Herbert Hensley Henson
|
The Right Reverend Hensley Henson |
|
|---|---|
| Bishop of Durham | |
 |
|
| Church | Church of England |
| Province | Province of York |
| Diocese | Diocese of Durham |
| In office | 1920–1939 |
| Predecessor | Handley Moule |
| Successor | Alwyn Williams |
| Other posts |
Bishop of Hereford (1918–1920) Dean of Durham (1913–1918) |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 1887 (deacon) 1888 (priest) |
| Consecration | 1918 |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 8 November 1863 London, UK |
| Died | 27 September 1947 (aged 83) Hintlesham, Suffolk, UK |
| Buried | Durham Cathedral, UK |
Herbert Hensley Henson (8 November 1863 – 27 September 1947) was an Anglican priest, scholar and controversialist. He was Bishop of Hereford, 1918–20 and Bishop of Durham, 1920–39.
The son of a zealous member of the Plymouth Brethren, 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, where he began to make a reputation as a speaker. He was ordained as a priest in 1888.
Feeling a vocation to minister to the urban poor, Henson served in the East End of London and Barking before becoming chaplain of an ancient hospice in Ilford in 1895. In 1900 he was appointed to the high-profile post of vicar of St Margaret's, Westminster and canon of Westminster Abbey. While there, and as Dean of Durham (1913–18), he wrote prolifically and sometimes controversially. The Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church took exception to his liberal theological views, which some regarded as heretical, and sought unsuccessfully in 1917 to block his appointment as Bishop of Hereford.
In 1920, after two years in the largely rural diocese of Hereford, Henson returned to Durham as its bishop. The industrial north-east of England, including County Durham, was badly affected by an economic depression. Henson was opposed to strikes, trade unions and socialism, and for a time his forthright expression of his views made him unpopular in the diocese. His opinions about some Church matters 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 efforts to introduce prohibition, exploitation of foreign workers by British companies, and fascist and Nazi aggression, and supported reform of the divorce laws, a controversial revision of the Book of Common Prayer and ecumenism.
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