Dr. Wortles School | Page 2

earth from whose nod there could be and should be no
appeal, but little harm came from this. If a tyrant, he was an
affectionate tyrant. His wife felt him to be so. His servants, his parish,
and his school all felt him to be so. They obeyed him, loved him, and
believed in him.
So, upon the whole, at the time with which we are dealing, did the
diocese, the county, and that world of parents by whom the boys were
sent to his school. But this had not come about without some hard
fighting. He was over fifty years of age, and had been Rector of
Bowick for nearly twenty. During that time there had been a succession
of three bishops, and he had quarrelled more or less with all of them. It
might be juster to say that they had all of them had more or less of
occasion to find fault with him. Now Dr. Wortle,--or Mr. Wortle, as he
should be called in reference to that period,--was a man who would
bear censure from no human being. He had left his position at Eton
because the Head-master had required from him some slight change of
practice. There had been no quarrel on that occasion, but Mr. Wortle
had gone. He at once commenced his school at Bowick, taking
half-a-dozen pupils into his own house. The bishop of that day
suggested that the cure of the souls of the parishioners of Bowick was
being subordinated to the Latin and Greek of the sons of the nobility.
The bishop got a response which gave an additional satisfaction to his
speedy translation to a more comfortable diocese. Between the next
bishop and Mr. Wortle there was, unfortunately, misunderstanding, and
almost feud for the entire ten years during which his lordship reigned in
the Palace of Broughton. This Bishop of Broughton had been one of
that large batch of Low Church prelates who were brought forward

under Lord Palmerston. Among them there was none more low, more
pious, more sincere, or more given to interference. To teach Mr. Wortle
his duty as a parish clergyman was evidently a necessity to such a
bishop. To repudiate any such teaching was evidently a necessity to Mr.
Wortle. Consequently there were differences, in all of which Mr.
Wortle carried his own. What the good bishop suffered no one probably
knew except his wife and his domestic chaplain. What Mr. Wortle
enjoyed,--or Dr. Wortle, as he came to be called about this time,--was
patent to all the county and all the diocese. The sufferer died, not, let us
hope, by means of the Doctor; and then came the third bishop. He, too,
had found himself obliged to say a word. He was a man of the
world,--wise, prudent, not given to interference or fault-finding,
friendly by nature, one who altogether hated a quarrel, a bishop beyond
all things determined to be the friend of his clergymen;--and yet he
thought himself obliged to say a word. There were matters in which Dr.
Wortle affected a peculiarly anti-clerical mode of expression, if not of
feeling. He had been foolish enough to declare openly that he was in
search of a curate who should have none of the "grace of godliness"
about him. He was wont to ridicule the piety of young men who
devoted themselves entirely to their religious offices. In a letter which
he wrote he spoke of one youthful divine as "a conceited ass who had
preached for forty minutes." He not only disliked, but openly ridiculed
all signs of a special pietistic bearing. It was said of him that he had
been heard to swear. There can be no doubt that he made himself
wilfully distasteful to many of his stricter brethren. Then it came to
pass that there was a correspondence between him and the bishop as to
that outspoken desire of his for a curate without the grace of godliness.
But even here Dr. Wortle was successful. The management of his
parish was pre-eminently good. The parish school was a model. The
farmers went to church. Dissenters there were none. The people of
Bowick believed thoroughly in their parson, and knew the comfort of
having an open-handed, well-to-do gentleman in the village. This third
episcopal difficulty did not endure long. Dr. Wortle knew his man, and
was willing enough to be on good terms with his bishop so long as he
was allowed to be in all things his own master.
There had, too, been some fighting between Dr. Wortle and the world

about his school. He was, as I have said, a thoroughly generous man,
but he required, himself, to be treated with generosity. Any question as
to the charges made by him as schoolmaster was unendurable. He
explained to all