Episcopal Indiscretion
Information
1913: On this Sunday, Edward Carr Glyn, Bishop of Peterborough, preached to members of the Royal Society of St George in Westminster Abbey. He made the point that there were encroaching positions that threatened patriotism, menaced the love of country and implied the relaxation, if not the destruction, of all the bonds that held the empire together. They had done something to oppose the atheistic socialists and Little Englanders, whose influence would weaken national fibre and debase the honour of our country and its throne. In reporting this, the newspaper, under the headline 'Episcopal Indiscretion' declares:
Vilification of the workers is not the special prerogative of employers it is participated in by their accomplices in the State church. The hysterical outbursts of certain Bishops pass unnoticed; we get accustomed to wordy exhibitions by ecclesiastical enemies of the people. But the blazing indiscretion of the Bishop of Peterborough within the precincts of Westminster Abbey brings the bigots into fuller notoriety. The sneer at the 'misnamed working classes' comes with poor grace from one whose stipend of £4,000 a year is guaranteed by public funds. Much of the income of prelates is drawn from rack-rented slums. Bishops should not be pedagogues promoted for party services - they should be the elect of democracy. (Cambridge Independent Press)
Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.