The Henson Journals

[261]

Saturday, August 17th, 1929.

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The party of visitors breaks up. First, Professor Edward Moore departed, & then Peter Richardson & Miss Howe. After lunch, Lord Darling and Diana.

Dashwood called with two ladies en route for Scotland, & were shown hurriedly through the Castle. Then I sate to the Painter.

The Chancellor sends me a copy of a recent issue of the "North Mail", which contains a report of that fool Merryweather's extravagances, with a very effective & well–written leader on them. He wishes to know whether Merryweather ought to be appointed a surrogate. I advised him by no means to appoint him. It is difficult to overstate the mischief which such utterances & proceedings as Merryweather's are doing at the present juncture. They set before the public a ludicrous caricature of the position which the Church must needs take up, & by associating it with their own blatancy & folly they make it actually nauseating to ordinary level–headed English folk. One can neither repudiate them frankly, nor give them any kind of encouragement. They just paralyze one's action, & discredit one's cause.

[262]

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I consider a uniformity which does not represent, but is the substitute for unanimity, as a very questionable blessing.

Bishop Thirlwell. Charge. 1866.

In the chaos of opinion that now exists in the Church of England, a sincere uniformity of practice is obviously unattainable. The question is whether any common order could be sufficiently elastic to be satisfactory, or whether all attempt at controlling the idiosyncrasies of individuals & congregations had not better be abandoned. We have parted company with the notion of a National Establishment so completely, that the attempt to perpetrate territorialism in the parishes has come to have an almost archaic aspect. A 'go–as you–please' Church is what we have really become. Neither in the sphere of doctrine nor in that of ceremonial can authority command obedience: & the Bishops, who must needs embody authority, have been brought into a situation of apparent & humiliating embarrassment.

[263]

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The Tudors, and especially Elizabeth, vehemently denied to their Parliaments any share in their ecclesiastical powers. Their supremacy over the Church was their own, and, as a really effective control, it died with them. As the authority of the Crown declined, its secular powers were seized by Parliament: its ecclesiastical powers fell into abeyance between Parliament and Convocation. Neither has been able to vindicate an exclusive claim to the inheritance; and the result of this dual claim to control has been a state of helplessness, similar in some respects to that from which the Church was rescued by the violent methods of Henry VIII.

Pollard. 'Henry VIII'. p. 329

Lord Darling borrowed Pollard's Henry VIII, and read it during his visit. He was much impressed by the author's excellent style, & evident mastery of his subject. A letter which Pollard wrote to the Times on the right of Ministers who were commoners to sit in the Lords had interested him.

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