{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2019}} The '''Oriel Noetics''' is a term now applied to a group of early 19th-century dons of the University of Oxford closely associated with Oriel College. John Tulloch in 1885 wrote about them as the "early Oriel school" of theologians, the contrast being with the Tractarians, also strongly based in Oriel.<ref>{{cite book|author=Stuart G. Hall|title=Jesus Christ Today: Studies of Christology in Various Contexts. Proceedings of the Académie Internationale des Sciences Religieuses, Oxford 25–29 August 2006 and Princeton 25–30 August 2007|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ub3LGmWVDfUC&pg=PA142|accessdate=12 December 2012|date=26 February 2009|publisher=Walter de Gruyter|isbn=978-3-11-021277-8|page=142 notes}}</ref>
The Noetics were moderate freethinkers and reformers within the Church of England. In terms of Anglican religious parties, the Noetics were High Church opponents of evangelicalism, but adhered also to a rationalism from the previous century.<ref name="BrockCurthoys1997">{{cite book|author1=Michael George Brock|author2=Mark Charles Curthoys|title=19th Century Oxford|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3bDAWHbXgi4C&pg=PA71|accessdate=11 December 2012|year=1997|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-951016-0|page=73}}</ref> They advocated for a "national religion" or national church,<ref name="BurnsInnes2003">{{cite book|author1=Arthur Burns|author2=Joanna Innes|title=Rethinking the Age of Reform: Britain 1780-1850|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eTmVgdHczd0C&pg=PA40|accessdate=11 December 2012|date=13 November 2003|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-82394-4|page=40}}</ref> and in their own view stood for orthodoxy rather than liberalism.<ref name="WalshHaydon1993">{{cite book|author1=John Walsh|author2=Colin Haydon|author3=Stephen Taylor|title=The Church of England c.1689-c.1833: From Toleration to Tractarianism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vYNlzfthufUC&pg=PA41|accessdate=11 December 2012|date=7 October 1993|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-41732-7|page=41}}</ref> In politics, they were associated with the Whigs, and influenced prominent statesmen such as Lord John Russell, Viscount Morpeth, and Thomas Spring Rice.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Curthoys |first1=Mark C. |title=Nineteenth-century Oxford, Part 1 |date=1997 |publisher=Clarendon Press |page=74}}</ref>
Distinctively, the Noetics combined natural theology with political economy. Their approach had something in common with that of Thomas Chalmers, and had much support at the time outside the college in Oxford, and more widely.<ref>Peter Mandler, ''Tories and Paupers: Christian Political Economy and the Making of the New Poor Law'', The Historical Journal, Vol. 33, No. 1, Mar., 1990, Cambridge University Press, p. 86 note 20; Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2639392.</ref>
==The Noetics at Oriel== Oriel College at the beginning of the 19th century had a policy of recruitment of Fellows on merit, disregarding both patronage and examination classes in search of intellectual calibre.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Nigel F. B. Allington|author2=Noel W. Thompson|title=English, Irish and Subversives Among the Dismal Scientists|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4fjwxnH8VPcC&pg=PA202|accessdate=13 December 2012|date=25 October 2010|publisher=Emerald Group Publishing|isbn=978-0-85724-061-3|page=202}}</ref> The college was also abstemious, compared with the others, and the "Oriel teapot" became proverbial.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Ursula Aylmer|author2=Carolyn McCrum|title=Oxford Food: An Anthology|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qBjLU0KrL6wC&pg=PA148|accessdate=13 December 2012|year=1995|publisher=Ashmolean Museum|isbn=978-1-85444-058-7|page=148}}</ref>
Prominent Noetics who were directly associated with Oriel included the successive Provosts John Eveleigh and Edward Copleston. Others who were Fellows of the College for some period were Thomas Arnold, Joseph Blanco White, Renn Dickson Hampden, Edward Hawkins, and Richard Whately. Baden Powell was an undergraduate at Oriel.<ref name="Copley2002">{{cite book|author=Terence Copley|title=Black Tom: Arnold of Rugby: The Myth and the Man|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=87NYJ6CIi6wC&pg=PA187|accessdate=11 December 2012|date=23 April 2002|publisher=Continuum International Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-8264-6705-8|pages=187–8}}</ref> John Davison was excluded from the group of Noetics when William Tuckwell wrote about them in the early 20th century, but is counted by Richard Brent in the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''.<ref name="Jones2003">{{cite book|author=Tod E. Jones|title=The Broad Church: A Biography of a Movement|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D9vkV5uKUrkC&pg=PA56|accessdate=11 December 2012|date=1 July 2003|publisher=Lexington Books|isbn=978-0-7391-0611-2|page=56}}</ref><ref>{{ODNBweb|id=7303|title=Davison, John|first=Richard|last=Brent}}</ref>
