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| William Stubbs by Hubert von Herkomer |
The one death which marks and makes a loss to diocese, Church, country, and literature is that of good Bishop Stubbs, kind Bishop Stubbs, grand Bishop Stubbs, of the winning face, fatherly heart, humorous fancy, fine nature, wide and magnanimous tolerance, keen sympathies.William Stubbs was born in Knaresborough in 1825 and his roots in Yorkshire were of importance to him to the end of his days. "So long as I last, I continue a devout Yorkshireman," he wrote not long before his death.
He grew up in a place rich in historical associations with important national events. All around him were places where his forebears had lived for generations – in the written records the Stubbs family can be found, farmers and yeomen, in the Forest of Knaresborough from the mid 14th century. In Bishop William Stubbs & Knaresborough, an article by Robert M Koch in the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal (Vol 82, 2010), you can find an evocative account of how the layers of history with which he was surrounded laid the foundation for William's career as a pioneering mediaeval historian.
He was drawn to the study of history very early on in his life and he recommended local and personal history to others as a way of connecting with the social and political history of the country.
His biographer W H Hutton (the biography can be read here) wrote that in 1886 William gave a talk in Crewe in which he took himself as an example. Hutton doesn't give his source for his quotation and there are errors which William would not have made – perhaps it was an early draft or a newspaper report.
I wonder if the talk was at the Crewe Mechanics' Institute. He presented prizes there on at least one occasion when he was Bishop of Chester and you will see that at the end of this quotation he encourages them with his own example of success, saying "please to remember that I am just as much a working man as any of you":
I wonder if the talk was at the Crewe Mechanics' Institute. He presented prizes there on at least one occasion when he was Bishop of Chester and you will see that at the end of this quotation he encourages them with his own example of success, saying "please to remember that I am just as much a working man as any of you":
You do not mind my taking myself for an illustration.
Where was I born? Under the shadow of the great castle where the murderers of Thomas Becket took refuge in 1170, and where Richard II was imprisoned in 1399. My grandfather's house stood on the site where Earl Thomas of Lancaster was taken prisoner in 1322. My first visits were paid as a child to the scene where Stephen defeated the Scots and where Cromwell defeated Prince Rupert; my great-grandfather had a farm in the township where King Harold of England defeated Harald Hardrada; and one of my remoter forefathers had a gift of land from John of Gaunt in the very same neighbourhood where I was born.
As you can see, William is referring to some famous battles fought in the North and West Ridings. His forefather John Stubbs had a grant of newly cleared land at Birstwith in the Forest of Knaresborough from the prince and soldier John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, on 27 February 1387. I think it wasn't his great-grandfather who farmed at Stamford Bridge, but his 3xgreat-grandfather, John Wright. Further on, it was his great-grandfather who was out in the Gordon riots.
Now he turns – he was a precociously clever little boy – to events that happened when he was four and five: the arson at York Minster in 1829; the death of the King on 26 June 1830; the July Revolution of 1830 in France when Louis Philippe, Duc d'Orléans, overthrew Charles X; and the election of the statesman Henry Brougham in 1830. Brougham was a major force in the passing of the 1832 Reform Act and the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act.
What do I remember first? Well, perhaps the first thing I do remember was the burning of York Minster – then the death of George IV, then the second French Revolution, then the election of Lord Brougham for Yorkshire, then the Reform Bill and the Emancipation of the West India Slaves. What sort of connection had I with soldiers and churchwardens, and such like? Oh, my grandfather was out in Lord George Gordon's Riots; and all of my ancestors, so far as I can trace, served the office of churchwarden in their time.
You may smile at this – perhaps I was lucky in the circumstances of birth and associations – but mind you, on every one of the points that I have mentioned hangs a lot of history to which my mind was drawn by the circumstances that I have jotted down, and from which the studies began which, not to speak of smaller successes, have landed me in the dignified position to-night of having to advocate the study of history before an audience of the most intelligent people in England!
You like, I dare say, to be told so. As I am flattering myself as you see, I may give you a little of the overflow of my self-complacency; and please to remember that I am just as much a working man as any of you, every step of the life which is now drawing to an end having had, under God's blessing, to be worked out by my own exertions, so that to some extent I may put myself forward as a precedent for you.
He had indeed worked his way through life by his own exertions.
