simon Patrick, later successively bishop of Chichester and Ely, and the Presbyterian, Richard Baxter. Spurr, Restoration Church, 311-16; Seventeenth Century Oxford, 591, 606-9. The fall of the Cabal and the death of Nicholson in 1672 left Bull with no obvious patron. Clifford’s career as lord treasurer was short and his efforts on Bull’s behalf were unsuccessful, not just because Bull was a controversial figure but, according to his biographer, because Bull did not understand ‘the art of intriguing for preferment’. Nelson, 15.

Bull, nevertheless, won the respect of Heneage Finch, later earl of Nottingham, and his clerical associates. In October 1678, he was made a canon of Gloucester on the recommendation of John Tillotson, the future archbishop of Canterbury, and John Sharp, the future archbishop of York. Ath. Ox. iv. 490; Nelson, 279. Bull dedicated his Defensio Fidei Nicenae to Nottingham, but a publisher was not forthcoming until John Fell published the treatise at his own cost in 1685. Nelson, 283. He was recommended by Robert Frampton, bishop of Gloucester, to William Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, as a ‘man of vast learning, sound principles and exemplary life’, an ‘ornament to our cathedral’, who needed a greater income to support his ‘very numerous’ family, but his presentation to the well-endowed rectory of Avening was, according to his biographer, a spontaneous act of its patron, Richard Sheppard of neighbouring Minchinhampton; Sancroft provided him in 1686 with the archdeaconry of Llandaff. Bodl. Tanner 147, f. 187; Jnl. Welsh Eccles. Hist. ix. 38; Nelson, 349-54. In 1686 he was nominated by Fell for a doctorate in recognition of his scholarship, even though he had no academic degree. Nelson, 358-60, 363-4. The Defensio Fidei Nicenae brought Bull a Europe-wide reputation for scholarly theology, and the endorsement of Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, leading light of the Gallican church. His Judicium Ecclesiae Catholicae published in 1694 consolidated his reputation, and Primitiva et Apostolica Traditio (1703) furthered it as an opponent of Socinianism and unitarianism.

Bull’s appointment to the neglected see of St Davids in 1705 came, wrote his biographer, as a surprise to him, and the reasons for it are obscure. Nelson, 408; G.H. Jenkins, Literature, Religion and Society in Wales 1660-1730, p. 4. The Whig cleric Maurice Wheeler was doubtful, writing that though Bull was ‘a very good man’, ‘a life of of hard study, and now a heavy load of many years’ had rendered him now ‘less capable of business, and especially in such a diocese, that has ... lain waste for many years’. G.H. Jenkins, Literature, Relig. and Soc. in Wales, 1660-1730, p. 4. He stayed at Brecon, due to the state of the palace near Carmarthen, and, in poor health, he travelled little within the diocese, his son-in-law the archdeacon of Brecon conducting the 1708 visitation on his behalf.Jnl. Welsh Eccles. Hist. ix. 40-1. Age and failing health had an impact on his attendance in the House of Lords, too. He appeared in the House on only 22 occasions. In the six sessions held during his episcopate, Bull attended only two, and those for less than a quarter of sittings. He did not attend for the session that began in the autumn of 1705, being excused at a call of the House on 12 November. By the winter of 1706 he was in London keeping company with William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, and John Evans, bishop of Bangor, and on 3 Dec. 1706 Bull took his seat in the House. Hearne’s Colls., i. (Oxford Hist. Soc. ii), 324. On 28 Jan. 1707 he was present in House for the reading of the articles relating to the Union between Scotland and England, the establishment of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland and for the bill securing the English Church. He attended the debates on religion in February 1707 but on 7 Feb. 1707, during the reading of the bill on the security of the Church, sat in the lobby of the Lords chamber smoking his pipe. Hearne’s Colls. Vols. (Oxford Hist. Soc. ii) i. 324. He was present on 15 Feb. 1707 and again on 19 Feb. 1707 for debates on the Union. On 4 Mar. 1707 (when a rider was offered against Presbyterianism being the true Protestant religion) Bull was listed present but did not sign the dissent against the rejection of the rider. Those who did included stalwart churchmen (and members of the Gloucestershire establishment) Henry Somerset, duke of Beaufort, George Hooper, bishop of Bath and Wells, and Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth. Perhaps Bull had left the chamber since there are indications he would have been sympathetic to the rider. Bull’s earliest biographer recounts a debate on the Scottish church during which Bull seconded a motion that the ‘excellent’ character of the Church of England be specified within the bill. When he was thanked for his speech by William Beveridge, bishop of St Asaph, Bull responded that he regarded it an ‘indispensable obligation’ of all the bishops and prelates of the Church to behave with ‘holy boldness’ in the highest court of England, ‘without being awed or biased by the torrent of the times, or made sordidly to crouch to a prevailing power of worldly politicians’. Nelson, 415-16.

In May 1707 Bull suffered a serious bereavement with the death from smallpox of his son George, a Christ Church don to whom he had resigned his Llandaff archdeaconry in 1704. It is clear that Bull had been grooming his son as a potential successor and was devastated by his loss. Nelson, 411-12. He did not attend the House for the session that ran from October 1707 to April 1708, a period for which the proxy book does not survive. A printed parliamentary list of May 1708 suggested that Bull was of Whig sympathies. In religious and moral affairs, however, he was ‘inflexible’ and saw toleration as a threat to the Church, condemning the ‘impudence of those mechanics that have leapt from the shop-board or plough into the pulpit’. W. Gibson, Church of England, 123-4, 226; English Theological Works of George Bull DD, 392. In October 1708, encouraged by Bull, the Carmarthen magistrates began a campaign against immorality. ‘The most vigorous of episcopal greybeards’, Bull founded branches of the societies for the reformation of manners, established schools and libraries and promoted the Welsh prayer book. Jenkins, 16, 68, 103, 110, 276. There is no evidence that he was involved in any of the parliamentary elections during his episcopate. With the revival of the Beaufort interest in Wales, there was little need. P.D.G. Thomas, Pols. in Eighteenth-Century Wales, 67.

Bull failed to attend the two parliamentary sessions that began in the autumn of 1708 and 1709. He died on 17 Feb. 1710 and was buried at Brecknock.