poetry about his views-the very highest of poetry I mean-in the looking to an ideal state of things both in common life and in church matters together with such wonderful practicality in his idea of how to set about it. Whether with such a diocese he will have time and strength to organise himself, no one can say. But one may trust that he will inspire some people and set them to work, on a less confused tack than hitherto. The Bishop spoke of the suggestive physical characterisation of the place-a Christian Parthenon on a Christian Acropolis— "a city set on a hill"-high above the smoke and din of the world of his great predecessor, St Hugh, and of a probable presence of a Bishop of Lincoln with a presbyter and deacon (i.e. as it were John and me) at the Council of Arles in the 4th century, which opened my eyes in a matter of antiquity. Grosseteste1Sanderson—and Kaye3—a Reformer before the Reformation—the author of the Preface in Book of Common Prayer and the learning and gentleness of the last. Then he spoke of clerical and lay action-and what do you think? of Woman's action. I almost think, of the representation of Women-" to whom as well as to ourselves the Church belongs."-I wished you had been there before all day, but especially then. You see that Radicalism is not the only woman's help. He spoke most feelingly and movingly too of the position of Dissenters and of how we ought to deal with them. Dissenters through no fault of theirshereditarily and by circumstances only-and not at present bitter or unmanageable. It made an impression. He walked about afterwards shaking hands and thanking some clergy present for an address, which had been so bunglingly managed that some were excluded-and the Chapter who ought to be the very persons to manage all such things had not signed at all. We all went to the Deanery to lunch, a nice luncheon but too select. Such a beautiful house, with all manner of arts and sciences and luxuries visible everywhere, not protruded you know, but peeping out. Jeremie of course full of complaints in all directions against people who had not given him due notice of how when and for whom the ceremonial was to be. But we know what this means. Fancy Alford murmuring because he didn't know! 2 Bishop from 1660-1663. 1 Bishop from 1235—1253. 3 Bishop from 1827-1853. * James Amiraux Jeremie, Dean 1864-1872. 1869 LETTERS-RISEHOLME 265 But he is very poorly and looks wretched. I am sure I do not know what would become of the Church of England if he resigned his Professorship; it is so good of him to enjoy it and keep out some possibly dangerous thinker like Westcott for instance. All his kindliness which is great and his wit and his knowledge can't make me forgive this deadly wrong he is doing at this time. However I remember him in the Litany and hope his heart will turn. If Riseholme is really a fine house and the grounds are very nice. There is a lake about which I had not heard, and a pretty and dry walk by it, up and down which the Bishop walked with me for more than half an hour; very pleasant it was and very good for me. I don't at all like living in this time of cloud. there is a change coming in the Church of England I hope it will come soon. I don't approve of being swept away, and would rather have to set to work on the bits and rubbish to build the new house. However the Bishop and I agreed that the change was coming. The Bishop has evidently an enormous mass of work and wants a private secretary to do nothing else—a Private Secretary like you, who could write exactly like him and forge his name and not trouble him about his letters or his own affairs at allwhat a treasure you might have been developed into by a judicious headmaster. If the E. S. Bill' is carried I shall retire into my dressing room occasionally, teach the Sixth, and you shall carry on everything else. I will take Martin's Latin. We are now going to walk into Lincoln to the service. The maidens are highly and naturally indignant at there being no seat for the Bishop's family. They sate opposite to the Throne yesterday but in some Prebend's pew not their own. It is ridiculous and is among those things in which Chapters are so silly. They stand on precedent as some people on etiquette. It may be questioned whether the Dean would think it correct to put out the Bishop's robes if they caught fire,-unless some Dean could be proved to have done it before. They would not allow a Canon's baby to be baptised in the Cathedral though there is a font there on that ground. Your most loving husband-with regrets after all that I didn't bring you by might, E. W. BENSON. 1 The Endowed Schools Bill of Mr W. E. Forster. Bishop Wordsworth nominated my father his examining chaplain, and made him Prebendary of Heydour-cumWalton, the stall of which was close to the stall he was afterwards to occupy as Chancellor. The Chapter of Lincoln is supposed to say the Psalter daily, a portion being assigned to each Prebendary. My father's Psalms were iv. and v., Cum invocarem and Verba mea auribus; a plaster cast of the Miserere of his stall adorned ever after the walls of his study. In the evening before his installation as Prebendary of Lincoln, he wrote the following prayer : LINCOLN, July 8, 1869. Lord, Thou knowest how from a child Thou hast put it into my heart dearly to love the beauty of Thy house-and how earnestly in all the minsters of England I have prayed that Thou wouldest raise up once more among us the Spirit whereby they were once builded to Thy Name, and inhabited to the peace and edifying of Thy people; and that Thou wouldest give even to me some portion of that Spirit and