Portrait of Benjamin Hoadly

The man in these robes had, some 20 years before Hogarth painted him, set off one of the loudest religious quarrels of the century. In 1717 Benjamin Hoadly, then Bishop of Bangor, preached that Christ had left no visible church authority on earth, which came close to saying the clergy held no special power at all. The pamphlet war that followed, the Bangorian Controversy, ran to hundreds of tracts and briefly paralysed the Church's own governing body. By 1741 Hoadly had been rewarded anyway, risen to the wealthy see of Winchester, and Hogarth, a friend, painted him in the robes of that office. Behind him a stained-glass window carries the figure of Saint Paul and the arms of Winchester.