Canon Carter

The year 2001 was the centenary of the death of Thomas Thellusson Carter, Rector of Clewer from 1844 to 1880. In his day Carter was a man of national importance in the Church. He it was who founded the Convent of St. John the Baptist in Hatch Lane but he also founded a great many charitable institutions.

I think he is probably the only parochial clergyman to merit an entry in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (O.U.P. 1957) It reads as follows:

Sub-Tractarian divine Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, he left Oxford before the Oxford Movement began, but when, after a series of parochial appointments he became Rector of Clewer, near Windsor, in 1844, he had come deeply under Tractarian influence. In 1849 he founded at Clewer a House of Mercy for the rescue of fallen women, and in 1852 a Sisterhood to take charge of it. Throughout the rest of his life he continued to take a prominent part in the High Church Movement. He was the author of a long series of spiritual and controversial writings, including the widely used “Treasury of Devotion” (1869).

“Tractarianism” was the movement started by the issue of tracts from Oxford by J. H. Newman and others, asserting the Catholicity of the C. of E. During the course of the year 2001, a number of articles about Carter will appear in this magazine. The Clewer Group are arranging various events associated with the Centenary. Denis Shaw