William Stubbs' family background
William and his family lived in a network of friendship and close-knit kinship. It can be seen in the diaries of William's cousin John and the account of his life I give in A Boroughbridge Boyhood in the 1850s: the diaries of John Richard Stubbs. The family's roots were deep in the farms, villages and towns from which they came but they kept in regular contact with relations across the country – in the 1870s, John's family letters show they were close friends with descendants of his great-grandfather's brother who was a grocer and vintner in London by the 1780s.
William was the first child of William Morley Stubbs (1800-42) and Mary Ann Henlock (1803-84).
in a small house in the High Street, which is still standing, next but one to the Bank. The house is built over an archway through which there is access to the back and to a garden stretching some way behind the houses.W H Hutton: William Stubbs, Bishop of Oxford (1906)
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| William's birthplace |
Thomas had chosen well. Boroughbridge was prosperous and bustling, an important staging post on the Great North Road and a major inland port on the River Ure, which had been made navigable up to Ripon in 1770. Before the railways bypassed Boroughbridge and took away the road and river traffic, the mail coaches alone brought a huge amount of business to the town – by the beginning of the 19th century there were at least 150 horses in constant requisition for the coaches in Boroughbridge alone. It was on the route for the Scottish drovers and it is said that nearly 2,000 head of cattle might pass through the town in a day.
Thomas's home and premises were in the Bridge Foot, which is now a care home, but which then was ideally placed beside the road and the river. Close by was the famous coaching inn, The Crown Inn. Its owner, Hugh Stott (1780-1851), was one of Thomas's partners in the Boroughbridge Bank. (Details of the Bank and a photograph of a 5 guinea note can be found here). When William said in 1886 that his grandfather's house "stood on the site where Earl Thomas of Lancaster was taken prisoner in 1322", he was speaking of the Bridge Foot.
(Business ledgers from the Bridge Foot dating from 1794 are now held by NYCRO – you can find an account of them here)
Thomas Stubbs married Jane Morley in Aldborough in 1794. Her mother was Elizabeth Barroby of Dishforth and her father was William Morley, a Boroughbridge merchant who had a share in a lead mine in the Forest of Knaresborough.
Thomas and Jane's eldest son, yet another Thomas (1796-1867) went into the family business. Their younger son William became a solicitor. We often see this development at this time, as prosperous yeomen and businessmen in country towns articled their sons to attorneys, a burgeoning profession.
William Morley Stubbs set up his practice seven miles away in the market town of Knaresborough – described charmingly in the 1822 White's Directory as "delightfully situated on the north eastern bank of the river Nidd, which runs here amongst precipitous banks, and through a romantic valley" – and by the time of the 1829 Pigot's Directory he was one of the nine attorneys practising in the town. Knaresborough offered him much better scope for his talents – much bigger and busier than Boroughbridge, with more bankers, more schools and more inhabitants to be listed in the directories as Nobility, Gentry & Clergy, it was also a centre of linen manufacturing.
On 23 September 1824 he married Mary Ann Henlock (1803-84). She was the daughter of William Henlock (1771-1808), a wine merchant in Knaresborough.
When he was 33 years old, William Henlock had been involved in a riot on polling day in the town. Knaresborough was a "pocket borough" – the Duke of Devonshire had it in his pocket and the town's two MPs were always men chosen by him – and on Monday 30 July 1804 the Duke's agents had been frustrated in their attempts to get his candidates elected. The History of Parliament online puts the riot down to the Duke of Devonshire's new agent cutting the amount of money he was willing to spend on the "treating" (wining, dining & bribing) of the electorate. Bishop Stubbs described it differently [see p4] – as a "riotous attempt" to stop the Duke's candidates from being elected by his tenants, men who didn't live in the town and who could only produce the property qualification to vote because the Duke's agents used to put a title deed into their hands as they went into the polling-booth – and took it off them again as they came out.
William Henlock and five other men were prosecuted for the riot and preventing the election. The report of the case and details of the riot can be found here. It ended with the solicitor Joseph Mosey Allen being sentenced to six months in Newgate Prison and Richard Dewse (or Dowse), linen manufacturer, and Thomas Abbott, weaver, to three months each in King's Bench Prison. William Henlock, the auctioneer William Allison and tailor William Whitehead were acquitted, which must have been a great relief to their families. But William Henlock died only a few years later in 1808, leaving three little girls – Mary Ann was only 4½ years old – to the care of their mother, 29 year old Eliza Bowes.
