The Henson Journals

[194]

Wednesday, October 6th, 1926.

Sir John and Lady Barron left the Castle after breakfast. I worked at the Article for the Bishoprick until lunch, and brought it to some kind of completion. After a short work [sic] in the Park with my chaplains, I baptized a lady, whom Budworth brought here, with her husband. She had been bred a Unitarian. The party had tea, & then returned to Durham. Nurse Rafter from West Hartlepool came to see me with reference to the complaint which her parents make against the noise in Prideaux's schoolroom which abuts their house! The situation is difficult, and I fear that Prideaux has been neither sympathetic nor tactful. Then James transferred the biographies from my study to the smoking room.

I received a badly–printed pamphlet, "The Story of the Church of the English in Geneva", from the author, the Revd C. H. D. Grimes M. A. There is much information, some of it important, collected in its pages. "Altogether eight dioceses, through their bishops have been connected with the little church at Geneva: Winchester (3), Rochester, Salisbury, Chester, Hereford, Durham, Chichester, and Lichfield." The Bishop of Durham was Pilkington, who cannot be regarded as a creditable Bishop. He was, I suppose, by conviction a presbyterian, and probably felt half–ashamed of himself for being a bishop. He succeeded the princely Tunstall, in whom was gathered up the great traditions of the palatine see. He was an avid fanatick, set to govern a rough people who regarded him as no better than a lecherous heretick, whose proper destination was the stake: and he served a royal mistress who hated equally his principles and his fate. He could not be dignified: it was much that his contemporaries thought him respectable. An English Bishop has a difficult rôle to play even now. Then it was an almost impossible rôle and they were not skilful players. Elizabeth gave them just the worst kind of power. They were almost necessarily regarded as persecutors by the Puritans, while they themselves disapproved the laws which they had to enforce, & heard from their victims the very sentiments which they themselves cherished!

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