REVELATIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 40, 16 February 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

REVELATIONS.

RECTOR FOUND HANGED. TATHETIC STORY. A pathetic story of a rector's weariness of life was told at Woking at the inquest on the Rev. John Gwyon, aged 60, of Bisley, who was found hanged in the empty rectory. The rector, who, it was said, was eccentric in clothes and ways, lived in one room over Bisley Post Office. His landlord 6aid that on Christmas night the rector casually mentioned that there was nothing in the Bible to indicate where a suicide went to. Mrs. Frances Mannings, who lives in the church cottage at Bisley, said that duririg the last month the rector had been in a very agitated state. "He came to me several times," 6he said, "and said he was being turned out of the living and that the bishop had ordered him to live in the rectory or resign. He said he dreaded passing the rectory, and that it gave him the shivers. Once when he passed it he fell down and lost consciousness. He came into my cottage and said he was very ill. "The rector has knelt down at the fireplace in my cottage and prayed to God to take him. He said he dreaded not so much leaving the Church, but the desolation of old age." Mr. H. T. A. Dashwood, the bishop's secretary, said: "I am glad to say there is not a word of truth in the statement that Mr. Gwyon was being turned out of his living. 'Tor gome time Bishop Talbot and the present Bishop of Guildford have been trying to relieve Mr. Gwyon of his work by obtaining a pension for him. The net value of his living was £200 a year, and arrangements had been made to give him £175 a year if he desired to resign. The question of Mr. Gwyon's resignation was entirely voluntary. Nobody had the power to turn him out."

Mr. William Davies, a Woking solicitor, who had acted for Mr. Gwyon, said that the rector was not a poor man. He could have afforded to live at the rectory without a pension.

The whole of Mr. Gywon's worries were due to pressure being brought to bear upon hira in the first place by the bishop to live in the rectory. Ultimately various commissions were mooted, the first being with a view to the amalgamation of Bisley with another parish.

The jury returned a verdict of suicide while insane, and expressed the opinion that Mr. Gwyon had become a mental and physical wreck.