Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/242

Rh formed was kept up by yearly reunions at Auckland Castle on St. Peter's day. There were in all about eighty who enjoyed this training before going forth into the diocese. At the same time the proportion of deacons newly ordained from Oxford or Cambridge to the whole number rose from a fifth in the last four years of the preceding episcopate to above half in Lightfoot's first four years, and in the four following years to three-fifths. Similarly he took every opportunity of manifesting his interest in the university of Durham, of which he was officially visitor, and endowed it in 1882 with a scholarship bearing the name of his predecessor, Richard de Bury (cf. his speech on ‘Higher Education’ in Durham Diocesan Mag. iv. 7 sq.) With a view to supplementing the work of the parochial clergy, Lightfoot was desirous of creating a staff of diocesan preachers, and as a first step filled up a vacant canonry by the appointment of a ‘canon missioner’ for the diocese. He interested himself especially in the various missions and institutes for seamen in the great ports (cf. ib. iii. 165), and under his guidance a diocesan board of education was established by the diocesan conference in 1886. Having been himself an ‘abstainer,’ though by no means a fanatical one, for some years before he left Cambridge, he was a warm friend of the Church of England Temperance Society (cf. ib. iii. 57, and Church of England Temp. Chron. for 22 May 1886, p. 242). But the cause which appealed most strongly to his sympathies in the region of morals was that of purity; and it was at Auckland that the ‘White Cross’ movement took its rise in 1883 (cf. his art. in Contemp. Review, August 1885).

In the convocation of the province of York, Lightfoot found a ready hearing. He spoke with much effect in 1879 on the Athanasian Creed, the use of which in public worship he desired to see made optional (York Journal of Convocation, 1879, pt. ii. pp. 128 sq.); in 1883 on the Revised Version (ib. 1883, pp. 18 sq.); in 1883 and 1884 on the permanent diaconate, the introduction of which he deprecated on practical grounds (ib. 1883, pp. 54 sq., and 1884, pp. 46 sq.); and in 1884 on the church ministry of women, with special reference to the ‘deaconesses’ of the New Testament—a favourite topic with him (ib. 1884, pp. 124 sq.; cf. also ib. 1880 pp. 48 sq., 1881 pp. 23 sq., 1884 pp. 84 sq., 1885 pp. 22 sq., 74, 128). At the Church Congress meeting at Bath in 1873 he had spoken on the best means of quickening interest in theological thought. During his episcopate he took part in four Church Congresses, presiding himself at Newcastle in 1881. At Leicester, in 1880, he read a paper on ‘The Internal Unity of the Church,’ and at Carlisle in 1884 on ‘The Results of recent Historical and Theological Research upon the Old and New Testament Scriptures;’ at Wolverhampton, in 1887, he preached one of the congress sermons. Two other gatherings over which he presided deserve mention, as illustrations of his varied interests, the Congress of Co-operative Societies at Newcastle in May 1880, and the British Archæological Association at Darlington in July 1886.

Although he abhorred all personal state and luxury, Lightfoot took great delight in having Auckland Castle as his home. It appealed in many ways to his historic instincts, while it offered accommodation for the many gatherings on which he relied in order to bring himself into personal contact with the clergy and laity of his diocese. He spent much thought and money on the adornment of the beautiful Early English hall which Cosin at the Restoration had converted into a chapel in place of the demolished chapel of earlier times. He enriched the windows with stained glass, in which the early story of the Northumbrian church was depicted. In like manner he took much pains in filling the gaps in the series of portraits of bishops of Durham in the castle.

In the severe spring of 1888 Lightfoot felt the strain of confirmations, a part of his work in which he always took especial pleasure. Later in the year he took an active part in the Lambeth Pan-Anglican Conference, 3–27 July, but, as he said later, the work ‘broke him down hopelessly.’ It is understood that he drafted the report of the committee on purity, which was adopted unanimously by the conference. Subsequently at his invitation nearly sixty of the bishops attended the festival with which he reopened his chapel after restoration in Auckland Castle (1 Aug.) He himself preached the sermon, a warm but not unguarded eulogy on Cosin. A medical examination in London in July had revealed a critical condition of the heart. A visit to Braemar, where he had in former years entertained at his lodgings weekly relays of hard-worked curates from his diocese, with now and then older friends, proved of little benefit, and he settled for the winter at Bournemouth. There, after a time of great peril in January 1889, he recovered sufficiently to return to Auckland by the end of May. On 2 July he consecrated the church of St. Ignatius the Martyr at Sunderland, which had been built wholly at his expense as a thankoffering promised after seven happy years of his episcopate. In spite of a fresh relapse he undertook the September