[‘Take no notice of the error’: John Fielder Mackarness, Bishop of Oxford.] Autograph Letter Signed (‘J. F. Oxon:’) to ‘Mr Hutchison’, setting forth his position on the question of incest between ‘aged people’.

An interesting letter, revealing the nuanced position of a liberal cleric on a difficult question. See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 4pp, 12mo. On bifolium. Signed ‘J. F. Oxon:’. Text clear and entire, on creased and worn paper, with two short closed tears at edges. Folded twice for postage. Minuted (by the recipient) at top of first page: ‘I read this at the Cler[ical]. meeting - (part of it)’. The letter begins: ‘My dear Mr Hutchison / In cases of persons who have knowingly contracted incestuous unions, in whatever degree - for the wife’s sister is no exceptional case - I always advise that the parties be not admitted to the Holy Communion, while they are living together. / There is however plainly some difference, in a moral point of view, between the general case and those in which the parties have acted ignorantly, and possibly may be still quite unconscious of wrongdoing. This difference would be ‘the more deserving of notice, if the parties should be of such an age, as to be no longer living together as man and wife. / Under these two conditions, I should be disposed to take no notice of the error, unless it were brought before me in such a way as to compel me to pronounce an opinion.’ If he is forced to ‘take notice’, he can only say ‘that they are not man and wife, and cannot be man and wife, but are living in fornication, if they live, as man and wife, together.’ In the case of ‘these aged people (as I understand them to be)’, it is doubtful whether Hutchison is ‘under obligation to raise the question, if it is not distinctly forced upon [him]’, and as Hutchison is ‘no longer charged with any cure of souls at Slough, being the pastor of another parish’, he is ‘the less bound in conscience to open the question, if the Vicar deems it wiser on the whole not to do so. Your direct responsibility is at an end.’ Mackarness observes that many of ‘these unhappy cases’ come before him, and it is ‘often necessary to say quite plainly that the persons are living in incest, and cannot be received to Holy Communion’. In cases where ‘the circumstances afford any way of escape from the necessity of making this declaration, it seems the part of prudence, and perhaps of charity, to embrace it by keeping silence’. In a postscript he states that Hutchison ‘may use this letter to the Vicar, if you think fit to do so.’