The Henson Journals

[344]

Saturday, November 28th, 1925.

The wintry weather continues with intensified severity. There was a considerable snow–fall today. I spent the morning on Tyndale, but made very little head–way. After lunch I tramped round the Park with Beck. The wind was driving the snow into considerable drifts.

Minor Canon Westlake died immediately after the Funeral service for Queen Alexandra in Westminster Abbey yesterday. He was only 46, and leaves a widow with 3 children. He had made himself a very competent antiquary. His big book on the Abbey is a notable work.

Major Hudson, the People's Warden at Bishopwearmouth met his death very strangely. He was muffling the bells for ringing in connexion with the Queen's funeral, when, by some calamitous misjudgement, he brought down one of the raised bells upon himself, & was immediately killed. Wynne–Willson writes despondently about the loss to the parish and to himself which this untoward occurrence involves.

The Evening Paper records the death of the Lady Mayoress in London after attending a Funeral Service in S. Paul's.

[345]

Tunstall's long career of eighty five years, for thirty–seven of which he was a bishop, is one of the most consistent and honourable in the sixteenth century. The extent of the religious revolution under Edward VI caused him to reverse his views on the royal supremacy, & he refused to change them again under Elizabeth. His dislike of persecution is illustrated by his conduct in 1527, when he put himself to considerable expense to buy up and burn all available copies of Tyndale's Testament, in order to avoid the necessity of burning heretics. In Mary's reign he dismissed a protestant preacher with the words, 'Hitherto we have had a good report among our neighbours; I pray you bring not this poor man's blood upon my head'.

A. P. Pollard 'Tunstall' in D. N. B.

In the eyes of Tyndale and his followers the burning of the Testaments probably appeared a worse crime than the burning of hereticks. The latter was in the order of things, natural enough; but the former was sacrilegious, an open defiance of God.

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