1 62 sportsmen Parsons in Peace and War 



Joseph Arch (who recently passed away) was a Warwick- 

 shire farm-hand who became a Primitive Methodist preacher, 

 and, later on, M.P. He founded the National Agricultural 

 Labourers' Union, which was the first attempt to gain 

 organised representation for the farm-men. The effort 

 created a good deal of unrest at the time and, in Kingham, 

 aroused a hitherto unheard-of wave of criticism and suspicion. 

 The old relationship between parson and peasant was in 

 danger of being lost, and the struggle — for it was a real 

 struggle — caused Mr. Lockwood a good deal of unhappiness ; 

 but not for long, for his perfect honesty and good-will reconciled 

 even the fiercest revolutionaries, who became his friends almost 

 to a man. 



Mr. Lockwood saw little of the world outside his parish, but 

 inside it he knew every man, woman, and child, and understood 

 them thoroughly. 



In the early days of compulsory education, the village 

 mothers went to him to air their pent-up storms of indignation 

 over the iniquities of a law that sent their children to school 

 instead of to house-work, or when their offspring had been 

 chastened by the schoolmaster. On these occasions his method 

 was simple. " Let them have their say out, until they have no 

 breath left in them, and then soothe them down with a few 

 plain words," was his description of the method. After one of 

 these ladies had exhausted herself in this manner, he remarked, 

 " The hounds will be at Churchill Heath in about half an hour. " 

 At this she jumped up and made off in that direction quite 

 happily. A little irrelevance seems to have done almost as 

 much good as a few plain words in this case — a not unusual 

 occurrence in village controversy. 



His sermons were modest enough, and he often amused 

 people by starting his discourse with an emphatic expression of 

 disbelief that they were of the slightest use. Doubts as to the 

 powerful effects wrought by their sermons are not very usual 

 among clerics, but Mr. Lockwood's expressed uncertainty was 

 real, and not mere modesty. In a letter to his brother, thanking 

 him for a copy of verses, he wrote, " The last five verses are 

 better than a sackful of sermons, and might with advantage be 

 fixed on every church door in the country." 



In the hope that readers may extract benefit to the equivalent 



