Lord Arthur Charles Hervey (1808 – 1894) was an English bishop of Bath and Wells. He was usually known by his aristocratic courtesy title Lord, rather than the style appropriate to a bishop, Right Reverend.
Hervey was the fourth son of Frederick William Hervey, 1st Marquess of Bristol, by Elizabeth Albana Upton, daughter of Clotworthy Upton, 1st Baron Templetown, and was born at his father's London house, 6 St James's Square, on 20 August 1808. From 1817 to 1822 he lived abroad with his parents, chiefly in Paris, and was taught by a private tutor; he entered Eton College in 1822, and remained there until 1826, entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827, and after a residence of two years and a half obtained a first class in the classical tripos, and graduated B.A. in 1830.[1]
Having been ordained both deacon and priest in October 1832, he was instituted in November to the small family living of Ickworth-cum-Chedburgh, Suffolk, with which he was associated until 1869. Chedburgh being in 1844 separated from Ickworth and joined to Horningsheath or Horringer, he also became curate of Horringer until in 1856 he was instituted to the rectory which he held with Ickworth. He was active in clerical work, took a leading part in the organisation of educational institutions in Bury St. Edmunds, and seems to have been the first to propose a system of university extension.[2] In 1862 he was appointed archdeacon of Sudbury.
On the resignation of Robert John Eden, bishop of Bath and Wells, in 1869, he was offered the bishopric on the recommendation of William Ewart Gladstone, and was consecrated on 21 December. He died at Hackwood, near Basingstoke, the house of his son-in-law, Mr. C. Hoare, on 9 June 1894, in his eighty-sixth year, and was buried at Wells. He was a moderate evangelical. By his wife Patience, daughter of John Singleton (born Fowke) of Hacely, Hampshire, and Mell, County Louth, whom he married on 30 July 1839, he had twelve children, of whom five sons and three daughters survived him.
He was a good linguist, and wrote some antiquarian papers. He was one of the committee of revisers of the Authorised Version of the Old Testament, which sat 1870-1884, and in 1885 received the honorary degree of D.D. from the university of Oxford in recognition of his services. He contributed largely to William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible and to the Speaker's Commentary. Besides sermons and lectures, charges and pamphlets, he was author of The Genealogies of our Lord (1853).
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Sidney Lee, ed (1901). "Hervey, Arthur Charles". Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
| Church of England titles | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Robert John Eden |
Bishop of Bath and Wells 1869 –1894 |
Succeeded by George Wyndham Kennion |