On her mother's side, Mary Ann's great-grandfather Thomas Bowes came from clothiers of Hunslet near Leeds but he himself was an apothecary in York where he was twice Lord Mayor, dying in office in 1777 aged 61 "after a long indisposition" [Leeds Intelligencer, 28 Oct 1777]. Her grandfather, another Thomas Bowes, was a lieutenant in the 9th Dragoons as a young man and out in the Gordon Riots; he died in York in 1793 aged 47.
The family circle into which William Morley Stubbs and Mary Ann Henlock's children were born was made all the closer by the fact that his elder brother Thomas had married her second cousin, Mary Henlock.
Mary, like Mary Ann, was a great-granddaughter of yeoman farmer John Henlock of Branton Green (died 1745), but while Mary Ann's father and grandfather had become merchants, Mary's family were still farming in the Great Ouseburn area – her brother William, who died in 1866, was the last of a line that began in the written records with the John Henlock of Nether Dunsforth who died in 1540.
William's early years
William was born on 21 June 1825 in his parents' house on Knaresborough High Street.
He learned his first Bible lessons with Mrs Maria Stevens in a little room off Kirkgate, whom he greatly revered for her piety and kindness [see p9]. He went to Mr Cartwright's school in Gracious Street, a school so highly thought of that the sons of tradesmen and professional people from as far afield as Harrogate were sent as pupils. One of the older boys was the future artist William Powell Frith (as in The Railway Station and Derby Day). Mr Cartwright was a master of the "old school" – he caned boys freely – but he was a man of wide general knowledge and loved to teach boys subjects far out of the usual curriculum of schools.
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| William Stubbs as a schoolboy |
Just before Christmas, on 23 December 1837, William Morley Stubbs went bankrupt. I don't know the cause. Possibly he had been investing or engaging in a venture that failed. Possibly he had backed somebody he had trusted whose crash then brought him down as well. The story of Thomas Mease in Stokesley shows how one man's bankruptcy could bring others down with him – you can see there how William Stephenson of Stokesley was ruined because he had accepted bills of exchange from Mease.
Family disaster: bankruptcy and death
It must have been a dreadful time for the family. The stigma was such that in 1906 Bishop Stubbs' biographer never mentioned the bankruptcy at all. In 1884, William wrote to a friend,
Any note from your family or from Knaresborough mean so much to me. I never forget the kindness of your aunt, Mrs Atkinson, to me as a boy when I was in sore need of kindness in many ways
By late February William Morley Stubbs' creditors were satisfied they had received as much as they would get and he received his discharge (for the curious, an explanation of the law on bankruptcy at the time can be found here).
Mary Ann gave birth to their fourth daughter, Mary Anne, shortly afterwards on 6 March 1838. They must at this point have been very dependent on family and friends for financial help. I don't know the effect this had on William Morley Stubbs and what he did to re-establish himself, but in fact he had very little time left to him.
The following year, 14 year old William left Mr Cartwright's school to go to the Grammar School in Ripon. It was no longer a boarding school, simply a town school "in a small building below the cathedral churchyard at the south, where now the choir school is" [Hutton, p10]. At the Grammar School, the boys only studied the Classics and William wrote in later life "the discipline depended largely on the cane and the rule of fasting".
Perhaps the family had already moved to Ripon by 1839 – if not, they did so then and by 1841 were living in North Street. William's father described himself in the census as an Attorney at Law and Mary Ann had a 20 year old servant girl to help with the house and the six children, who were aged between 3 and 15.
Perhaps the family had already moved to Ripon by 1839 – if not, they did so then and by 1841 were living in North Street. William's father described himself in the census as an Attorney at Law and Mary Ann had a 20 year old servant girl to help with the house and the six children, who were aged between 3 and 15.
Then, on 23 August 1842, William Morley Stubbs died at the age of 42 and was buried at Ripon Cathedral. (The ancient minster church had become a cathedral a few years earlier when a new diocese was formed in 1836.)
This must have left the family devastated. Not only did they have to contend with their grief, but Mary Ann was now in very difficult financial circumstances. Young William's future was now even more important – sons in his position knew only too well that their mother and sisters might very well look to them for support in the future. In William's case, he would feel it all the more acutely as his younger brother Thomas was a delicate boy.
