EDITORIAL UR President takes with him the good wishes of all members of the Society as he relinquishes the Principalship of O Lancashire College, which he has held since 1922. Charac­ teristically, he is not ceasing work altogether, for he has accepted the pastorate of the church at Cavendish, Suffolk. Dr. Grieve has been very loyal to the Society, and always on the look-out for opportunities to further its interests. We wish for him and Mrs. Grieve many years of healthy, happy leisure, with just as much work as they feel inclined to do. It is a hundred years this year since the opening of the Lancashire College in its Manchester home; it is therefore appropriate that the President should address our Annual Meeting on the subject ''Early Years in Lancashire College". The Meeting will be held in Dr. Berry's Room, 22, Memorial Hall, London, on Tuesday, May 11th, at 3 p.m. We print within an article by one of the oldest students of the College, the Rev. J. P. Kingsland, describing his student days sixty-five years ago. * * * * * Though our last issue carries the date November, 1941, it did not appear until well into 1942. We are glad to be able to print this 64 pp. number, though we fear the paper situation will prevent another number from appearing in the autumn. Nevertheless, the work of the Society is being maintained. There has never been more correspondence than this winter, and many of our members are engaged in research of various kinds. We hope that all are keeping a watch on this paper salvage campaign, which might easily result in the destruction of valuable historical documents. In some areas an expert examines all papers submitted. Recently from Suffolk we were asked if we would care to have an album which had been sent in. It was the ordinary kind of Victorian album, with the usual quotations, but some of its pages contained the signatures of ministers and delegates who visited the Doddridge Museum in Northampton when the Congregational Union held its Autumnal Meetings there in 1851. We accepted the album with gratitude, and it has found a fitting abiding place in Northampton. We hope to print a description of its contents later. 129 130 EDITORIAL This is a year of ecclesiastical centenaries, and notably for Scot­ land. The centenary of the Disruption must not be allowed to obscure that of the formation of the Evangelical Union. Of the two events Dr. John Murphy writes in the April Congregational Quarterly, and members of the Society may care to be reminded of the article on "The Morisonian Controversy", by the Rev. M. R. Kirkpatrick, in Transactions, VIII. 226-236. Prof. Hugh Watt's Thomas Chalmers and the Disruption (Nelson, 7s. 6d.) is a stirring account of the life and work of the preacher-reformer who led the Free Churchmen out into the wilderness, which his skill and the devotion and generosity of the people of Scotland soon transformed. * * * * * For Congregationalists there is an even more important com­ memoration. On April 6th, 1593, Henry Barrow and John Greenwood came to an untimely end; six weeks later the Arch­ bishop of Canterbury saw to it that John Penry was executed with as much secrecy as possible. Today it seems incredible that men of such steadfast courage and loyalty, earnest men making their witness for pure religion, should have lost their lives in this country for the same cause for which pastors are imprisoned in occupied Europe today. There is opportunity for Congregationalists this spring to tell the world that three and a half centuries ago their forefathers were dying for a cause for which Roman Bishops are standing today-the Bishop of Munster almost uses Penry's words in his recently published sennons. Recently we have spent much time in transcribing the note-book Penry used in the last months of his life. It rests in the Hunting­ ton Library, San Marino, California. Why there, of all places, readers may ask? Because the Huntington Library bought the Ellesmere MSS., and the first Baron Ellesmere was Sir Thomas Egerton, Attorney-General and subsequently Lord Chancellor, one of the men responsible for Penry's fate. Apparently members of the Privy Council, Judges, and others kept in their private posses­ sion exhibits at the trials in which they were engaged, and Elles­ mere kept this note-book. Penry's papers were seized, and, as is well known, his private artd unpublished writings were put in as evidence against him. We have copied at the Huntington Library some of the depositions, and this note-book can be identified among the exhibits listed. Other unknown works of Penry are mentioned, and we hope when the war clouds lift that we may have the oppor­ tunity to search for them in