Thomas Wilson was for 57 years (1697-1755) the saintly Bishop of Sodor and Man. The Governor’s wife had, it was alleged, declared that Mrs. Z. was no better than she should be. Mrs. Z. said she was as good as Mrs. Governor. The matter was referred to the Bishop, who decided in favour of Mrs. Z. and ordered her assailant to apologise. On the lady’s refusal he excommunicated her. But she “got at” the Archdeacon—(“ploughed with my heifer,” said Bishop Wilberforce of his Archdeacon 150 years later)[51]—and persuaded the inferior officer to admit her to Communion. Thereupon the Bishop inhibited the Archdeacon. Whereupon the Governor seized the Bishop, and put him in the dungeons of Castle Rushen, till he should be purged of his contempt.
There is much to be said for Home Rule.
FOOTNOTES:
[48] One of my colleagues was unable to land on the Island, and was carried on to Barrow. Till I had seen these lines, I fully believed that it was the ordinary result of an easterly gale. Now I see that he was after no good.
[49] Letters of T. E. Brown, 2 vols. (Constable.)
[50] “Cotton” = Lancashire man?
[51] That was when the Archdeacon of Oxford acted as “Chairman of Hardy’s Committee”; the Bishop favouring Gladstone. Mansel’s epigram is famous, beginning—
When the versatile Prelate of Oxford’s famed city
Spied the name of the chairman of Hardy’s Committee,
Said Samuel (from Samson his metaphor seekin’)
“You have ploughed with my heifer,—that is my Archdeacon.”
&c., &c. (see Burgon’s Life of Mansel).
CHAPTER XXX
RELEASE
“We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
Roll’d to starboard, roll’d to larboard, when the surge was seething free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.”
“Lotos-Eaters.”