The Henson Journals

[174]

Monday, September 20th, 1926.

The great heat of yesterday and last night culminated in a vehement thunderstorm about 6 a.m., accompanied by a deluge. It was still raining when the President took his departure after breakfast. I wrote a number of letters and paid a doctor's bill. (£10.6.0 to Wardle & Son)

Chapman, Lilburn's successor at S. Peter's, Jarrow, came to see me. I had sent for him to learn what defence he could offer against divers allegations that the law had not been observed in the matter of meetings of the P. C. C. He is clearly in the wrong, and, as clearly, his accuser is a "nasty fellow"! The problem for the bishop to solve is how to condemn the parson without inflating the layman!

I motored to Durham, and presided at a meeting of the Bede College Committee, at which we accepted Mr Goodyear's tender for the 2nd part of the work at Bede College, (about £10,000). After the meeting I went to the College, & had tea with the Bishop of Jarrow, with whom I talked over several matters of business. Then I returned to Auckland.

I wrote to Mr Spencer at Jarrow, taking the precaution, however, to send on my letter to Wilson for his judgment before letting it go out.

Braley told me that somebody had offered to present Bede College with a set of vestments for use in the chapel. He asked me whether he ought to accept them. Of course I told him that he must not do so; that they were undoubtedly illegal; that for him as head of a college to set an example of law–breaking would be deplorable: that the lawlessness of the time added a special gravity to any contempt of law by persons in authority. He professed agreement, disclaimed any personal sympathy with vestimentarians, & indeed did his best to allay the suspicions which he had aroused in my mind, but I could not fail to discern the direction in which his desires pointed, and I do not doubt that he was chagrined by my prompt and decisive condemnation of vestments.

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