Frederick Hervey — The Builder Bishop
The rotunda fills the sky, flanked on both sides by colonnades to east and west wings. The overall effect would scarcely look out of place in central Rome, and that was exactly the intention. Yet this neoclassical monument stands thousands of miles to the north, dominating the landscape about a small village in Suffolk. It is out of place. In this it has much in common with its creator, Frederick Hervey, the flamboyant Earl-Bishop.
1768
King George III was a man of his word. The failing health of the incumbent bishop of Derry led the Viceroy of Ireland, George Hervey, to seek the bishopric for his younger brother and the King had agreed. In the end the old bishop held on longer than expected, and only succumbed after the elder Hervey had already resigned his post, having never actually set foot on Irish soil. The new Viceroy desired the post for one of his associates but the King kept his promise. Thus the younger Frederick Hervey was appointed bishop of Derry. It was an act of integrity the King would later regret.
The dispensation of powerful jobs in return for political support was a typical arrangement in the eighteenth century. By this time, the Herveys had already served the royal family for three hundred years (no mean feat considering the succession of royal houses during that period) and loyalty was rewarded. Accordingly there was little expectation that Hervey would do any more than bank the substantial income the diocese provided. However, it turned out the new bishop had other intentions. Within months of his arrival, Hervey visited every parish, ordering repairs and other infrastructure, and established a pension scheme for elder clergy. Unusually tolerant for the age, he made donations to local catholics and insisted upon Irish people for Irish posts (his excepted, of course) The mission to win over hearts and minds was successful — Hervey remained idolised by his parishioners for the rest of his life.
Frederick Hervey was indeed a man of contradictions. An aristocrat by birth, he was an ambitious reformer by nature. Beloved by his congregation, he became increasingly detested by his own family. A serial builder of great houses, the open road called louder than settled life. Hervey was impatient, restless, a seeker of danger. And so, within two years of his move to Northern Ireland, Hervey was travelling south, on the way to Italy.
Buried for a thousand years, the eighteenth century saw keen amateurs across the Mediterranean unearthing the remnants of the classical world. Visiting the sites of ancient civilisation, “The Grand Tour”, became a rite of passage for wealthy elites, For Hervey, the income from Derry offered him the chance to see the sights for himself. Far from a once-in-a-lifetime event, touring would become his lifelong obsession. Travelling from the northern tip of Ireland down to Italy (then still a collection of independent states) was no small undertaking. To pass through the fragmented states of Europe required various documents of identification, letters of recommendation, bewildering local currencies, as well as an entourage of horses, carriages and staff. Genuine expanses of wilderness greeted travellers journeying from one European city to another, with inherent risk of accident or illness befalling the traveller on the way. The Alps themselves posed a particular challenge: carriages had to be dismantled and carried by hand over mountain crossings. Hervey’s first trip to the continent took him and his family away from the diocese for two years and cost them dearly — their eldest son died as they passed through Belgium. His wife detested the journey; for Hervey it was the beginning of a life on the road.
During that first trip became apparent more of the extraordinary contradictions that defined Hervey’s character. Upon arrival in Rome, he managed to secure an audience with Pope Clement XIV, no mean feat of persuasion for an Anglican bishop! On his way through Paris he’d also dropped in on his old friend Voltaire, the French Enlightenment author, famous for his attacks on the Catholic Church
It was on the foothills of Vesuvius that Bishop Hervey developed a lifelong fascination with volcanoes, despite being hit by a piece of molten rock that almost killed him. Upon his return to Ireland he explored the nearby Giant’s Causeway, and is credited with its understanding as a volcanic formation. Hervey was granted membership to the Royal Society in recognition of his work, and for popularising the causeway as a tourist attraction.
When his second brother Augustus died, Hervey became the first English Earl-Bishop in over 700 years. Having struggled financially in his earlier years, he was now worth a fortune, and was free to build and travel as he pleased.
Volcanology was not the only interest Hervey had brought back to Ireland. Having attempted to buy the temple of Vesta at Tivoli to import to Derry (he was refused permission to do so by the Pope), Hervey set about building a version of it in Ireland, which is now known as the Mussenden temple. Ickworth itself is a repetition of Mussenden, on a grander scale.
A couple of years later Hervey was once again on his way to Rome. King George noted with some displeasure the repeated absences of his newly appointed bishop. As it turned out, the King would soon wish his ‘wicked prelate’ spend more time away from British shores. Indeed in short order, George would find himself signing a warrant for the Earl Bishop’s arrest.
“Until ye can forgive and reciprocally tolerate each other, ye must expect to find yourselves ultimately tools and victims.”
Frederick Hervey
Let’s not kid ourselves. Frederick Hervey, Earl of Bristol, absentee bishop of Derry, restless traveller, unfaithful husband and neglectful father was scarcely a role model, particularly when viewed through our sharp modern lens. And yet the words of Hervey, spoken in Ireland two hundred years ago are, nonetheless, distinctly modern.
