William Connor Magee, Bishop of Peterborough

Carlo Pellegrini's chromolithograph, plate 8 of Vanity Fair and Statesmen No. 22, caricatures William Connor Magee, the combative Anglican Bishop of Peterborough, in full episcopal dress: voluminous black chimere over white rochet, one hand extended in mid-oration. The caption below reads, 'If eloquence could justify injustice, he would have saved the Irish Church' — a pointed dig at Magee's forceful but ultimately futile Lords opposition to Gladstone's Irish Church Act of 1869, which disestablished the Church of Ireland. Pellegrini exaggerates Magee's heavy brow and pugnacious jaw, traits the caricaturist routinely used to signal rhetorical aggression rather than ethnic othering. The portrait captures a Victorian culture-war flashpoint: Protestant establishment versus Liberal reform.