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FROM A CORRESPONDENT

Morwenstow near the lychgate and the There is now a new car park at lonely | old lych-house, where R. S. Hawker used to have the drowned sailors laid out and shrouded before burial. Down to the right is the vicarage built by miniature church towers rising Hawker, with chimneys in the likeness among the trees. To the left is a gate

of

Christian forms of baptism and burial were
more important to the vicar than the living
of Christian lives. He was at one time
much "worked up " with a fancy that Tait,
elected Archbishop of Canterbury, had not
been properly baptised!

The man's whole character was compact
of contradictions. In July, 1861, he wrote:
"No! I do not like Hymns. First of all,
I know of none to be compared in value

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a National Trust sign marking the
to Vicarage Cliff-and SO to
awker's hut, which he constructed of
Wreckwood saved from the beach below.

The top of Hennacliff, "king of
Cornish headlands ", frowns above, and
beneath are those deadly rocks. Here,
in the hut between, the vicar composed
much of The Quest of the Sangraal and
those concluding lines:-

There stood Dundagel, throned, and the
great sea
Lay, a strong vassal at his master's gate,
And, like a drunken giant, sobb'd in sleep.

Today Morwenstow church is included
in the itinerary of various coach trips from
the holiday resorts and time is allowed for
a walk to the cliffside. Hawker, who died
in 1875, might have grinned a little sourly.

BITTER COMPLAINTS

Robert Stephen Hawker was not deficient in self-esteem, An eccentric indivi

dualist, he liked to throw around his weight (or rather his opinions) and sometimes in

later life he

that ne hould

or in sound doctrine with the very worst
version of David's Psalms. Every Hymn
that I ever read is more or less tainted
with unsoundness in thought or in expres-
Besides, how they utterly destroy
uniformity-the great object of our Church
and State !

sion.

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HARVEST FESTIVAL

Yet in the whole church there cannot
have been a priest less uniform in his prac-
tices and more idiosyncratic than R. S.
Hawker. He is often remembered chiefly
for his 1843 inauguration (or revival?) of
harvest festivals, but these services, though
now very widespread and attracting the
largest country congregations of the year,
are regarded by the stricter kinds of church
people as a rather dubious development-
a kind of popular "frill not known to
the Book of Common Prayer.

Hawker served not only the first or most
northerly of Cornish churches but also
Welcombe, the last in North Devon. On
Sundays he would ride from one to the
other. It is still a lonely land, one
suspects little changed except as to road

surfaces.

ist from Dobell Car 166/291

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