The Henson Journals

[547]

Wednesday, December 22nd, 1915.

506th day

I took Frere for a walk through Houghall Wood. The mud was dreadful, and a dank mist enwrapped everything. We talked hard, for I wanted to get his views on some points. He said that the Elizabethan settlement was designed as a compromise. I objected that there was no single instance of its being treated as such. Thus the Vestments which, it was alleged, had been restored in order to reconcile the Papists, were never used. He agreed that the solitary case sometimes advanced was probably inadmissible for the garments worne in the Queen's Chapel were almost certainly copes. Puritan denunciations were more vehement than exact or discriminating. Nothing could have done more to reconcile the parishioners to the new arrangements than the use of Vestments: if there had been any serious intention to reconcile, it is inconceivable that they should never have been used. Elizabeth was nowise reluctant to exasperate the Puritans as her pronouncements about clerical marriage sufficiently shew. Had she been legally free to enforce the Vestments, is it conceivable that in no single instance should she have done so? Frere told me that there was an actual case of the Injunction about parsons' wives being enforced. The justices' certificate of approval is printed in the Loseley Papers. He conceded, rather reluctantly, that on what are called 'catholic principles' one could not have accepted the Elizabethan changes at the time: & said that he himself would then probably have been a papist. I suggested that in this case it seemed scarcely fair to speak of Roman Catholics as 'the Italian Mission', as Archbishop Benson was wont to do, or as our 'guests', an expression recently employed by the Bishop of Birmingham, and vehemently resented by the papists themselves.

[549]

Knowling and his niece came to dinner. After their retirement, Frere & I had some conversation about Church matters. He declared himself friendly to Disestablishment, which, he thinks, would reconcile the Nonconformists by removing the principal hindrance to fellowship. I told him that herein he was mistaken: that the social difficulty would rather be increased than taken away by Disestablishment: & that Sacerdotalism, the most formidable barrier to religious harmony, would be intensified.

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