Re: VMs: Edward Kelly's dead Catholic bishop...?

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Here's a load more information swinging in way from left-field, round about 
1971:-

	http://www.ucalgary.ca/~nurelweb/books/glastonbury/glast-1.html

	Since the summer of 1967 an increasing number of young people
	have been coming to Glastonbury on what they claim is a "spiritual
	quest". They are referred to by the local press and people as
	"hippies", a name they dislike, usually preferring to be called "Freaks"...

	<SNIP>

	Around 943 A.D. St. Dunstan reorganised an existing institution
	along Benedictine lines...

	During the fifteenth century Abbot Bere excavated a crypt beneath
	the Lady Chapel....

	Early in 1907 the ruins were auctioned by their owners and bought
	by the Bishop of Bath and Wells for the Church of England. The
	architect Mr. F. Bligh Bond was employed to restore the ruins
	and to carry out excavation work. He did this from 1908 to 1921
	with interruptions in the work due to the First World War. In
	1922 the work was discontinued, by the Trustees of the Abbey,
	but was resumed in 1926 by Mr. T. Fyfe [18].

	It is popularly believed that Bond was dismissed from his post as
	director of the excavations at Glastonbury Abbey because he
	claimed to receive through the medium of automatic writing
	"revelations" which purported to come from monks who had
	lived in the abbey. These messages are believed to have
	embarrassed the Church authorities. Bond originally claimed
	that he believed that the messages were the result of a "racial
	unconscious". He later seems to have come to believe that
	they came from departed "spirits" [19].

	The Abbey is important to the Freaks in providing a source
	for innumerable stories about its history and mystical
	significance. They are particularly interested in Bond's
	writings and in stories about him. Because there is a charge
	made for entry to the Abbey grounds, few freaks are able to
	spend any time there. This tends to reduce its importance
	for them as a cultic centre [20].

[18] See Page 1911 pp. 82 ff; Watkins 1969; Ashe 1969 chapter 5; and 
Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, 
(Proceedings) 1908-1922 and 1926.

[19] Proceedings, 1913, p. 26. Bond 1918 and 1925.

[20] Freaks often told me how they would go into the local library to read 
about Bond and to read his writings. Among the freaks in Glastonbury a 
number of Bond's lesser writings are in circulation. Details about Bond's 
psychic interests can be found in "The Quest at Glastonbury" by G. W. 
Lambert The Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, June 1966, Vol. 
43, No. 728. A new biography of Bond has been written by W. W. Kenawell: 
The Quest at Glastonbury, Garrett Publications, New York, 1965. I was 
unable to obtain a copy of this. The Proceedings give no indication of why 
the work on Glastonbury abbey under Bond's direction was suspended in 1922. 
When I wrote to the Bishop of Bath and Wells to get some information about 
this I received a very uncommunicative reply from the Archdeacon of Wells 
the Venerable J. Du B. Lance, who told me that the Trustees would be 
reluctant to let me look at their records because they would not want to 
"rake up an old dead squabble". Letter dated 12.9.71.


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