However, they were fortunate in their friends and especially in the vicar the Revd R Poole and his family because it was through him that the Bishop of Ripon, Dr C T Longley, took an interest in William. Within two months of his father's death, the Bishop had obtained for him a servitorship at Christ Church, Oxford, for 1844. This was the only way that the son of poor parents could attend Oxford (the Revd Patrick Brontë was a sizar, the equivalent at Cambridge) because the universities were the preserve of the very well-to-do. This is William's biographer's description of the position of servitors –
Servitors were at this time men who came up to the University in forma pauperis, and they formed a class in a college as distinct as that of the noblemen. The servitorships were bestowed on persons who were unable to support themselves, with a view of smoothing their way into the ranks of some profession; and candidates for them would have to satisfy the authorities that they were poor and deserving, but not necessarily that they were capable of high honours. Thus there was no presumption in those days of exceptional intellectual distinction in a servitor.
William recorded that when he went to see the Bishop to thank him, he said it was
certainly speaking a very good thing for me, and worldlily speaking the best thing that could happen to me, that I should have the same advantages as the first men in the kingdom, and with the Lord's blessing he hoped I should succeed.
The Bishop went on to guide William's studies over the next couple of years.
William goes to Oxford – his mother & sisters go to Settle
William entered Christ Church in April 1844 and Mary Ann and the other children continued at Ripon, where they were now living in Bondgate. In early January 1846 they must have been visiting Mark Barroby of Dishforth – a prosperous and kindly bachelor farmer who lived with his spinster sister, he was William Morley Stubbs' first cousin once removed. There was an accident and young Thomas, aged 11, died. The copy of W H Hutton's biography in my possession is annotated in pencil "Killed by falling from a pony at Dishforth" (the handwriting may be that of Miss Alice Stubbs, who is described in A spinster lady in 19th century Boroughbridge) and indeed in the burials register of Ripon Cathedral the clerk has noted that the boy was "buried under the Coroner's Warrant" on 15 January 1846.
A few months later, Mary Ann's younger sister took a decisive step. While Mary Ann had married only to meet with tragedy and her elder sister Frances Eliza (1801-81) was settled in Knaresborough with her husband, the Scottish surgeon John Lees Hunter, the youngest sister Isabella (1805-60) had remained unmarried. She must have been earning her living as a governess. In the summer of 1846 she took the step that so many governesses hoped one day to make – she announced her intention of opening a school. She had found a house in Settle which would be suitable – one of three large stuccoed houses built in a terrace not very many years earlier. The address, then and now, is The Terrace.
Settle was a much smaller town than Knaresborough but the new railway would within months connect it to the wider world. I think the ability to attract girls from the growing manufacturing towns of the West Riding was a great asset to any school, as can be seen in the story of The Mease sisters of Stokesley, and in Settle extra income could be made by lodging boys attending Giggleswick Grammar School. The 1851 Census lists 17 year old Mary Jane Hardacre from Long Preston, who must have been a parlour boarder and treated as part of the family, plus six Grammar School boys. One was Isabella's nephew Henry Hunter from Knaresborough; the birthplaces of the others were given as Leeds, Colne and Wetherby, while the two youngest, aged 10 and 12, were born in Jamaica
Leeds Intelligencer, 29 August 1846
The Terrace, SettleMiss Henlock purposes to Open an Establishment for the Board and Education of Young Ladies, in Settle, upon the commencement of the next Year. Miss Henlock begs to say it will be her earnest endeavour to unite sound Religious Principles with a useful and elegant Education, and as far as possible combine the comforts of home with the duties and discipline of School.
Most unexceptionable references can be given if required. Terms may be had on application to Thomas Redmayne, Esq., Taitlands, Settle
Mary Ann Henlock joined with Isabella in this venture – she would be needed to act as housekeeper and supervise the boarders while Isabella devoted her time to teaching. Her own girls would be pupils in the school and in due course would be able to help in the school.
Isabella was drawing on the support of a significant local figure in Thomas Redmayne of Taitlands. He was married to her second cousin Jane Henlock of Great Ouseburn.
