Margaret Laird

Pusey Wreathed in Smoke

Memory Lane today; a visit to Pusey House for the Requiem of dear Margaret Laird. She was a stalwart of the Catholic Group in Synod, and so highly regarded that she became Third Estates Commissioner. The Celebrant was the Principal, his predecessor, the Bishop of Fulham, was at the throne (you might discern a fifth unbleached candle hiding behind the crucifix on the Altar. And the House was filled with smoke, which won't make it any easier for you!) Bishop Geoffrey Rowell preached - his sermon, when it gets into print, will be well worth reading.

Mother Harriet of Clewer

On the stairs to the Library where the reception was held I came across two of the foundation stones of the Oxford Movement. When Queen Victoria visited the Community of St John the Baptist, Clewer, she asked to do so incognito - no fuss. So she was put out when some of the Sisters curtsied as she passed. When she remonstrated with Reverend Mother she was told "They are not curtseying to you; they are curtseying to me".Seeing her portrait you can well believe the truth of that story. You would not mess with Mother Harriet!

Dr Pusey

An altogether more avuncular figure was the Regius Professor of Hebrew, Dr Pusey: and
here he is too:

But it was the current leaders of the Anglo-Catholic rump who were here today; several of the clergy (like the Bishop of Fulham) former students in my time at St Stephen's House. Look carefully in the photographs and you might spot Sir Michael Colman (one-time First Estates Commissioner) together with several from Forward in Faith. There will be pictures of others  on Facebook: but most important of them all, of course, was John Laird, Margret's devoted husband of many years. They called on us in Lymington, and we had seen them both in Truro from time to time - for despite having a flat in Lambeth Palace and latterly the house of the Chaplain to the Salisburys at Hatfield, Margaret was a Cornishwoman above all. Now John is preparing for another move, this time to the College of St Barnabas in Lingfield. May he have a long and happy retirement there.

John Laird (rt) and friends

Plus ҫa change

The Church Commissioners are moving the Bishop of Bath and Wells out of the Palace. How good, you might think, to cut bishops down to size and make some money into the bargain...except that they probably won't do well financially. They are putting the new Bishop into a former Parsonage. That Vicarage is one they sold off a few years ago and  they are now buying it back at a much higher price. The whole business reminded me of a couple of other property coups of the Commissioners.
When a house had to be found for a suffragan bishop (of Lynn) in Norwich Diocese, they purchased for him the Vicarage of Castle Acre - at much more than they had sold it for only a few years earlier. There was another even more remarkable piece of dealing. The Bishops of Portsmouth had lived at Bishopswood in Fareham, a large thatched property standing in many acres of land. The site might have been developed, but the Commissioners were put off by the local authority who said the land could not be built on. So they sold Bishopswood and bought a 19th Century house built originally for a Naval Officer. They spent several hundred thousands more than the price obtained for the former house in bringing the new one up to standard.
Drive past the site of the old house now, and you will see it glamorously restored (and rented out very profitably) while many new 'executive' houses stand in the grounds. They appeared there within a couple of years of the sale - so the local authority must have changed its mind about development.
You could say this is no concern of someone in the Ordinariate - except that the one part of the Church of England with which some of us remain in unimpaired communion is the Pensions Board, funded to a large extent by the Church Commissioners. Doesn't Parliament have some oversight of their activities?