The Henson Journals

[126]

Friday, June 7th, 1929.

Brooke accompanied me to Newcastle, when I motored there in order to lunch with the Rotarians, and give them an address on "Three weeks holiday in the South of France". There was a company of about 150 men, mostly, I should guess from their appearance, above forty. I spoke for 35 minutes, & was listened to very attentively. If I may infer as much from their applause, and the flatterous terms in which they thanked me, they were well–pleased with their "entertainment"! Brooke, who had been visiting friends of his own, rejoined me at the station, & we returned to Auckland together.

Miss Joyce Robinson, a school teacher in Leeholme Council School, living at the School house, Eldon, came to see me. She desires to do some "social work" in her spare time. She told me that I had confirmed her, but that she had not kept up her religion. Therein I suspect that she is representative of but too many. However she promised to reform her practice.

[127]

I finished Pollard's 'Wolsey' with much admiration of the author's mastery of his material, insight into his subject, and admirable manner of writing. He has certainly broken new ground and set the course of the English Reformation in a new light. His study of the Cardinal's character is most illuminating.

'Wolsey, albeit a bad loser, was a born fighter encumbered by clerical garments and spiritual professions to which he had no vocation, but to which he was condemned by the lack of other outlets for his mental & physical exuberance. He rose above the underworld of crime which peopled the country with criminous clerks; and, if he transgressed the proprieties of his profession in his private and public life, there was a common cause in the system which forced into the church the able–bodied and ambitious servants of the state: a celibate civil service, unaccustomed to the surgical operations of the later Roman Empire, was probably worse than a celibate priesthood.' p. 305

Wolsey was certainly an odd "reformer".

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