He visited the continent also and Scotland; attended the Church Congress at Stoke-upon-Trent; and assisted at the Consecration of the Cathedral of Cumbrae, in the Diocese of Argyle and the Isles. Returning to England he was again present at the opening of the Convocation of Canterbury. The degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him by the University of Cambridge on the occasion of this visit.
He was again in England in 1881 and attended, by invitation, the funeral of Dean Stanley, (July 25th). On the invitation of the Queen's Domestic Chaplain, the Hon. and Rev. Dr. Wellesley, he preached in the Chapel Royal, Windsor, on Sunday, August 14th. No American had ever previously been invited to preach in this chapel. He took for his text on that occasion: "If thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?" (Jeremiah xii: 5.)
In these three visits, therefore, the Bishop performed every service appertaining to the Episcopal office. Such experiences were absolutely unique for an American Bishop at that time. It had often been asserted that the Bishops and clergy of the Church in America were not permitted to officiate in the Church of England. These visits of the Bishop not only gave him an extended acquaintance among the Bishops and clergy and prominent laity of the English Church, but changed the relations between them and the American Church, so that the latter has since been held in higher regard by the Church of England. How much this was influential in leading up to the present amicable relations existing between England and America, it is not necessary for us to inquire, though doubtless such an influence might be taken into account in tracing up the history of the present Anglo-American alliance.
In 1887 the Bishop was in England and was present by invitation of the Dean of Westminster, in the Abbey at the Queen's Jubilee. He assisted at an anniversary service of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, in the Chapel Royal, Savoy. As a Chaplain of the Order, he attended a meeting in the Chapter House, Clerkenwell Gate. The following year, as Chaplain of the Order, he assisted at the Installation of H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, (now Edward VII), as Grand Prior of the Order of St. John, in succession to the Duke of Manchester, who for twenty-five years had held the office.
He was also in attendance, in 1888, at the Lambeth Conference, was the guest of the Archbishop at Lambeth Palace, and assisted at the consecration of two Bishops. With the Lord Bishop of Peterborough, he was presenter of one of them,—the Rev. Dr. Thicknesse, consecrated Bishop Suffragan of Leicester, in the Diocese of Peterborough.
CHAPTER XVI
BISHOP QUINTARD AND SEWANEE
The enthusiasm with which Bishop Quintard, immediately after his consecration, took up and pushed forward whatever promised to be of spiritual benefit to the people of the South, was characteristic of the man. Especially attractive to him was the scheme set forth in the address by Bishop Polk to the Bishops of the Southern Dioceses, published in 1856, emphasizing the importance of building up an educational institution upon broad foundations, for the promotion of social order, civil justice, and Christian truth; to be centrally located within the Southern States. The scheme had been formulated and developed by its projector and originator, Bishop Polk; and "The University of the South" was duly organized in 1857. A liberal charter was secured from the State of Tennessee; title was acquired to a domain of nearly ten thousand acres of land upon the top of Sewanee Mountain; the corner-stone of a main college building was laid; and pledges of an endowment amounting to half a million of dollars were obtained before the war broke out.
In the fall of 1865, before his election to the Episcopate, Dr. Quintard met upon a train between Nashville and Columbia, the Rev. David Pise, a prominent presbyter of the Diocese of Tennessee, and Secretary of the Board of Trustees of The University of the South as it was organized before the war. On the same train was Major George R. Fairbanks, of Florida, a lay Trustee on said Board. The conversation of these three gentlemen was upon the proposed University. The magnificent domain secured for that institution, it was asserted, would revert to its donors unless the proposed University were in operation within ten years of the date of the donation, that is, in 1868. Dr. Quintard pledged himself not only to save the domain, but to revive the scheme for the University and to establish such an institution of learning as Bishop Polk, Bishop Otey, and others had in view when The University of the South was organized in 1857.
The day that he took his seat for the first time in the House of Bishops, Dr. Quintard entered into correspondence with the Rev. John Austin Merrick, D.D., a "man of godly and sound learning," and offered to meet him in Winchester, Tennessee, on a specified day; to go with him to Sewanee and see what might be done toward carrying out the educational enterprise which was intended to mean so much to the Southern people, and which meant all the more to them in the condition in which the war had left them.
The way for such a movement had been prepared at the special convention of the Diocese of Tennessee at which Dr. Quintard had been elected Bishop. Reviving a measure that had evidently been adopted in 1861, at the last convention over which Bishop Otey had presided, (the journal of this convention was lost in the printing office to which it was committed for publication,) the special convention of 1865 appointed a committee to take measures for establishing, (with the concurrence of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of the University,) a Diocesan Training and Theological School upon the University domain. Dr. Quintard, as Bishop-elect, had made sure that the war had not impaired the charter, nor up to that time, the title to the domain; even though it had swept away the endowment, and though soldiers of both armies, marching over the mountain and encamping about the spot, had amused themselves by blowing up the corner-stone laid in 1860, and making out of the fragments trinkets for their sweet-hearts.