The Henson Journals

[38]

Saturday, July 10th, 1920.

I walked to the Athenaeum, & wrote to Maish & to William. The Abp. of Wales was in the Club, & evidently anxious to speak with me. He showed me a letter from some "Catholick" who protested against the admission of the Prime Minister & his wife to Communion at the Enthronement in S. Asaph's Cathedral, & said that he had just torn up a cheque for £1000 which he had intended to send to the Welsh Church Endowment Fund, & had stopped his son from contributing £500. The Abp. said that he had been inundated with letters of protest. He told me the exact history of the incident. The Prime Minister had indicated his desire to communicate, and had inquired whether there was any objection. The Abp. had thereupon consulted the Abp. of Canterbury who told him that he had no right in law to refuse communion.] Accordingly both the P.M. & his wife (who, however, is said to have been confirmed) presented themselves at the rail, & were communicated. I referred the Abp. to the passage in Laud's Conference with Fisher, in which Laud lays it down that the Church of England only makes rules for her own members. This bore on the point whether the Rubric requiring Confirmation as a condition of receiving the Holy Communion could apply to a Welsh Calvinistic Baptist.

[39]

The Lambeth Conference spent the morning in discussing the Church's duty with regard to Marriage & Sexual relations. Of the 4 appointed speakers, I noted that 3 were celibates viz. London, Vermont, & an Australian bishop, & that these were all very rigorous. The Bishop of Birmingham was comparatively tolerant. Bishop Gwynne gave us an account of venereal disease in the Army: and the Bishop of Sacramento in California dilated on the extravagances of American divorce. In Nevada the proportion of divorces to marriages is as 1 to 1.7. [We were photographed as we sate in our places before rising for lunch.] The discussion on the afternoon "bored me stark". It was on the multiplication of provinces in the Anglican Communion. I deserted the Conference, and went to the Athenaeum [where I had tea, & wrote to Knight & Wynne Willson. As I walked back to the Deanery, I fell in with the Archdeacon of London. He told me that the Prime Minister had said to him with reference to my appointment to Durham, "The people would have him".]

I dined quietly in the Deanery, and talked rather too freely about the Conference. If it were not that ecclesiastical subjects don't really interest anybody who isn't personally bound into the ecclesiastical machine, one might fear ill consequences from such free talking!

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