The Henson Journals

[2]

Tuesday, October 2nd, 1923.

The Johnsons went into Durham with the car, and there spent the morning, returning to Auckland in time for lunch. I spent the time in working at the Introduction. After lunch I walked with Johnson to Escomb. Of course the Vicar insisted on accompanying us to the "Saxon" church! After tea I resumed work on the "Introduction". My progress is certainly not rapid!

At dinner Johnson started to tell some of his Oxford stories. He has a great store of them ranging over a period of 60 years.

Frere's appointment as Bishop of Truro takes one's breath away. That on all personal grounds he is eminently fitted for episcopal office may be admitted, but he is in the inner counsels of the "Anglo–Catholic" party, and was prominent at the notorious Congress last July. His protest, if indeed it was a protest, against the telegram to the Pope can hardly outweigh the fact that he was there at all, still less, that he is as fully committed as a man can be to the official programme. That, on the morrow of such an orgy of lawlessness as that Congress represented, Frere should be raised to the Bench can mean nothing less than the total collapse of Anglican discipline. "The game of law and order is up" in the Church of England as evidently as it was in Ireland. Disestablishment & Disendowment are overdue.

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