2ND LIEUT J A CARTER
John Arnold Carter, also John Francis Arnold Carter, was born on 2 July 1887 in Clapham and baptised into the Church of England at the Church of St John the Evangelist, Wandsworth, later that month. He was educated, according to his own account, at St Alban's Grammar School and also attended Bloxham School, Banbury between 1900 and 1903. He appears in the 1911 census, aged 24, as living in his father's household at Greenstead, Avenue Road, St Albans, Hertfordshire. He was single and worked as an Insurance Clerk. His father, Edward Clay Carter, was a general builder and at the time of the census the family consisted of Edward, his wife Charlotte Sarah, four grown-up children including both John Arrnold and his elder brother Hugh Clay, and a servant, Alice Palmer.
John Kersey (Arnold Harris Mathew and the Old Catholic Movement, p.) states that the young Carter was originally a Roman Catholic, however at some point he became associated with the nascent Old Catholic movement in Great Britain, under the leadership of Bishop Arnold Harris Mathew. By 1913 he was sufficiently in Mathew's confidence to be ordained priest by him on 23 March of that year (Yelton, Anglican Papalism, p.203). As well as being one of Mathew's priests, Carter was at some point also given a canonry and made a member of his cathedral chapter. The Old Catholic Church in Great Britain (or Old Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain and Ireland as it had by now become) was a small denomination and so it is plausible that Fr Carter should have retained some form of secular employment to provide him with an income. Certainly, when shortly after the outbreak of war he enlisted in the Dragoon Guards, his employment was given in his Short Service Attestation as insurance clerk. He was still living at Greenstead[s] at the time, and his enlistment was noted in the St Albans Times of 18 September 1914 as follows: "Mr John Arnold Carter of St Albans has joined the 4th Dragoon Guards and his brother Mr Hugh Clay Carter the 34th Regiment Light Horse, Winnipeg."
J A Carter, by this time aged 26 years 65 days, was given the regimental number (GS/)7123 and appointed to the 4th Dragoon Guards (Royal Irish). His engagement was short-lived however; having been medically examined by the Deputy Surgeon-General at the Admiralty Recruiting Depot, 7 Whitehall Place on 2 September and making his way to Newport via the Great Western Railway to join up on 5 September 1914, he was discharged as unlikely to make an efficient soldier (paragraph 392(iii)(c) of King's Regulations) due to suffering from varicocele on 23 October 1914. (Pension record). He was with 'B' Squadron, the 4th Reserve Regiment of Cavalry at Tidworth when discharged. He received a gratuity of £1 10s for his 49 days' service.
After this, he appears to have resumed some form of civil employment as well as his Old Catholic activities. In December the following year, Carter appears to have been one of the petitioners to have the interestingly heterodox James Ingall Wedgwood consecrated to the Old Roman Catholic Church's episcopate:
"On December 10, 1915, a meeting of laity and clergy of what was then the Old Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain was held to elect Wedgwood to the episcopate:
'We the undersigned clergy and laity of the Old Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain, at a meeting held for the purpose, at No. 1 Upper Woburn Place, London, W.C. on December the 10th 1915, do hereby elect the Very Rev. James Ingall Canon Wedgwood to the honour and dignity of the episcopate, and in view of this election, we who append our names hereto do pray that the said Priest may receive visible Episcopal Consecration to the greater Glory of God and the honour and welfare of the Church.'
(Canon) J.B. Seaton, D.D., M.A
Robert King
Rupert Gauntlett
[James Frances] Arnold Carter
Reginald E.A.L. Farrer (Secretary and Registrar)
Thos. Haines (Priest)
Theodore Bell (Priest)
Helen Bell
Marion Edith Palmes
Selene Oppenheimer
Fiona Dainly.
A further signature was added on January 4, 1916: F[r]ederick James. Priest.
