The Henson Journals

[23]

Septuagesima, February 1st, 1920.

That we have our Prayer–book, our altar, even our Episcopacy itself, we may, humanly speaking, thank Laud. The holy table in all our churches, altarwise at the east end, is a visible memorial of Laud which none can escape……Laud saved the English Church. That any one of Catholic predilections can belong to the English Church is owing, so far as we can see, to Laud.

Mozley. Essays I, 227.

Accompanied by Ella, Fearne, & the Registrar, I motored to Walford on Wye, and there publicly instituted and inducted the new Vicar (Greene). It was a pleasant service in a crowded church, and will, I hope, inaugurate a happy & fruitful ministry. After service we all lunched with the Traffords, & then returned to the Palace. A parson in Lancashire, the Rev. G. Vale Owen, is fluttering the dovecotes of the feminine world by "messages from beyond the veil". The Weekly Dispatch prints columns of rubbish about "the worlds to which we pass at death", and Conan Doyle, now a recognized High Priest of Spiritualism, adds a cordial "puff". At my wife's urgent insistence, I glanced through the stuff, which was even poorer than I should have thought possible: but she thinks it most beautiful & attractive!! It seems to be profoundly humiliating that there should be a welcome, sure & general, for this kind of rhodomontade.

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