6.--The Norwich Diocesan Conference commenced its two days' sittings at
Noverre's Rooms, Norwich. Bishop Pelham presided for the last time, and
in his presidential address alluded to his approaching retirement.
8.*--"The Hon. Robert Marsham having received Royal Licence to take the
additional name of Townshend, the surname of himself and his family will
henceforth be Marsham-Townshend instead of Marsham."
21.--A great Unionist demonstration took place at St. Andrew's Hall,
Norwich, as a protest against the Home Rule Bill. Colonel Bignold,
leader of the Conservative party, presided, and Lord Ashbourne was the
principal speaker.
--Died, at Bradenham Hall, Mr. William Meybohm Rider Haggard, aged 76.
Mr. Haggard came of a Scandinavian family, and for several generations
his ancestors had been Norfolk squires. He was lord of the manor of West
Bradenham, a Deputy Lieutenant, and one of the most active magistrates in
the county. For many years he acted as a Chairman of Norfolk Quarter
Sessions held by adjournment at Swaffham, and afterwards at Lynn, and for
a long period was a member of the Committee of Visitors to Norwich
Castle. After the passing of the Local Government Act, by which the
business previously transacted at Quarter Sessions was transferred to the
County Council, Mr. Haggard, like so many representatives of the old
county gentry, retired from active participation in public affairs. He
was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, called to the Bar in 1842, and
married, in 1844, Ella, elder daughter of Mr. Doveton, of the Bombay
Civil Service. Mrs. Haggard was an exceedingly gifted woman, and
possessed of brilliant literary powers.
23.--Died, at Cambridge, Mr. Robert Lubbock Bensly, M.A., Senior Fellow
of Gonville and Caius College, and Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic,
aged 61. Professor Bensly, who was widely known as an Oriental scholar,
was the eldest surviving son of Mr. Robert Bensly, of Eaton. He was
educated at King's College, London, and afterwards at Gonville and Caius
College, where he graduated in the Classical Tripos in 1855, and was
elected Tyrwhitt Hebrew Scholar in 1857. After spending two years at the
Universities of Bonn and Halle, he returned to Cambridge, where he was
appointed Hebrew lecturer at his college, and subsequently became the
Senior Fellow. He was an active and valued member of the Old Testament
Revision Committee, and was for many years an examiner in the theological
and Semitic languages triposes, and succeeded the Hon. Ion Keith Falconer
as Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic. Afterwards he was appointed
University lecturer in Oriental Languages. The closing work of his life
was connected with a discovery of extreme importance and value, which he
made in company with his former pupil, Mr. F. C. Burkett, of a manuscript
found by Mrs. Lewis, of Cambridge, in 1892, in the Convent of St.
Catharine on Mount Sinai. A careful examination of photographs taken by
her from this MS., which was a palimpsest, revealed the important fact
that the nearly obliterated Syriac characters bore a close resemblance to
the fragmentary text found by Cureton in 1842, and that the newly-found
text comprised nearly all the four Gospels. This discovery led to an
expedition in the present year (1893) to Mount Sinai, where the intricate
task of deciphering and transcribing the MS. was undertaken by Professor
Bensly, Mr. Burkett, and Mr. Rendel Harris. The Professor was well known
as the discoverer and editor of "The Missing Fragment of the Fourth Book
of Ezra." He also edited the Harklean version of the Epistle to the
Hebrews, and at the time of his death was engaged in preparing other
important works for the press.
24.--In a letter to the Press on this date Mr. James Emery, of Stibbard,
wrote:--"This is the earliest spring for more than one hundred years in
Norfolk. I have this day gathered some hawthorn in full blossom. I have
seen more than sixty summers; my father lived to be seventy-four, and he
has told me many times he never saw hawthorn in flower by the first of
May. Nor have I ever seen it till this season before the first of May."
25.--The Fletcher Convalescent Home, at Cromer, built by the munificence
of Mr. B. E. Fletcher, and endowed by the Earl of Leicester, as an
adjunct to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, was opened by the Countess
of Leicester. Mr. Edward Boardman, of Norwich, was the architect. The
cost of the building was not disclosed by the donor; the endowment fund
amounted to 15,000, which Lord Leicester augmented to 20,000 in February,
1894.