The Henson Journals

[155]

Monday, February 20th, 1922.

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Horden, if I may accept its Vicar's report, is a hot–bed of rather squalid sectarianism. Roman Catholicks and Spiritualists are said to be numerous. In a population of 10,000 people, there are 8 sects established on a permanent footing. The miners, whose compose the population, are described as an unusually rough class, given to profane speech.

The 'Yorkshire Post' prints my reply to the Secretary of the Anglo–Catholic Congress on its front page with the heading, "The Bishop of Durham's Rebuff to the Anglo–Catholics". What repercussions will this occasion?

I attended a meeting in the Edgar Hall convened in order to make a presentation to Lord Thurlow and his wife, and formally, to bid them farewell. There was but a meagre attendance, certainly less than 200 persons, and these mostly females, though the parish is stated to contain 16000 people! The proceedings lasted an hour & a half, for there were many speeches. I presented the gifts, a fur–lined coat to Lord Thurlow, & a signet ring to his wife. The North–country folk are known to be undemonstrative, but only indifference, or dislike could explain the languor & chill of this meeting. There is no question that these people attach principal importance to the pulpit in their estimate of a clergyman: & that not even the grossest flattery could describe Ld Thurlow as a preacher. He had the ill fortune to follow a Vicar – Woods, now Bishop of Peterborough, – who enjoys a considerable reputation as a preacher. Of course Ld Thurlow had the worst luck in the World. He had hardly got into the parish before the War broke out, & everything was thrown into confusion. The wonder is that he managed to carry on at all.

That unspeakable scoundrel Bottomly seems to have come at last to disaster, for not even he could survive the summing up of Mr Justice Darling, and the verdict of the jury, in action against the ruffian, Bigland. The quarrelling of rogues is the security of honest men. These two men are evidently the most worthless parasites in the world, yet, if they had not quarrelled, they might have continued to prey on the public for the whole term of their worthless & degraded lives.

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