Herbert Hensley Henson (8 November 1863 – 27 September 1947) was an English Anglican cleric, scholar and polemicist. He was Bishop of Hereford from 1918 to 1920 and Bishop of Durham from 1920 to 1939.
Henson's father was a devout follower of the Christian sect the Plymouth Brethren and disapproved of schools. Henson was not allowed to go to school until he was fourteen, and was largely self-educated. He was admitted to the University of Oxford, and gained a first-class degree in 1884. In the same year he was elected as a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and began to make a reputation as a speaker. He was ordained priest in 1888. Feeling a vocation to minister to the urban poor, Henson served in the East End of London and Barking before becoming the chaplain of Ilford Hospital Chapel, a 12th-century hospice in Ilford, in 1895. In 1900 he was appointed to the prominent post of rector of St Margaret's, Westminster, and canon of Westminster Abbey. While there, and subsequently as Dean of Durham (1913–1918), he wrote prolifically and sometimes controversially. He was tolerant of a wide range of theological views; because of this, some members of the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England accused him of heresy and sought unsuccessfully to block his appointment as Bishop of Hereford in 1917.
In 1920, after two years in the largely rural diocese of Hereford, Henson returned to Durham in the industrial north-east of England as its bishop. The area was badly affected by an economic depression. Henson was opposed to strikes, trade unions and socialism, and for a time his outspoken denunciation of them made him unpopular in the diocese. Some of his opinions changed radically during his career: at first a strong advocate of the Church of England's continued establishment as the country's official church, he came to believe that politicians could not be trusted to legislate properly on ecclesiastical matters, and he espoused the cause of disestablishment. He campaigned against prohibition, the exploitation of foreign workers by British companies, and fascist and Nazi aggression. He supported reform of the divorce laws, the controversial 1928 revision of the Book of Common Prayer, and ecumenism.
Life and career
Early years
Herbert Hensley Henson was born in London on 8 November 1863, the fourth son and sixth child of eight of Thomas Henson, a businessman, and his second wife, Martha, Fear.Peart-Binns, p. 17 Thomas, raised in a farming family in Devon, quarrelled with his father and left home as a young man to go into business in London. By 1865, when Hensley was two years old, Thomas had prospered enough to buy a property in Broadstairs on the coast of Kent to retire there and devote himself to gardening and religion.Chadwick, pp. 1–2 In his three volumes of memoirs, written towards the end of his life, Henson was conspicuously reticent about his childhood, devoting three and a half pages out of the total of nearly 1,200 to his first eighteen years,Henson (1942), pp. 1–4 but it is clear that Thomas Henson was a zealous evangelical Christian who had renounced the Church of England and later became a follower of the Plymouth Brethren.
Henson's biographer John Peart-Binns writes that Henson senior's "bleak outlook on the world" and "feeling of urgency to be prepared for the Second Coming" caused his family life to be one of all-pervading darkness.Peart-Binns, pp. 18–19 His wife shielded the children from the worst excesses of what the biographer Matthew Grimley describes as Thomas's "bigotry",Grimley, Matthew. 2011 "Henson, Herbert Hensley (1863–1947)" , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 4 November 2014 but in 1870 she died, and, in Henson's words, "with her died our happiness".Henson (1942), p. 3 Grimley comments that Henson's unhappy childhood "could have come straight out of the pages of Charles Dickens".
As an adult Henson remembered Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin as the first book that moved him.Chadwick, p. 3 Thomas Henson forbade his children to go to school, play with other children, or go on holiday. Chadwick writes that deprived of outlets except religion, the family, and his father's books, Hensley "escaped into the library. At an early age he became the voracious reader of the family."Chadwick, p. 4 The family library lacked fiction for boys; the young Henson instead read such works as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and John Milton's Paradise Lost.Chadwick, p. 5 Chadwick comments that by the age of fourteen "this prodigious boy had read as deeply in divinity as many young men when they take holy orders." The young Henson became a dedicated Christian and felt a vocation for the Anglican priesthood; his father's fundamentalist views were anathema, and left him with what Grimley calls "an enduring hatred of protestant fanaticism".
In 1873 Thomas Henson remarried; Emma Parker, widow of a Lutheran pastor, ensured that the children were properly educated. In Henson's phrase, "she recreated the home". She introduced him to the works of Walter Scott and translations of classical authors such as Thucydides and Plutarch, helping to form his literary style. He wrote later, "It was a curiously mixed bag, but I absorbed it with avidity". He remained devoted to her – he called her – and once he was an adult he cared for her until her death in 1924.