(From “Appointing a Bishop With Special Reference to the “Election” of the Rt. Rev. James Ingall Wedgwood”, The Liberal Catholic LV:1, February, 1986:14." Source: https://cwleadbeater.wordpress.com/2017/02/20/who-elected-leadbeater-as-a-bishop/)"
Only two days before this, on 8 December 1915, Carter had attended the Kingsway Recruiting Office, Holborn to be medically examined and attest his willingness to serve, under the Derby Scheme. He was posted to the Army Reserve the following day. He was recorded in the records of the St Albans Military Tribunal as having described himself as a 'Clerk in Holy Orders' of Greenstead, Avenue Road, when he attested, although his surviving Army Form B.178A simply notes his occupation as 'insurance clerk'.
February 1916 was made notable by Carter (by then a canon) being present at the consecration of the aforementioned James Ingall Wedgwood - himself also a priest and canon - as a bishop of the [Old Roman] Catholic Church at the Co-Masonic Temple, 13 (or 15?) Bloomfield Road, Maida Vale, London, W.9, on 13 February 1916. This timing is interesting as it post-dates the split between the Theosophically-inclined majority in the church and Mathew its founder, following the latter's 6 August 1915 Pastoral Letter On Membership in the Theosophical Society and in the Order of the Star in the East, but antedates Carter's own supposed consecration by Mathew, so presumably the two must have in some way subsequently reconciled. Kersey (op.cit., p.222) noted that at the ORCC Synod of 23 June 1917 it was stated that Carter had resigned from the movement and this may have been the ultimate cause of his rapprochement with Mathew.
The Liberal Catholic Church in the British Isles Newsletter No.8 (nd., but around December 2006/January 2007 from internal evidence) amplifies this from 'Bishop James’s edited extracts from the archive Minutes of the Liberal Catholic Church (Old
Catholic)', as follows:
"Epiphany February 13th 1916 at a Chapel specially provided
for the purpose at 15, Broomfield Road, London, W. Bishop Wil-
loughby was assisted by Bishops King and Gauntlett as co-
consecrators. The Provost, Dr. J.B. Seaton, Canons Carter and Farrer,
and the Rev. Theodore Bell were in attendance. Canon Carter officiated as Master of Ceremonies. The Provost read the Protocol of Election.
The three bishops imposed hands with the words, "Receive the Holy
Ghost", the Anointings, the delivery of the Instruments and other details of the Ceremony, were performed with scrupulous care and exactitude according to the rite of the Roman Pontifical. Canon Wedgwood was consecrated (to serve) as Regionary Catholic Bishop for Great Britain and Ireland and the British Empire, and was elected in the style of Presiding Bishop of the Old Catholic Church for the said jurisdiction.
The instrument of consecration was duly signed, sealed, and witnessed, Fr. Seaton acting as secretary ad hoc.
There was a (large) congregation of about 100, among whom the following in addition to the clergy signed the instrument of consecration:
Principal G.S, Arundale, M.A., Ll.B. Cantab., Arthur Paddocks, B.Sc.,
Birmingham, M.I.C.E., Kingsley Bayly, Solicitor, Esther Bright,
Mabel Besant Scott; Montagu R. St. John; Theodora St. John; Albert
B. Dexter; G.L. Becton; Silene Oppenheimer.
Notice of the election was intelligibly and distinctly
read in the Vulgar Tongue at the regular mass in the presence of
the congregation on the Sunday previous to the Consecration at
the Church of the Holy Spirit, Red Lion Square, London, W.C.
as well as immediately prior to the Ceremony of Consecration."
Carter subsequently appeared before St Albans City military Tribunal with a request to defer his military service. At a hearing of the County Appeal Tribunal on 31 March 1916 he was granted conditional exemption from joining up 'on his remaining a priest', with the decision (unusually) recorded in the St Albans City Tribunal minutes (HALS SBR/865) (Credit: Jon Mein) Given that he was also actively pursuing a commission at this time, it seems possible that this was done with a view to 'buying time' in order to secure his entry to an officer training battalion.
