VICAR KEPT IN VESTRY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18025, 25 February 1922, Page 2 (Supplement)

VICAR KEPT IN VESTRY.

SEQUEL TO CHURCH TROUBLE. NOTICE BOARD WAR WITHCURATE How a Surrey vicar was held up in his own vestry and prevented'from taking service in his church on Sunday • evening was related by the victim recently. . The Rc.7. A. O. Tranter, of St. Jude's Church, Englefield GreeyEgham (Surrey) was engaged in. meditation and prayer, when a knock came to the vestry door. In response to his call to "Come in," eight men walked into the apartment and ranged themselves round the door, so that he could not get out, and demanded' why a certain change had been made on the notice board. Mr. Tranton declined to sny anything on the subject—a matter of local dispute —before the service, but said "I will meet you all afterwards." He then sent for a churchwarden to witness the incident. It was now a quarter _ to seven, and the service was timed for\6.oo, go Sir. Tranter gave instructions for tbo curate to take service. He was left with the eight men, and as the service was drawing to a close he put) on his hat and coat, and said he was going home. They let him go. Mr. Tranter, who seemed littlo disturbed by the evonts of the evening before, told a pressman that he had.gone to the church to preach a missionary sermon. During Sunday afternoon he. was warned that there might bo violence, and was asked if he would have a bodyguard of parishioners. He declined,

For some time there had been friction between tho vicar and the Rev. £.• Teviotdale, curato of the church. Mr. Tranter is a Churchman, and attends Nonconformist gatherings, while tho ciu'atfl has High Church leanings. A ' petition recently was preferred to the Bishop of Winchester asking that the fingleficld Green part of tho parish should he separated from Egham and be mado a parish on its own account.

Mr. Teviotdalc, the curate, had had the notice-board of the church painted, on which he was described as curatc-in-cfiarge, and a former'reference to evening Communion was omitted. :

The Bishop.of Guildford decided against the petition, and tho vicar had tho noticeboard painted over. The scene above described was tho sen,ue<.