BISHOPS ON HORSEBACK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 September 1941, Page 6

BISHOPS ON HORSEBACK

. Evangelistic zeal and the ability to ride a horse are not (as witness John Wesley) incompatible, says a writer in the “Manchester Guardian.” One fears, however, that not all of his episcopal brethren will contemplate so lightheartedly as does the Bishop of Lichfield the prospect of having, on account of petrol shortage, to revert to older methods of episcopal locomotion and take to horseback as a means of getting about their dioceses. Dr. Woods would doubtless display as an equestrian the same prowess he has shown as a pedestrian in summer pilgrimages afoot in his diocese. Some of his bro-ther-bishops are —not to put too fine a point upon it —not so well qualified as he is to adorn the saddle and have figures better adapted to a Rolls than to a Rosinante. It would, indeed, be difficult to recall any recent occupants of the episcopal bench, apart from a few with overseas experience, with any pretensions to horsemanship. Possibly the slump in episcopal interest in equitation dates from the death of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, who met his death by being thrown from his horse while riding on the Surrey Downs near Leatherhead on July 19, 1873. but the Bishop’s second son, Ernest, who afterwards became Bishop successively of Newcastle and Chichester, was also a mighty horseman in his younger days and, according to his biographer, left behind him) at Oxford many stories of his ex-j ploits in dealing with “horses of dubious stamina but unquestionable viciousnoss.”