Hensley Henson

Herbert Hensley Henson (8 November 1863 – 27 September 1947) was an English Anglican bishop, scholar and controversialist. He was Bishop of Hereford from 1918 to 1920 and Bishop of Durham from 1920 to 1939.

The Right Reverend Hensley Henson
Bishop of Durham
Church	Church of England
Province	York
Diocese	Durham
In office	1920–1939
Predecessor	Handley Moule
Successor	Alwyn Williams
Other post(s)	Bishop of Hereford (1918–1920) Dean of Durham (1913–1918)
Orders
Ordination	1887 (deacon) 1888 (priest)
Consecration	1918
Personal details
Born	8 November 1863 London, England
Died	27 September 1947(1947-09-27) (aged 83) Hintlesham, England
Buried	Durham Cathedral, England

The son of a zealous member of the Plymouth Brethren, Henson was not allowed to go to school until he was fourteen, and was largely self-educated. He was admitted to the University of Oxford, and gained a first-class degree in 1884. In the same year he was elected as a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, where he began to make a reputation as a speaker. He was ordained priest in 1888.

Feeling a vocation to minister to the urban poor, Henson served in the East End of London and Barking before becoming chaplain of an ancient hospice in Ilford in 1895. In 1900 he was appointed to the high-profile post of vicar of St Margaret's, Westminster, and canon of Westminster Abbey. While there, and as Dean of Durham (1913–18), he wrote prolifically and sometimes controversially. The Anglo-Catholic wing of the church took exception to his liberal theological views, which some regarded as heretical, and sought unsuccessfully in 1917 to block his appointment as Bishop of Hereford.

In 1920, after two years in the largely rural diocese of Hereford, Henson returned to Durham as its bishop. The industrial north-east of England, including County Durham, was badly affected by an economic depression. Henson was opposed to strikes, trade unions and socialism, and for a time his forthright expression of his views made him unpopular in the diocese. His opinions about some Church matters changed radically during his career: at first a strong advocate of the Church of England's continued establishment as the country's official church, he came to believe that politicians could not be trusted to legislate properly on ecclesiastical matters, and he espoused the cause of disestablishment. He campaigned against prohibition, the exploitation of foreign workers by British companies, and fascist and Nazi aggression. He supported – particularly prior to the 1936 Abdication Crisis – reform of the divorce laws, the controversial 1928 revision of the Book of Common Prayer, and ecumenism.

Life and career

Early years

Henson was born in London, the fourth son and sixth child of eight of Thomas Henson (1812–1896), a businessman, and his second wife, Martha, née Fear.^[1] The family moved to Broadstairs on the coast of Kent when Henson was two years old. Thomas Henson was a zealous evangelical Christian who had renounced the Church of England and joined the Plymouth Brethren. Martha Henson shielded her children from the worst excesses of what the biographer Matthew Grimley describes as Thomas's "bigotry",^[2] but in 1870 she died, and, in Henson's words, "with her died our happiness".^[3] From an early age the young Henson was a dedicated Christian and felt a vocation for the Anglican priesthood; his father's fundamentalist views were anathema, and left him with what Grimley calls "an enduring hatred of protestant fanaticism".^[2] In 1873 Thomas Henson remarried;^{[n 1]} Emma Parker, widow of a Lutheran pastor, filled the role of stepmother with sympathy and kindness, mitigating the father's grimness and ensuring that the children were properly educated. In Henson's phrase, "she recreated the home".^[5]

Henson was fourteen before his father allowed him either to be baptised or to attend a school.^[5] The Rector of Broadstairs conducted the baptism; there were no godparents, and Henson undertook their functions himself.^[6] He took religious instruction from the rector leading to his confirmation as a communicant member of the Church of England in 1878.^[7] At Broadstairs Collegiate School he derived little educational benefit, having already educated himself widely and deeply from books in his father's library.^[2] He rose to be head boy of the school, but after a dispute with the headmaster during which Henson expressed "with more passion than respect"^[8] his opinion of the head, he ran away from the school in 1879.^[8] He gained employment as an assistant master at Brigg Grammar School in Lincolnshire; the headmaster there recognised his talent and recommended that he should apply for admission to the University of Oxford. Thomas Henson was against the idea, partly because his financial means had declined, but was talked round by his wife and gave his consent. Thomas agreed to fund his son's studies, but the sum he allowed was too little to pay the substantial fees for residence at any of the colleges of the university. In 1881 Henson applied successfully for admission as an unattached student, a member of none of the Oxford colleges, but eligible for the full range of university tuition.^[9] Cut off from the camaraderie of college life, Henson felt seriously isolated.^[9] He concentrated on his studies, and gained a first class honours degree in Modern History in June 1884.^[10]

All Souls

 

Influences and benefactors: Sir William Anson (top), William Rathbone, and Charles Gore

