‘An awfully tweaky sermon!’

Just before the end of term in the summer of 1912 Louis had written home in an undated letter that is full of interest. He begins by describing an extraordinary cricket match against a boys’ club from Birmingham, which the Rugby boys were instructed to lose, but failed to do so (!), with Louis taking three wickets ‘by accident’, but the majority of the letter is taken up with a description of a sermon preached in chapel the previous Sunday by the Rev Dr Samuel Bickersteth, later Canon of Canterbury. In it he described in extraordinary detail his ministry to ‘one of the most brutal and callous murderers’, awaiting execution in prison in Birmingham. As Louis described to his father:

“He found that man like adamant, he simply couldn’t be moved to any repentance. So when the day before the execution came he felt he must make some last effort to save him. He had been doing his best to shew him that God is love, but he had made no impression. So as he took leave of him he bent down and – kissed him! “And I tell you – the tears were on that man’s cheeks – and for the first time for three weeks he yielded to love”. So then Dr B. said goodbye – but then the man said “Oh come tomorrow, come tomorrow”. So next day he went and was with him for half an hour and then left. But the change that the knowledge of God’s love can make on a man’s face in spite of everything – when he knows that God loves and that thought outweighs every other consideration was perfectly wonderful (he said).”

One of Canon Bickersteth’s many sons was the Rev Julian Bickersteth (above, alongside the crucifix that he took to the trenches), who was himself an Old Rugbeian who had only left the school in 1909. At the time of his father’s sermon he was serving as Curate at St Andrew’s, the parish church in the centre of town (below), and that probably explains his father’s invitation to preach, but became a military chaplain in the Great War, being mentioned in despatches by Field Marshal Haig, and winning the Military Cross, which he received at Buckingham Palace in 1919 alongside his brother, who was receiving the same honour! Julian Bickersteth was appointed as Queen’s Honorary Chaplain in 1953 and his nephew, the Rt Rev John Bickersteth KCVO (now aged 96), also an Old Rugbeian, was the Bishop of Bath and Wells between 1975 and 1986. Quite an fascinating Rugbeian clerical family!