A traveller in faith: Joseph Stevenson

THESE are days in which tales of conversion from one religion to another occasion no great surprise and rarely scandal or resentment. We are reminded that it was not always so as we approach the anniversary of a very remarkable scholar of the last century whose life covered most of it and whose spiritual odyssey took him through three forms of Christian faith. Born in Berwick-upon-Tweed on November 27, 1806, Joseph Stevenson was the eldest son of Robert, a surgeon of that town, and his wife Elizabeth nee Wilson. His early life may be taken as an encouragement for the late starter. Although he was to develop into a scholarly writer of enormous industry, and publish over fifty volumes, apart from articles, reports to government and miscellaneous papers, his early education hardly suggested a future scholar. It suggested, rather, that he might follow in the footsteps of his paternal grandfather, a captain in the Royal Navy, or even of the maternal grandfather who was a banker whose business failed.

Joseph's earliest schooling was at Wootten le Wear but he was soon transferred to the grammar school attached to Durham Cathedral. The Reverend James Raine was a dominie common in those times, one apparently more adept in the use of the birch than the blackboard. Young Stevenson was usually at the bottom of his class so that he was brought near his tormentor's desk who, we are told, emphasised his lessons with cuffs and pinches which his victim long remembered. The boy acquired little in the way of Latin and Greek but out of school some experience in smuggling, thanks to an uncle who took him on expeditions across the border. He also purchased a pistol with which he came close to a serious accident even before leaving the shop. He nearly fired two barrels of gunpowder. Later the weapon was discovered by a maid who let it off with dramatic, if not grave, consequences. Leaving Durham, Joseph proceeded to Glasgow University but did not, it seems, take a degree. He returned to Berwick to become a licentiate in the Presbyterian ministry but made no notable advancement.

Whatever his formal education failed to give him, his contact with the splendid environment of Durham gave him an early taste for antiquity. He became absorbed in the study of St. Cuthbert and other early saints, and had begun to write on antiquarian subjects before making his way to London to seek appropriate employment in 1831. This he found among the public records then kept in St. John's Chapel in the Tower of London. Soon afterwards he went over to the manuscript department of the British Museum. It was not entirely a matter of chance or good luck since he had letters of recommendation from Dr. Laing of Edinburgh and Dr. Bliss, two notable scholars. It was also fortunate that the museum had just purchased the Arundel Collection and needed suitable assistants to put the papers in order. After a week's trial, Stevenson was given a permanent post, about midsummer, 1831.

The salary was good enough for him to return to Glasgow to claim a wife, Mary Ann Craig of Mount Florida. Married on September 19, 1831, they lived happily together and indeed ever after. True, those were days in which couples entered their union with every intention of making it lifelong but this was a pair apparently made for one another. Robert, a boy of great promise, was born to them in August 1832.

Stevenson's work at the museum now brought him into contact with notable scholars, not least P. F. Tytler, and gained him access to various learned societies for which he edited a number of volumes of historical texts. His reputation for accuracy and industry brought him an appointment as a subcommissioner of the public records in 1834. During this time he gradually severed his connection with the Kirk and turned to Anglicanism in which Robert and two daughters were baptised. He seemed to be set for a career which was to bring his colleagues and contemporaries, Edward Cole, S. T. Duffus Hardy and Edward Bond, to recognised positions of distinction.

On November 5, 1839 young Robert died after an attack of cerebral palsy. The effect on his father was devastating. He could not think of pursuing the obvious path of his career hitherto. Resigning his post on the record commission, he returned to Durham to study for ordination in the Anglican ministry. There was plenty of scope for an idealist in his church at that time. He records how he witnessed a cockfight within the communion rails of a local church. In 1841 he succeeded his former persecutor, the Rev. James Raine, as librarian and archivist to the dean and chapter. Stevenson began at once to catalogue the charters and deeds preserved in the treasury. This occupied him for seven years at the end of which the university conferred on him an honorary M.A. degree. Meanwhile various religious influences pressed upon him; his studies of early Christian history were bringing him closer to Catholicism, but Mr. Townsend, the vicar of the church in which Stevenson had a curacy, was so convinced of the truth of his reformed faith that he not only annotated voluminously Foxe's Book of Martyrs but made a special visit to Rome to convert the Pope. His Holiness failed to avail himself of this rare moment of grace.