Such was the quality of Henson's scholarship that his history tutor encouraged him to enter the annual competition for appointment as a Fellow of All Souls, the university's post-graduate research college.^[11] He was appointed in November 1884, at the age of twenty. Membership of the college offered an annual stipend of £200; for the first time, Henson was in reasonably comfortable financial circumstances.^{[n 2]} At All Souls, he later wrote, "I was welcomed with a generous kindness which made me feel immediately at home. I formed friendships which have enriched my life."^[13] His biographer John Peart-Binns suggests that Henson may nonetheless have remained something of an outsider, his arrival at All Souls "akin to that of an alien".^[12] The college was headed by the Warden, Sir William Anson, who became something of a father figure to Henson, and encouraged his researches.^[14] Henson's first paper, on William II of England, marked him out as not only a fine scholar but a gripping speaker when he delivered it to an audience.^[15] Aware that his quick tongue could lead him into indiscretion, he adopted and maintained all his life the practice of writing out his lectures and sermons in full beforehand rather than improvising or speaking from concise notes.^[16] He preferred a quill pen, and wrote in a fine clear hand; he considered illegible writing to be a form of bad manners as tiresome as inaudible talking.^[17] He gained a reputation as a controversialist. In a biographical sketch, Harold Begbie wrote that at Oxford Henson was nicknamed "Coxley Cocksure"; he added:

Never was any man more certain he was right; never was any man more inclined to ridicule the bare idea that his opponent could be anything but wrong; and never was any man more thoroughly happy in making use of a singularly trenchant intellect to stab and thrust its triumphant way through the logic of his adversary.^[18]

In 1885, in tandem with his work at All Souls, Henson acted as tutor to Lyle Rathbone, son of the philanthropic businessman William Rathbone.^[19] The family lived in Birkenhead, where for six months Henson stayed with them. He had ample leisure time, much of which he spent in visiting local churches and nonconformist chapels. This process left him struggling with doctrinal questions, but sure of a religious vocation. The day after his return to Oxford in October 1885 he went into St Mary's, Iffley, and with his hand on the altar vowed to dedicate himself to God and the Church.^[20]

Henson's beliefs on doctrine were still forming, but he inclined to high-churchmanship and was influenced by Charles Gore and the Puseyites, though he was unattracted by more extreme Anglo-Catholic forms of ritualism.^[2] With his suspicion of nonconformism he was a proponent of the principle of establishment – the maintenance of Anglicanism as the official state religion – and in 1886 he became secretary of the new Oxford Laymen's League for Defence of the National Church, to counter the threat of disestablishment proposed by politicians such as Joseph Chamberlain and Charles Dilke.^[21]

Ordination and east London

The poverty Henson had seen during his six months in Birkenhead gave him a strong impetus to minister to the poor.^[22] In 1887, after being ordained deacon, he took charge of the Oxford House Settlement, a high-church mission in Bethnal Green, a poor area of the East End of London.^[23] While in this post he honed his speaking skills in public debates with atheist orators, many from the National Secular Society's Bethnal Green office.^[24]

 

St Margaret's, Barking, Henson's first parish

In 1888 Henson was ordained priest.^[25] Shortly afterwards All Souls appointed him vicar of a church in its gift: St Margaret's, Barking, in east London, a large, working class parish, with a population of 12,000, and increasing.^[26][27] At twenty-five he was the youngest vicar in the country,^[2] and had a large staff of curates to manage.^[28] An All Souls colleague Cosmo Lang, himself on the brink of a Church career, visited Henson at Barking and noted, "He came six months ago to a parish dead – 250 a good congregation in the church; and now, when he preaches, every seat is filled – 1100!"^[29]

With the energy and impetuosity noted by Lang, Henson worked continually over the next seven years to improve the parish, restoring the fabric of the church, opening clubs for his parishioners, and holding popular open-air services in the vicarage grounds.^[28][30] At Barking his high-church leanings were welcomed, and he was invited to preach from time to time at St Alban's Holborn, a central London bastion of Anglo-Catholicism.^[28] He was never physically strong, and his relentless work at Barking put a strain on his physique.^[28] In 1895 he accepted an offer from Lord Salisbury of a less arduous post, the chaplaincy of St Mary's Hospital, Ilford, which he held until 1900. In 1895 and 1896, Henson was select preacher at Oxford, and from 1897 he served as chaplain to John Festing, Bishop of St Albans.^[31] He had time for writing; between 1897 and 1900 he published four books, ranging from purely theological studies to analyses of Church politics.^[31] His beliefs had changed from his early high-churchmanship to a broad-church latitudinarianism; his 1899 Cui bono? set out his concerns about the strict ritualists in the Anglo-Catholic wing of the church.^[2][32]

Westminster

 

Henson when Rector of St Margaret's

The Ilford appointment had been in Salisbury's personal gift; in his official capacity as prime minister he was responsible for Henson's next appointment: rector of St Margaret's, Westminster and canon of Westminster Abbey in 1900.^[28] St Margaret's, the parish church of the British parliament, was a high-profile appointment; Henson followed predecessors as willing as he was to court controversy including Henry Hart Milman and Frederic Farrar.^[33] His eventual successor as Bishop of Durham, Alwyn Williams wrote that at St Margaret's, Henson's brilliance as a speaker and independence of thought attracted large congregations and "his increasingly liberal churchmanship" appealed to a wide range of public opinion, though some of his views offended the orthodox.^[27]