some sight of the work thereof before I die, and some part in the same. Let my prayer continue in Thy sight, and hearken unto it, O Lord. I thank Thee that Thou givest me to sit in Thy holy Church of Lincoln, though the office of Thy churchmen is become for our sins and uselessness but a shadow. We and our fathers have abused and wasted and corrupted Thy glorious gifts of old and they were taken from us and we care not, because we know not how great is the work that is passing out of our hands and how large the means which Thou hadst given us to perform it. O Lord, have mercy on us ere it be too late. Let not learning and study and peace and beauty and order be taken away from us. Restore, O Lord, the colleges of Thy priests through the whole land, but let them be priests rich of poverty and alms-deeds, of diligence in mercy and in sacrifice, of righteousness, of zeal, and discretion. Let them know that the vileness and thought of our vices and the misery of our ignorance will not pass from town or country through the ease of pastors and the sweetness of their inheritance. 1869 HEYDOUR-CUM-WALTON 267 By the Sign of the Cross, good Saviour, teach us this. Thou hast said Blessed are the poor, but we all seek to be rich and plentiful in quietness. And the priests' wives and children that should strengthen us a hundredfold are through our weakness snares unto us. This, Lord, is painful, pitiful confession of my own sin and weakness and the weakness of my brethren. And it is not in me to help. But, O Lord, send by the hand of him whom Thou wilt send. And in silence and unknown, let me help in the cause and open ways speedily, good Lord, that we know not, ere I be old and die. The sins of my youth and the selfishness of all my days have taken all strength out of me and I ask no honour in Thy service for I deserve but shame. But I pray I earnestly prayI earnestly beseech Thee, good Lord, to let me have some work to do and grace to do it. To feed Thy sheep better than I have fed Thy lambs. My life has not shed light, O Lord, and therefore my words can give no more strength. But, good Lord, let the words be Thine, and let not me nor any man ever think them mine, and the vileness of Thine instrument shall magnify Thy glory. O Lord, restore to Thine houses Thine old armies of priests and companies of preachers, but let them be the people's priests-not lovers of wealth nor courtiers of power-let us have learnt our lesson once for all, good Lord, to belong but to Thee and Thy poor people-so shall not history and life and Thy word be wasted on us any more, nor even on me Thy poor and blessed servant. O Jesu, Shepherd, Master, Prince, listen and save. E. W. BENSON. To be made Prebendary of Lincoln to-morrow in the Stall of Heydour-cum-Walton—and I ignorant of the very meaning of such a word '. 1 See Lincoln Cathedral Statutes, Part I. the Liber Niger, Bradshaw and Wordsworth, Cambridge, 1892, p. 210. "Another copy (i.e. of a form of Installation of a Canon or Prebendary, printed in 1863) used at the admission of Dr Benson to the prebend of Heydour-cum-Walton, July 9, 1869, is now preserved in the Muniment-room at Lincoln (A. 4. 12). It was supplied to him as the authorized form by the Chapter Clerk. The form of oath contains the following clauses: ......do swear that I...will observe and keep all the Statutes, Customs and Ordinances, written in the New Registry, and also all others published or hereafter to be made and published by lawful authority......I will inviolably observe the Laudum or determination of the late Venerable Father in God, William Alnwick, Bishop of Lincoln, so far as This appointment, which involved no residence but only two annual sermons, was an immense pleasure to my father. The connection with the ancient foundation of such a Cathedral was a source of pure delight to him; Cathedral problems, long congenial to him, began to occupy his mind closely; these thoughts were the germ of his article on "The Cathedral, its Life and Work," published in the Quarterly Review1, and his contribution to the Essays on Cathedrals, edited by Dean Howson (1872, Murray), which he afterwards reprinted in one volume and amplified2. His friend Westcott was by this time a Canon of Peterborough, and was much occupied with the scheme already referred to, of a Coenobium, or monastic establishment of married clergy who were to live simple domestic lives of study. It is to be feared that the essence of such establishments is after all celibacy, without which men cannot have the freedom from cares or the sense of common as opposed to individual attachment to their work. My father was more definite: he was anxious to see established celibate societies of preachers, but he realised that the Canonical life could well be restored in modern days, and that marriage might help rather than hinder it. The following letters passed between him and some of his old friends on the duties of Prebendaries. WELLINGTON College. MY DEAR LIGHTFOOT, I have two most pleasant letters of yours unanswereda rare event for you and me. I wish I could have come to I lawfully can, and may, by lawful authority be required to do....' I have some recollection that it was in his efforts to investigate and to understand the obligations involved in the latter clauses that Dr Benson (now Primate of all England) learnt many of those lessons from the Old Activity' which have helped to direct the renewed life of the Church of England in recent years." 1 Vol. 130, No. 259. 2 The Cathedral: its necessary place in the life and work of the Church, by Edward White Benson, Bishop of Truro. Published by John Murray, 1878. |