Having completed his application for a commission on 28 February, on 2 March 1916 he went to see a Captain SHA Wilson (station SD3), who endorsed him as 'fit in every way for admission to an officer cadet unit with a view to a temporary commission in the Regular Army for the period of the war', and to whom he wrote the following day (from Greenstead) enclosing his application, explaining how he had arranged for a local RAMC officer to undertake his medical examination and thanking Captain Wilson for his kindness. Carter's certificate of moral character was signed by the aforementioned John Briggs Seaton, Provost of Arnold Harris Mathew's Old Catholic Church of Great Britain (although on the form itself only described as 'Clerk in Holy Orders and Private Tutor'). In the application, Carter described himself as an Insurance Surveyor, and the profession of his father, presumably by now retired, as 'gentleman'; he also affirmed that he was British by birth, could ride, and had no preference as to which regiment he would be commissioned into.
Having reported to his nearest recruitment centre, Watford, as instructed on or around 15 April 1916, Carter was mobilised on 17 April and simultaneously posted to the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry under the regimental number 23243 and thence on to No.6 Officer Cadet Battalion, Balliol College, Oxford. Whilst there although no doubt busy he took the opportunity to go over to Banbury to visit Bloxham School, as recorded in The Bloxhamist of July 1916 (Vol LXII, no.377).
After just four and a half months of training, on 4 September 1916 Carter was discharged from the school on being granted his commission and sent to the 3rd Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment, then based at Sittingbourne in Kent.
Accordingly, the Supplement to The London Gazette, 8 September 1916, states that John Arnold Carter, from officer cadet unit, is to be a Second Lieutenant on probation with the Gloucestershire Regiment (Special Reserve of Officers).
He served overseas with the 12th Gloucesters (Bristol's Own) from 29 November 1916. At this time the battalion was part of the 95th Brigade of the 5th Division. It is not clear when he joined them in the field but at this time the battalion was resting in billets at Essars, as part of 5th Divisional Reserve, and training, before returning to the front line in the Ferme du Bois left sub-sector between 5 and 9 and 13 and 17 December. Either of these occasions could have been 2/Lt Carter's first experience of life in the line.
Clearly doing sufficiently well, he was subsequently confirmed in his rank, as published in the supplement to the London Gazette of 25 January 1917.
By March 1917 the battalion was in the Le Quesnoy sector, going into the right sub-sector at Cuinchy on 3 March in relief of the 1st Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry. On 5 March a significant raid, previously planned for 26 February, was launched by 'A' Company of the 12th Gloucesters, with 2/Lt Carter accompanying. Leaving the British trenches at 5am, the raid on trenches at A.22.a.1/4, south of the canal, was supported by a trench mortar barrage on the Brickstacks and a 30-minute machine-gun barrage on the support line and communications trenches. The raiders concentrated on blowing-in dug-outs using mobile charges and causing general damage. In the course of the twenty-minute raid, two prisoners of the 393rd Infantry Regiment, 7th Division were captured and enemy casualties were estimated in the battalion war diary as around 56; six known to be killed and the remaining fifty in the blown-in dugouts. The enemy retaliation was described as 'feeble'.
Unfortunately, as recorded by his subsequent medical board, while going over the trench wall in the raid, Carter slipped and injured his left knee. He left his unit the following day and on 11 March 1917 was evacuated to the United Kingdom per the Calais to Dover route aboard the Hospital Ship 'Brighton', and committed to the care of the Eccleston Hospital, Eccleston Square, London. Beyond that, casualties from the operation were slight, with one other rank wounded, 2/Lt E A Bradbury and three other ranks slightly wounded, and two other ranks wounded but at duty.
Meanwhile, the wheels of the tribunal system ground on, and Carter's case was reviewed at the County Appeal Tribunal on 6 April 1917 (source: Herts Advertiser, 8 April, 1917, pg. 8). The report in the paper stated that he was a 'Reverend of Old Catholic Church, St Albans', that he had been in the Army for six months and 'his case not gone into'. (Credit: Jon Mein) Ironically, he was back at home by this time, having been evacuated injured with sinovitis connected with the aforementioned trench raid injury. A medical board convened under the authority of the General Officer Commanding London District at Caxton Hall on 16 April determined that the injury would incapacitate him from military duty for a period of about 2 1/4 months. In the spring term of 1917 he visited his old school again. After several medical boards he was sent home from his officer's hospital on three weeks' leave at the end of July. By 30 August 1917 he was attending a board at Chatham, which reclassified his injury as severe, not permanent and classified him as fit for light duty at home.
