# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Carpenter, William Boyd

​CARPENTER, WILLIAM BOYD (1841-1918), bishop of Ripon, the second son of the Rev. Henry Carpenter, incumbent of St. Michael’s, Liverpool, by his wife, Hester, daughter of Archibald Boyd, of Londonderry, was born at Liverpool 26 March 1841. His mother’s brother, Archibald Boyd [q.v.], was dean of Exeter. Educated at the Royal Institution, Liverpool, he won an open scholarship at St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and graduated B.A. (senior optime) in 1864. Ordained the same year, he served as curate at All Saints, Maidstone (1864-1866), St. Paul’s, Clapham (1866-1867), and Holy Trinity, Lee (1867-1870). He rapidly gained a reputation as a preacher, his last vicar nicknaming him ‘the extinguisher’. In 1870 he was appointed vicar of St. James’s, Holloway, and became known as a capable parish priest. In 1879 he passed to the fashionable parish of Christ Church, Lancaster Gate. He was much liked by Queen Victoria and was appointed a royal chaplain in 1879 and canon of Windsor in 1882. Later he was clerk of the closet to Edward VII (1903-1910), and to George V (1911-1918), by whom he was created a K.C.V.O, in 1912. In these offices he came into close contact with the German court and enjoyed the friendship of the Empress Frederick and of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who made him a knight of the Royal Crown of Prussia.
In 1884 Mr. Gladstone selected Boyd Carpenter for the see of Ripon. This he administered successfully for twenty-five years. He helped to create the see of Wakefield, and prepared the way for that of Bradford; he instituted the Queen Victoria clergy fund to provide pensions for poor clergy, and founded the Ripon clergy college in 1898 to train graduates for holy orders. This foundation (renamed Ripon Hall) was moved to Oxford in 1919. He supported many forms of philanthropic endeavour, and keenly advocated the national league of physical training, the passing of the Children Act (1908), and the old age pensions scheme. A lover of the drama, he promoted the British Empire Shakespeare Society. He delivered the Hulsean lectures at Cambridge in 1878, the Bampton lectures at Oxford in 1887, the Noble lectures at Harvard in 1904 and 1913, the pastoral theology lectures on preaching at Cambridge in 1895, and the Liverpool lecture (translated into German) in 1913. In these utterances he showed himself a persuasive exponent of Victorian religious liberalism. He was a most prolific writer; commentaries, reviews, religious poetry, books of devotion, and popular expositions of the poets, particularly Dante, flowed from his pen. His Introduction to the Study of the Scriptures (1902) is perhaps the best example of his popular religious teaching. In 1905 under the nom de plume Delaval Boyd he produced a tragedy, Brian; and earlier, under the same name, a ‘shilling shocker’, The Last Man in London. His reputation, however, rests mainly on his oratory. He spoke, without manuscript or notes, with extreme rapidity, and in a beautifully modulated voice; this caused him to be known as ‘the silver-tongued bishop of Ripon’. His most notable sermon was that before the House of Commons at the Queen’s jubilee in 1887.
On resigning his bishopric in 1911 Boyd Carpenter became canon, and was later sub-dean, of Westminster. He died in London 26 October 1918. His body is buried in the cloisters at Westminster. There is a memorial window erected to him in Ripon Minster: portraits of him by H. G. Riviere (see Royal Academy Pictures, 1916) hang at Ripon Hall and Ripon palace.
Boyd Carpenter married twice: first, in 1864 Harriet Charlotte, only daughter of the Rev. J. W. Peers, of Chiselhampton, Oxfordshire; and secondly, in 1888 Annie Maude, daughter of W. W. Gardner, publisher. He had five sons and six daughters.
Boyd Carpenter’s published works; H. D. A. Major, Life and Letters of William Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, 1925; unpublished correspondence and diaries; personal knowledge.]
H. D. A. M.