A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature/Church, Richard William
Church, Richard William (1815-1890).—Divine, historian, and biographer, was b. at Lisbon, and ed. at Oxf., where he became a friend of J. H. Newman (q.v.). He took orders, and became Rector of Whatley, Somerset, and in 1871 Dean of St. Paul's. He was a leading member of the High Church party, but was held in reverence by many who did not sympathise with his ecclesiastical views. Among his writings are The Beginning of the Middle Ages (1877), and a memoir on The Oxford Movement (1891), pub. posthumously. He also wrote Lives of Anselm, Dante, Spenser, and Bacon.