realizing the blasphemy of according to a mortal clergyman the title that belongs to God alone), entered into a conspiracy with another Romanizing clergyman, the Reverend Oliver Dorward, Vicar of Green Lanes, Hants, to abduct my son from his own father’s house, with what ultimate intention I dare not think.  Incredible as it must sound to modern ears, they were so far successful that for a whole week I was in ignorance of his whereabouts, while detectives were hunting for him up and down England.  The abduction was carried out by young Lidderdale, with the assistance of a youth called Hacking, so coolly and skilfully as to indicate that the abettors behind the scenes are USED TO SUCH ABDUCTIONS.  This, my lord, points to a very grave state of affairs in our midst.  If the son of a Protestant clergyman like myself can be spirited away from a populous but nevertheless comparatively small town like Slowbridge, what must be going on in great cities like London?  Moreover, everything is done to make it attractive for the unhappy youth who is thus lured away from his father’s hearth.  My own son is even now still impenitent, and I have the greatest fears for his moral and religious future, so rapid has been the corruption set up by evil companionship.

These, my lord, are the facts set out as shortly as possible and written on the eve of my departure in circumstances that militate against elegance of expression.  I am, to tell the truth, still staggered by this affair, and if I make public my sorrow and my shame I do so in the hope that the Society of which your lordship is President, may see its way to take some kind of action that will make a repetition of such an outrage upon family life for ever impossible.

     Believe me to be,

     Your lordship’s obedient servant,

     Eustace Pomeroy.

The publication of this letter stirred England. The Times in a leading article demanded a full inquiry into the alleged circumstances. The English Churchman said that nothing like it had happened since the days of Bloody Mary.  Questions were asked in the House of Commons, and finally when it became known that Lord Danvers would ask a question in the House of Lords, Mr. Ogilvie took Mark to see Lord Hull who wished to be in possession of the facts before he rose to correct some misapprehensions of Lord Danvers.  Mark also had to interview two Bishops, an Archdeacon, and a Rural Dean.  He did not realize that for a few weeks he was a central figure in what was called THE CHURCH CRISIS.  He was indignant at Mr. Pomeroy’s exaggeration and perversions of fact, and he was so evidently speaking the truth that everybody from Lord Hull to a reporter of The Sun was impressed by his account of the affair, so that in the end the Pomeroy Abduction was decided to be less revolutionary than the Gunpowder Plot.

Mr. Lidderdale, however, believed that his nephew had deliberately tried to ruin him out of malice, and when two parents seized the opportunity of such a scandal to remove their sons from Haverton House without paying the terminal fees, Mr. Lidderdale told Mark that he should recoup himself for the loss out of the money left by his mother.