The Henson Journals

[22]

Tuesday, September 11th, 1930.

A belated telegram sent on to me by Alexander tells me that old Boddy of Pittington is dead. He had been some fifty years in Orders, and had been a solicitor for four years before he was ordained by the Bishop of Durham in 1880. So he was an old man.

The traces of his legal training were apparent in an attorney–like astuteness in all business matters. This trait had a rather disconcerting effect since it was associated with an extreme Evangelism, which sometimes transgressed the boundaries both of orthodoxy and of good sense. He had travelled much, and he made good use of the fact by writing booklets and articles of a semi–biographical character which widened his influence and replenished his purse. He was energetic, devoted, and successful as a parish clergyman, though his extreme & eccentric Evangelicalism detracted from his influence outside the limit of his parish. His wife, who shared his extremist opinions, had some reputation as a faith–healer.

[23]

There are now vacant in the dioceses, or about to be vacant, the following benefices :

1. Eightonbanks (Rev. V.T. Bailey)

2. Ignatius. Sunderland. (Rev. G.H.I. Baily)

3. Christ Church. Sunderland. (Canon McCullagh)

4. Hebburn. (Rev. A.F. Mann)

5. Pittington (Rev. A.A. Boddy)

How are these parishes to be provided for?

Ella and I left Carwood shortly after 11a.m., and motored by way of Peebles to Sunderland Hall near Selkirk, where we lunched with Mrs Scott Plummer, and three of her four children viz. Charles, Wattie, and Sophie, nice enough but horribly plain. After lunch Scott Plummer himself appeared, & then Lady Maxwell Scott & a French priest. We walked around the gardens which are fine & finely situated. The tall yew hedges, & the herbaceous border are particularly noticeable. At tea–time there came from Abbotsford the Benedictine Abbot Sir David Hunter Blair, fat, sleek, sly,& loquacious. He said that he had met me at Oxford, and, of course, may have done so, though I remember nothing of it.

[24]

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He told me that he was one of the three Benedictines who possessed the secret of S. Cuthbert's burial place: & then proceeded to discuss the question of S. Cuthbert's Body as if there were, indeed, a serious question about the genuineness of the Body in the Cathedral, which we affirm to be the Saint's.

He did not appear to be very accurately informed, and though (as he said) he had spent a fortnight in Durham pursuing inquiries, yet he was ignorant of the notices in the Chapter Library – which he had never seen. When I reminded him that I had myself been dean of Durham, and naturally much interested in the question, his omniscient tone was exchanged for an almost receptive attitude, & when we parted, we seemed to have exchanged the rôles which at first we played in the conversation. I was instructing him!

Why don't there papists take the straightforward method of producing the evidence which they say, or insinuate, that they possess?

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