James Welldon

James Edward Cowell Welldon (25 April 1854 – 17 June 1937) was an English clergyman, Bishop of Calcutta, and scholar.

Early life

Welldon was born in 1854 in Tonbridge, Kent, the son of the Rev. Edward Welldon, the second master of Tonbridge School. He was educated at Eton and was named the Newcastle scholar in 1873. He went on to King's College, Cambridge where he was academically prominent, becoming the Bell scholar in 1874 and the Browne's medallist in 1875 and 1876. In 1877, as well as gaining his BA degree, he was the senior classical and senior chancellor's medallist.^[1] He became a fellow in 1878 and in 1880 gained his MA degree.^[2]

Career

In May 1883, Welldon was appointed master of Dulwich College. In the short time he held this position he did much for the college, including the creation and institution of its school song Pueri Alleynienses which is still in use today. He resigned in July 1885 to take up the position of headmaster of Harrow School, which he held from 1885 to 1898.^[2] He was disliked by many of the masters as an autocratic administrator, but was more popular with the boys, by whom he was known as "the Porker."^[3]

While at Harrow he also accepted a number of clerical positions, having been ordained as a deacon in 1883 and as a priest in 1885, including the select preacher before Cambridge University (in 1885, 1888, and 1893) and the select preacher before Oxford University in 1886 and 1887. He was honorary chaplain to Queen Victoria from 1888 to 1892, and chaplain in ordinary from 1892 to 1898. He was the Hulsean Lecturer at Cambridge in 1897.^[2] In 1898 he became a Doctor of Divinity.^[2]

After leaving Harrow, Welldon was appointed Bishop of Calcutta in 1898. As bishop, then metropolitan of Calcutta, he excluded Scottish chaplains and troops from the use of garrison churches in India because they had not received episcopal consecration, an action for which he was criticised by Robert Herbert Story. He remained diocesan until 1902 when he resigned owing to ill health and disagreement with the Viceroy, Lord Curzon.^[4] He returned to England to become a canon of Westminster until 1906. From 1906 to 1918 he was Dean of Manchester and from 1918 of Durham. He had a strained relationship with the Bishop of Durham, Hensley Henson, who described him as "a man who could neither speak with effect nor be silent with dignity".^[5]

Welldon became an Officer d'académie in 1898.^[2] He was a member of the Athenaeum,^[2] a freemason, and a keen proponent of British imperialism.^[3] He was a life-long bachelor, and for nearly fifty years had the close companionship of a manservant, Edward Hudson Perkins, from whose death in 1932 Welldon never recovered.^[3]

Publications

Welldon was the author of a number of works including:^[2]

• Translation of Aristotle's Politics (1883)^[4]
• Translation of Rhetoric (1886)^[4]
• Translation of Ethics (1892)^[4]
• The Hope of Immortality (1898)^[4]
• Patriotic Song (1901)^[6]
• The English Church (1926)^[4]
• Recollections and Reflections (1915)^[4]
• Forty Years On (1935)^[4]
• Gerald Eversley's Friendship
• Sermons
• Pueri Alleynienses

Notes

1. ^ Welldon, James Edward Cowell in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Ormiston, T. L., (1926), Dulwich College Register,page 53, (J J Keliher & Co Ltd: London)
3. ^ ^{a b c} J. W. S. Tomlin, "Welldon, James Edward Cowell (1854–1937)", rev. M. C. Curthoys, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 26 Dec 2010 (subscription required)
4. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} Richard Aldrich and Peter Gordon, (1989), Dictionary of British Educationists, page 258, (Routledge: London)
5. ^ Lyttelton, letter of 2 May 1956.
6. ^ "Rev. of Patriotic Song". The Publishers' circular and booksellers' record of British and foreign literature 75: 581. 1901. http://books.google.com/books?id=amhNAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA581. 

References

• Lyttelton, George, and Rupert Hart-Davis (1978). The Lyttelton/Hart-Davis Letters, Volume I (1955-6 letters). London: John Murray. ISBN 0-7195-3478-X
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.