the Ellesmere Collection. Passages used in the trial are marked in the margin of the note­ book. A note-book kept in prison is not exactly an ideal manu­ script to decipher. There are now two photostats in this country, EDITORIAL 131 one in the National Library of Wales, the other in our possession, and thus we have been able to give a good deal of time to it. Some­ times Penry writes with the book upside down; often an item does not run consecutively; sometimes there are fragmentary notes. With patience, however, practically the whole has been deciphered, though when Penry has used Welsh expert assistance has been needed: one baffling word only yielded when a brain wave sug­ gested it was a Welsh word in Greek letters! In due course, the note-book will be published-the precursor, we trust, of the long desired corpus of the writings of Browne, Harrison, Barrow, Green­ wood and Penry. Penry was a truly heroic figure, and work on this manuscript has been thrilling indeed. It contains much impor­ tant information, and confirms the view that there are few men in the history of Wales-or of any land, for that matter-who rank with the young martyr who gave his life witnessing for the truth when only about thirty years of age. * * * * * It is well that even in war-time local historians should continue their work, and from one of Britain's most-blitzed cities comes a readable popular history. The Rev. J. G. Patton was for thirty years minister in Hull, first in Hope Street, and then when the church "moved out" and became Newland. The Story of Hope Street Newland Congregational Church, Hull (Brown, 3s.) begins in 1797, and ends only with the present. Perhaps the most remark­ able of Mr. Patton's predecessors in the ministry was Henry Oller­ enshaw, of whose work from 1856 onward a vivid account is given. * * * * * The large folio manuscript volume recently acquired, and to be presented to the Presbyterian Historical Society of England, con­ tains six Westminster Assembly documents in perfect condition. 1. The Form of Church Government {Sept., 1644), in the hand­ writing of John Wallis. 2. Petition to Parliament (4 Aug.,'1645) for expediting Presby­ terian government, apparently in the handwriting of Adoniram Byfield. 3. The Answer of the Assembly to the Reasons of the Dissenting Brethren for not bringing in a model of their way. 4. The Reasons of the Dissenting Brethren against the third Proposition concerning Presbyterial Government. 132 EDITORIAL 5. The Answer of the Assembly to the said Reasons. These three are in the beautiful penmanship of several profes­ sional scriveners. 6. The Confession of Faith, in the handwriting of Cornelius Burges, containing several corrections which are referred to in the minutes of Assembly. The documents are all duly attested, and the volume thus con­ tains the signatures of each of the seven men who held office in the Assembly, Twisse, Herle, Burges, White, Palmer, Roborough, and Byfield. * * * * • The appreciations of the life and work of Bernard Manning heard at the last Annual Meeting are printed within. Since that time Mr. Frank Brittain's admirable memoir of Mr. Manning (Hefter, 7s. 6d.) has been published, the Independent Press has issued a volume of Mr. Manning's sermons, A Layman in the Ministry {6s.) and the Epworth Press The Hymns of Wesley and Watts 6s.). A new edition of Orthodox Dissent is in preparation, and Mr. J. 0. Greenwood is completing the History of the Dissenting Deputies on which Mr. Manning had been for so long engaged. A second volume of sermons is also a possibility. * * * * • Vol. VI of the Warwick County Records (Shire Hall, Warwick, 10s. 6d.) has been issued, and an article thereon has appeared in the Congregational Quarterly (XXI, 58-61). Once again the editorial work is a joy to see, and Messrs. Ratcliff and Johnson and the Records Committee are to be warmly congratulated. * * * * * How many of our readers with Forsythia in their gardens know that it gets its name from one of the founders of Kensington Chapel? Mr. F. P. Winterbotham is now re-telling the story of the Chapel in the Church Calendar; in our next issue we hope to print extracts. Bernard Lord Manning, the Man HA VE been asked to say something about Bernard Manning as a man. His worth to us as a historian is to be spoken of I by Mr. Matthews. In that respect his work was unfinished­ inevitably a fragment, though a brilliant and valuable fragment. Manning died before he was 49, when his powers and resources as a student of history had only begun to bear fruit. But about a man's personality and character there is something by no means fragmentary, something whole and complete, even though he dies young.