Item 123 - Letter from Thomas Robinson to John Wilberforce Doran

1 folded sheet

See MSPB 123.

Transcript

Private

The Precincts. {1}
March 29th 1865.

Revd & dear Sir,

Your letter, being addressed unfortunately to my empty house at the Temple, has only just reached me at this place, together with a copy of the “Church Times”.

I have carefully read the Article in that Journal to which you refer, & have no sympathy with the language there used with regard to the Ch: Missionary Society, its Missionaries in Travancore, & our Indian Bishops.

I remember your good Father with affection & respect, having been Chaplain to Bishop Heber, when His Lordship invited your Father to join his party in travelling from Madras to the South; & I do not wonder at the pain you feel in reading the reviewer’s mention of his name. But I am bound to say to you in all truth, as I said publickly to the world many years ago, that I exceedingly deplored his withholding the two letters which the Bishop entrusted to his care. addressed to Mar Athanasius the legate of the Patriarch; which had they been delivered, would have saved the unhappy consequences of his imprisonment & banishment. Bishop Heber was empowered by the Governor of Madras not only to prevent the dismissal of the Legate, but to assign him a salary for his maintenance in the Diocese of Malabar, as Archbishop with the two native Bishops as his suffrages. {2} His Lordship was most anxious to preserve unbroken the dependance† of the Syriac Church in Travancore on the Patriarch of Antioch, both on the ground of clear & undoubted justice of claim, but for the great value of the connection among their heathen neighbours.

It was my duty to detail the circumstances of the failure of his endeavours to the Patriarch after his death, & at the same time to the Archbishop of Canterbury; & you will find the whole of the correspondence in “the last days of Bishop Heber” published in London in 1830. I believe it is quite out of print now; but if you will favor me with a call at the Temple (where I hope to be next week) I shall be happy to lend you the volume. You will see the impossibility of my altering my expression of regret at the course your excellent Father pursued; in deference, I have no doubt, to his seniors in the Mission, but unfortunately neutralizing the entire plan of our Bishop.

I would earnestly advise you not to notice the review at all.

Believe me, dear Sir, | very faithfully yours,
Thos Robinson

I am generally at home at the Temple till 12.

——————————

Some abbreviations have been expanded.

{1} Robinson lived in the Cathedral Precincts at Rochester, where he was a canon.

{2} A slip for ‘suffragans’?

† Sic.

In an envelope pasted to a flyleaf in D.8.157.