In October 1902 at Westminster Abbey Henson married Isabella (Ella) Caroline (1870–1949), the only daughter of James Wallis Dennistoun of Dennistoun, Scotland.^[31][34] Grimley comments that it was in keeping with Henson's usual impulsiveness that he proposed within four days of meeting her.^[2] The marriage was lifelong; there were no children.^[28]

 

Caricatured by Wallace Hester in Vanity Fair, 1912

From his pulpit, Henson spoke against the view that ecumenism was, in W E Gladstone's words, "a moral monster", and criticised schools that failed to provide adequate religious instruction.^[35] Preaching at Westminster Abbey in 1912 he attracted international attention for naming and denouncing three British directors of the Peruvian-Amazon Company for the "Putumayo atrocities" – the mass enslavement and brutal treatment of indigenous Peruvians in the company's rubber factories.^[36] During his time at St Margaret's Henson published nine books, some of them collected sermons and lectures, others on the role of Christianity in modern society and theological questions.^[31]

Henson's uncompromising character brought him into frequent conflict with old friends and colleagues. In 1909 he offended Charles Gore, now Bishop of Birmingham, by defying Gore's order not to preach in the institute of a Congregational church in the diocese.^{[n 3]} His confrontational style and liberal theology caused delay in his promotion, despite his obvious abilities.^[28] An apocryphal story circulated in 1908 that the prime minister, H. H. Asquith, suggested Henson's name to Edward VII when the see of York became vacant, and the king replied, "Damn it all, man, I am Defender of the Faith!"^[39] In 1910 the post of Dean of Lincoln fell vacant. Asquith considered appointing Henson, but decided, as he told the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, that "it would be rather like sending a destroyer into a land-locked pool".^[28]

Dean and bishop

 

Durham Cathedral

In 1912 the Dean of Durham, George Kitchin, died. The Bishop, Handley Moule, hoped the prime minister would appoint Henry Watkins, the Archdeacon of Durham, but Asquith chose Henson.^[40] On 2 January 1913 Moule presided over Henson's formal installation at Durham Cathedral.^[41]

The five years Henson spent as Dean of Durham were marked by further controversy, including his objection to the existing divorce laws as too favourable to men and unfair to women.^[42] He was hostile to changes aimed at giving the church more control over its own affairs; he regarded establishment and parliamentary control as safeguards against extremism. He opposed William Temple's "Life and Liberty movement", which campaigned for synodical and democratic government of the church, and he was against the establishment of the National Assembly of the Church of England in 1919.^[43] To Henson, the essence of Anglicanism rested on parliamentary enforcement of the rights of the laity of the church against the bishops and priests, and the inclusion of both clergy and laity in all matters under the rule of the monarch as Supreme Governor of the church.^[39]

Among other views for which Henson was known were his disapproval of teetotalism campaigners and of socialism, and for his disbelief in social reform as an ally of religion.^[44] When the Kikuyu controversy erupted in 1913 Henson once again found himself at odds with Gore. The question was whether two colonial bishops had committed heresy by taking part in an ecumenical service. Gore and his ally Bishop Weston of Zanzibar led the charge, and appear in Henson's journal as "devoted, unselfish, indefatigable, eminently gifted, but ... also fanatical in temper, bigoted in their beliefs, and reckless in their methods."^[45] Together with Bishop Moule, Dean Wace of Canterbury and other leaders, Henson strongly, and successfully, supported the accused bishops: "The Church owes a deep debt of gratitude to the Bishops of Uganda and Mombasa."^[46]

Henson spoke out strongly, and ultimately unsuccessfully, against the proposed disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Wales.^[47] In doing so he addressed many nonconformist gatherings; the historian Owen Chadwick suggests that this may have commended him to David Lloyd George, who became prime minister in 1916.^{[n 4]} A serious doctrinal row within the church seemed to many to put Henson out of the running for elevation to a bishopric. He had defended the right of clergy to express doubts about the virgin birth and bodily resurrection. He was, as most of his critics failed, or refused, to notice, doctrinally orthodox on the resurrection, and content to accept the tradition of the virgin birth,^[49] but his contention that other priests had the right to question them was intolerable to the Anglo-Catholic wing of the church, led by Gore.^[2]

 

Hereford Cathedral

Archbishop Randall Davidson had no doubts about Henson's doctrinal soundness, and persuaded him to issue a statement of faith to silence his critics. Davidson stated publicly that no fair-minded man could read consecutively a series of Henson's sermons without feeling that they had in him a brilliant and powerful teacher of the Christian faith.^[50] Gore and his followers were obliged to call off their protests. Against Davidson's advice for caution, Lloyd George appointed Henson to the vacant see of Hereford in 1917. Gore and others, including Cosmo Lang, now the Archbishop of York, failed to attend the consecration service.^[2] Their attitude hurt Henson, offended lay opinion in the church, and was sharply criticised in The Times.^[51] Henson was consecrated bishop in Westminster Abbey on 4 February 1918 by Davidson, assisted by twelve supporting bishops.^[52] He was enthroned at Hereford Cathedral eight days later.^[53]

