William Boyd Carpenter

Background

William Boyd Carpenter was the second son of the Revd Henry Carpenter of Liverpool, perpetual curate of St Michael's Church, Aigburth, who married (marriage licence 1837 in Derry) Hester Boyd of Derry, sister of Archibald Boyd, Dean of Exeter. Her father was Archibald Boyd (born about 1764 of Saint Leonards, Shoreditch, London, England), who married Sarah Bodden there on 13 July 1789.

Carpenter was the uncle of Mrs Henry Williams of Moor Park House, Beckwithshaw, North Yorkshire. In 1897 he consecrated St Michaels and All Angels Church at Beckwithshaw, after she and her husband had funded its construction.

Education and career

Carpenter was educated at the Royal Institution, Liverpool, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and was appointed Hulsean lecturer at Cambridge in 1878. He held several curacies, was vicar of Christ Church, Lancaster Gate, from 1879 to 1884, canon of Windsor in 1882–84, and after 1884 Bishop of Ripon. In 1887 he was appointed Bampton lecturer at Oxford, and in 1895 pastoral lecturer on theology at Cambridge. In June 1901, he received an honorary doctorate of Divinity from the University of Glasgow.

In 1904 and 1913 he visited the United States and delivered the Noble lectures at Harvard. He was chaplain in ordinary to Queen Victoria, Edward VII, and George V. He resigned his see in 1911 on the grounds of ill-health and became a canon and sub-dean of Westminster. He was interested in eugenic issues and served as President of the Society for Psychical Research in 1912.

He was appointed Clerk of the Closet from 1903 to 1918.

Publications

His publications include:

Correspondence with Alexandra Feodorovna

William Boyd-Carpenter corresponded with the last empress of Russia, Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse). "In early 1895 she wrote to William Boyd-Carpenter, who as Bishop of Ripon was also court chaplain to her grandmother Queen Victoria, that she was trying hard to come to terms with external trappings of her new faith. ‘Now that I am more used to hear the Russian language I can understand the service so much better, and many things have become clear to me and comprehensible which at first rather startled me. The singing is most beautiful and edifying, only I miss the sermons, which are never preached in the Imperial chapels..."

Family

In 1864 Carpenter married his first wife, Harriet Charlotte Peers (daughter of the Rev. J. W. Peers, of Chislehampton), who bore him eight children:

Harriet died in 1887 and in 1883 Carpenter married his second wife, Annie Maude Gardner (daughter of W. W. Gardner), who bore him a further four children:

Carpenter's other descendants include:

Ancestry

"Life of Lord George Carpenter", published in 1736 (five years before Carpenter's death) is stored in the British Museum. It states that he was a son of Warncomb Carpenter, who was the sixth son of Thomas Carpenter, Esq., from Holme in the parish of Dilwyn, Herefordshire. The family had owned land there for over 400 years, proof of their being there by 1300.

The family bore arms with a blazon reading "Paly of six, argent and gules, on a chevron azure, 3 cross crosslets or." The 3 cross crosslets show that an ancestor had been in the Crusades or was a Crusader, possibly William de Melun. Their motto was Per acuta belli ("Through the asperities of war").

There is no direct male-to-male Carpenter descent connecting Lord George Carpenter and Sir William Boyd Carpenter. The family connection is by marriage through women in the family.