By What Authority?  Robert Hugh Benson

1904 original republished by Once and Future Books 2005 £20.99 ISBN 0-9729821-1-6 543pp

With the Church of England in turmoil over legislation for women bishops and the ripple effect of international fall out over homosexual unions what better escape for vacation reading than a novel that turns the clock back to the reign of Elizabeth I and its religious tensions, especially when the book is based in one’s own Sussex village?

Great Keynes is a lightly disguised Horsted Keynes in Fr. Benson's historical novel about the English Reformation. The story, penned by Archbishop Benson's convert son, is of the Roman Catholic conversion and martyrdom of a Tudor Archbishop's chaplain with roots in mythical Great Keynes. The author's preface is signed 'Tremans, Horsted Keynes, October 27, 1904'. His mother, Archbishop Benson's widow, is commemorated in the porch of St Giles, Horsted Keynes.

Hugh Benson wrote at the apex of the Oxford Movement that attempted recovery of the catholic heritage of the Church of England. Like John Henry Newman Father Benson became a celebrity convert from Anglicanism, one whose investigation of Anglican credentials led him to what he saw as a sounder authority. Father Benson was feted in England and America and that fame lies behind this American reprint of his novel.

The hero, Anthony Norris, and his sister Isabel make separate pilgrimages from Puritan to Papal allegiance over the course of the story. The decisive rejection of the Pope as head of the English Church is followed by the stripping of churches and a pyre of vestments and statues in Great Keynes. The plight of faithful Christians is one of divided loyalty between age old tested devotion and innovation alleged to be in the name of the Gospel.

'By What Authority?' portrays people of integrity across the divide the best of whom wrestle to balance the claims of love and truth. The worst exploit the divide with a cynical eye to worldly profit. Father Benson provides an inspirational portrait of Edmund Campion, the scholar Jesuit known to Queen Elizabeth who is racked at Tyburn. Puritan sympathiser Archbishop Grindal is one of a few Protestants who shine out in the book. Anthony Norris moves from the Archbishop of Canterbury's court to courting recusants such as Campion and engaging with the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola which turn him Christward and Romeward.

The tragedy of Mary Queen of Scots, Queen Elizabeth's attempted via media and the Spanish Armada are covered, woven into the faith journeys of the principal characters. Is it the case though, as the editor's preface claims, that 'Benson depicts the rise and entrenchment of the nation state and the replacement of a supernatural Lord and Savior (sic) with an earthly Virgin Queen'?

If it is this writer would dissent! The ongoing vitality of the Church of England is evident even if that vitalisation so often comes from a vision of the church, catholic or evangelical, that lies beyond her.

A telling feature of the novel is its title, 'By What Authority?' This is the question heavily pursuing the Church of England's children today as they face the 'reimaging' of their church for the modern era. That reimaging seems to be facilitated by the loss of sacred authority consequent upon the Reformation, as Hugh Benson would no doubt concur.

How much the implementing of women's ordination and same sex union blessing is a worldly or a godly reimaging of the church time will tell. Meanwhile reading a historical novel like this can serve to clarify the issues that never seem to go away in the principled compromise that is Anglicanism.

The Revd Dr John Twisleton, Rector of Horsted Keynes