The Henson Journals

[99]

Wednesday, February 1st, 1928.

Douglas, the Vicar of Stockton–on–Tees, and Firth, the Vicar of Esh, write to request permission to resign their benefices under the Act, which gives them pensions out of the income of the living.

I spent the morning in writing letters. Leonard Wilson, the son of the Vicar of St Edmund's, Gateshead, came to bid me farewell before going to Egypt to take up work in a C.M.S. school there. For the 3 years past he has been an assistant curate in Coventry. He said that he had been surprised at the general dislike of Anglo–Catholicism which had revealed itself since the rejection of the Revised Prayer Book by the House of Commons.

I walked with Dr McCullagh in the Park. Lionel and I motored to Redmarshall, where I instituted the Rev. Edward Rust, lately Vicar of Hamsteels, to the Rectory – a wall–eyed man much detested by his late parishioners. His sphere of conflict will at least be restricted for, while Hamsteels has 4500 inhabitants, Redmarshall has little more than 300. The parish church was filled, but I found no comfort in the service, & an old woman coughed incessantly until I was near driven to madness!