Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Badeley, Edward Lowth
BADELEY, EDWARD LOWTH (d. 1868), ecclesiastical lawyer, was the younger son of John Badeley, M.D., near Chelmsford, by Charlotte Brackenbury. He graduated at Brasenose College, Oxford, as B. A. in 1823, being in the second class in classics, and he took his M.A. degree in 1828. In 1841 he was called to the bar as a member of the Inner Temple, and for a short time went the home circuit, but his tastes were for the study of ecclesiastical law, and he was soon employed in solving its intricacies by those who, like himself, were zealous for the spread of tractarian principles. A speech by him in proof of the prohibition of marriage with a deceased wife's sister by Holy Scripture was printed, with Dr. Pusey's evidence before the commission then sitting on the law of marriage, in 1849. When Dr. Phillpotts, the Bishop of Exeter, refused to admit the Rev. G. C. Gorham to the vicarage of Brampford Speke on the ground of his unsound doctrine on the sacrament of baptism, Badeley argued the bishop's case before the judicial committee of the privy council, 17 and 18 Dec. 1849; and his speech on this occasion was published as a pamphlet. He gave an opinion in 1851 in favour of the legality of altar lights, which was printed in the 'Morning Chronicle,' April 1851, and was republished in 1866 in connection with their use in the parish church of Falmouth. This opinion was attacked in 1851 in a pamphlet issued 'by a layman, late fellow of Trinity Coll. Camb.' His last tract was in support of 'The Privilege of Religious Confessions in English Courts of Justice,' 1865. In the summer of 1850 Badeley and thirteen other members of the English church, including Cardinal Manning, signed a series of nine resolutions to the effect that the views of the privy council on baptism should be solemnly disowned by the national church; and when no such action was taken Badeley and several of his colleagues withdrew to the Roman communion. In this new association he was much engaged in settling the legal points connected with their trusts and charities. Dr. Newman's collection of 'Verses on various Occasions' (1868) was dedicated to Badeley, with very warm expressions of friendship, in commemoration of their warm attachment and their unanimity of religious opinions. Many letters to and from Badeley are printed in Mr. Robert Ornsby's 'Memoirs of Mr. J. R. Hope-Scott,' 1884. Badeley died 29 March 1868.
[Gent. Mag. v. 688 (1868); Denison's Notes of my Life, pp. 197-9; Ornsby's Memoirs of .J. R. Hope-Scott, passim.]