made considerable efforts on his behalf. A petition was prepared for his admission to the Blue Coat School in London, supported by members of several Oxford colleges, but it appears to have failed, most likely because of her Nonconformist connections. He was instead sent to the Clergy Orphans’ School at St. John’s Wood, where he received a disciplined education intended to produce obedience, usefulness, and self-control.

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​Education and Early Ministry

From there he went on to Rawdon College in Yorkshire, where he trained for the Baptist ministry. His early years were spent as a Protestant Dissenter, first at Kingsbridge in Devon, where he married Elizabeth Shackleford in 1836, and then at Dover, where most of his children were born. These were years of active ministry and growing responsibility, and they established the pattern of work that would continue throughout his life.

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A Change of Direction  

A change came after his mother's death in 1851. At that point, he decided to enter the Anglican ministry. This was not simply a matter of changing denomination. He seems to have carried with him the convictions of his earlier training—particularly a strong emphasis on conversion, scriptural authority, and personal holiness—and to have sought to maintain these within the Church of England.

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The obituary notes that he “belonged to the old Evangelical party in the Church of England” and that he looked to Cecil as his model, identifying himself with that tradition. This is a significant clue to his inner position. The Evangelical movement within the Church of England placed its emphasis not on form or hierarchy, but on the active proclamation of the Gospel—the duty to carry its message outward and to bring about personal conviction.

Seen in this light, his move into Anglicanism appears less a departure from his earlier influences than a continuation of them in a different setting. The strong evangelical emphasis that had shaped his mother, Esther Beuzeville Hewlett, and which had entered the family through earlier Nonconformist influence, remained central to his outlook. In following this path, he was not so much turning away from that inheritance as carrying it forward into the Established Church.

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​Work with the Bible Society

During this period of preparation prior to his ordination, he worked for the British and Foreign Bible Society, first in the West of England and later in London. The work suited him. It required organisation, persistence, and the ability to speak clearly and convincingly, all of which he possessed. The obituary published after his death noted that his “massive intellect and…vigorous will dealt with each matter…with peculiar force,” and that his words carried weight because of the evident conviction behind them.

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​Ordination and Parish Ministry

He was ordained deacon in 1862 and priest in 1863, and served first as curate at Tredington and later at St. Mary’s, Hornsey. In 1874 he was appointed to the vicarage of Purton in Wiltshire, where he remained until his death in 1878. His ministry there was marked by hard work and a strong sense of duty. He preached frequently, held additional meetings during the week, and seems to have given himself little rest. It was thought at the time that the strain of this work contributed to his final illness.

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Character and Authority

In character, he was a man of strong convictions. He had a powerful sense that his beliefs were true and that it was his responsibility to uphold and communicate them. This gave him authority, both in the pulpit and in public life, but it also shaped the atmosphere of his home. As head of the household, he expected obedience, and his authority has been described as strict, even puritanical. His wife appears to have been largely submissive, and his children responded to him in different ways.

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Family and Influence

Several followed the paths he laid out for them. His son Edmund entered the ministry; his daughter Sarah became a medical missionary in India; and his youngest son Arnold also took holy orders and later worked as a missionary in Madagascar. Others did not comply so readily. His eldest daughter, Esther, and his son Russell both experienced tension in their relationship with him, and each, in different ways, chose a course that departed from his expectations.

Yet there is also evidence of a more complex outlook.

 

Conviction and Complexity

Through his work with the Bible Society and his contact with people of differing views, he appears to have developed a certain breadth of sympathy. The obituary observed that, although he held firmly to his own beliefs, he came to recognise that his opinions “did not monopolise all truth,” and he was able to find common ground with others. In Purton, Nonconformists respected him and, on occasion, invited him to take part in their gatherings—an indication that he was not regarded as narrow or sectarian.

 

Inheritance and Continuity​​

What may at first appear as a departure in his life—his movement from Baptist Nonconformity into the Anglican ministry—can be more convincingly understood as a reconciliation of influences rather than a rejection of them. From his father, he inherited the framework of the Church of England; from his mother, a powerful evangelical conviction shaped by the “new gospel” she had embraced. In his own life, these two strands were not held in opposition but brought together. His adherence to the Evangelical party within the Church suggests that he carried forward his mother’s emphasis on conversion and active proclamation, while finding expression for it within the structures his father had served. In this sense, he did not abandon either inheritance but embodied both.

He died in 1878 after a period of illness, having been unable to carry out his duties for some months. The obituary speaks of “an active and useful life,” and of a man faithful to his work. That is true. But it does not fully convey the nature of his influence.

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A Life Concluded

​He was a man of certainty—of strong inner assurance that what he believed was not only true, but divinely purposed. That certainty gave direction and force to his life and to the work he undertook. It also shaped the lives of those closest to him, sometimes drawing them into alignment and sometimes setting them at a distance.

In that sense, his legacy is not confined to the parishes he served or the causes he advanced. It lies also in the imprint of his character—formed from both inheritance and conviction—upon the lives that unfolded around him, and in the differing ways those lives responded.