William Gresley (divine)

William Gresley (16 March 1801 – 19 November 1876) was an English divine.

Early life

Gresley was born in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, on 16 March 1801. He was the eldest son of Richard Gresley of Stowe House, Lichfield, Staffordshire. He was a descendant of the Gresleys of Drakelow Park, Burton-on-Trent, and a bencher of the Middle Temple, by his first wife, Caroline, youngest daughter of Andrew Grote, banker, of London. George Grote was his first cousin on his mother's side.

Education

He was a king's scholar of Westminster School, and matriculated at Oxford as a student of Christ Church on 21 May 1819.[1] In 1822 he took a second class in classics, and graduated B.A. on 8 February 1823, M.A. on 25 May 1825.

Career

An injury to his eyesight prevented his studying for the bar, and he took holy orders in 1825. He was curate for a short time (in 1828) at Drayton-Bassett, near Tamworth, and from 1830 to 1837 was curate of St. Chad's, Lichfield. During part of the time he was also morning lecturer at St. Mary's, Lichfield. An earnest high churchman, he threw himself into the Tractarian movement of 1833, and tried to popularise its teaching.

In November 1840 Gresley became a prebendary in Lichfield Cathedral, an honorary preferment.[2] About 1850 Gresley moved to Brighton, and acted as a volunteer assistant priest in the church of St. Paul. He preached every Sunday evening. In 1857 he accepted the perpetual curacy of All Saints, Boyne Hill, near Maidenhead, Berkshire, where a church, parsonage-house, and schools were in course of erection at the expense of three ladies living in the Oxford diocese. He settled there before either church or house was ready, and worked there with great success. His schools obtained a high reputation.

Gresley died at Boyne Hill on 19 November 1876, and was buried in the churchyard. In 1828 he married Anne Wright, daughter and heiress of John Barker Scott, banker, of Lichfield, and had by her nine children, all of whom he survived.

Works

In 1835 Gresley published Ecclesiastes Anglicanus: being a Treatise on the Art of Preaching as adapted to a Church of England Congregation, and in 1838 his Portrait of an English Churchman, which ran through many editions. In 1839 he began with Edward Churton a series of religious and social tales under the general title of The Englishman's Library, 31 vols., London, 1840–39–46. Of these tales he wrote six:

To describe the influence on his own mind of the Oxford movement, and to illustrate the "danger of dissent", he wrote Bernard Leslie, or a Tale of the Last Ten Years, London, 1842, 1859. To The Juvenile Englishman's Library (21 vols., 1845–44–49), edited successively by his friends Francis Edward Paget and John Fuller Russell, he contributed Henri de Clermont, or the Royalists of La Vendée: a Tale of the French Revolution (vol. iii.), and Colton Green, a Tale of the Black Country (vol. xv.)

His ‘Ordinance of Confession,’ published in 1851, caused considerable stir, although he did not wish to make confession compulsory. Later in life Gresley, with a view to checking the spread of scepticism, published ‘Sophron and Neologus, or Common Sense Philosophy,’ in 1861; ‘Thoughts on the Bible,’ in 1871; ‘Priests and Philosophers,’ in 1873; and ‘Thoughts on Religion and Philosophy,’ in 1875. From the last two of these works selections, under the title of ‘The Scepticism of the Nineteenth Century,’ were published, with a short account of the author, and portrait, by a former curate, S. C. Austen, in 1879.

His other writings include:

References

  1. Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1715–1886, ii. 563
  2. Le Neve, Fasti, ed. Hardy, i. 642

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Goodwin, Gordon (1890). "Gresley, William". In Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography. 23. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 153–155. 

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