THE REV. JOHN RUSSELL 



If all sporting parsons had been of the same sort as the 

 beloved and respected ' Jack ' Russell of Devon, I doubt 

 whether there would ever have been any objection taken 

 to them, even by the most strait-laced. The indul- 

 gence in sport pure and simple has never, so far as I am 

 aware, been forbidden by the canons of the Anglican 

 Church, though I can recall some instances in which 

 bishops have lifted up their voices against clerical 

 sportsmen as a discredit to the ' cloth.' When Apology 

 won the St Leger in 1876, there was a great outcry 

 raised against her owner and breeder, the Rev. Henry 

 Launde, on the ground that it was a grave public 

 scandal that a clergyman of the Church of England 

 should mix himself up with so worldly and disreputable 

 a pursuit as horse-racing. Mr Launde's reply was that 

 he had nothing to do with the Turf beyond the fact that 

 he was a breeder of thoroughbreds, which he maintained 

 to be a perfectly innocent and unquestionably useful 

 occupation. But there was a sharp passage of arms 

 between him and his diocesan, the Bishop of Lincoln, in 

 which, I think, the bishop had the best of it. Even 

 laymen who were far from Puritanical thought that a 

 parson, in his pursuit of sport should draw the line at 

 the racecourse. And a clergyman who openly managed 

 a racing stable, as the Rev. Lord Henry Fitzroy did for 



