The Henson Journals

[233]

Thursday, August 1st, 1929.

Copies of the Bishoprick went sent to:

1. Arthur

2. Arthur Rowle

3. Alfred Spelling

4. The Dean of Westminster

5. " " " York

6. " " " Canterbury

7. " " " Hereford

8. W. D. Caröe

Another wet day, & promise of more.

I motored to Durham, and instituted or collated Boutflower to the hon: canonry, and Beaglehole to his mission district. Cecil Ferens said that he was "fifty pounds a year better than he had supposed". He seems to have expected the payment which I made to J. G. Wilson for an assistant wd terminate on Wilson's death, but I thought it best to continue it.

I walked round the Park. Bryden told me that some of the pitmen, who frequent the Park, have become very insolent since the accession to office of a "Labour" Government, bragging of what they will do, and get for themselves. Well! Well!

[234]

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Mr. Neville Chamberlain and his daughter arrived from Birmingham before dinner. I had some talk with him in my study before going to bed, and found him beyond my expectations candid and intelligent. I asked him whether the Bishop of Birmingham was getting hold of his diocese, and he replied in the negative. This surprised me as I had supposed that his hereditary Unitarianism would predispose him to approve of Barnes's proceedings. But I remembered that Barnes was a prominent member of the Labour Party, and wondered whether the animus of the political partisan might not outweigh the preference of the sectarian thinker. I spoke to him about the situation in the Church, and urged him to seize any opportunity that might present itself to detach himself from the traditional Conservative advocacy of Establishment and indicate his readiness to attempt a separation of Church & State on terms not unfavourable to the Church. Also, I gave him a copy of "Disestablishment", &, at his request, wrote his name in it.

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