Foreign News: Rector of Stewky

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Under the bleak late-Victorian beamed roof of Westminster Church House last week sat the Worshipful Frederick Keppel North, Chancellor of the Diocese of Norwich, at the head of an ecclesiastical court to hear charges preferred by the Lord Bishop of Norwich against Rev. Harold F. Davidson. Church House was packed with prebendaries, minor canons, curates, newshawks. By nightfall British readers grew pop-eyed over the details of "the most sensational trial in church history." the trial of the "lewd rector of Stiffkey."

Although the lustings of the clergy have been a favorite subject of British writers from Chaucer to Fielding to the Brothers Powys, this case was important enough for the sedate London Times to give it five columns.