Christopher Wordsworth

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The Reverend Doctor Christopher Wordsworth, M.A., D.D. (October 30, 1807 – March 20, 1885), English bishop and man of letters, was the youngest son of the Rev. Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, Master of Trinity, born in London and educated at Winchester and Trinity, Cambridge. He was the younger brother of Charles Wordsworth, Bishop of Saint Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane, and a nephew of the poet William Wordsworth.

Like his brother Charles, he was distinguished as an athlete as well as for scholarship. He became senior classic, and was elected a fellow and tutor of Trinity in 1830; shortly afterwards he took holy orders. He went for a tour in Greece in 1832-1833, and published various works on its topography and archaeology, the most famous of which is "Wordsworth's" Greece (1839). In 1836 he became Public Orator at Cambridge, and in the same year was appointed Headmaster of Harrow, a post he resigned in 1844. He then served as Canon of Westminster (1844-1869), Vicar of Stanford in the Vale, Berkshire (1850-1869) and Archdeacon of Westminster (1864-1869). From 1869 till his death in 1885 Wordsworth was Bishop of Lincoln.

He was a man of fine character, with a high ideal of ecclesiastical duty, and he spent his money generously on church objects. As a scholar he is best known for his edition of the Greek New Testament (1856-1860), and the Old Testament (1864-1870), with commentaries; but his writings were many in number, and included a volume of devotional verse, The Holy Year (1862), Church History up to A.D. 451 (1881-1883), and Memoirs of his uncle, William Wordsworth (1851), to whom he was literary executor. His Inscriptiones Pompeianae (1837) was an important contribution to epigraphy.

In 1838 Wordsworth married Susanna Hartley Frere (d. 1884) and had seven children. The eldest son, John Wordsworth (b. 1843), was Bishop of Salisbury, founder of Bishop Wordsworth's School, Salisbury, and author of Fragments of Early Latin (1874); the eldest daughter, Elizabeth (b. 1840), was the founder and first principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford in 1879.

His Life, by J. H. Overton and Elizabeth Wordsworth, was published in 1888.