FROM A CORRESPONDENT 14 Sea

There is now a new car park at lonely | Christian forms of baptism and burial were

Morwenstow near the lychgate and the more important to the vicar than the living
ying

old lych-house, where R. S. Hawker
new

of Christian lives. He was at one time

much “worked up” with a fancy that Tait,
It 10
used to have the drowned sailors laid

elected Archbishop of Canterbury, had not
riven
out and shrouded before burial. Down

been properly baptised ! to the right is the vicarage built by The man's whole character was compact

Hawker, with chimneys in the likeness of contradictions. In July, 1861, he wrote: the

of miniature church towers rising “No! I do not like Hymns. First of all, vinia. ned l among the trees. To the left is a gate 1?.

To the left is n gate 1 I know of none to be compared in value

or in sound doctrine with the very worst
! a National Trust sign marking the

version of David's Psalms. Every Hymn
y to Vicarage Cliff--and so to that I ever read is more or less tainted
awker's hut, which he constructed of with unsoundness in thought or in expres-
wreckwood saved from the beach below. sion. Besides, how they utterly destroy

uniformity—the great object of our Church
The top of Hennacliff, “king of

and State ! "
Cornish headlands ”, frowns above, and

HARVEST FESTIVAL
$959. beneath are those deadly rocks. Here,
ded in the hut between, the vicar composed

Yet in the whole church there cannot
much of The Quest of the Sangraal and

have been a priest less uniform in his prac-
nto

tices and more idiosyncratic than R. S.
those concluding lines :-
had
There stood Dundagel, throned, and the

Hawker. He is often remembered chiefly

for his 1843 inauguration (or revival ?) of

great sea the Lay, a strong vassal at his master's gate,

harvest festivals, but these services, though heers | And, like a drunken giant, sobb’d in sleep.

| now very widespread and attracting the ided Today Morwenstow church is included

largest country congregations of the year,

are regarded by the stricter kinds of church of | in the itinerary of various coach trips from

people as a rather dubious development,
zion the holiday resorts and time is allowed for

| a kind of popular “frill ” not known to
a walk to the cliffside. Hawker, who died |
ayoi
halt in 1875, might have grinned a little sourly.

the Book of Common Prayer..

Hawker served not only the first or most
BITTER COMPLAINTS

northerly of Cornish churches but also
Robert Stephen Hawker was not defi-

| Welcombe, the last in North Devon. On cient in self-esteem, An eccentric indivi

Sundays he would ride from one to the

other. It is still a lonely land, one dualist, he liked to throw around his weight

suspects little changed except as to road (or rather his opinions) and sometimes in surfaces. later life he stated clearly that he should Once, when he was returning from Wel