James Butler Knill Kelly
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James Butler Knill Kelly (18 February 1832 – 15 May 1907) was a Bishop of the Church of England active in the British colony of Newfoundland and in Scotland. Kelly was a participant in the first Lambeth Conference, which was a crucial step in the creation of the Anglican Communion.
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[edit] Early life and education
Kelly received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts from Clare Hall. Clare Hall, which was renamed Clare College shortly after Kelly's graduation, remains part of the prestigious University of Cambridge, in Cambridge, England, but Clare itself was in a period of academic decline during Kelly's time there.
In 1855, at the age of 23, Kelly was ordained as a deacon of the Anglican Church. A year later, in 1856, he was elevated to priest.
Kelly began his professional life as curate of Abington, Northamptonshire, but left England for the Isle of Man, to serve as a domestic chaplain for Bishop of Sodor and Man, Horatio Powys. In 1860, upon the death of Joseph Brown, Kelly began serving as the registrar and vicar of the Kirkmichael diocese on the Isle of Man, while continuing his duties as chaplain to Powys. Kelly was the second vicar in the new (1858) parish church, St. Nicholas-Bishop's Court, after Brown.
[edit] Life in Newfoundland
In 1839 the Anglican Church had founded the see of Newfoundland. Bishop Edward Feild's 1864 appeal for clergy needed in the British colony offered Kelly an opportunity in North America he quickly seized, leaving the Isle of Man two years before it achieved Home Rule. In June, Kelly found himself appointed incumbent of the cathedral in St. John's, Newfoundland, and archdeacon of the province.
1867 was a momentous year for Kelly. His ministry had proven a success, and Feild named Kelly his coadjutor. Charles Thomas Longley, the Archbishop of Canterbury, performed the ceremony of consecration on August 16. Kelly, thirty-five years old, received his Doctor of Divinity degree from Cambridge University, and was an attendee at the first Pan-Anglican conference of British, colonial and foreign bishops conference in Lambeth. The conference had been lobbied for by the Canadian synod, but much of the agenda focused on the controversy over John William Colenso, a missionary to the Zulu. Eleven advisory resolutions regarding colonial district administration were nevertheless passed.
The Anglican diocese of Newfoundland also included the island of Bermuda. Kelly and Feild travelled aboard the diocesan ship The Star, and both nearly died in 1871 in a sailing accident that destroyed the ship. This was not the last occasion in which sea travel proved a hardship to Kelly; he became seriously ill in 1874 when travelling to coastal communities on Newfoundland and Labrador. Kelly's logs of his travels on The Star have been published as Journal of a visitation by the Right Reverend J. B. K. Kelly, dd, coadjutor bishop of Newfoundland, in the church ship Star, July–October, 1869, (London, 1870), and The voyage the churchship Star, 1870 (St.John's, 1973).
Kelly's trips did not distract him from projects at home. On 9 October 1871, he married Louisa Bliss, daughter of William Blowers Bliss, a prominent judge from Nova Scotia. Kelly took on leadership of the completion of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist (not to be confused with the Basilica of St. John The Baptist). The Cathedral's nave, finished in 1850, had been serving as the entire church. The cathedral was finished its final construction in 1885, but burned down in the Great Fire of 1892. Kelly organized its reconstruction. The cathedral bears a memorial window dedicated to his memory.
Kelly became a full bishop in 1876, after Feild's death. His understandble aversion to sea travel, however, led him to resign the position in 1877 after a fruitless search for a coadjutor who could relieve him of its necessity.
[edit] Return to the United Kingdom
Kelly returned to his country of birth, where, after a series of other postings, he became coadjutor of Moray, Ross and Caithness in 1885, and received the bishopric in 1886, after the death of Joseph Brown. Kelly again found himself resigning as a bishop in 1889, due to his poor health. He was replaced by William Clavell Ingram, and began a retirement that ended with his death in Inverness, Scotland, in 1907.
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ Clare College: About Clare (History). Retrieved on October 15, 2005.
- ^ 1867 Lambeth Conference Resolutions. Retrieved on October 15, 2005.