Jane was the sister of Mary Ann's sister-in-law Mary Henlock, wife of Thomas Stubbs of Boroughbridge. Mary was one of eight – there were four brothers and four sisters including, confusingly, another Miss Isabella Henlock – and they had a great many connections in the Settle area. (You can meet Mary and her family in A Steadfast Friend: the life of Mrs Mary Stubbs). Their mother was Jane Redmayne, daughter of Richard Redmayne yeoman of Austwick. Their father John Henlock's sister Mary had married Giles Redmayne of Settle. And a few years after Isabella Henlock set up her school, Mary and Jane's brother William Henlock of Great Ouseburn married Ellen Thornber of Settle.
Leeds Intelligencer, 9 January 1847
The Terrace, SettleMiss Henlock would be happy to receive into her Family after the Christmas Vacation, a limited Number of Young Ladies to be Educated along with Three of her own Nieces who reside with her, and thus to combine the care and comforts of Home with the duties and discipline of School.
Miss H. would desire to impart to her Pupils a sound and liberal Education, based on the highest Religious Principles.
Terms and further Particulars may be had on Application, and the most unexceptionable References given if required.
Miss H. would be happy to receive a Young Lady as Parlour Boarder. School will commence on the 20th of January.
In this advertisement in the New Year of 1847, Isabella stresses the comforts of home and the family atmosphere that her pupils would enjoy. The three nieces must be Isabella, aged nearly 15, and Frances and Mary Ann, who would soon be 11 and 9. Eliza was soon to be 20 so she was either teaching in the school or was working as a governess. William's biographer W H Hutton never mentions the school, only going so far as saying that "one of [Mary Ann's] daughters had gone out as a governess, partly to help in her brother's education". This must have been Eliza, who was two years younger than William. Isabella was a governess at the age of nineteen when William was an ordained clergyman. I suspect all the sisters will have taught and I don't think this was something that an Edwardian biographer would want to dwell on overmuch.
On the night of the 1851 census, only Frances, aged 15, was with her mother and her aunt at the Terrace. Eliza, now 24, and 13 year old Mary Ann were with William at the vicarage in Navestock in Essex, where he had been vicar only a few months. Isabella was governess to the four daughters, aged between 6 and 15, of the banker Henry Alcock and his wife Belle in Skipton.
Isabella wasn't there long. On 1 June 1852, she died aged 20 and was buried in Settle churchyard.
William & his family in John Richard Stubbs' papers
John Richard Stubbs was the son of Mary Ann and Isabella's second cousin, Mrs Mary Stubbs of Boroughbridge. His diaries begin in 1853, six months after Isabella's death, when he was a pupil at Giggleswick Grammar School and boarding with his aunt and her sister. A diary entry shows he was under his aunt's supervision – and was escaping it to visit his Redmayne cousins at Taitlands near Stainforth
30 Sep 1853: School In the evening walked with T Bramley to Taitlands on the sly Mrs Stubbs & Co knew not
There was quite a family party in Settle in August 1856. John, his cousin Sophy Hirst and his Aunt Bell (Miss Isabella Henlock) were over from Boroughbridge, and William was there visiting his mother. John was not quite eighteen but he was evidently trusted with his uncle Thomas Redmayne's phaeton as he took three of his cousins, including William's sister Fanny (Frances), out for a drive. On 18 August he
drove the ladies to the Terrace to tea. After tea we all walked to Castleberg Fanny told me of her smash with George Robinson and she also told me of Mary Anne’s Engagemt with Walter Alfred Hill [actually Hills] Esq
Fanny’s "smash" with George Robinson was perhaps the end of an attachment or engagement. George was a young banker and nephew of a prominent banker and JP in Settle. He was the same age as Fanny, only 21 at the time of the "smash".
On 12 January 1857 John records that William's sister Eliza dined at the Bridge Foot with their cousin Dora Hirst – Eliza must have been staying with the Hirsts – before going back to Settle for her wedding on 20 January to the Revd Thomas Gwynn, a Christ Church graduate whom she must have met through William. John’s father went over for the wedding, staying with the Redmaynes at Taitlands, and John sent Eliza a copy of the classic household handbook Enquire Within Upon Everything for a wedding present.
In 1858, both John and William were groomsmen for their friend Dr Leonard Sedgwick when he married John’s cousin Jane Redmayne of Taitlands at Stainforth, near Settle. It was a fine wedding.
William himself married the 20 year old Catherine (Kate) Dellar, the daughter of John Dellar, gamekeeper in Navestock, and his wife Martha, at Navestock on 20 June 1859.
