Brighton and "the South Coast Religion"
The Anglican Church in Brighton was heavily influenced by the Oxford Movement to an extent unparalleled elsewhere in the country apart from London.[2] In Anglo-Catholic circles Brighton would become known under the collective title of "London-Brighton and South Coast Religion", which was a play on an actual railway company’s name “London, Brighton and South Coast Railway”, this coincidently or otherwise, linked all the large and growing centres of Anglo-Catholic worship spreading from London to Brighton and then east and west along coast of Sussex to the neighbouring counties of Kent and Hampshire.[3]
 

 The atmosphere in Brighton, created by the local press and the Brighton Protestant Defence Association (the forerunner of the Church Association) was very hostile to ritualist priests. The Brighton Gazette was highly vitriolic towards any clergy that adhered to the English Catholic Tradition. The same newspaper in 1873 published a bias report that Fr.Wagner had refused in court to answer questions that would “involve him to breach the confessional”. As a result of this article, Fr. Wagner was brutally assaulted on the streets of Brighton. His assailants went to prison but Fr. Wagner characteristically supported their wives and families at his own expense [5].

In another Parish in Brighton,at St James Church, Fr. John Purchas was prosecuted for using vestments and the eastward position. The case took three years to conclude and resulted in the Church of England paying £7,661 in costs (Fr Purchas had placed his property in his wife's name so unable to pay the costs) [6]. To appreciate the scale of these costs, a house in Portslade could be rented for £13 a year in 1872 [7]. Fr. Purchas was removed from his Parish and some commentators believe his persecution led to his early death.

While serving under Fr Wagner and sharing his Anglo-Catholic views, Fr Enraght wrote the pamphlet, which was published nationally on the subject "Who are True Churchmen and Who are Conspirators" (his exposition on The Last Settlement of English Reformation in 1662), he stated in his conclusion he had proved that the English Church was both Catholic and Reformed. Fr Enraght's pamphlet was clearly aimed at the Church Association to counter their campaign of miss-information to the general public:-
"I have now, then, I think, sufficiently demonstrated what I undertook to prove. I have proved that the last Revision and Settlement in 1662 of the Formularies of the English Church, by which the Bishops and Clergy are bound, both by their Ordination promises and by Act of Parliament, was distinctly Catholic. I have proved, therefore, that the Catholic-minded clergy of the English Church alone are in the right, that the charge of “Romanizing” and unfaithfulness to their Church, so persistently brought against them because of their faithful adherence to Catholic truth and practice, is a grievous slander, and that the only consistent course for their opponents to adopt—in order, if they can, to put themselves in the right—is to endeavour to get the Formularies of the Church altered in a “Protestant” direction, and so to alter the basis on which we now stand. Until this be accomplished, which God forbid! Catholic-minded Churchmen, and they only, truly represent the mind of the English Church. All others are simply, more or less, conspirators against “the principles of the” English “Reformation” in its latest, and therefore most carefully considered, development. Consequently, it is obvious that the efforts so strenuously made in the present day by nominal Churchmen of Puritan sentiments to persecute and, if possible, put down the Catholic-minded clergy of the English Church, under a pretended zeal for the principles of the English Reformation, wear an appearance of gross hypocrisy. Puritans ever since the first dawn of “the Reformation,” have been in the Church of England only on sufferance. If any are to be restrained, it must not be those clergy who loyally carry out the principles of the Church which the Revisers of 1662 so strenuously maintained against all attacks, but any who (although many of them holding position and preferment within the Church) use their position and influence, contrary to their Ordination promises, to carry out the work of the Nonconformists of 1662, and undermine the Reformation principles for which the Revisers of 1662 contended, and which they have preserved in the Formularies of the Church." [8]
Fr Enraght received critical acclaim in the reviews for his "Who are True Churchmen and Who are Conspirators" “Really learned and closely reasoned, its well- marshalled arguments are powerful and conclusive.” – Union Review. “It is a clear, concise, and vigorous summary at once of the work of our last Prayer Book revisers, in reference to certain points now in dispute among us, It should be in everybody’s hands” - Literary Churchman. “Most useful, for turning the tables upon our accusers, and opening the eyes of ‘aggrieved parishioners’.” – Church Review. “Those who wish to see the disputed questions of the day on Church matters fairly and honestly submitted to the test of the Reformation, should read Rev. R. W. Enraght’s clever little Pamphlet”,– Church Times. [9].

Fr Enraght's fearless writings of confronting the architects of the forthcoming Public Worship Regulation Act by using the Book of Common Prayer to  prove that the Church of England has an unbroken Catholic Tradition no doubt marked him out as a future target for the attentions of the Church Association and its lawyers
 

Fr Richard Enraght SSC.
This photograph was reproduced
by kind permission of
the Principal & Chapter of Pusey House, Oxford
(Hall Collection 3/13, Pusey House Oxford)

