JOHN SANCROFT HOLMES.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—The old-fashioned English country gentleman and land- lord is probably passing under modern economic conditions. Will you permit me space to put on record in the Spectator one of the best of that class? 1 have been intimately associated with Sancroft Holmes for fifty-eight years, at Harrow and Cambridge and afterwards in his Norfolk home. After a long minority he came into his estate, Gawdy Hall, at twenty-one, and laid out for himself the life of a country gentleman. He never varied in his aim; he never had any other house; he was his own agent, dealing personally with all his tenants and most careful about buildings and fences. I doubt whether his landed estate gave him 2 per cent. on his money. I remember the splendid courage he showed in the seventies amid the great agricultural depression, and how he and his wife retired into a couple of rooms rather than desert his people. I don't know any local duty which he did not fully face. A forty-five years' churchwarden and magistrate, reading the lessons every Sun- day and hating to be absent from home on that day; a restorer of Bedenhall Church and the builder of parish rooms wherever there was on his estate a cluster of houses, it was a noble life " in one stay." Guests will never forget the family prayers which he always took. Of course ho was highly qualified for county problems, and in due time, in 1912, he was elected chair- man of the Norfolk County Council. Week by week I found him immersed in all modern economic agricultural and munici- pal questions, whenever I was his guest. No one will forget his funeral. All Norfolk seemed to have sent representatives. A great public school and university and his inherited estate supplied the education of a typical English gentleman, who was as fine a shot and a golfer as he was a high-minded landlord. The type is passing. I hope you will find room for a tribute to the memory of one who was greatly loved. There is no Norfolk public man who will not thank you for inserting these lines, inadequate as they are. Holmes held all the property of Archbishop Sancroft, and carried on the tradition of the piety of the great non-j uror.—I am, Sir, &c.,
H. H. Morroommx (Bishop).
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