§ MR. COBB (Warwick, S.E., Eugby)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the attention of the Lord Chancellor has been called to the public scandal which has been caused by its having recently become generally known in the neighbourhood of Ross that the Reverend Edward Burdett Hawkshaw, the Chairman of the Ross Bench of Justices, wrongfully assumed, during 18 years, the title and hood of a Master of Arts of Oriel College, Oxford, 354 although he was in fact only a Bachelor of Arts, and so conducted the services, and administered the Sacraments of the Church; whether he is aware that the Bishop of Hereford discovered this upon the collation of the Reverend Edward Burdett Hawkshaw to the prebendal stall of Nonnington, in Hereford Cathedral, for which a Bachelor of Arts is not eligible, and compelled him to take the degree of Master of Arts; whether one of the canons of the Church prescribes the punishment of suspension for the offence of conducting the services and administering the Sacraments in a University hood of a higher degree than that which the clergyman possesses, and such an offence is also punishable under the statutes of the University of Oxford; and whether if, upon inquiry, these facts are found to be correct, the name of the Reverend Edward Burdett? Hawkshaw will be removed from the Commission of the Peace?
§ MR. MATTHEWSI have no information as to the various allegations in the question. I have drawn the attention of the Lord Chancellor to them, and I learn from him that he has caused inquiry to be made.