Untitled - Electric Scotland

1866-68] MR. MACRORIE S NOMINATION 383
no difficulties, but for this purpose he required the co
operation of the Archbishop, on whom the Lambeth
debates had had anything but a reassuring effect. Indeed,
Archbishop Longley had now, it would seem, come round
to a view not very different in some respects from that of
Bishop Tait, and a few weeks after the Conference he
wrote to Mr. Butler dissuading him in decided terms
from accepting the Bishopric, 1
although
he retained his
opinion that some orthodox diocesan must sooner or later
be appointed. Mr. Butler accordingly declined to go
further, and Bishop Gray, disappointed and indignant, but
not disheartened, set to work to find a substitute. One
clergyman after another was offered the post in vain, but
at last, on January 13, 1868, Bishop Gray wrote to the
Guardian that the nomination had been accepted by the
Rev. W. K. Macrorie, Vicar of St. James , Accrington.
" The "
have
place and time for the Consecration," he said,
not yet been definitely fixed." It became known,
however, in a few days, that arrangements were being
privately made for the consecration to take place at the
earliest possible date, and that there was no intention of
asking for, or waiting for, the usual mandate from the
Crown. It would have been the only consecration that
had ever taken place in England without such mandate,
and the new departure might have had serious results.
Had Bishop Gray been content to return to Capetown
and consecrate the new Bishop there, no further difficulty
would have arisen. But he was naturally bent upon hold
ing the consecration in England, so as to secure the appa-
1
"
I have come to the conclusion," he said, "that I ought to dissuade you
from availing yourself of your election to the See of Pieter Maritzburg. To
my mind, the appointment of any one of very marked opinions to the See
would be open to serious objections, and it would be better to select some
one more calculated to meet the various shades of religious opinion that exist
among the faithful members of the Church of England in the Colony of
Natal." Bishop Gray s Life^ vol. ii. p. 368.