Although Henson's elevation was controversial chiefly among factions of the clergy – in general lay people supported his appointment – it nevertheless gave fresh impetus to the idea of taking away from the prime minister the power to choose bishops.^{[54][n 5]} Gore attempted to promote the idea at the Convocation of Clergy in May 1918; Henson abandoned restraint and in Chadwick's words "stripped Gore's arguments bare".^[56] He argued from historical examples that appointments made at the church's instigation were partisan and disastrous, and that the Crown and prime minister were able to take an unbiased view in the national interest.^[56] Despite the public support for him, the controversy revived Henson's feelings of isolation.^[57]

The appointment was described as "sending an armoured car into an orchard of apple trees"^[58] and Henson had doubts about accepting a mainly rural diocese rather than ministering to the urban poor.^[58] Nevertheless, the clergy and laity of Hereford gave him a warm welcome, and he enjoyed working with the incumbents of country parishes. They appreciated his delicacy in not intruding unduly into local church concerns, and it was remarked that "he treated all the world as his equals".^[59] During his brief time at Hereford he published only one book, Christian Liberty (1918), a collection of sermons.^[31]

Henson was an active Freemason. At Hereford, he and the dean, Reginald Waterfield, were among the founders of a new masonic lodge in 1920.^[60] Peart-Binns describes him as enjoying the meetings of his various lodges, but finding the associated social activities "intolerable". Henson was outspoken as an apologist for Freemasonry, promoting its ideals, and its religious foundations.^[61]

There was regret in the diocese that Henson's tenure there was brief. In 1920 the see of Durham became vacant on the death of Bishop Moule. Davidson wanted Thomas Strong, Dean of Christ Church, to be appointed and pressed his claims on Lloyd George, but the prime minister took the view that the area needed Henson's practical skills and common touch rather than Strong's academic scholarship.^{[62][n 6]}

Durham

Henson was translated to Durham – England's most senior diocese after Canterbury, York and London^[66] – in October 1920.^[67] The appointment was challenging: the area was in grave economic difficulty, with the important coal-mining industry in a crisis caused by falling industrial demand for coal in the years after the war. Ecclesiastically there was potential for friction, as the Dean of Durham, James Welldon, who had once been a bishop himself, was temperamentally and politically at odds with his new superior, given to making public statements that Henson found infuriating. Welldon, in Henson's view, "could neither speak with effect nor be silent with dignity".^[68] They clashed on several occasions, most conspicuously when Welldon, a strong admirer of prohibition, publicly criticised Henson's tolerant views on the consumption of alcohol.^[69] Relations between the Deanery and Auckland Castle, the bishop's official residence, improved markedly in April 1933 when Cyril Alington, the Head Master of Eton from 1917 to 1933, succeeded Welldon.^[70] Alington was almost universally loved, and though he and Henson differed on points of ecclesiastical practice, they remained warm friends.^[71]

 

Durham coal mine in 1920

At the beginning of Henson's episcopate the Durham miners were on strike. He got on well with miners individually and conversed with many of them as they walked through the extensive grounds of Auckland Castle.^[2] It was said of him that he got on easily with everyone "except other dignitaries in gaiters".^{[72][n 7]} Friction arose from Henson's belief that strikes were morally wrong because of the harm they did to other working people,^[73] and he had, in Grimley's words, "a violent, almost obsessional", dislike of trade unions.^[2] His early concern for the welfare of the poor remained unchanged, but he regarded socialism and trade unionism as negations of individuality. For the same reason he was against state provision of social welfare, though a strong advocate of voluntary spending on it.^[2] Later in his bishopric Henson denounced the Jarrow March in 1936 as "revolutionary mob pressure" and condemned the action of his subordinate, the suffragan Bishop of Jarrow, who had given the march his blessing.^[74] He loathed class distinction, and was not antipathetic to social reformers, but he was strong in his criticism of Christian campaigners who maintained that the first duty of the church was social reform. To Henson, the church's principal concern was each individual man or woman's spiritual welfare.^[75]

 

Cosmo Lang by William Orpen: "proud, pompous and prelatical"

The best-known anecdote of Henson, according to Chadwick, comes from his time at Durham. Cosmo Lang complained that his portrait by Orpen "makes me look proud, pompous and prelatical", to which Henson responded, "And to which of those epithets does your Grace take exception?"^[76] Grimley remarks that on occasion each of those unflattering adjectives applied just as much to Henson.^[2] Nonetheless, Henson ranked Lang "among the greater figures of ecclesiastical history".^[77]

The most conspicuous cause with which Henson was involved during his time at Durham was, in Anglican terms, of national—and even international—rather than diocesan concern. As a broad churchman he gave strong support in the mid-1920s to the major revision and modernising of the Book of Common Prayer, the Church of England's liturgical book that had been largely unchanged since 1662, in its proposed 1927 and 1928 editions. The evangelical wing of the church opposed the revision, which some low-church factions dubbed "popish".^[78] Henson, now on the same side as the Anglo-Catholics with whom he had early been in bitter dispute, called the opposition "the Protestant underworld".^[79] Despite the clear majority of clergy and laity in favour of the revision, the House of Commons refused to authorise it, and voted it down in 1927 and again in 1928. Henson's colleague Cyril Garbett wrote that the Commons had "made it plain that the Church does not possess full spiritual freedom to determine its worship".^[80] The church instituted damage limitation measures by permitting parishes to use the new unauthorised text where there was a local consensus to do so,^{[n 8]} but Henson was horrified at what he saw as Parliament's betrayal of its duty to preside impartially over the governance of the church, giving in to pressure from what he termed "an army of illiterates".^[82]

 

1922 sketch of Henson, with Durham Cathedral in the background

Together with the suspicions he had started to harbour that a socialist government might misuse ecclesiastical patronage, the Prayer Book debacle turned Henson from a strong proponent of establishment to its best-known critic. He spent much time and energy fruitlessly campaigning for disestablishment. He was, as he had often been earlier in his career, an isolated figure. Few of his colleagues agreed with him, even those dismayed by the parliamentary vote.