==Relationship with the High Church men== The ''Edinburgh Review'' called Oriel under Copleston "the school of speculative philosophy in England".<ref>{{cite book|author=Maurice Cross|title=Selections from the Edinburgh review: comprising the best articles in that journal, from its commencement to the present time. With a preliminary dissertation, and explanatory notes|url=https://archive.org/details/selectionsfrome00crosgoog|accessdate=11 December 2012|year=1835|publisher=Baudry's European Library|page=[https://archive.org/details/selectionsfrome00crosgoog/page/n318 301] note}} This was in a review of a supplement by Dugald Stewart to the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''.</ref> Copleston was seen by Edward William Grinfield in 1821 as undermining the orthodox Anglicanism of Joseph Butler's natural theology. He took care to rebut this charge; and Grinfield in the ''British Critic'' was represented as over-impressed by Oriel's reputation. Baden Powell remained close to his High Church roots, an ally of the Hackney Phalanx.<ref name="Corsi1988">{{cite book|author=Pietro Corsi|title=Science and Religion: Baden Powell and the Anglican Debate, 1800-1860|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VJHB3j_VCUQC&pg=PA77|accessdate=11 December 2012|date=26 May 1988|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-24245-5|pages=77–8}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=The British Critic|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nt7QAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA20|accessdate=11 December 2012|year=1822|publisher=F. and C. Rivington|pages=1–20}}</ref>
John Henry Overton argued that Copleston was his own man, not attached to a church party; and that his leaving Oxford in 1827 as a bishop removed his influence.<ref>John Henry Overton, ''The English Church in the Nineteenth Century, 1800-1833'' (1893), p. 117;[https://archive.org/stream/a601284200overuoft#page/n131/mode/2up archive.org].</ref> A split in views developed in the run-up to the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, which left the Oriel group and the diehard Hackney Phalanx on opposite sides of the question, Baden Powell siding with the reforming views of others in the college.<ref>{{ODNBweb|id=22642|title=Powell, Baden|first=Pietro|last=Corsi}}</ref>
==Relationship with the Tractarians== The rise of the "Oxford Movement" proved very divisive within Oriel College, where John Keble, John Henry Newman and Hurrell Froude held positions. The successor to Copleston as Provost was Hawkins. By 1833 the fellowship split with four fellows opposed to the incipient Tractarian moves, while more were broadly supportive.<ref>{{cite book|author=C. Brad Faught|title=The Oxford Movement: A Thematic History of the Tractarians and Their Times|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ActQ_CZvk-EC&pg=PA85|accessdate=12 December 2012|date=1 January 2004|publisher=Penn State Press|isbn=978-0-271-02394-6|page=85}}</ref> Hawkins was an early influence on Newman, but his election (defeating Keble) blocked internal changes to college teaching in 1831, which Newman, Froude and Robert Wilberforce wished to have more of a pastoral content;<ref>{{cite DNB|wstitle=Hawkins, Edward (1789-1882)}}</ref> the other tutor of the time, Joseph Dornford, supported Hawkins.<ref>{{cite book|author=Brian Martin|title=John Henry Newman: His Life and Work|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IZKW51HSqOUC&pg=PA43|accessdate=13 December 2012|date=30 January 2001|publisher=Continuum International Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-8264-4993-1|page=43}}</ref>
==Political economy== The Noetics stood for a degree of curriculum reform in the university, in the form of optional courses. As part of this drive, Copleston and Whately in 1831 introduced a course on political economy, treated in the context of natural theology. It drew on Whately's ''Elements of Logic'', which had an appendix on political economy by Nassau Senior.<ref name="Gasser2000">{{cite book|author=James Gasser|title=A Boole Anthology: Recent and Classical Studies in the Logic of George Boole|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A2Q5Yghl000C&pg=PA145|accessdate=11 December 2012|date=30 September 2000|publisher=Springer|isbn=978-0-7923-6380-4|page=145}}</ref> Whately was Drummond Professor of Political Economy for a year after Senior, but left Oxford in 1831.<ref>{{cite DNB|wstitle=Whately, Richard}}</ref>
==Social policy== It has been claimed that the composition of the Royal Commission into the Operation of the Poor Laws 1832 was heavily slanted towards followers of the Noetics. Among reformers involved named as aligned with the Noetics and their views are William Sturges Bourne, Walter Coulson, and Henry Gawler. Edwin Chadwick, an assistant commissioner, had contributed to the ''London Review'' founded as an organ for the Noetics.<ref name="Offer2006">{{cite book|author=John Offer|title=An Intellectual History of British Social Policy: Idealism Versus Non-Idealism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LCsjEw_U8-EC&pg=PA14|accessdate=11 December 2012|year=2006|publisher=The Policy Press|isbn=978-1-86134-531-8|page=14}}</ref>
==References== {{reflist|25em}}
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Category:Oriel College, Oxford Category:History of the Church of England