He
took up the subject and preached on it in his own pulpit in a
way that offended the landowners and alarmed the farmers in
the district. The church wardens, who were farmers, then
locked him out of his church, and for two or three weeks there
was no public worship in the parish of Coombe. Doubtless
their action was applauded by all the substantial men in the
neighbourhood; the others who lived in the cottages and were
unsubstantial didn't matter. That storm blew over, but its
consequences endured, one being that the inflammatory parson
continued to be regarded with cold disapproval by the squires
and their larger tenants. But the vicar himself was
unrepentant and unashamed; on the contrary, he gloried in what
he had said and done, and was proud to be able to relate that
a quarter of a century later one of the two men who had taken
that extreme course said to him, "We locked you out of your
own church, but years have brought me to another mind about
that question. I see it in a different light now and know
that you were right and we were wrong."
Towards evening I said good-bye to my kind friend and
entertainer and continued my rural ride. From Coombe it is
five miles to Hurstbourne Tarrant, another charming "highland"
village, and the road, sloping down the entire distance,
struck me as one of the best to be on I had travelled in
Hampshire, running along a narrow green valley, with oak and
birch and bramble and thorn in their late autumn colours
growing on the slopes on either hand.
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