Uproar in Church
The Whiston Matter. By Ralph Arnold (Hart. Davis, 21$.)
IN the year 1842 the Reverend Robert Whiston was appointed by the Dean and Chapter to be headmaster of Rochester Cathedral grammar school, which had been so badly run by the pre- vious headmaster that only one pupil was left in it. He brought with him his own private pupils and his brother-in-law as assistant master; he was successful and popular and the school was ' quickly full again. The dean and chapter were pleased with him.
They soon ceased to be. Whiston investigated the affairs of the cathedral and discovered that the statutes were being broken on a large scale. Scholars who should have been 'maintained' at Cambridge University were not being main- tained. The grammar school boys were deprived of the free board and lodging they were entitled to. The `bedesmen' (pens:oners) had not been appointed since the late eighteenth century. The Visitor—the Bishop of Rochester—had not made his triennial visitations for twenty years.
The chapter had pocketed the proceeds of these malversations, and he wrote to it requiring it to reform, and using fairly peremptory terms. But they would not—they were by now very rich. The chapter consisted of the dean and five canons, only one of whom .had any trace of scholarship; one was perpetually absent, one had had a stroke and all of them broke the law on a large scale by holding she livings of several parishes, which also they never visited. The bishop was a Regency reprobate who had been enthroned in his twenties and was 'avaricious, domineering and neglectful.' When Whiston pub- lished the facts about Rochester and other cathedrals in a pamphlet it was not very sur- prising that they dismiSsed him. •
The story of his subsequent light and victory against the cathedral reads like an excerpt from Trollope or Dickens; it was in fact used by both of them as raw material. fie fought their notice 01 dismissal through the Queen's Bench. through Chancery, through the visiting Bishop's court and through Parliament. when they appointed a prison, chaplain to replace him as headmaster, he refused to go and locked his successor out of the school. Only one pupil attended the new head's classes; the boys thet.,v stones at him and even kicked a football at a canon. And when Whiston was reinstated large reforms had been made.
The attractive and consoling history of Whis- Ion's victory promotes the melancholy thought that there are very few Whistons today. There are too many organisation men. too few granite men like Tommy Hepburn, the Tolpuddle men, Bradlaugh or Lansbury, These (you may object) were exceptional men. But in fact they were not In their day; the Victorian age was rich in such
freedoms characters, to whom we owe the personal ireedoms and the absence 3f large-scale corrup- lion lion which we cherish so inadequately. Whiston was very ordinary; he was a narrow. domineer- ing schoolmaster; he had no broadness of mind nor civility of manner or writing. nor was he lovable in other ways. Merely, he knew what was right and what was wrong and would not be intimidated until he had set the wrong right. He beat the bishop, the dean and the chapter as con- scientiously as he would have beaten his pupils' bottoms for impertinence, lying and bad gram- Mar. God send us more like him.
RAYMOND POSTGATE
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