He was subsequently promoted to Lieutenant with the 3rd Battalion (Reserve), the Gloucestershire Regiment, his Seniority Date being 5 February 1918 (see 1918 Army List). His posting to the 3rd Battalion is confirmed by the St Albans Absent Voter List for 1918, compiled mid-1918 (credit SAHAAS).
At some point during this period he appears to have renewed his relations with Archbishop Mathew and it is generally accepted by the major authorities (Anson, Brandreth, Bain and, more recently, Kersey, Persson and Yelton) that Carter was consecrated a bishop by Mathew, although there are contrasting views as to when. Older sources (Brandreth and those depending upon him) favour a date in August 1917, however Yelton, (op. cit., p.210), suggests a date of 15-16 December 1919, deriving from a list formerly in the possession of the late Dr F.R. Brittain of Jesus College, Cambridge. This timing for the consecration would perhaps fit better with what is known of J.A. Carter's military service, which would have been coming to an end at this time, and the fact that it would place the consecration shortly before Mathew's death on 19/20 December 1919 may explain its absence from the latter's Registry of consecrations.
In January 1920, Carter passed through No.1 Dispersal Unit, Purfleet, and was demobilized with effect from 22 January of that year, retaining the rank of Lieutenant. His protection certificate, dated January 1920, and thus predating his Anglican ordination, mentions that he is employed by the Church (Holy Orders) although it does not specify, perhaps purposefully, whether the order of deacon, priest or bishop is meant. It also indicates that he had been sent overseas again, presumably after the Armistice, to serve with the Rhine Army of Occupation, apparently in the office of the Deputy Provost Marshal (DPM), where he was Assistant Deputy Provost Marshal.
He appears to have at some point determined to pursue Anglican orders, spending some time later that year at St Catherine's College, Oxford, and St Stephen's House, Oxford, and being subsequently ordained deacon.
In May 1921 Carter was ordained a priest of the Church of England, conditionally, by the Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram. This corrects assumptions in older texts that Carter was an Anglican incumbent at the time of his consecration. The further assumption that it was pursuant to Mathew's attempt to reconstitute the Order of Corporate Reunion may or may not be correct.
Carter applied for his medals in September of 1921, his addresses being given on the medal index card as Mapleleaf, Granville Road, St Albans, Herts and then St Bridgets, Hall Place Gardens, St Albans. His British War and Victory Medals, correctly named 2/Lt J A Carter, representing his highest rank held in a theatre of war, were issued on 2 November.
Subsequent to his Anglican ordination, Carter served curacies at the churches of St Gabriel, South Bromley and of St Alban, Teddington, between 1920 and 1925. His time at St Gabriel was particularly remarkable for the fact that he served his curacy under William Noel Lambert and alongside Francis Herbert Bacon, both themselves also consecrated bishop by Mathew: Lambert - already an Anglican incumbent - clandestinely alongside Carter, and Bacon (as a matter of public knowledge) in 1911 (see Kersey, op.cit., p.183). At St Alban's he was described as 'senior assistant priest of a staff of four' (Royal Leamington Spa Courier, August 19, 1927, p.4). Carter was appointed rector of Hampton Poyle in 1925, serving also as General Secretary for the Diocese of British Honduras, and then on 10 November 1927 was inducted as vicar of St Mary Magdalene's, Lillington, Warwickshire, a position he was to occupy for some thirty-one years. Here he married Louisa Augusta Devereaux Hickman, granddaughter of a former Churchwarden of Lillington, in April 1929. Apart from being a strong Anglo-Papalist (see below) he also appears to have been a collector of church plate and was instrumental in installing a Lady Chapel in the church. From 1946-1951 Carter was also examining Chaplain to The Bishop of Coventry. Other distinctions included serving as chaplain to the High Sherriffs of Warwickshire between 1935 and 1940 and as Secretary to the Diocesan Conference in 1948. He appears to have retained an interest in South America, serving from 1937 on as Commissary to the Bishop of Guiana and subsequently editor of Guiana magazine. He also held a seat on Leamington Town Council between 1940 and 1945 on behalf of the Ratepayers' Association and was a member of the Worshipful Company of Basketmakers.