Hensley was less isolated in some other causes he took up in the 1920s and 30s. He was one of many wary of the ultra-liberalism of the Modern Churchmen's Union. In 1934, he was among the senior clerics who censured Dean Dwelly for inviting a Unitarian to preach in Liverpool Cathedral and Bishop David for permitting it.^{[83][n 9]} He was critical of American evangelism as practised by Frank Buchman and the Oxford Group. Henson wrote of Buchman's "oracular despotism" and "the trail of moral and intellectual wrecks which its progress leaves behind."^[86] Henson was critical of one of his clergy, Robert Anderson Jardine of Darlington, for conducting the wedding ceremony in France of the Duke of Windsor to a divorced woman, contrary to the doctrine of the church.^[87] Henson was in a minority of senior clergy in speaking out against the dictators of the Axis powers. He condemned Nazi anti-Semitism, Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia, appeasement and the Munich agreement.^[2]

On 1 February 1939, at the age of seventy-five, he retired from Durham to Hintlesham in Suffolk.^[88] Seven months later the Second World War began. Henson supported the Allies' fight in what he saw as a just war to defeat godless barbarism; he wrote of "The deepening infamies of Nazi warfare – infamies so horrible as almost to shake one's faith in the essential Divineness of Humanity."^[89] He urged, "there can be no compromise or patched up peace".^[90]

Last years

Winston Churchill was impressed by Henson. Grimley comments that they had much in common, both spending years as isolated figures speaking out for beliefs that were dismissed at the time and later vindicated.^[2] As prime minister, Churchill persuaded Henson out of retirement in 1940 to resume his old duties as a Canon of Westminster Abbey. After overcoming the momentary strangeness of being back in his old post after nearly thirty years he preached with vigour until cataracts made his eyesight too poor to continue. He retired from the Abbey in 1941.^[27]

In his later years Henson's lifelong sense of loneliness was compounded by the growing deafness of his wife, making their conversation difficult.^[91] He found some solace in the friendship of her companion, Fearne Booker, who lived with the Hensons for more than thirty years.^{[91][n 10]} He occupied a considerable part of his retirement writing a substantial work of autobiography, published in three volumes under the title Retrospect of an Unimportant Life. Both at the time and subsequently many of his friends and admirers regretted his publishing the work; they thought he had done his reputation a disservice.^[28] Despite what Williams calls the "peculiar interest and vivacity" of the books, his survey of his many campaigns and controversies, seemed to others to be self-justifying and wilfully to deny many changes of stance that he had manifestly made during his career.^[27] In Williams's view the posthumous publication of Henson's edited letters were a better legacy: "delightful in both form and content, and, barbed though they often are, they do him fuller justice".^[27] He was offered the masonic position of Provincial Grand Master in his retirement, but declined it, believing himself too old.^[61]

In his writings Henson referred to his two regrets in life. The first was that he had not been at a public (i.e. fee-charging non-state) school, a fact to which he ascribed his lifelong feeling of being an outsider.^{[n 11]} The second regret was that he and his wife had been unable to have children. They unofficially adopted a succession of poor boys and paid for their education. At least one of them became a priest and was ordained by Henson.^[2]

Henson died at Hintlesham on 27 September 1947 at the age of eighty-four. At his wish his body was cremated; his ashes were interred in Durham Cathedral.^[2]

Bibliography

As editor

• Church Problems, a View of Modern Anglicanism. London: John Murray. 1900. OCLC 29980088.^{[n 12]}
• The Naked Truth by Bishop Herbert Croft. London: Chatto & Windus. 1919 [1674]. OCLC 265436413.
• A Memoir of the Right Honourable Sir William Anson. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1920. OCLC 4065005.

