Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman | Page 8

or Upper Worton and Lower Worton. They lie between Banbury and Woodstock, near Oxford. Mr. Bateman, in his Life of Bishop Wilson (1860), says "their united population, consisting of farmers and agricultural labourers, does not exceed two hundred." From one village to the other is a distance of about three-quarters of a mile, or perhaps a little less by the field path. Mr. Bateman says that before Bishop Wilson came, "the church was much neglected, as a sporting curate used to race through the services so as to get through in as little time as possible."
Mr. Wilson revolutionized all this. He was accustomed to preach straight to "his people." He seems, indeed, to have preached too "straight" for some, for after some sermon he had given in an adjoining parish, a lady who had "sat under him" said to her vicar, "Pray do not let Mr. Wilson preach here again. He alarms me so."
I am indebted to the Rev. W. H. Langhorne, present Rector of Worton, for the following information about the place. He tells me that the church is of the thirteenth or fourteenth century; Early decorated, but so altered by Derick in 1844 "as almost to destroy its identity." The chalice in Over Worton Church has the date 1574 upon it. The rectory is about one hundred years old. The low building attached to it on the left (in the photograph) was added in 1823. The parish of the two Wortons has for years been a family living in the possession of the Wilsons, so an old friend, a relation of Bishop Wilson, tells me. It was at Worton Church that John Newman preached his first sermon, 23rd June, 1825.
Rev. Walter Mayers went as curate, in 1823, to Rev. William Wilson, and took charge of Worton parish. In the following year he met--and later married--my aunt Sarah Giberne. She and her sister had been staying with Rev. and Mrs. William Wilson, and it was there that Mayers first made her acquaintance. Mr. Mayers asked Frank Newman, during the Long Vacation, to come and help him in teaching the pupils who came to read with him at Worton. Newman was then nineteen. He had been four years longer at the Ealing School, under the tuition of Walter Mayers, than his brother, who had gone to Oxford, according to the notion prevalent at that time, at about the age of fifteen or sixteen. Francis Newman says, consequently, "I knew him (Mayers) much better than did my brother.... He allured me to his new curacy, three miles from Deddington, Oxon, to help him in mathematics with his pupils; first 1822, and again in 1823, after his marriage."
It was in connection with this marriage of Mr. Mayers to Sarah Giberne that the two families of Newman and Giberne first became acquainted, and that friendship began which lasted throughout their lives.
Sarah Giberne was the daughter of Mark Giberne, who, in partnership with Mr. George Stainforth, was court wine merchant in 1750. He came of an old French family, descended from the noble Jean de Giberne, Sieur de Gibertène, in the sixteenth century. The family owned two castles in the country of the Cevennes, which were destroyed by the Camisards. In the seventeenth century some of the family came over and settled in England, and it was from this branch of it that Gabriel de Giberne, secretary to Sir Horace Mann, was descended, and from his son Mark--Sarah Giberne--who married Rev. Walter Mayers.
I shall now give extracts from the diary of Mrs. Benjamin Pearson (_née_ Charlotte Elizabeth Giberne), to which I have access through the kindness of my cousin, Mr. George Pearson. It was in the spring of 1823 that Sarah and Charlotte Giberne spent a week with John Whitmore and his wife, Maria, the daughter of their father's partner, Mr. Stainforth (of the firm "Stainforth & Giberne"). Mrs. Pearson mentions that they both helped her and her sisters to a "knowledge of the Scriptures and of the Christian life."
[Illustration: WORTON CHURCH, OXFORDSHIRE FROM AN OLD PRINT BY KIND PERMISSION OF REV. V. H. LANGHORNE]
[Illustration: HOLY TRINITY, WEST END, OVER WORTON, MAY, 1905 BY KIND PERMISSION OF REV. W. H. LANGHORNE, PRESENT RECTOR OF WORTON]
"We were introduced by Maria, Mrs. Whitmore, about June, 1823, to a good clergyman who had lately come to reside at Walthamstow, about two miles from our home" (they were living at Wanstead), "the Rev. William Wilson, who received us into his friendship, and whose preaching we attended with joy and profit for several years.
"It was on Christmas Day of this year, I think, that we first heard the Rev. Walter Mayers preach from Nahum i. 7 a most beautiful experimental discourse which impressed us very much. On making enquiry concerning him, we found that he was Mr. Wilson's curate