It is not clear how Carter viewed his episcopal consecration in later years. Bain (Bishops Irregular, p.68) notes "So far as is known, he performed no Episcopal acts". However, Yelton (op. cit., p.215), drawing from the papers of Peter F Anson (a seminal author on the question of Episcopi Vagans/'wandering bishops') at Lambeth Palace Library, comments "Carter on the face of it was living a quiet life in the country, but Anson was contacted very much later [after the publication of 'Bishops at Large'] by an apparently reliable source, Revd H. H. Bloomfield, who had read his book [Bishops at Large], and recalled as a young man before the Second World War having seen Carter's episcopal regalia at Lillington. He also thought that there was a picture showing not only Carter but Warwick [another Anglican clergyman supposedly ordained by Mathew] in pontificals. Carter certainly gave the outward impression of being committed to Anglican Papalism: in 1940 Lillington was one of the parishes supporting the Holy Hour for reunion with Rome and at his death on 14 December 1967 he was recorded as being a member of the Catholic League. There is a certain irony in an undated letter he wrote to Father Silas Harris (internally dateable as from 1935) in which he says: 'Unless we can form a Uniate church and feel that although we are in the church of England we are independent of the strange ways of our brother clergy, I can see little hope.'" (Yelton, p.215)
On 30 June 1958 Carter retired from the ministry of the Church of England, dying, as noted above, on 14 December 1967. He left behind effects of £2,408 and his last address was 12 Kenilworth Road, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.
Credit: photographs by RJ Taulbut of originals in the posession of Lillington Parish Church
Jon Mein, St Albans Historical and Archaeological Society
Bibliography:
Anon, 'The Bloxhamist' (1916, 1917)
Anon, Lillington Parish Newsletter (various)
Anon, 'The Liberal Catholic Church in the British Isles Newsletter No.8', (nd., but around December 2006/January 2007 from internal evidence) - retrieved November 2019 from https://kg.vkk.nl/english/organizations/lcc.gb/gb/ukniewsletter/8.pdf
Anon, “Appointing a Bishop With Special Reference to the “Election” of the Rt. Rev. James Ingall Wedgwood”, The Liberal Catholic LV:1, February, 1986:14." (Source: https://cwleadbeater.wordpress.com/2017/02/20/who-elected-leadbeater-as-a-bishop/)
Anon,
WO 339/58569 Description:
Lieutenant John Arnold CARTER
The Gloucestershire Regiment.
Anon, 12th Gloucestershire War Diary
Anon, Brigade War Diary
Peter F Anson, 'Bishops at Large', Apocryphile Press, Berkeley, California (2006, reprint of 1964/65 edition)
Alan Maxwell Bain, '"Bishops Irregular" an international directory of independent bishops', Bristol (1985)
Henry Reynaud Turner Brandreth, 'Episcopi Vagantes and the Anglican Church, SPCK, London (second edition, revised, 1961)
John Kersey, 'Arnold Harris Mathew and the Old Catholic Movement in England 1908-1952', The Western Orthodox University (2010), second Impression revised and updated, Lulu (2017)
Mike North & Jonathan Mein, 'St Albans Absent Voters List' (n.d., 2019?) (Source: https://www.stalbanshistory.org/social-history/the-home-front-in-st-albans-during-the-first-world-war/st-albans-people-serving-in-the-military-in-mid-1918)
Bertil Persson, 'The Order of Corporate Reunion', St Ephrem's Institute, Solna, Sweden (2000)
Michael Yelton, 'Anglican Papalism An Illustrated History 1900-1960, Canterbury Press, Norwich (2008)
