PMarione Site Admin
Joined: 26 Mar 2007 Posts: 883
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Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2011 2:29 pm Post subject: the Rev Henry Bellairs |
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Henry Bellairs was a Midshipman on the Spartiate at the battle of Trafalgar.
He was severely wounded in the arm and leg and invalided in 1806 which put an end to his naval career.
He joined the 15th Hussars but forced to resign for having married withouth the army's consent.
He then matriculated in Oxford and took Holy Orders and became Rector of Bedworth, Warwick.
He died in 1872, aged 81.
He seems to have been a Reverend in the line of Don Camillo :
"He faced a situation here that would have appalled most men, and carried out his task with amazing success.
He found the parish utterly demoralised and disorganised: poverty, unemployment, and vice were rampant; his church empty and his schools almost completely neglected. Cockfighting, bull-baiting, drinking, gambling, and disorders of every description had full sway; fights among the men were incessant, and even the women stripped in the streets to fight, and the surpassing grossness and degradation of the place obtained for it the proverbial designation of " Black Bed'orth.
But the rector tackled his task in characteristic fashion, and two successful fights - one in the churchyard and one in the marketplace - established his physical supremacy over even the worst of his parishioners.
He made successful war upon the public houses by information before his fellow magistrates, made himself respected even amongst the roughest mobs, by the energy with which he attacked the prevailing disorders, and compelled the parish authorities to the vigorous performance of their duties, at the same time that he wrought unceasingly at his own.
Gradually a great improvement in the habits and manners of the place was achieved, and the word "black" lost its meaning."
Bedworth Church & its Rectors by Alfred H Lawrence |
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