RECTOR CHARGED.

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17410, 24 May 1928, Page 5

RECTOR CHARGED.

COMMISSION’S DECISION. GUILTY OF FOUL LANGUAGEACQUITTED OF OTHER ACCUSATION (By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Australian Press Association.) (Received May 24, 9.45 a.m.) LONDON, May 23. The commission of inquiry into the case of Rev. O. E. Hayden, vicar of Avening, found him’ guilty of had language and not guilty of all the oilier charges. Little else was discussed in Gloucestershire recently but the inquiry of a Special Commission of Assessors into the complaints by members of his congregation against the Rev. Oswald Ernest Hayden, the rector of Avening, a picturesque little village in the heart of the Cotswolds. In a variety of charges the rector, a married man, was accused, among other things, of flagrant association with an assistantmistress in the parish infants’ school; of foul language “leading to scandal and offence;” of resort to taverns and alehouses; and of neglect to visit the sick, and infirm, and the afflicted. Each and every one of the allegations against him was categorically denied by the rector on oath ; and, so far as her implication in the charges was concerned, was supported in those denials by the schoolmistress. People, trekked from all parts of the country to the Gloucester Shire Hail, where the commission is silting, and from the rector’s own parish, 17 miles distant, they arrived “in state” by motor-coach. The proceedings were instituted by the Bishop of Gloucester, under the Benefices (Ecclesiastical Duties) Act of 1926, and they are the first of any importance since the measure became law.