66 Facts About Hensley Henson

Herbert Hensley Henson was an English Anglican cleric, scholar and polemicist.

Hensley Henson was Bishop of Hereford from 1918 to 1920 and Bishop of Durham from 1920 to 1939.

Hensley Henson was not allowed to go to school until he was fourteen, and was largely self-educated.

Hensley Henson was admitted to the University of Oxford, and gained a first-class degree in 1884.

Hensley Henson was tolerant of a wide range of theological views; because of this some members of the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England accused him of heresy and sought unsuccessfully to block his appointment as Bishop of Hereford in 1917.

In 1920 after two years in the largely rural diocese of Hereford, Hensley Henson returned to Durham in the industrial north-east of England as its bishop.

Hensley Henson was opposed to strikes, trade unions and socialism, and for a time his outspoken denunciation of them made him unpopular in the diocese.

Hensley Henson campaigned against prohibition, the exploitation of foreign workers by British companies, and fascist and Nazi aggression.

Hensley Henson supported reform of the divorce laws, the controversial 1928 revision of the Book of Common Prayer, and ecumenism.

Herbert Hensley Henson was born in London on 8 November 1863, the fourth son and sixth child of eight of Thomas Henson, a businessman, and his second wife, Martha, Fear.

Hensley Henson seemed to lose interest in everything except religion, and under the influence of some Plymouth Brethren.

Hensley Henson never joined the sect, but he read their literature, shared many of their opinions and grew into their narrow intolerance.

Hensley Henson's wife shielded the children from the worst excesses of what the biographer Matthew Grimley describes as Thomas's "bigotry", but in 1870 she died, and, in Henson's words, "with her died our happiness".

Thomas Hensley Henson forbade his children to go to school, play with other children, or go on holiday.

In 1873 Thomas Hensley Henson remarried; Emma Parker, widow of a Lutheran pastor, ensured that the children were properly educated.

Hensley Henson introduced him to the works of Walter Scott and translations of classical authors such as Thucydides and Plutarch, helping to form his literary style.

Hensley Henson wrote later, "It was a curiously mixed bag, but I absorbed it with avidity".

Hensley Henson's father did not allow Henson to be baptised or to attend a school until the boy was fourteen.

The rector of Broadstairs conducted the baptism; there were no godparents, and the young Hensley Henson undertook their functions himself.

Hensley Henson took religious instruction from the rector, leading to his confirmation as a communicant member of the Church of England in 1878.

Thomas Hensley Henson was against the idea, partly because his financial means had declined, but was talked round by his wife and gave his consent.

Hensley Henson 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 Hensley 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.

Hensley Henson concentrated on his studies, and gained a first class honours degree in Modern History in June 1884.

Hensley Henson was appointed in November 1884, at the age of twenty.

The college was headed by the warden, Sir William Anson, who became something of a father figure to Hensley Henson, and encouraged his researches.

Hensley Henson 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.

In 1885, in tandem with his work at All Souls, Hensley Henson acted as tutor to Lyle Rathbone, son of the philanthropic businessman William Rathbone.

The family lived in Birkenhead, where for six months Hensley Henson stayed with them.

Hensley Henson had ample leisure time, much of which he spent in visiting local churches and nonconformist chapels.

The poverty Hensley Henson had seen in deprived areas of Birkenhead during his six months with the Rathbones gave him a strong impetus to minister to the poor.

Hensley Henson was never physically strong, and his relentless work at Barking put a strain on his health.

In 1895 and 1896 Hensley Henson was Select Preacher at Oxford, and from 1897 he served as chaplain to John Festing, Bishop of St Albans.

Hensley Henson had time for writing; between 1897 and 1900 he published four books, ranging from purely theological studies to analyses of Church politics.

In October 1902 at Westminster Abbey Hensley Henson married Isabella Caroline, the only daughter of James Wallis Dennistoun of Dennistoun, Scotland.

From his pulpit, Henson spoke against the view that ecumenism was, as W E Gladstone once called it, "a moral monster", and he criticised schools that failed to provide adequate religious instruction.

Hensley Henson's independence enabled him to defend those liberal clergy in conflict with their bishops about doctrinal matters such as the historicity of the empty tomb and the reality of miracles.

The five years Hensley 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.

Hensley Henson 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.

Hensley Henson 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.

Hensley Henson spoke out strongly, and ultimately unsuccessfully, against the proposed disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Wales.

Hensley Henson had defended the right of clergy to express doubts about the virgin birth and bodily resurrection.

Hensley Henson was, as many of his critics failed, or refused, to notice, doctrinally orthodox on the resurrection, and content to accept the tradition of the virgin birth, but his contention that other priests had the right to question them was regarded as heretical by the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church, led by Gore.

Hensley Henson was consecrated bishop in Westminster Abbey on 4 February 1918 by Davidson, assisted by twelve supporting bishops.

Hensley Henson was enthroned at Hereford Cathedral eight days later.

Gore attempted to promote the idea at the Convocation of Clergy in May 1918; Hensley Henson abandoned restraint and in Chadwick's words "stripped Gore's arguments bare".

Hensley Henson 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.

Hensley Henson was outspoken as an apologist for Freemasonry, promoting its ideals, and its religious foundations.

Alington was almost universally loved, and though he and Hensley Henson differed on points of ecclesiastical practice, they remained warm friends.

Hensley Henson got on well with miners individually and conversed with many of them as they walked through the extensive grounds of Auckland Castle.

Hensley Henson was against state provision of social welfare, though a strong advocate of voluntary spending on it.

Later in his bishopric Hensley Henson denounced the Jarrow March of 1936 as "revolutionary mob pressure" and criticised his subordinate, James Gordon, the suffragan Bishop of Jarrow, for giving the march his formal blessing.

Hensley Henson 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.

The best-known anecdote of Hensley Henson, according to Chadwick, comes from his time at Durham.

The Church instituted damage-limitation measures by permitting parishes to use the new unauthorised text where there was a local consensus to do so, but Hensley 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".

Hensley Henson spent much time and energy fruitlessly campaigning for disestablishment.

Hensley Henson was, as he had often been earlier in his career, an isolated figure.

Hensley Henson was less isolated in some other causes he took up in the 1920s and 30s.

Hensley Henson was one of many wary of the ultra-liberalism of the Modern Churchmen's Union.

Hensley Henson was in a minority of senior clergy in speaking out against the dictators of the Axis powers.

Hensley Henson condemned Nazi antisemitism, Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia, appeasement and the Munich agreement.

Hensley Henson was offered the masonic position of Provincial Grand Master, but declined it, believing himself too old.

Hensley Henson found some solace in the friendship of her companion, Fearne Booker, who lived with the Hensons for more than thirty years.

Hensley Henson occupied a considerable part of his retirement writing his memoirs, published in three volumes under the title Retrospect of an Unimportant Life.

Hensley Henson died at Hintlesham on 27 September 1947 at the age of eighty-three.

Towards the end of his life Hensley Henson wrote that his career, "though public, had never been important: that I had been the champion of no cause, the leader of no party, and the darling of no society; that I had written no book which had pleased the 'reading public'; and that, finally, my Journal was as destitute of public interest as of literary merit".