The Henson Journals
Fri 31 August 1917
Volume 21, Page 165
[165]
Friday, August 31st, 1917.
1124th day
Stuckey Coles sent me a very interesting and useful letter in response to my appeal for materials for the Memoir. He suggested that I should write to the Revd B. S. Hack, who was chaplain of the Oxford Prison while the Warden was Chairman of the Quarter–Sessions, & could tell me about the Warden's generous concern for prisoners. I wrote to Mr Hack this morning. I sent what I had written about the Wardenship election in 1881 to W. P. Ker in order that he might pass his judgment. Headlam & his wife lunched here, & came back for tea afterwards. He said that he had private reason for thinking that the War would end this year, but he did not disclose what those reasons were. I attended Mattins & Evensong. As I returned across the Prebends' Bridge, I fell with six nice–looking Belgian girls of a superior class, & found that they hailed from Alost, that their parents were in Belgium, & that they were staying in Newcastle for a holiday. I shewed them the Deanery, and the Library, which greatly delighted them. I dined with Knowling. Fearne & Bailey made up the party. Then I went home & wrote to Ella, & to Carissima.
Harold Anson wrote to me to ask for "the historical instances in the XVIth century of the non–requirement of episcopal ordination in the Anglican Church". He said that he was writing "a popular essay on the subject from the same point of view for a book by C. H. Matthews". In reply I sent him a copy of the Lee Lecture, and added in a letter the fact that Beeching had succeeded in unearthing the formal record of de Laune's institution to the parish of Redenhall. Thus confirming the statement of Cosin, which the Tractarians so persistently belittle. There is something odd about reverting to these old controversies in present circumstances, and yet one can go but a little way in religious discussion before one is brought up against them. Muddle–headedness and good feeling together may evade them for a time, but only for a time. Sooner or later they must be faced.