The Henson Journals

[86]

Monday, September 19th, 1927.

In harvest this year [1747] I was presented by John Hay Esq. of Spot, to the church of Cockbarnspath. As my father & grandfather were always against resisting Providence, I was obliged to accept it. It was an obscure distant place, without amenity, comfort, or society, where if I had been settled, I would have most probably fallen into idleness and dissipation than a course of study: for preferment is so difficult to be obtained in our Church, and so trifling when you have obtained it, that it requires great energy of mind not to fall asleep when you are fixed in a country charge. From this I was relieved by great goodluck.

Dr Alex. Carlyle. Autobiography. p. 211

The same thing is said by candid observers in 1927, but it is no longer acquiesced in as inevitable. We assume – in spite of reiterated disallowance in life – that the deadening influences of "an obscure distant place, without amenity, comfort, or society "can be effectively counterbalanced by "quiet days", the intermittent exhortations of the bishop and a platform of printed counsels! There is something in the very constitution of human nature which conforms a man to his milieu.

[87]

I received a letter from Sir Leslie Scott, M.P. asking for my "views about the proposed new prayer book". He adds:

"I always find myself in agreement with what you say about important questions, & if I worry you, please forgive me for attaching importance to your advice.!"

I wrote at once & at some length, enclosing the Bishoprick. Also, I sent the letter to Lord Halsbury.

I read through cursorily, a very careful and illuminating study. "English Monastic Finances in the Late Middle Ages by R.N. Snape. M.A. Cambridge 1925. It is one of the valuable "Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought" which G.G. Coulton is editing. On the whole the conclusion to which the argument leads is decisively unfavourable to the monasteries as they had come to be at the end of the Middle Ages. There is comparatively little in these later years to be seen beyond a life of easy sauntering comfort. Though extravagant luxury might be absent, ease & plenty were not …. The monk lived comfortably, as comfort went then: he was provided with pocket money for luxuries, apart from those which the ordinary fare of the monasteries gave him." It is a restrained and kindly verdict. Materials exist in abundance for a much harsher judgment. After all, the ease with which the Monasteries were dissolved, tells its own tale.