John Wordsworth

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The Reverend John Wordsworth was born at Harrow-on-the-Hill, to the Reverend Christopher Wordsworth, nephew of the poet William Wordsworth. He was born into a clerical family: his father was Bishop of Lincoln, his uncle, Rev. Charles Wordsworth, was Bishop of Saint Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane, and his grandfather, Rev. Dr. Christopher Wordsworth was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. John was a precocious child, the third in a family of seven and the elder of two brothers. He became a distinguished classical scholar, holding the positions of Fellow and Tutor at Trinity, then Chaplain Fellow, Prebendary at Lincoln, and Oriel Professor and Residentiary Canon at Rochester before being elevated to Salisbury in 1885, at the age of 42.

Three years into his term of office at Salisbury, Bishop John inaugurated the Salisbury Church Day School Association. Salisbury had reached a time of educational and political crisis and the Association set about the task of raising the £14,000 necessary to build three new primary schools and to add an infants department to the existing St Thomas’ School, thus accommodating another 1121 children. In addition the Bishop founded his own school at a cost of £3,000, entirely at his own expense. He purchased a piece of land adjoining the grounds of the palace and started building in 1889. Whilst building work was being completed, the Bishop started his school in January 1890 in his own palace, the pupils moving to their new building in April 1890 when the new school was officially opened. The school was known at the time as the Bishop’s School, being renamed the year after the Bishop’s death as "Bishop Wordsworth's School".

John Wordsworth was married twice, first to Susan Esther Coxe (1870) who died at the palace in 1894 and then to Mary Anne Frances Williams (1896). There were four sons and two daughters to this second marriage. The Bishop undertook three major foreign visits during his episcopacy, the first to New Zealand as he recovered from the death of his first wife and the others to Sweden in 1909 and to America in 1910. He died at the palace on the 16th August 1911, working right up to the very end. A friend, Canon Woodall, remembering a conversation held some years before recalls: "Some years ago.....when walking with him on the site of the present St Mark’s School he said ‘I should like to see Salisbury a great educational centre. I should like to found a school which shall be equal to the greatest and best of our public schools.’ " However, it was perhaps his care for and love of children which underpinned his foundation. The school’s motto "Veritas in Caritate", surely remembered from his father’s epitaph in 1885, survives him to this day.

Religious Posts
Preceded by George Moberly	Bishop of Salisbury 1885–1911	Succeeded by Frederic Ridgeway