M. G. Smith (1921–1993)

Why must an irreplaceable book be one that only a lawyer could love?

Jonathan Trelawny was a Cornish squire who became an English bishop and, in that role, was one of the Seven Bishops who opposed King James II over James's plans to impose new religious rules on England and the Anglican Church. Trelawny was not the most original or the most important or the most capable of the seven -- indeed, he was probably the least of the seven. But he became the subject of the Cornish anthem "The Song of the Western Men" ("Trelawny he may die But twenty thousand Cornish bold Will know the reason why"), and so is now probably the most famous of the lot.

There are several books about the Seven Bishops and their trial (in which they were acquitted despite James II's intense efforts to bias the prosecution, influence the court, and harass the jury), but this seems to be the only one about Trelawny. Unfortunately, it's pretty thin. Trelawny's papers are largely lost and records of him are few. So a true biography would be hard -- probably not impossible, but hard.

But rather than try to do that hard work, author M. G. Smith has devoted most of his work to the various doctrinal and organizational conflicts Trelawny had with his inferiors, with an occasional break so we can read how Trelawny tried to extort money from his subordinates. It is incredibly, mind-numbingly dull, and also really quite useless -- Trelawny may have been zealous about his Anglicanism, but he was far too junior to set policy; all he could do was use the rules to his own advantage.

There is some biographical information in here, but only the slightest, and only as an afterthought -- e.g. there are only a few pages devoted to his family, and they are inserted out of order, some two thirds of the way through the book. We learn only a little about his marriage, and just about the only personal detail we learn about his children is that Trelawny forced his daughter Rebecca to marry an older, disfigured man in a wedding in which she never even gave consent and in which the officiating clergyman tried to stop the proceedings until Trelawny ordered the poor man to finish the marriage or Trelawny would do it himself -- even as his daughter kept on weeping. Smith, p. 135, says that "All that can be said in mitigation is that the Bishop was not alone in exploiting his women-folk in this fashion." I disagree. Nothing can be said in mitigation of that.

That story told me about all I needed to know about Jonathan Trelawny. There is some good on his side -- you don't have to be Christian to know that his fight against Arianism was probably positive, and resistance to James II, no matter what form it took, was a virtue. But his dominant psychological trait was clearly blind stubbornness. And author Smith illustrates that far more with information about endless legal fights than with actual insight into the "Fighting Bishop."… (altro)