Church Church of England Predecessor William Howley Diocese Diocese of London Successor Archibald Tait | Elected 1828 Name Charles Blomfield Term ended 1856 (ill health) Role Artist | |
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Died 1926, Freemans Bay, Auckland, New Zealand | ||
Charles James Blomfield (29 May 1786 – 5 August 1857) was a British divine and classicist, and a Church of England bishop for 32 years.
Contents
Early life
Blomfield was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk and educated at the local grammar school and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won the Browne medals for Latin and Greek odes, and the Craven scholarship. In 1808, he graduated as third wrangler and first medallist, and in the following year was elected to a fellowship at Trinity College. At Cambridge, Blomfield was tutored by John Hudson, mathematician and clergyman.
Career
The first-fruits of his scholarship was an edition of the Prometheus of Aeschylus in 1810; this was followed by editions of the Septem contra Thebas, Persae, Choephori, and Agamemnon, of Callimachus, and of the fragments of Sappho, Sophron and Alcaeus.
Blomfield, however, soon ceased to devote himself entirely to scholarship. He had been ordained in 1810, and held in quick succession the livings of Quarrington, Lincolnshire, Dunton, Buckinghamshire, Great and Little Chesterford, Tuddenham and The Chesterfords. In 1817 he was appointed private chaplain to William Howley, Bishop of London. In 1819 he was nominated to the rich living of St Botolph, Bishopsgate, and in 1822 he became archdeacon of Colchester. Two years later he was raised to the bishopric as bishop of Chester where he carried through many much-needed reforms.
In 1828, he was appointed a Privy Counsellor and translated becoming bishop of London, a post which he held for twenty-eight years. During this period, his energy and zeal did much to extend the influence of the church. He was one of the best debaters in the House of Lords (members of the Upper House of the Canterbury Convocation confessed to trimming their quill pens before his arrival!), took a leading position in the action for church reform which culminated in the ecclesiastical commission, and did much for the extension of the colonial episcopate; and his genial and kindly nature made him an invaluable mediator in the controversies arising out of the tractarian movement.
Later life
His health at last gave way, and in 1856 he was permitted to resign his bishopric, retaining Fulham Palace as his residence, with a pension of £6000 per annum.
Blomfield is buried in the churchyard of All Saints Church, Fulham, London and a memorial to him, by G. Richmond, can be seen at Saint Paul's Cathedral along the south wall of the ambulatory.
Published works
His published works, exclusive of those above mentioned, consist of charges, sermons, lectures and pamphlets, and of a Manual of Private and Family Prayers. He was a frequent contributor to the quarterly reviews, chiefly on classical subjects.
Personal life
Charles James Blomfield was the eldest son of the ten children of Charles Blomfield (1763–1831), a schoolmaster (as was Charles James's grandfather, James Blomfield), a JP and chief alderman of Bury St Edmunds, and his wife, Hester (1765–1844), daughter of Edward Pawsey, a Bury grocer. His brother was Edward Valentine Blomfield a classical scholar.
He married Anna Maria Heath on 6 November 1810 at Hemblington, Norfolk and they had the following children: Anna Maria (1811-1812), Charles James (1813-1813), Charles William (1815-1815), Edward Thomas (c1817-1822), Maria (1817-c1884) and Charles James (1818-1818). Anna Maria died on 16 February 1818 at Hildersham, Cambridgeshire.
He then married Dorothy (née Cox, widow of Thomas Kent of Hildersham, Cambridgeshire) on 17 December 1819 at St George, Hanover Square, London and they had the following children: Charles James (1820-1822), Mary Frances (1821-1869), Frederick George (1823-1879), Isabella (1824-1879), Henry John (1825-1900), Francis (1827-1860), Arthur William Blomfield (1829-1899), Lucy Elizabeth (1830-1864), Charles James (1831-1915), Alfred Blomfield, (1833-1894) and Dorothy Hester (1836-1886). He was grandfather of the poet and hymn writer Dorothy Gurney née Blomfield (1858-1932), the architect Sir Reginald Blomfield (1856-1942) and the palaeontologist, geologist and malacologist Francis Arthur Bather (1863-1934).
Dorothy also had one son from her first marriage, Thomas Fassett Kent, who was born in 1817 in Ellough, Suffolk.