the same time he accepted the post of examining chaplain to Dr. Archibald Campbell (afterwards archbishop) Tait [q. v.], who in September 1856 had been appointed bishop of London. His ‘Three Introductory Lectures on the Study of Ecclesiastical History’ (published in 1857) were delivered in February 1857. His ‘Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church’ (published in 1861) and his ‘Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church’ (part i. 1863; part ii. 1865; part iii. 1876) were also based upon lectures delivered as professor of ecclesiastical history. Through the lecture-room, the pulpit, and social life, he exercised a remarkable influence over young men at Oxford. To Stanley, for example, John Richard Green attributed his devotion to historical studies; from him also he learned the ‘principle of fairness’ (Prothero, Life of Dean Stanley, ii. 13–15). Among older men he was not an intellectual leader, though always a stimulating force. He could not join himself unreservedly to any party, and hated the spirit of combination for party purposes. His passion for justice plunged him continually into ecclesiastical conflicts. It was this feeling, even more than personal friendship, which stirred him to support Professor Jowett's claims to the endowments of the Greek chair against those who, on theological grounds, withheld his salary while they accepted his services. Though he regretted the publication of the first volume of Dr. Colenso's work on the Pentateuch (October 1862), he championed the writer's cause, because he could not ‘join in the indiscriminate outcry against an evidently honest and single-minded religious man.’ He disapproved of some of the contents of ‘Essays and Reviews’ (1860); but he pleaded that each essay should be judged by itself, and urged the unfairness of involving the different writers in the same sweeping censure (see his article on ‘Essays and Reviews’ in the Edinburgh Review for April 1861).
In January 1862 he was asked to accompany the Prince of Wales on a tour in the east. Leaving England in February, he returned home in the following June. The ‘Sermons in the East’ (published in 1863) were preached on this tour. During his absence abroad his mother died (Ash-Wednesday, 7 March 1862). This second tour in the Holy Land produced two results which were important in his career: it connected him closely with the court; it also made him better known to Lady Augusta Bruce (1822–1876), fifth daughter of the seventh Earl of Elgin, whom he had first met in Paris in 1857, and whose brother, General Bruce, his fellow-traveller throughout the prince's tour, died in 1862 of a fever caught in the marshes of the Upper Jordan.
On 22 Dec. 1863 he was married to Lady Augusta in Westminster Abbey, and on 9 Jan. 1864 was installed as dean of the abbey in succession to Richard Chenevix Trench [q. v.], who was promoted to the archbishopric of Dublin.
Stanley at once made his mark in his new position. In convocation, in literature, in society, in his official duties as dean, and in the pulpit, his work was rich in results and his influence grew in extent. By the ancient instrument to which he declared his assent at his installation as dean, he held his office for ‘the enlargement of the Christian church.’ To obtain recognition for the comprehensiveness which was, in his opinion, secured to the church by its union with the state, and, within the limits of the law, to widen its borders so that it might more worthily fulfil its mission as a national church, were the objects to which he devoted himself. In this double meaning of the enlargement of the church lies the key to his sermons, speeches, and writings. The sacrifices which he was prepared to make for the attainment of his ideal repelled numbers of the best men in his own church, whether their views were high or low. On the other hand, the breadth of his charity attracted thousands of the members of other communions. Outside the pale of his own church no ecclesiastic commanded more respect or personal affection. Within its limits no one was more fiercely assailed. In the controversies in which he took part or provoked, such as those which centred round Dr. John William Colenso [q. v.] or Dr. Vance Smith, his attitude was at least consistent. He opposed every effort to loosen the tie between church and state, to resist or evade the existing law, or to contract the freedom which the widest interpretation of the formularies of the church would permit. In his ‘Essays, chiefly on Questions of Church and State, from 1850 to 1870’ (published in 1870), as well as in the ‘Journals of Convocation,’ are preserved the memories of many forgotten controversies.
In Westminster Abbey he found the material embodiment of his ideal of a comprehensive national church, an outward symbol of harmonious unity in diversity, a temple of silence and reconciliation which gathered under one consecrated roof every variety of creed and every form of national activity, whether lay or ecclesiastical, religious
