CHAPTER II
AVOIDING THE FLOWER PATTERN ON THE CARPET
SIR MICHAEL MANICHOE, the stay and pillar of "Anglicanism" in the English Church, was a man of great natural gifts. The owner of one of those colossal Jewish fortunes which, few as they are, have such far-reaching influence upon English life, he employed it in a way which, for a man in his position, was unique.
He presented the curious spectacle, to sociologists and the world at large, of a Jew by origin who had become a Christian by conviction and one of the sincerest sons of the English Church as he understood it. In political life Sir Michael was a steady, rather than a brilliant, force. He had been Home Secretary under a former Conservative administration, but had retired from office. At the present moment he was a private member for the division in which his country house, Fencastle, stood, and he enjoyed the confidence of the chiefs of his party.
His great talent was for organisation, and all his powers in that direction were devoted towards the preservation and unification of the Church to which he was a convert.
Sir Michael's convictions were perfectly clear and straightforward. He believed, with all his heart, in the Catholicity of the Anglican persuasion. Roman priests he spoke of as "members of the Italian mission"; Non-conformists as "adherents to the lawless bands of Dissent." He allowed the validity of Roman orders and spoke of the Pope as the "Bishop of Rome," an Italian
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