The Henson Journals

[191]

Friday, November 23rd, 1928.

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Warham's munificence towards public objects as well as literary men was great, yet he died, as More wrote, incredibly poor, leaving not much more than sufficient to pay his debts and funeral expenses. Just before his death he is said to have called his steward and asked him how much ready money he had in hand, and, being answered £30, he said 'Sat est viatici'.

v. D.N.B. 'Warham'

Warham was, of course, unmarried, & Davidson has a wife. Still, it is not pleasing that the latter should have accepted a peerage and 'tributes' of money on resigning his see. It does not need that one should be a medieval ascetic in order that one should perceive how far more congruous with the idea of a Christian pastor is the poverty of the Tudor primate than the acquisitions of dignity & cash which belong to his Georgian successor. And if I feel the incongruity of the circumstances which have attended the Archbishop's retirement from office, how much more must it offend the poorer clergy, and the many thousands of the Unemployed!

[192]

Ella and I motored through heavy rain, picking up Mrs. Parry–Evans on the way, to Durham, & there I presided over a meeting of the Preventive & Rescue Association in the Cosin Library. After the meeting we returned to Auckland.

A violent tempest raged during the afternoon, and work havock[sic] in many directions, e.g. much glass was destroyed in the green–houses.

According to 'the Ministry of Labour Gazette' for November, there are about 120,000 men out of work in Northumberland & Durham, of whom probably two thirds are in Durham. What is the use of a Lord Mayors' Fund to deal with such a number?

The papers give prominence to a report of the King's illness – congestion of the lungs – which, though not yet serious, may easily become so. It is, perhaps, unfortunate that the Heir Apparent should be absent in the heart of Africa at this juncture. Few people could contemplate without anxiety the substitution for his present Majesty of a Prince who, with many charming qualities, has displayed a waywardness & frivolity which tend to take shape as grave disqualifications as he passes from early manhood into the beginnings of Middle Age.

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