A couple of William's letters to John survive. His remarks and Kate's messages have a pleasant air of playfulness and affection. When John's engagement to Ellis was announced – they were engaged within ten days of meeting in late November 1870 and married four months later – William wrote to John's sister Alice
I hope you and Aunt like John’s engagement. Do you know the young lady? Where will they live? Were you surprised?
In February 1872 when the birth of their first baby was imminent, John's mother wrote to Ellis that Kate Stubbs had enquired after her –
if the baby has yet arrived that would be so well trained she hoped you would not forget she would like to be at Redcar again but dreads the journey with three children
The children were Katharine, William and Launcelot, as little Francis had died not many weeks before, aged only two months. Poor Kate and William had already lost baby William in Navestock and little Helena and Edward at Oxford – details, and a photograph of Helena, Edward and Francis's gravestone at St Sepulchre's can be seen here.
And when John's first child Thomas Duncan Henlock Stubbs was born, William wrote
I congratulate you very sincerely on your little boy and hope he will live to be a blessing and comfort to you and his mother. I suppose you have already found out how mistaken your previous views of wives and children were. I shall be very happy to be godfather, and will put him down in the pedigree as soon as he is baptized.
That summer William and Kate and the children did come up to Redcar. In August 1872 John's mother Mary wrote from Boroughbridge
I hope you and the Professors are good neighbours give my love to them all
William had been made Regius Professor of History at Oxford and the family evidently – and proudly – referred to him as the Professor. On 10 August he preached at John and Ellis's parish church – Christ Church, Coatham – on the anniversary of its consecration.
I fear the Professors will now be dull only they will have Canon Haines as neighbors
wrote Mary on the same day, as Ellis and the baby had gone to visit her family in Scotland and John was off for a few days' shooting.
By 31 August the Professors were staying in Harrogate, where John's sister Jane Capes and her lively family lived. (see A large family in 19th century Harrogate). Mary Stubbs wrote
Aunt Bell went to tea at the Professors on Wednesday they are much enjoying Harrogate and stay another week they may come to us for a day next week they were going last Thursday with a party of eighty to Hackfall given by Mr Gill his return wedding party. Jane and [her husband] Henry were going too
On 10 October 1872, Mary wrote to John and Ellis
The Professor is going to Harlow this week to preach at the reopening of Knaresbro Church. I had a letter from Kate this morng. She enquired if you are at home again and begs her love to you all poor little Lancey was very ill at Harrogate but is better again
The 1870s did not continue well for William's family. It seems that only he and his mother had robust health ...
William's sister Fanny never married, but continued to live with her mother and to be the useful unmarried sister. She and her mother are described in a letter of 6 October 1873 from John's Aunt Bell – they were "both as cheerful as ever and look very well". Fanny died at the age of 41 in 1877, and was buried at Ramsgate where her sister Mary Anne and her family lived.
Mary Anne's wedding to Walter Alfred Hills took place nearly two years after Fanny had told John about the engagement. They were married by William at Navestock church on 14 December 1858. She probably met Walter, who was a graduate of Trinity College, Oxford, through her brother. The son of a barrister, he studied law himself and was the author of published poetry. The Hills lived in Ramsgate and had five children – Laura, Florence, Lilla, Henry and Margaret – but Mary Anne was only 40 and her children aged between 12 and 19 when she died in 1878. Walter died the following year.
Eliza's husband the Revd Thomas Gwynn was an assistant master at Marlborough College. In 1869 he and Eliza began their own preparatory school at Marlow Place, a fine country house outside Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire. A notice in the Reading Mercury of 21 August 1869 advertises that Thomas would receive "twenty-six pupils to prepare for Marlborough College and other Public Schools", with William as one of the references for interested parents. Letters surviving in John's family reveal that in 1873 they were hit by misfortune. In October Eliza fell ill with "rheumatic gout in the knee" and wrote to Boroughbridge where her mother and sister Fanny were staying, because she "wished for Fanny’s help". A week later she was better but both knees were affected. She continued unwell through November, but then her husband was taken very seriously ill. On 6 December Mary wrote to John that
we have rather better accounts of Mr Gwynn but he will be obliged to give up work entirely and the School must be disposed of poor things they had hoped to go on a few years longer and then take a Curacy but now I do not suppose he can even do that.On 13 December she wrote
Poor Mr Gwynn is better they have disposed of the school for one thousand pounds and had saved nearly five thousand so they may live quietly poor things but he is never to attempt taking duty or work at allIn February 1874 they came north to visit the family:
Poor Mr Gwynn is much the same they stay at Harlow till next month then go to Wem they have got the one thousand for the school
Thomas Gwynn died at Great Marlow in the house of Mr Ransom of West Street at the age of 47 on 3 April 1874, Good Friday. Mary Stubbs heard the news a couple of days later. On 11 July she told her son John
we must be at home the last week in August as Eliza Gwynn will come to us then
Eliza died four years later on 6 April 1878, very near the anniversary of her husband’s death, and was buried at Wem.