As author

Light and Leaven: Historical and Social Sermons to General Congregations. London: Methuen. 1897. OCLC 15070416. Apostolic Christianity: Notes and inferences mainly based on St Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians. London: Methuen. 1898. OCLC 315404297. Cui Bono? – An Open Letter to Lord Halifax on the Present Crisis in the Church of England. London: Skeffington. 1899. OCLC 681103530. Ad Rem: Thoughts for Critical Times in the Church. London: Wells, Gardner, Darton. 1899. OCLC 17424794. Dissent in England: two lectures. London: Rivingtons. 1901. OCLC 690683271. Godly Union and Concord: Sermons preached mainly in Westminster Abbey in the interest of Christian fraternity. London and New York: John Murray and Longmans Green. 1902. OCLC 18727562. Cross-Bench Views of Current Church Questions. London: Edward Arnold. 1902. OCLC 1706844. Preaching to the Times – in St. Margaret's, Westminster, during the Coronation Year. London: James Clarke. 1902. OCLC 70986753. The Education Act and after; an appeal addressed, with all possible respect, to the non-conformists, fellow-guardians with English Churchmen of the national Christianity. London: Methuen. 1903. OCLC 18158455. Sincerity and Subscription: A Plea for Toleration in the Church of England. London and Macmillan: Macmillan. 1903. OCLC 475487271. reissued 2010 Studies in English Religion in the Seventeenth Century; St. Margaret's Lectures, 1903. London: John Murray. 1903. OCLC 22462289. The Value of the Bible and other Sermons. With a Letter to the Lord Bishop of London. London: Macmillan. 1904. OCLC 3373616. Notes on Popular Rationalism. London: Isbister. 1904. OCLC 314720933. Moral Discipline in the Christian Church. London: Longmans, Green. 1905. OCLC 4364905. Religion in the Schools. London: Macmillan. 1906. OCLC 500069112. Christian Marriage. London: Cassell. 1907. OCLC 13563563. The National Church: Essays on its history and constitution and criticisms of its present administration. London: Macmillan. 1908. OCLC 951413. Christ and the Nation. London: T Fisher Unwin. 1908. OCLC 17351091. The Liberty of Prophesying (Lyman Beecher Lectures 1909). London: Macmillan. 1909. OCLC 10121345. Westminster Sermons. London: James Clarke. 1910. OCLC 559696043.

Puritanism in England. London and New York: Hodder and Stoughton. 1912. OCLC 2683311. The Creed in the Pulpit. London and New York: Hodder and Stoughton. 1912. OCLC 6833444. War-Time Sermons. London: Macmillan. 1915. OCLC 14705642. Robertson of Brighton 1816–1853. London: Smith, Elder. OCLC 2380202. Christian Liberty. London: Macmillan. 1918. OCLC 27672113. Anglicanism. London: Macmillan. 1921. OCLC 2909792. Byron: the Rede Lecture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1924. OCLC 2480567. In Defence of the English Church. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1923. OCLC 11586017. Quo Tendimus. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1924. OCLC 20728425. Notes on Spiritual Healing. London: Williams and Norgate. 1925. OCLC 2529734. Church and Parson in England. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1927. OCLC 2783802. The Book and the Vote. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1928. OCLC 908598. Disestablishment. London: Macmillan. 1929. OCLC 2161447. Sibbes and Simeon: An essay on patronage trusts. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1932. OCLC 41430167. The Oxford Groups. London: Oxford University Press. 1933. OCLC 2990780. Christian Morality. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1936. OCLC 1022377. Ad Clerum. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1937. OCLC 1350595. The Church of England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1939. OCLC 391952. Last Words in Westminster Abbey. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1941. OCLC 6776261. Retrospect of an Unimportant Life, Volume 1, 1863–1920. London: Oxford University Press. 1942. OCLC 504487861. Retrospect of an Unimportant Life, Volume 2, 1920–1939. London: Oxford University Press. 1943. OCLC 504487878. Bishoprick Papers. London and New York: Oxford University Press. 1946. OCLC 2783813. Retrospect of an Unimportant Life, Volume 3, 1939–1946. London: Oxford University Press. 1950. OCLC 772945481.

Notes

1. It is not clear whether there was any formal or legal wedding; the sect to which Henson Snr belonged discouraged legal ceremonies.^[4]
2. The biographer John Peart-Binns notes that from his £200 a year Henson made substantial contributions to his family as his father's financial affairs deteriorated to the point of bankruptcy.^[12]
3. Gore's specific objection was not to Henson's preaching in a nonconformist establishment, but his doing so within another Anglican cleric's parish against the incumbent's wishes.^[37] The distinction was not widely noted, and the bishop was seen by many to have been narrow-minded. Henson's defiant act in having Gore's document of "inhibition" framed and hung in the study of St Margaret's rectory was felt by many to be needlessly provocative.^[38]
4. Lloyd George was an agnostic, but was from a nonconformist family, like the majority of Welsh people.^[48]
5. Theoretically, the power to choose whom to appoint remained (and still remains) with the monarch, but the exercise of the royal prerogative had passed to the prime minister in the 19th century.^[55]
6. Moule and his two immediate predecessors at Durham, Joseph Lightfoot and Brooke Foss Westcott, had all been all professors of divinity at the University of Cambridge immediately before their appointment as bishop.^[63][64][65]
7. Henson's relations even with his episcopal colleagues could be warm. He and his principal adversary in the Kikuyu controversy, Bishop Weston, later became good friends.^[72]
8. The new text was published in December 1928 and carried the statement in bold type that "the publication of this Book does not directly or indirectly imply that it can be regarded as authorized for use in churches".^[81]
9. Dwelly's biographer Peter Kennerley considers it ironical that Henson, who moved the motion against David at the Northern Convocation, had ten years earlier preached the sermon at the consecration of Liverpool Cathedral, particularly welcoming the presence of non-Anglicans at the service.^[84] Important aspects of Unitarian theology were unacceptable to many mainstream Christians at that time.^[85]
10. Grimley writes that the friendship between Henson and Booker was the basis of a 1987 novel by Susan Howatch, Glittering Images, in which Henson is portrayed as Alex Jardine. In the novel Jardine's friendship with the companion is more than platonic, but Grimley emphasises that Howatch made it clear this was pure fiction, and there was no reason whatever to imagine any impropriety in Henson's relations with Booker.^[2]
11. The many senior clergy of his day who were at Eton, Harrow or other leading public schools included Alington, Davidson, Gore, Temple and Welldon.^{[92][93][94][95][96]}
12. Contents: "The Church of England" (H Hensley Henson); "Establishment" (H Hensley Henson); "Disendowment" (C A Whitmore); "The Parochial System" (Edgar Gibson); "Convocation" (W H Hutton); "Anglican Theology" (W O Burrows); "Anglican Worship" (W O Burrows); "Relations with Eastern Churches" (Arthur Headlam); "The Church and Nonconformity" (E W Watson); "Education" (H A Dalton); "The Bible and Modern Criticism" (Thomas Strong); "The Church and the Empire" (Bernard Wilson); "The Anglican Spirit in Literature" (Henry Beeching); "The Roman Controversy" (W E Collins); "Uniformity" (W E Collins); "Parties in the Church" (Lord Hugh Cecil).^[97]