His father did not allow Henson to be baptised or to attend a school until the boy was fourteen.Chadwick, p. 6 The rector of Broadstairs conducted the baptism; there were no godparents, and the young Henson undertook their functions himself.Peart-Binns, p. 19 He took religious instruction from the rector, leading to his confirmation as a communicant member of the Church of England in 1878.Peart-Binns, p. 20 At Broadstairs Collegiate School he learned what he called "a smattering of Latin and Greek".Henson (1942), p. 4 That apart, he found he derived little educational benefit, having already educated himself widely and deeply from books in his father's library.Chadwick, pp. 6–7 He rose to be head boy of the school, but in 1879, after a dispute with the headmaster during which Henson expressed "with more passion than respect" his opinion of the head – whom he held in contemptChadwick, pp. 7–8 – he at once voluntarily left the school.Henson (1950), p. 358
Henson then found a post as an assistant master at Brigg Grammar School in Lincolnshire; the headmaster there recognised his talent and recommended that he should apply for admission to the University of Oxford. Thomas Henson was against the idea, partly because his financial means had declined, but was talked round by his wife and gave his consent. He agreed to fund his son's studies, but the sum he allowed was too little to pay the substantial fees for residence at any of the colleges of the university. In 1881 Henson applied successfully for admission as an unattached student, a member of none of the Oxford colleges, but eligible for the full range of university tuition.Chadwick, p. 16 Cut off from the camaraderie of college life, Henson felt seriously isolated. He concentrated on his studies, and gained a first class honours degree in Modern History in June 1884.Peart-Binns, pp. 21–22
All Souls
Such was the quality of Henson's scholarship that his history tutor encouraged him to enter the annual competition for appointment as a fellow of All Souls, the university's post-graduate research college.Chadwick, p. 21 He was appointed in November 1884, at the age of twenty. Membership of the college offered an annual stipend of ; for the first time, Henson was in reasonably comfortable financial circumstances. At All Souls, he later wrote, "I was welcomed with a generous kindness which made me feel immediately at home. I formed friendships which have enriched my life."Henson (1942), p. 5 Peart-Binns suggests that Henson may nonetheless have remained something of an outsider, his arrival at All Souls "akin to that of an alien". The college was headed by the warden, Sir William Anson, who became something of a father figure to Henson, and encouraged his researches.Chadwick, p. 24 Henson's first paper, on William II of England, attracted attention. Peart-Binns comments, "He knew how to hold an audience in thrall by using language which developed into 'Hensonia' ... Charles Oman, Chichele Professor of Modern History was gripped by Henson's 'extraordinary ability'".Peart-Binns, p. 24 Aware that his quick tongue could lead him into indiscretion, he adopted and maintained all his life the practice of writing out his lectures and sermons in full beforehand rather than improvising or speaking from concise notes.Chadwick, p. 279 He preferred a quill pen, and wrote in a fine clear hand; he considered illegible writing to be a form of bad manners as tiresome as inaudible talking.Lyttelton in Lyttelton and Hart-Davis, p. 25 He gained a reputation as a controversialist. In a biographical sketch, Harold Begbie wrote that at Oxford Henson was nicknamed "Coxley Cocksure"; he added:
In 1885, in tandem with his work at All Souls, Henson acted as tutor to Lyle Rathbone, son of the philanthropic businessman William Rathbone.Chadwick, p. 28 The family lived in Birkenhead, where for six months Henson stayed with them. He had ample leisure time, much of which he spent in visiting local churches and nonconformist chapels. This process left him struggling with doctrinal questions, but sure of a religious vocation. The day after his return to Oxford in October he went into St Mary's, Iffley, and with his hand on the altar vowed to dedicate himself to God and the Church of England.Peart-Binns, pp. 25–26; and Chadwick, p. 29
Henson's beliefs on doctrine were still forming, but he inclined to high-churchmanship and was influenced by Charles Gore and the Puseyites, though he was unattracted by more extreme Anglo-Catholic forms of ritualism. With his suspicion of nonconformism he was a proponent of the principle of establishment – the maintenance of Anglicanism as the official state religion – and in 1886 he became secretary of the new Oxford Laymen's League for Defence of the National Church, to counter the threat of disestablishment proposed by politicians such as Joseph Chamberlain and Charles Dilke.Henson, H. Hensley. "The Oxford Laymen's League for Defence of the National Church", The Times, 13 August 1886, p. 6; and "Election Intelligence", The Times, 17 November 1885, p. 7
Ordination and east London The poverty Henson had seen in deprived areas of Birkenhead during his six months with the Rathbones gave him a strong impetus to minister to the poor.Chadwick, p. 29 In 1887, after being ordained deacon, he took charge of the Oxford House Settlement, a high-church mission in Bethnal Green, a poor area of the East End of London.Chadwick, pp. 40–41 While in this post he further honed his speaking skills in public debates with atheist orators, many from the National Secular Society's office in Bethnal Green.Peart-Binns, p. 41; and Chadwick, p. 44