The Henson Journals

[38]

Thursday, March 30th, 1922.

Very cold weather with snow showers at intervals. Mr Francis of New Shildon lunched here, and afterwards told me that he would accept the living at Middleton St George, which Blackwall vacates. He was evidently desirous of urging me to appoint his curate Ainsley to be his successor, but I told him bluntly that this was impossible. Not only is Ainsley too recently ordained, but I think it almost invariably mistaken to prefer curates to be successors of their own vicars. After tea Clayton and I motored to Houghton–le–Spring, and there I confirmed 240 candidates. The service occupied exactly an hour & a half. We had supper at the Rectory. Ramsay , whom I ordained at Hereford, is now happily established at Houghton. We motored back to Auckland in a mild kind of blizzard, and arrived shortly after 11 p.m. I felt mortally tired.

Knight is evidently fitting in to his place admirably. He now meditates a staff of four curates. If he could succeed in finding the men there could be no better arrangement, for he is certainly an extremely competent parish priest, and a genuinely Christian man. Add that he is also a student, & you get a combination of qualities, too rare in these days not to be remarkable. He is plainly a man of tact for he has brought the clergy of the rural deanery into a very admirable state of submission.

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