From Dr Simon Cotton
Sir,
Nigel Palmer’s interesting article on Pusey (April ND) mentions his aristocratic background; as Nigel Aston pointed out some years ago, that also acted as a doctrinal source for him. His grandfather on the maternal side was the Rev. Robert Sherard, 4th Earl of Harborough, a squarson who built three churches: Teigh, Stapleford and Saxby. Lucy, his youngest child, married the Hon. Philip Pusey, a Berkshire landowner, as her second husband, the flrst having died less than a year after their marriage). Sherard catechised his daughter very thoroughly, as in her turn she did her son Edward. In his old age Pusey acknowledged that he had learnt the doctrine of the Real Presence from his mother’s exposition of the Catechism (Liddon’s Life of Pusey), which casts a light on the negative view often held of the Georgian Church of England. For more, see Nigel Aston, “An 18th Century Leicestershire Squarson: Robert Sherard, 4th Earl of Harborough (1719-1799)”, Transactions, The Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, 1986, LX 34-46.
Simon Cotton
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