St Andrew Church
Portslade

Portslade ministry

In 1871, after previously serving as a Curate to Fr Arthur Wagner the Vicar of St Paul's Brighton, Revd Richard William Enraght continued his ministry at St Andrew Church Portslade by Sea. He was appointed Priest in Charge to the new Parish of St Andrew’s Portslade by Sea by the Vicar of St Nicolas Church Portslade who at that time held the patronage of St Andrews [10]. Fr Enraght’s appointment was not without controversy. There was an unsuccessful appeal to the Bishop of Chichester by the Vicar of the neighbouring Parish of Southwick who questioned the authority of the Vicar of Portslade to make the appointment of a priest to this new Parish of St Andrew Church Portslade by Sea which did not have a permanent priest [11]. Portslade is only 3 miles from Brighton with very good railway links, so therefore Fr. Enraght SSC was able to continue as an officer of the Brighton Branch of the Society of the Holy Cross, the Branch was spoken of by its national leadership, “as one of the most promising and was carrying on a vigorous campaign in Brighton” [12]. While living in Brighton and Portslade, Fr Enraght also served as the Organising Secretary for the National Association for the Promotion of Freedom of Worship, and campaigned for the abolition of "pew-rents" [13]. St Andrew Church Portslade (built in 1864), where Fr Enraght served as its priest, was one of the earliest, if not the first church in Sussex never to have had "pew-rents" in its history [14].
In Portslade, Fr Enraght continued to be very active in his defence of Ritualism in published pamphlets and letters to the Brighton Gazette promoting adherence to the English Catholic Tradition within The Church of England. As priest in charge of Portslade by Sea, Fr. Enraght published the pamphlets "Catholic Worship" which promoted the importance and necessity of ritual in worship and the "The Real Presence and Holy Scripture" of which the Church Times described as "A masterly exposition of the texts which more directly relate to the Blessed Eucharist".
These writings put him on a collision course with the pro PWR. Act local newspaper the Brighton Gazette who were sensitive to any hint of ritualism in worship. The Brighton Gazette’s editorial 8th January 1874 was titled "Protestant Reaction" and sub titled ‘a warning to polemics’ from which these quotes are taken; "True Protestants can scarcely desire the loss of power and influence this would involve and the great help it would be to the Papists to re-establish their supremacy in Britain, through the Ritualists" From the pages of the same newspaper Fr Enraght was accused of Puseyism (used here as a term of abuse) and of trying to turn the local St Nicolas Church School in Portslade into a Puseyite school. The letter column of the Brighton Gazette carried this personal attack on Fr Enraght made by a Mr Gossett, a Portslade anti-ritualist, "The Revd Mr.Enraght, whose doctrines, if they were not doctrines of the Church of Rome, he (Mr.Gossett) was ignorant to what Church they belonged".
In reply to this personal attack, Fr Enraght sent the following statement to the Brighton Gazette, " My attention has only just be drawn to an attack made upon me, in my absence, by Mr. Gossett, of Portslade. I only noticed Mr. Gossett’s slander for the sake of the people to whom I lately ministered. I beg to inform all who care to know that “my doctrines” are those of the “one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church”, in which Mr. Gossett has professed to, but does not, I suppose “believe”; whereas I do. If Mr Gossett means that amongst “my doctrines” as – The Holy Trinity; the Incarnation; the Atonement; that “a child is by baptism regenerates” (Private Baptism of Children in Houses) or “the body and blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper”, (Church Catechism); or that “Our Lord Jesus hath left power to his Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in him (Visitation of the Sick); or any such like doctrines common to all parts of the Catholic Church in all ages, and therefore now held by the Church of England in common with “the Church of Rome”- he utters a truism. It is shameful that “Protestants (Church Association)” should persist in deceiving the people with the palpable fallacy that because we hold the old faith in Christ in common with Rome, therefore we also hold all that Rome has seen fit to add to that old faith "[15]

Another example of the Gazettes bias reporting, for Thursday 21st May 1874:
"The Revd R. W. Enraght of Portslade has given notice of his intentions to hold a “Retreat”-our readers will not have forgotten what sort of things these “retreats” are - at Lancing College in August next. The rev. gentleman’s name appears in the roll of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament for 1872, so that here we get another peep into the interior economy of those notorious “Woodard Schools”, of which Lancing College is the headquarters."
In 1874 the Government, under the leadership of Disraeli, with the backing of both Primates and many Bishops, decided to crush ritualism in the Church of England by passing the Public Worship Regulation Act.

Fr Wagner, Fr Purchas, Fr Enraght and the many other Brighton Anglo-Catholic priests all carried out their ministries to large sympathetic congregations. The local press spoke only for a minority in their campaign to use the Public Worship Regulation Act to rid ritualism from the churches of Brighton. From the Brighton Gazettes editorial for the 23rd April 1874 on the topic of the Public Worship Regulation Act, quote, "Let us have the law obeyed and let there be an easy mode of redress from offending clergyman".

In the winter of 1874 Fr Enraght left Portslade to take on a new challenge in the City of Birmingham as Vicar of Holy Trinity, Bordesley, an area much like Brighton where the Church Association were very active. Portslade was a good stepping stone in Fr Enraght's ministry as this was his first Parish where he had sole responsbility for the parishioners and being so close to Brighton he was able to maintain his links with the Brighton Branch of the SSC and with his former Vicar, Fr Wagner, the "Father" of the Catholic Revival in Brighton.
 

Fr Enraght entering Warwick Prison in chains
(from The Daily Post Newspaper (Birmingham)
26th November 1880.