Thomas Thellusson Carter

Thomas Thellusson Carter (19 March 1808 – 28 October 1901 ), often known as T. T. Carter, was a significant figure in the Victorian Church of England. He was responsible for reintroducing some Catholic practices to the church and being the founder of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament. He also founded several charitable organisations. He was a prolific writer on church matters and a project exists to collect and collate all his writings. He was for 36 years the Rector of Clewer and an honorary canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.

Early life Carter was the son of Thomas Carter (then under master and later vice-provost of Eton College) and his wife Mary (née Proctor). Carter was educated at Eton from the age of six and, when he left, was captain of oppidans. He then entered Christ Church, Oxford, in 1825. Amongst those he met there were Edward Bouverie Pusey who had been a pupil of his father's. He graduated with first class honours in classics in 1831 and attempted to gain a fellowship at Oriel College but was unsuccessful. and give them an alternative to life there. This became the Clewer House of Mercy, which Carter, influenced by the writings of John Armstrong strongly supported. Ill-health prompted Tennant's withdrawal from the project in 1851, and she was succeeded by another widow, 40-year-old Harriet Monsell, who became mother superior of the newly created Community of St John Baptist, Clewer on 30 November 1852. Soon there were over forty branch houses, and significant work was undertaken in the United States and India. Re-establishment of the religious life was still controversial in Anglicanism (all monasteries and other religious houses had been dissolved during the English Reformation), and the foundation of a sisterhood was viewed with alarm in some quarters, not least among them being the Bishop of Oxford (the diocesan), Samuel Wilberforce, despite his misgivings, he acted as Visitor to the community until his move to Winchester in 1869. He also became a pioneer of retreats within the Church of England. This work also led him into the controversial area of auricular confession, and in 1865, the book, The Doctrine of Confession in the Church of England. When, in 1873, a controversial petition signed by 483 clergy requesting the provision of suitably qualified confessors was presented to the Convocation of Canterbury, he was one of those who drew up the Declaration on Confession and Absolution, as Set Forth by the Church of England in defence of private confession.