THE CASE OF RICHARD MEYNELL

BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

1911




TO THE MEMORY OF A BELOVED CHILD




A FOREWORD


May I ask those of my American readers who are not intimately acquainted
with the conditions of English rural and religious life to remember that
the dominant factor in it--the factor on which the story of Richard
Meynell depends--is the existence of the State Church, of the great
ecclesiastical corporation, the direct heir of the pre-Reformation
Church, which owns the cathedrals and the parish churches, which
by right of law speaks for the nation on all national occasions, which
crowns and marries and buries the Kings of England, and, through her
bishops in the House of Lords, exercises a constant and important
influence on the lawmaking of the country? This Church possesses half the
elementary schools, and is the legal religion of the great public schools
which shape the ruling upper class. She is surrounded with the prestige
of centuries, and it is probable that in many directions she was never so