In many ways, Hervey was ahead of his contemporaries. Needless to say, such sentiments only deepened the admiration of his congregation. However, Hervey’s oratory brought him to the edge of rebellion, and very nearly brought the weight of the British establishment crashing down upon him.
During the latter part of the eighteenth century in which Hervey was Bishop, Ireland was a theoretically autonomous state with its own parliament. In reality it was nothing of the sort; the Irish parliament was subservient to the whims of King George III and his cabinet in London. The king was free to do as he wished, including placing his allies into plum positions in the clergy, which is how Hervey came to Ireland to begin with.
Tithes to the Irish Anglican Church were paid by the Catholic majority population, themselves disenfranchised of power and excluded from land ownership under the penal laws. One-sided trading tariffs with Britain and other economic inequality forced the Irish to export great quantities of their own food to make ends meet. Combined with an exceptionally cold winter, this had led directly to the famine of 1741, in which some 400,000 people had died. George Berkeley, a predecessor of Hervey’s as Bishop of Cloyne, wondered at the time, “how a foreigner could possibly conceive that half the inhabitants are dying of hunger in a country so abundant in foodstuffs?”
In short, the rule imposed by the British on Ireland was anything but modern or tolerant. It led to simmering resentment toward the Anglian landowners and British ruling class as a whole.
So it is remarkable that Hervey, scion of the same establishment that had provided him with so much personal gain, should become a prominent supporter of Catholics and Irish rights. He vigorously opposed the payment of tithes to his own Anglican Church. Indeed, in his will he offered the use of his Mussenden temple to local Catholics, who were without a church of their own. In time, Hervey’s involvement went beyond gestures.
Having again passed time in Italy, Hervey returned to Derry in 1782, keen to start another project. A rapacious writer of letters, he sent admiring missives to the chairman of the Derry corps, a local nationalist militia. Joining the group, he quickly ascended the ranks before campaigning for election as its president. Hervey’s oratory became downright rebellious. He accused George III of tyranny, and running a “rapacious oligarchy”. These words, probably quite accurate, were extremely incautious for a man in Hervey’s position.
Word reached the king, and the king was furious. The very man George III had appointed on a point of principle was encouraging revolt! A warrant for Hervey’s arrest was drawn up, spies sent to Derry to watch the renegade bishop, whom the king now referred to as the “wicked prelate.”
It was only the intervention of the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, that saved Hervey from arrest. Pitt himself was no fan of the Earl-Bishop, but felt that prosecution would only make Hervey more popular with the locals. And so the arrest never came. We can assume some agent made it clear to Hervey how closely he’d courted disaster. He eased himself out of volunteering and steered clear of politics for the rest of his days.
Hervey’s actions had turned the royal family and British establishment at large decisively against him. The close bond between generations of Herveys and English royal houses was at an end. Perhaps this was one of the reasons that the continent once again called the wandering bishop away from his diocese. In Rome the artistic community welcomed back their wealthy patron with open arms.
Over the years this patronage had filled the Bishop’s Palace in Derry with future treasures, to join a collection of masterpieces including works by Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian and Raphael. They adorned the walls of a silent house. Hervey’s wife Elizabeth had long since relocated to Ickworth in Suffolk, where she survived on a meagre income in the lodge — the grand house that stands there today did not begin construction until 1795. Hervey himself departed on ever longer trips to the continent, usually travelling alone. There was nothing left for him in Ireland.
In 1791 Hervey left Derry for the last time. Making his way to Germany he avoided France and her revolution that was unfriendly to passing aristocrats. The bishop wandered Germany for a year, finding time to meet the great writer Goethe, later becoming involved within the Hamburg royal court, which he plotted to have his son marry into. When his son refused, the bishop cursed his stupidity. Hervey was slowly becoming detached from all but his paid servants.
His eccentricity left unchecked, Hervey became ever more unwilling to stop, or even pause his travels. At one point he crossed the alps three times in sixteen months, oscillating without purpose, toward where, in 1803, we see him last. On the road between Albano and Rome, Hervey suffered an agonising attack of “gout”, which had afflicted him throughout his life. Abandoned by his staff, Hervey died far from his family, his diocese and his legacy, in pain and alone.
Hervey had built a legacy at Derry, and started another at Ickworth. In the end it was his son Frederick who completed the house at Ickworth, almost bankrupting himself in the process — a surprising act of loyalty given how little attention his father had bestowed upon him in life. Let’s not kid ourselves — Hervey was no angel, but his buildings add beauty and colour to a small village in rural Suffolk, and our national heritage. Some of his words, however rebelliously intended, ring as true today as they did when first uttered over two hundred years ago.
NB: Much of the content on Hervey’s eventful life recounted here is learned from the book, The Earl Bishop, by Stephen Price. If you’d like to learn more about Hervey’s fascinating life, I’d recommend this good-humoured and interesting read.
