The Henson Journals

[54]

Wednesday, January 22nd, 1919.

I worked at the Temple sermon, very vacuity: & was much interrupted by callers. Llewelyn, a queer little quarrelsome Welshman, now Vicar of Clodock, came to lunch. He is at loggerheads with the adjacent parish over burial–rights in Clodock graveyard. I attended a meeting of the representatives of female workers in the diocese, & said a few words: and then I sawed wood for two hours. Old Prebendary Duncombe came to tea, & told me some of his recollections. He was ordained by Bishop Hampden, who was "hodden down" by a virago–wife, who was the original of Mrs Proudie in Trollope's novel.

Lilley brought me a cutting from "the Examiner" a Roman Catholic paper circulating in India. It contained the following:–

"No less than eleven clergymen from the Diocese of Bishop Hensley Henson have made their obedience to Rome, & this is regarded as the outcome of a man who is an avowed disbeliever in the Divinity of Our Lord and other fundamental doctrines of Christianity, being raised to the episcopal bench. In addition to all these clergymen, numbers of the laity are also [55] being received daily, and again particularly in Bishop Henson's diocese".

Neither Lilley nor Wynne–Willson had ever heard of so many as one clergyman being 'received' into the Roman Church; & I certainly have never heard of any. If this paragraph be a specimen of Roman "intelligence", it "gives one to think furiously". But it is futile to correct such lies. For with the advantage of a lead, they can never be overtaken.

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