Page:Distinguished Churchmen.djvu/159

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THE REV. GEORGE BAYFIELD ROBERTS
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also one of the most active, as he certainly is one of the most enthusiastic, of its office-bearers. Wherever he goes he carries E.C.U. influence with him, and, as some of his co-members think, it is the influence of the advance guard of the party. At home his connection with the E.C.U. has brought him into prominence as Chairman of the Cheltenham Branch and President of the Gloucestershire (Central) District Union; but his activities have found a wider scope in work for the Union at large. He is one of the twelve clerical members of Council elected by the whole body of the E.C.U., a member of the Press and Publications Committees and Chairman of the Canon Law Committee. In the literary world Mr Roberts is well known as a contributor, on important occasions, to the columns of the Guardian, Church Times, Church Review, etc. As Chairman of the Canon Law Committee, a great deal of work comes to him, chiefly in dealing with correspondence from every part of the empire. Early in the nineties—to be precise, 1892—he was one of three invited speakers on Canon Law at the Folkestone Church Congress. Two years later he published his History of the E.C.U., with preface by Lord Halifax. This work, which not only deals with the annals of the E.C.U., but is also a useful and accurate history of ecclesiastical matters during the latter half of the last century, has passed into a second edition. In 1896