References

Footnotes

1. Peart-Binns, p. 17
2. Grimley, Matthew. 2011 "Henson, Herbert Hensley (1863–1947)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 4 November 2014 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
3. Henson (1942), p. 3
4. Peart-Binns, p. 18
5. Chadwick, p. 6
6. Peart-Binns, p. 19
7. Peart-Binns, p. 20
8. Henson (1950), p. 358
9. Chadwick, p. 16
10. Peart-Binns, pp. 21–22
11. Chadwick, p. 21
12. Peart-Binns, p. 23
13. Henson (1942), p. 5
14. Chadwick, p. 24
15. Peart-Binns, p. 24
16. Chadwick, p. 279
17. Lyttelton–Hart-Davis, p. 25
18. Begbie, pp. 90–91
19. Chadwick, p. 28
20. Peart-Binns, pp. 25–26; and Chadwick, p. 29
21. Henson, H Hensley. "The Oxford Laymen's League for Defence of the National Church", The Times, 13 August 1886, p. 6; and "Election Intelligence", The Times, 17 November 1885, p. 7
22. Chadwick, p. 29
23. Chadwick, pp. 40–41
24. Peart-Binns, p. 41; and Chadwick, p. 44
25. Peart-Binns, p. 38
26. "Restoration of Barking Church", The Times, 25 May 1889, p. 17
27. Williams, Alwyn. "Henson, Herbert Hensley", Dictionary of National Biography archive, Oxford University Press, 1959. Retrieved 6 November 2014 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
28. "Bishop Hensley Henson – Master of Dialectic", The Times, 29 September 1947, p. 27
29. Lockhart, p. 76
30. Peart-Binns, p. 41
31. "Henson, Rt Rev Herbert Hensley", Who Was Who, Oxford University Press, 2014. Retrieved 6 November 2014 (subscription required)
32. Chadwick, pp. 80–81
33. Smyth, pp. 165–168, 170–172 and 214
34. "Court Circular". The Times. No. 36904. London. 21 October 1902. p. 8.
35. "Canon Henson on Fundamental Christianity", The Times, 5 March 1906, p. 14
36. "Rubber Directors Assail Canon Henson", The New York Times, 25 August 1912 (subscription required); "Putumayo Atrocities", The Times, 5 August 1912, p. 6
37. "Canon Hensley Henson's Inhibition: Statement by Bishop Gore", The Manchester Guardian, 2 April 1909, p. 7 (subscription required)
38. "The Bishop of Oxford and Dr Henson", The Manchester Guardian, 17 January 1918, p. 8 (subscription required)
39. Buckler, F W. "The Church of England by Herbert Hensley Henson", Church History, September 1940, pp. 277–278 (subscription required)
40. Peart-Binns, p. 69
41. "Ecclesiastical Intelligence", The Times, 3 January 1913, p. 2
42. Peart-Binns, p. 65
43. Peart-Binns, pp. 82–84 and 100
44. "Dean Hensley Henson", The Manchester Guardian, 13 December 1917, p. 4
45. Henson, 1943, p. 159
46. "'Heresy' and Possible Schism in the Church of England: Figures in the Vital Kikuyu Controversy", Illustrated London News 10 January 1914, pp. 54–55
47. Peart-Binns, p. 70
48. Blake, p. 101; and Morgan, Kenneth O. "George, David Lloyd, first Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor (1863–1945)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 7 November 2014 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
49. Peart-Binns, p. 68
50. Bishopric of Hereford: The Primate's Attitude The Manchester Guardian, 18 January 1918, p. 5
51. "Christian Reunion", The Times, 18 December 1917, p. 9
52. "Bishop of Hereford Consecrated", The Times, 4 February 1918, p. 2
53. "Dr Henson at Hereford", 'The Times', 13 February 1918, p. 3
54. Chadwick, p. 145
55. Straw, p. 25
56. Chadwick, p. 147
57. Chadwick, p. 150
58. Chadwick, pp. 113 and 133
59. Chadwick, p. 154
60. "Cantilupe Lodge" 10 July 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Masonic Province of Herefordshire. Retrieved 9 July 2018
61. Peart-Binns, p. 114
62. Peart-Binns, p. 109; and Chadwick, p. 155
63. Munden, A F. "Moule, Handley Carr Glyn (1841–1920)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 12 November 2014 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
64. Barrett, C K. "Lightfoot, Joseph Barber (1828–1889)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 12 November 2014 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
65. Patrick, Graham, "Westcott, Brooke Foss (1825–1901)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 12 November 2014 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
66. Whitaker, p. 235
67. "Bishop Henson Enthroned", The Times, 1 November 1920, p. 15
68. Lyttelton–Hart-Davis, pp. 17–18
69. Peart-Binns, p. 124
70. "New Dean of Durham", The Times, 3 May 1933, p. 14
71. Chadwick, p. 297
72. Chadwick, p. 157
73. Chadwick, p. 161
74. Bartley, p. 89
75. Chadwick, p. 162
76. Chadwick, p. 244
77. Lockhart, p. 295
78. "Prayer-Book Revision", The Times 1 May 1928, p. 18
79. "Prayer-Book Revision", The Times, 30 March 1927, p. 11
80. Garbett, p. 194
81. "The Prayer-Book of 1928", The Times, 4 December 1928, p. 21
82. Chadwick, p. 193
83. Kennerley, p. 138
84. Kennerley, p. 149
85. Kennerley, pp. 138–139
86. Henson, Hensley. "The Oxford Group", The Times, 19 September 1933, p. 8
87. The Darlington vicar and a royal wedding in Evening Gazette dated 29 April 2011, accessed 11 July 2021
88. "Ecclesiastical News", The Times, 13 January 1939, p. 15
89. Henson (1951), p. 164
90. Henson (1951), p. 123
91. Peart-Binns, p. 188
92. Card, Tim. "Alington, Cyril Argentine (1872–1955)"; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 12 November 2014 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
93. Mews, Stuart. "Davidson, Randall Thomas, Baron Davidson of Lambeth (1848–1930)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 12 November 2014 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
94. Wilkinson, Alan. "Gore, Charles (1853–1932)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 12 November 2014 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
95. Hastings, Adrian. "Temple, William (1881–1944)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 12 November 2014 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
96. Tomlin, J W S, rev. M. C. Curthoys. "Welldon, James Edward Cowell (1854–1937)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 12 November 2014 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
97. "Contents", Church Problems, a View of Modern Anglicanism

