John Kensit

He had in his youth been a chorister at St Lawrence Jewry and attracted to the Ritualist elements of church services, but in later life became a Protestant leader and anti-Ritualist campaigner.

[1] In 1889 he founded the Protestant Truth Society[2] to oppose what he saw as the excessive influence of the Oxford Movement on the Church of England, despite the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874.

[1][4] On Good Friday, 15 April 1898, Kensit with some of his followers attended the service at St Cuthbert's, Earls Court, and 'seized the crucifix, and, holding it aloft, said in a clear and distinct voice, "I denounce this idolatry in the Church of England; may God help me".'

[5] Kensit made international news in 1899 when he announced that he would stand as a candidate in the 1900 general election in Manchester East against Arthur Balfour, the Leader of the House of Commons.

Kensit died aged 49 on 8 October 1902, of pneumonia and blood poisoning, the result of a wound he received in September that year when he was struck by a chisel thrown by a protester as he arrived at a meeting in Birkenhead.