Copy letter from John H. G. Oglander, to W. H. Richards

"I forget the circumstances under which I wrote to you 14 years ago. My letter looks as if it was in answer to one of the letters you used to send me saying you thought of giving up St. Helens as you had found little sympathy in the parish. I thought when Eton appointed you to the living, you were not received as you should have been and that my brother forgot that the college had patron rights. I also remember when we visited you at Fairy Hill, thinking that you and Mrs. Richards expressed yourselves kindly towards him, considering all the trouble you had had. This together with his "duties to the Crown" probably caused me to use the words "pompous language" and "ridicule" which I must own I now feel it would have been better taste for me to have omitted when writing about my brother, though my letter was a private one written to you in sympathy with your difficulties and in the belief that if you would be conciliatory and persevere in making the welfare of your parish your main object you could live down opposition. I must say that since I came back to live in the Island my opinion on that point is changed and I do not see that there is any chance of seeing the parish united, while you are vicar though my brother has not for years in speaking to me, referred to his difficulties with you. You say you have made no use of my old letter. If you should ever think fit to show it, I would ask that you should show this one with it. I do not quite gather what your object is in writing now. Perhaps you mean that my old letter was not reconcilable with my not siding with you at the last Council meeting. If so, I must say that to stir up litigation against my brother or any of your parishioners is little likely to promote unity in the parish and I spoke to correct assertions in your statement of the case, which within my own knowledge were mistaken and I expressly said that I did not impute that you or your informants, were aware that they were erroneous."

(102/601)