The Henson Journals

[272]

Monday, December 6th, 1926.

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I received from the Bishop of Rochester a reply to my inquiry about Malling Abbey (v. p. 265). The opening paragraph is sufficiently disconcerting, for it states that "in 1902 Archbishop Temple signed his approval to the constitution of the Benedictine rule". The Bishop himself had broken with the community some years ago: –

["] As regards Malling, except in the case of Miss Moss, no complaint has reached me since the present occupants came into possession in 1911, when transferred from Baltonsborough, where they had a house & were recognized by Bishop Kennion. My troubles came earlier, when the abbot of Caldey claimed to be supreme over the Benedictine Order in England (male and female) and himself installed the new Abbess of Malling, when I had declined to accept the form of service. This incident terminated my connexion with the Abbey. When he went over to Rome, he took most, but not all, the Benedictines with him . . . . .

As regards myself, owing to my early experiences with Malling Abbey I have never been inside the place: I have never licensed any priest to be Chaplain, but I have given Mr Vasey, the present Chaplain, a Preacher's license, & have always found him spiritually minded, very loyal, but bound, he considers, to the Benedictine rule.["]

This suggests that the Archbishop & the Bishop have "given themselves away" on the main issue.

[273]

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I received from the Oxford Press a substantial volume – Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London. 1669–1748, by Norman Sykes – and I read about a quarter of it. Gibson was a strong Churchman, but was so convinced of the necessity of preserving Protestantism in England by maintaining the Hanoverians on the British throne, that he organized the administration of the ecclesiastical patronage of the Crown with a view to excluding all who were opposed to that interest, & of rewarding all who supported it.

I motored to Durham, and attended a meeting of the committee of St Hild's College, when I promised to subscribe £5 to the college fund. Miss Christopher said that the students disliked taking service in Church schools because of the inferiority of the buildings, which were in many cases actually insanitary.

The Bishop of Jarrow addressed a meeting in Bishop Auckland in advocacy of the Bible Society, and afterwards came to dinner. The Times notes that this is Darling's birthday. He is 77, which seems quite incredible.

Colonel Burdon, as he presented himself in the chair at St Hild's, was debonair and religious enough, but as I contemplated him there rose on my vision the spectacle of the parochial autocrat presented to me last week by his parish priest, a picture which I am the less able to set aside as over–drawn or totally unfair, because in its essential features it has been presented to me by three successive Vicars of Castle Eden. All, however, agree in attributing the major responsibility for the tyranny under which they groan to Mrs Burdon.

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