AN AMAZING MARRIAGE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 154, 8 October 1910, Page 5

AN AMAZING MARRIAGE

VICAR GUILTY OF "GROSS IMMORALITY." By Cable—Press Association— Copyright. London, October Q. The Peterborough Consistory Court decided that the Rev. Christopher Hudson, vicar of Sutton Chen y, was guilty of immorality by contracting a marriage after the Scotch fashion while his own wife was living.

Some five years ago the Rev. C. Hudson's wife deciled not to live with him anv longer, and left him, al=o leaving behind the child of the marriage, a little bov. For five years Mr. Hudson endured the lot of a grass widower, and then, in defiaw of 'lip laws of the Church and State and of sociil conventions, he took unto himself another •'wife," whom he married after the Scottish fashion of declaration in the presence of witnesses. This marriage hiholds to be as "honorable and moral as anv wedding in the United Kingdom, even if taken by a dozen priests and bishops in a cathedral." The vicar's parishioners do not at flr«t appear to have known of the "marriage," but it seems that Sutton Cheney folk were soon winking and nodding over the relations of the parson and his "lion s-eeper." The scandal presently spread :> places berond, aihl came to the ears of the Rev. Mr. Bowers, of Market Bosworth. That gentleman at once drew the Bishop's attention to the irregular menage at Sutton Cheney, and in due course the Bishop of Peterborough inhibited Mr. Hudson from taking further services in his parish until the changes of immorality had been met and disproved. Mr. Hudson's retort to his diocesan took the shape of an amazing letter, in which hj" openly defied the Bishop to take away his living, and vehemently denied that there was in his actions any just cause for anyone to bo scandalised.