Her father, Thomas Heywood an erudite banker & historian became the chief landowner in the
nearby Wellington Heath area where in 1841 he had Christ Church constructed. Many years
later Mary would donate a font to honour her parents, which survived a fire ca 1940 & is
still in use today.
Mary had an elder brother and sister. Her younger brother, Thomas died in 1833
at the age of just six weeks. He is buried in Colwall.
Her mother was a profoundly religious and cultured woman of charm and sympathy, qualties that Mary inherited.
Mrs Heywood gave support to the then incumbent at St James, Colwall, Frederick Custance, and held Mothers' Meetings at Hope End. These may well have been Mary's later inspiration.
Whilst she was finishing her musical education in Rome where she was brought with her sister by her mother, she met a young man, George Sumner, the youngest son of Charles Richard Sumner, the Bishop of Winchester. George's father like Mary's was an historian, being the historiographer to king George IV. George's uncle was later the Archbishop of Canterbury & his father's cousin was William Wilberforce.
They fell in love and were married
at St James, Colwall in July 26th 1848 when was he twenty-four, just 18 months after
his ordination. They were to celebrate
their diamond anniversary.
She gave birth to two daughters in the county, Margaret and Louise.
In 1851 the Sumners moved to Old Alresford, Hampshire where George became the rector for the next thirty-four years. (George would eventually become Archbishop Suffragan for Guildford).
The Rectory was the hub of village activities for concerts, choir practices, a choral society as well as Temperance meetings. Mary would not take any moaning in it as she fostered an ambience of loving joy.
Two years later the girls were joined by a baby brother, George Heywood Maunoir who grew up to be an artist who designed church interiors in the 'arts-and-craft' style, eg the Russian Orthodox Church in Ennismore Gardens, London.
Mary devoted herself to her children's upbringing and helping her husband's ministry by teaching music and the bible.
When Margaret gave birth for the first time in 1876 Mary recalled her sense of the tremendous burden & responsibility of bringing a child into the world. She felt that all mothers have to grasp that motherhood is a profession in itself and that they need to be adequately equipped for it.
She believed that this was not merely a question of seeing to the tangible
requirements of children, but to bring them up in the love of God.
Mary planned to start a society to promote this, and to take steps towards this
she first gathered the parish women in the Rectory. However, unfortunately, Mary
found herself to nervous to speak & explain what it was all about. The following week
she convened another meeting. This time she had had cards printed giving practical
suggestions which she gave out to the ladies. The first line ran 'remember that
your children are given up, body and soul to Jesus Christ in Holy Baptism, and
that it is your duty to train them for His service'. This was the inaugural meeting
of the Mothers' Union.
Maybe this organisation would have remained obscure outside Old Alresford had it not been for Bishop Ernest Wilberforce of Newcastle.
In 1885 he had been due to speak at a women's meeting at the Portsmouth some twenty miles from Old Alresford. He had Bishops' block & could not think of what to say to the ladies, so he invited Mary to the platform. At first she felt reluctant to do so, as in that day and age it was frowned upon for women to address public meetings, but she eventually agreed.
She lamented the low moral standards in the nation but expressed her conviction that things could improve. She argued that the people with the greatest power to change things were mothers as people can be most easily influenced in their early childhood years.
Such was the enthusiasm which which the audience responded that the Bishop of Winchester whose see included Old Alresford and Hampshire decided to make the Mothers' Union a feature of every parish in the diocese.
Even before this speech Mary had been using her connections to persuade the wives of bishops, clergy and country squires to set up local branches of the Mothers' Union. Soon these were formed in Ely, Exeter, Hereford, Litchfield & Newcastle. The first Welsh branch was established by the wife of the rector of Llandrindod Wells in 1884, that of Ireland in 1887 at Raheny. In 1889 after a trip to Scotland, a branch was founded at Dunblane.
By 1892 Mothers' Unions were operating in 28 dioceses, and had 60,000 members which had grown to 169,000 at the turn of the century.
Success can bring problems in that as the Mothers' Union expanded Mary could not have the time to write back to all those members who sought her wise counsel. In reponse to this difficulty a magazine The Mothers' Union Journal was launched in 1888. This was to achieve a circulation of 100,000 by 1900. In 1891 first appeared Mothers in Council edited by novelist Charlotte Yonge.
Another snag of an organisation spreading itself far and wide is that there is
a danger that people often lose sight of the fact that they are part of a national
mass movement rather than something parochial. Mary felt that since unity is
powerful it was important that members have a sense of belonging to one united
organisation. For this reason from 1893 annual general meetings were held, and three
years later the Central Council was set up, Mary being unamimously elected President,
with a Central Constitution agreeing
that the Mothers' Unions aims were:
To uphold the sanctity of marriage;
To awaken in all mothers a sense of
their great responsibility in the
training of their boys & girls
(the future fathers and mothers of England);
To organise in every place a band of mothers
who will unite in prayer, and seek by their
own example to lead their families in
purity & holiness of life.
The Mothers' Union got a boost when Queen Victoria became its patron in her Diamond Jubilee.
The MU had first spread outside the British Isles to New Zealand in 1885 then next to Canada & India. Today it exists in over 60 countries with a million members.
Members help those overseas by raising money for the Overseas Fund for practical development projects or for the Relief Fund which helps out when disasters occur.
Mary who remained president even after her ninetieth birthday was to live long enough to know that the Mothers' Union had held its first Conference of Overseas Workers in 1920. She passed away in August 11th the following year.
All this day, Lord
Let me touch as many lives
as possible for thee
and every life I touch do thou
by thy spirit quicken
whether through the words I speak,
the prayer I breathe,
or the life I live
Amen
As a girl growing up in the beauty of the Herefordshire countryside she could never have dreamt that this would happen.
