John Keble’s The Christian Year, a volume…

John Keble’s The Christian Year, a volume of poems for Sundays and festivals of the church year, had proven immensely popular and had led, in 1831, to a professorship of poetry at Oxford.

By 1833, however, he has become known as a leader of the Oxford Movement, which is generally considered to have been initiated by his Assize sermon “National Apostasy,” given this year on July 14 at the university chapel.

The immediate impetus for the Movement had been the secularization of the Church, focused particularly on the decision by the Government to reduce by ten the number of Irish bishops in the Church of Ireland following the 1832 Reform Act.