Sources

• Bartley, Paula (2014). Ellen Wilkinson: From Red Suffragist to Government Minister. London: Pluto Press. ISBN 978-0-7453-3237-6.
• Begbie, Harold (1922). Painted Windows; Studies in Religious Personality. New York and London: Putnam. OCLC 720803.
• Chadwick, Owen (1983). Hensley Henson: A Study in the Friction between Church and State. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-826445-3.
• Garbett, Cyril (1947). The Claims of the Church of England. London: Hodder and Stoughton. OCLC 1209695.
• Grigg, John (1996) [1993]. "Churchill and Lloyd George". In Robert Blake and Wm. Roger Louis (ed.). Churchill. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-820626-2.
• Henson, Hensley (1942). Retrospect of an Unimportant Life, Volume 1, 1863–1920. London: Oxford University Press. OCLC 504487861.
• Henson, Hensley (1943). Retrospect of an Unimportant Life, Volume 2, 1920–1939. London: Oxford University Press. OCLC 504487878.
• Henson, Hensley (1950). Retrospect of an Unimportant Life, Volume 3, 1939–1946. London: Oxford University Press. OCLC 772945481.
• Henson, Hensley (1951). Evelyn Foley Braley (ed.). Letters of Herbert Hensley Henson. London: SPCK. OCLC 271598098.
• Lockhart, J G (1949). Cosmo Gordon Lang. London: Hodder and Stoughton. OCLC 739641.
• Lyttelton, G W; Rupert Hart-Davis (1981). The Lyttelton–Hart-Davis Letters, Volume Three. London: John Murray. ISBN 978-0-7195-3770-7.
• Peart-Binns, John Stuart (2013). Herbert Hensley Henson – A Biography. Cambridge: Lutterworth Press. ISBN 978-0-7188-9302-6.
• Straw, Jack (2007). The Governance of Britain. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. ISBN 978-0-10-171702-1.
• Whitaker, Cuthbert (1999) [1899]. Almanack, 1900. London: J Whitaker and Sons. ISBN 978-0-11-702247-8.
• Hesilrige, Arthur G. M. (1921). Debrett's Peerage and Titles of Courtesy. London: Dean & Son. p. 326.

Church of England titles
Preceded by George Kitchin	Dean of Durham 1912–1918	Succeeded by James Welldon
Preceded by John Percival	Bishop of Hereford 1917–1920	Succeeded by Linton Smith
Preceded by Handley Moule	Bishop of Durham 1920–1939	Succeeded by Alwyn Williams
Professional and academic associations
Preceded by Henry Gee	President of the Surtees Society 1939–1945	Succeeded by Alwyn Williams