The Henson Journals

[157]

Thursday, April 29th, 1920.

I received the Holy Communion in the Palace Chapel, & read the lessons at Mattins. After breakfast I walked in the garden with the Bishop of St E. and I. We encountered the gardener with an Aberdeen terrier. I asked whether he could obtain one for me, & he said he thought he could. So I asked him to do so. Then I went in the Bishop's motor to Westminster, & spent the day there, for the business, swollen by various new items from the Lower House, held us until 4 p.m. In the morning I successfully resisted a proposal to go back, at the instance of the Lower House, on our resolution fixing 2 as the minimum number of communicants. In the afternoon I spoke against the Bishop of Chelmsford's motion urging the National Assembly to take the reform of the Courts in hand immediately. He was seconded by the Bishop of Truro. My point was that the conflict of first principles within the Church of England would be precipitated by the attempt to solve the problem of the final Court; that I didn't wish the disaster of disruption to be hastened: that the National Assembly ought to earn the confidence of the Church & Nation before it embarked on the thorny question of the Courts. The Abp. of Canterbury made a lengthy statement on the whole question, & came down on the side of the resolution: His Grace was followed by the Bp. of Winchester who "went for" me. I contented myself with getting the resolution verbally amended.

The Bishop of Durham is reported to be ill of pleurisy & congestion of the lungs. He lies at Cambridge in his brother's house.

---