Hawarden to London Slums.

Manawatu Herald, 22 October 1904, Page 3

Hawarden to London Slums.

The Rev. Stephen Gladstone, the son of the “ Grand Old Man,” a short time ago resigned the lucrative and in every sense of the word delightful rectorship of the Parish of Hawarden, which is on the Gladstone estates, where his father was wont to read the lessons at the daily morning services and on Sundays with that wonderfully melodious voice of his. Considerable astonishment was caused by the action of Stephen Gladstone, and much speculation was indulged in with regard to the motives which prompted him to resign, some people circulating the story that it was due to differences of opinion with his widowed sister-in-law, the Hon. Mrs William Gladstone, whose eldest boy (William Glynne Gladstone), now in his nineteenth year, is the owner of Hawarden Gastle and the property surrounding it, Mrs Gladstone being virtually the mistress until her boy attains his majority. These rumours have now been set at rest by the discovery that he has given up his Hawarden rectory in . order to devote himself to mission Work in one of the most poverty stricken districts of London in i fact, in those very districts where he laboured for several years and virtually won his ecclesiastical spurs when first ordained. He does not take charge of the parish, but merely assumes the rol.o of a curate of St. Majiy-the-Leas, in Lambeth, and it is in these slums that he has already established his residence a striking change, tq say the least, from the beautiful English country scenery ‘around Hawarden. V*',' ,'Thisself-denial on the part of the « »Rev. Stephen Gladstone is all the !i more remarkable when one recalls ** the fact that bis father as Premier again and again had the duty of nominating clerics to the highest ecclesiastical dignities of the land, and that nobody would have thought the worse of him if he had presented his son's name, if not for a bishopric, at any rate for the canonry of some cathedral. The late Lord Salisbury also had a clergyman son, for whom be always declined a preferment, and who, ever since his ordination, has been in charge of the parish of Hatfield, which is comprised in the .territorial possessions of the Lords of Salisbury.