The Ecclesiastical Underworld
‘The Ecclesiastical Underworld’ is the first systematic attempt to chart the origins and progress of the smaller episcopal churches which appeared in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was originally serialised in a north London newspaper, ‘The Bowes Park Weekly News’ in 1935, with a print run of just a few thousand. It is the progenitor of many later studies and therefore predates Brandreth’s ‘Episcopi Vagantes and the Anglican Church’ (1947 & 1961) and Peter Anson’s ‘Bishops at Large’ (1964) by many years. Its author, Hugh George de Willmott Newman (1905-1979) was well known in and around Southgate, where he had been an active worker both in national and municipal politics and a regular lecturer & writer in the local press. He was himself ordained to the priesthood by one of Archbishop Mathew’s bishops and in 1944 consecrated to the episcopate as Mar Georgius, Archbishop and Metropolitan of Glastonbury.