The years 1877 and 1878 were terrible for the Bishop’s family. Fanny died on 16 June 1877. On 5 March 1878 Mary Anne died leaving five teenage children. A month later Eliza died on 6 April, her husband having died three years earlier, leaving an 18 year old daughter. On 21 October 1879 Mary Anne's widower Walter Alfred Hills died. Mary Ann Stubbs had lost one son, all her daughters and both her sons-in-law. She died on 8 June 1884 – in time to see William become Bishop of Chester.
William's career
In June 1848, William took his B.A. degree with a first in Classics and a third in Mathematics. According to Hutton, it was not the custom of Christ Church for a servitor to become a Fellow; instead William became a Fellow of Trinity College, where he stayed for two years. He felt called more to ministry in the church than to work as a college tutor and he was priested in May 1850 and presented to the College living of Navestock in Essex.
William was at Navestock for 17 years. He was a diligent and well-loved parish priest – 'I suppose,' he said in later years, ’I knew every toe on every baby in the parish' [p259 of Letters of William Stubbs]
It was during those years that he began his prodigious body of historical work. He had first begun to find his way about mediaeval documents when he spent holidays in the archives held in the old Courthouse (now the Museum) in Knaresborough, amongst manorial records dating from the reign of Edward III (1327-77). By the time he was settled in Essex, he had gained an unrivalled knowledge of many original mediaeval sources. He also took the occasional pupil – Algernon Swinburne was one.
Swinburne came to William Stubbs at the end of 1859 and given that he's considered one of the Decadent school of poetry and many of his subjects were distinctly shocking (dealing with lesbianism, cannibalism, sado-masochism, and anti-theism as the wikipedia entry says), it's rather touching to read his tribute to his old tutor in 1903
It would be impossible for me to say with what cordial and grateful regard I shall always remember him. His kindness was as exceptional as his other qualities. I am sure no young man who ever had the honour to be his pupil – however little credit the pupil may have done him – can remember his name without affection as well as admirationIn 1866, William became Regius Professor of History at Oxford. Robert M Koch writes in his article [p355]
Stubbs was the ideal choice to hold the office, the first Regius Professor to be trained in the discipline of history. When he rose to give his Inaugural Lecture on 7 February 1867, a lecture delivered with traces of a Yorkshire accent and a mind trained in the German methods of scholarship, Stubbs began a revolution in the study of history in the English speaking world
His career included: being librarian to Archbishop Longley at Lambeth; diocesan inspector of schools in diocese of Rochester; Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford; curator of the Bodleian Library; delegate of the Clarendon Press; Rector of Cholderton, Wilts; Canon Residentiary of St Paul's; Bishop of Chester; and Bishop of Oxford. The bishopric he really wanted was that of Ripon.
For a true appreciation of William's significance as a pioneering historian and editor, in the preservation and publication of mediaeval chronicles and texts in England, and in his views of what university teaching should be ('the historical teaching of history has been practically left out in favour of the class-getting system of training'), the reader should turn to Robert M Koch's article and to the rather drier, but very detailed, entry in the Dictionary of National Biography. The text of the DNB entry can be read here.
It concludes with a list of his public honours:
Among the public honours Stubbs received may be mentioned membership of the Berlin, Munich, and Copenhagen academies, corresponding membership of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques of the French Institut, honorary doctorates of Heidelberg, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Dublin, and Oxford, and the rarely conferred Prussian order pour le mérite (1897). Perhaps no recognition pleased Stubbs better than that of his old Oxford contemporaries and brother historians, the friendship of such German scholars as Pauli, Maurer, Waitz, and Liebermann, and his honorary studentship of Christ Church.
