Humbly, faithfully, gladly he knelt among the litter of the room and said the Lord's Prayer, said it in Latin as he had said it at school-- _Pater noster!_ 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"; Nonconformists 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 ecclesiastic with whom the English communion had little or nothing to do. In his intimate and private life Sir Michael lived according to rubric. His splendid private chapel at Fencastle enjoyed the services of a chaplain, reinforced by priests from a community of Anglican monks which Sir Michael had established in an adjacent village. In London, St. Mary's was, in some sense, his particular property. He spent fabulous sums on the big Bloomsbury Parish and the needs of its great, cathedral-like church. There was no vicar in London who enjoyed the command of money that Father Ripon enjoyed. Certainly there was no other priest in the ranks of the High Churchmen who was the confidential friend and spiritual director of so powerful a political and social personality.