Page 14 - KBHA BULLETIN 3

11

point in the judgment is contained in the following words: ‘No metropolitan or bishop in any

colony having legislative institutions can by virtue of the crown’s letters patent alone (unless
granted under an act of parliament or confirmed by a colonial statute) exercise any coercive

jurisdiction or hold any court or tribunal for that purpose.’ It is a remarkable fact that the
judge who presided at the pronouncement of this judgment, Lord-chancellor Westbury, was

the very person who, as attorney-general, had drawn the letters patent which he now
pronounced to be null and void in law.” (Pocock, p. 18.)

Back in December 1863 Gray wrote that “we are prepared, if there is to be a struggle with
the world, to do what we believe our duty to our Lord requires us to do. If Civil Courts

interfere and send Colenso back, God helping, I will excommunicate, and if my brethren will
join, will (if the Church at home is afraid to do so) consecrate an orthodox Bishop. I know

that this will provoke the vengeance of the civil power; but I am prepared to brave everything

in this case.” (quoted in Guy, p. 142.)

Widdicombe recounts “[when] he found that [his second Letters Patent] were a broken reed
to lean upon he wrote to the Lord Chancellor stating that as the Crown had compelled him to

obtain legal powers of jurisdiction which were not worth the parchment they were written on

and for which he had had to pay nearly £500, the Crown ought in common honesty to return
the money to him. ‘I corresponded,’ said he, ‘with certain high and exalted personages for

some time, and did at length succeed in prevailing upon them to return a portion of the fees I
had paid. It was only a portion, and I thought myself fortunate in getting even that.’”

(Widdicombe, p. 175-176.)

The End

Sophy Gray died at the Cape on 27 April 1871. The Bishop died at Bishop’s Court on 1
September 1872.