William was very ill when he gave the sermon at Queen Victoria's funeral in St George's Chapel, Windsor, in the presence of King Edward VII and Kaiser Wilhelm II. He died not long afterwards on 22 April 1901 and was buried in the village churchyard of Cuddesdon. Kate survived him by many years. She died on 19 August 1942 at the age of 103 and was buried in the vault with William. She was survived by her daughter Katharine and her sons William, Launcelot, Lawrence, Wilfred and Reginald.
I notice that the obituaries in the newspapers after William's death often commented that he was no orator. I wonder – given the open, accessible language of the extracts that Hutton gives from the lecture to the working men in Crewe and from a lecture in Reading, and given that the Pall Mall Gazette wrote of the "good, plain sense" of the content of his sermons – how much of this was a matter of style, and whether we nowadays would very much prefer to hear William Stubbs preach rather than any of his famous contemporaries.
Humorous anecdotes about Bishop Stubbs
After William's death, vicars in his diocese paid tribute to him in their Sunday sermons. These phrases can be found in the reports in the Oxford press: his freedom from worldly or even intellectual ambitions ... his gentle, retiring character ... a single eye for truth, for righteousness ... his simplicity of character ... with his great learning the Bishop was above all a humble man ... singularly forbearing, and patient of other people's follies ... he did not care to ridicule or chide ... his playful moods ... his perpetual activity was simply marvellous, as well as his sound wisdom and critical acumen.
Serious obituaries were published in the newspapers – but they couldn't resist humorous stories about him either because, as the Sheffield Independent remarked "this cold seeker after historic truth had a pretty wit". This is from the Bradford Daily Telegraph
On one occasion, when he was presiding over a meeting of the Diocesan Board whose proceedings were, as he thought, being unnecessarily protracted by a sequence of prosy speakers, he scribbled the following on a piece of paper and passed it to his neighbour. It plays on the remark of Louis XIV, "L'état, c'est moi" and that he was the diocesan, the bishop:
"I am the state," said Louis the Great,
A parallel case I afford,
For now don't you see, it's the same thing with me,
For I'm the Diocesan bored.
On one occasion the Bishop had presided at the presentation of a pastoral staff – a crozier – to his suffragan, Dr Randall. When making the presentation he delighted his hearers with an eloquent speech on the uses of the staff and all that it symbolised. And then wound up by saying, "For my own part I prefer an umbrella." Some dismay and a lot of laughter followed. One of the Oxford clergy, preaching after his death, earnestly explained this
the truth of the matter being that to him the useful and the ornamental occupied very much the same place, and both seemed insignificant when measured with the eternal claims of truth and righteousness.
While officiating in a Buckinghamshire church he hesitated before coming down the steps from the altar. After the service, one of the other clergymen told him he was on the point of coming forward to help as he thought perhaps the hesitation was due to failing eyesight. "Not that at all, not that at all, thank you," replied the Bishop, "merely a matter of sex, you know. Though I have been a bishop twenty years, I have not yet learnt to manage my skirts properly."
Some of the stories showing his playful, down-to-earth humour may have been embroidered over the years!
A favourite story, which appears in variants, finds the Bishop at a school prize giving – he was apparently excellent on these occasions. He told his audience of his regret that pressure of work as a bishop meant that he no longer had time for literature. Indeed, there was only one book he now found time to dip into at all. (Some variants have him asking if the audience can guess its name – which began with B):
"I need hardly say that the book to which I refer" (a stillness fell on the audience) "is – the Bradshaw [Railway Guide]"
These are from the Yorkshire Evening Post:
An importunate lady, knowing Dr Stubbs's experience of the Holy Land, kept on asking him what place she ought to go to, as she was starting on a trip to Palestine. "To Jericho, madam." said the Bishop sweetly
On another occasion his tall hat was damaged as he passed through a somewhat hilarious crowd. Someone proposed that it should be put on the table for general view. "I propose," said the Bishop, "that it be passed round."
Once going to a service at Oxford St Mary's, Dr Stubbs and his chaplain espied a Master of Arts in the procession wearing the hood of a Bachelor of Divinity. "I call that acting a lie," said the chaplain. "I should only call it a false hood," said the Bishop.
An aristocratic don insisted on having his name pronounced in an eccentric manner. Dr Stubbs talked of great houses – "But I seldom find recognised," he added, "the distinction of the great family of St. Ubbs"
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