On 23 April 1745 he was promoted to be vice-admiral, and sent out as commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean. The service was one of blockade and co-operation with the allied armies, who in the winter of 1746–7, having driven the French out of Italy, invaded Provence; but, after an unsuccessful attack on Antibes, were obliged to retire. On 15 July 1747 Medley was advanced to be vice-admiral of the red, but died, probably in ignorance of his latest promotion, on board the Russell, at Vado, on 5 Aug. 1747. His portrait, by John Ellys, has been engraved by John Faber, junior.
[Charnock's Biog. Nav. iv. 93; commission and warrant books and other documents in the Public Record Office.]
MEDLEY, JOHN (1804–1892), first bishop of Fredericton, New Brunswick, son of George Medley of Grosvenor Place, Chelsea, was born 19 Dec. 1804. He was entered in November 1822 at Wadham College, Oxford, whence he graduated B.A. in 1826 in the second class in literis humanioribus. In the same year he was ordained deacon, and priest in 1829. He proceeded M.A. in the following year.
For the first three years of his ministry he was curate of Southleigh, Devonshire; in 1831 he became incumbent of St. John's parish, Truro. In 1838 he was transferred to the vicarage of St. Thomas, Exeter, and in 1842 became a prebendary of Exeter Cathedral. Having proceeded D.D. 15 March 1845, on 4 May he was consecrated to the bishopric of Fredericton, New Brunswick. On 11 June he was installed in the partly built cathedral of that city. He had come to a diocese full of dissension and strife, and he met his difficulties with vigour. In the summer of 1848 he returned to England to raise funds for the completion of his cathedral. In subsequent years he only occasionally left his diocese to attend meetings of the bishops in neighbouring dioceses. On 11 June 1879, as oldest bishop in the Dominion, he became metropolitan of Canada in succession to Bishop Oxenden. In the summer of 1889 he attended the Lambeth Pan-Anglican Conference, and was made an honorary LL.D. of Cambridge and D.D. of Durham. He died on 9 Sept. 1892, aged nearly 88.
He was the author of the ‘Episcopal Form of Church Government,’ 1835; of two volumes of ‘Sermons,’ 1845; and of a ‘Commentary on the Book of Job,’ 1860. With the Rev. H. J. Cornish he translated the ‘Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on the Corinthians’ (vol. iv. of the ‘Library of the Fathers,’ Oxford, 1838). He also composed a few anthems.
[Dr. W. Q. Ketchum's Life of Medley, St. John's, N.B., 1893; Toronto Mail, 10 Sept. 1892; Colonial Church Chronicle; Foster's Alumni Oxon.]
MEDLEY, SAMUEL (1738–1799), baptist minister and hymn-writer, second son of Guy Medley (d. 25 Oct. 1760), was born at Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, on 23 June 1738. His grandfather, Samuel Medley, had been in the diplomatic service, and accompanied the Earl of Kinnoull's embassy to Constantinople in 1729. His father, Guy, had been tutor to the Duke of Montague, and attorney-general of the Isle of St. Vincent; he subsequently kept a school at Cheshunt; married the youngest daughter of William Tonge, a schoolmaster at Enfield; and was an intimate friend of James Hervey (1714–1758) [q. v.] Medley was educated by Tonge, his maternal grandfather, and at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to an oilman in the city of London. In 1755, however, he obtained his freedom on entering the royal navy, from which he was discharged after being severely wounded in the action off Cape Lagos on 18 Aug. 1759, while serving in Admiral Boscawen's squadron. From 1762 to 1766 he kept a flourishing school in King Street, Soho, and became acquainted with Andrew Gifford [q. v.], assistant-librarian at the British Museum and pastor of the particular baptist church in Eagle Street, Holborn, whose church he joined in December 1760. Gifford led him to enter the baptist ministry. He began preaching on 29 Aug. 1766, and on 6 June 1767 he accepted a call to a congregation at Watford, Hertfordshire, which had been without a minister since 1763. Here he was ordained on 13 July 1768. His ministry was successful, and on 11 Nov. 1771 he was invited to the baptist church in Byrom Street, Liverpool. He first visited Liverpool at the end of December, and began his stated ministry in Byrom Street on 15 April 1772.
Medley's career as a preacher in Liverpool was one of remarkable and increasing popularity. His meeting-house was enlarged in 1773, and in 1789 a new and much larger building was erected for him in the same thoroughfare. His old meeting-house was consecrated in 1792 as St. Stephen's Church. Medley did a valuable work among the seamen of the port of Liverpool. His methods, often adapted to gain the ear of this class, exposed him to the criticism of fastidious persons like Gilbert Wakefield; his daughter collected some of his witticisms. Halley, who ranks him as ‘a great preacher,’ testifies to his ‘liberal and catholic spirit.’ His high character and disinterested philanthropy are
