The Henson Journals

[11]

Monday, December 9th, 1929.

The post brought me a long letter from Bishop Knox acknowledging the copy of the Letter of Advice to a young Clergyman which I had sent him. He writes:

'It was particularly gratifying to me to receive it since I found that my letters to the Times about the Prayer Book had put a strain on old and valued friendships even to the breaking point. Your remembrance of me encouraged me to hope that in respect of your long and valued friendship this is not the case, and this confidence has been a source of real happiness to me.'

Of course he found much to disapprove, but something also to approve even heartily.

'As for Disestablishment my feeling has been all along that the Enabling Act made it inevitable. The Scottish analogy is entirely impertinent, Scotland being practically free from Dissent, and the Scottish Church having never acknowledged such dependency on the Crown as was created by the Act of Submission, & the Elizabethan Acts of Supremacy & Uniformity.'

This at least is true enough.

[12]

I employed the morning in elaborating the address on Disestablishment, or rather on 'The case against the existing Establishment'.

Moore from Sedgefield came to lunch. He gives a sad account of his Rector, Sykes, who is now in a nursing home with a severe attack of neurasthenia. His twin brother committed suicide some months since, & the shock at a time when he himself was suffering from phlebitis has been too much for him. Meanwhile, that parish with a population rapidly increasing, of 3500, and an income of over £1400 net, is left to a young man of 28, of little education & narrow experience.

I walked round the Park with Dr McCullagh.

Pattinson and I motored to Stockton–on–Tees, where I addressed the P.C.C.s of that Deanery. The night was wet, and the rural deanery is rather scattered. Accordingly the attendance was not large – about 120. The sympathies of this district are said to be predominantly Protestant, and this circumstance may explain the almost funereal gravity with which the Councillors listened!

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