One of my favourite passages from Moorman, especially the footnotes:

Of yet another type was that remarkable but eccentric Cornish priest, R. S. Hawker of Morwenstow. Hawker was neither High, Broad nor Low Church.1 His interests were with the Eastern Church which he held to be the mother of Cornish Christianity. For many years he devoted himself to his little parish, full of smugglers, wreckers and poachers. His church was full of activity and colour. He wore a cope, all and scarlet gloves both at Mattins and the Eucharist (believing this to be in accordance with Eastern customs);2 he introduced the custom of Harvest Thanksgivings; he revived synods for his rural deanery. He studied Cornish customs and lore, and wrote a considerable amount of poetry. For forty-one years, from 1834 to 1875, he devoted himself to his church and his parish, a strange, whimsical creature on the rock-bound Cornish coast.

J.R.H. Moorman, A History of the Church in England

  1. He had no faith in Conversion, which he called ‘a spasm of the ganglions’ (S. Baring, Gould, R. S. Hawker (1876), P. 190). ↩︎

  2. His dress was always very eccentric. On the day of his wedding in London he wore a claret-coloured clerical coat, a blue fisherman’s jersey, wading-boots up to the hips and a pink hat without a brim. ↩︎