# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Alexander, William

​ALEXANDER, WILLIAM (1824–1911), archbishop of Armagh, was born in Derry on 13 April 1824. His father, Robert Alexander, rector of Aghadowey, was nephew of Nathanael Alexander, bishop of Meath, and a cousin of James Alexander, first earl of Caledon. His mother was Dorothea, daughter of Henry M'Clintock of Ballyarton, co. Donegal. William was the eldest son in a family of three sons and five daughters; of his two brothers, Henry became a rear admiral, and Robert was killed at the siege of Delhi. Educated at Tonbridge School, Kent, William matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, in November 1841, afterwards migrating to Brasenose. Residence at the university during the last years of the Oxford movement permanently affected his life and his attitude towards religious questions. In later years he used to recall the spell of Newman's sermons. He graduated in classical honours (fourth class) in 1847, but in spite of the low class he had proved command of poetic and literary gifts. On 19 Sept. 1847 he was ordained deacon by Richard Ponsonby [q. v.], bishop of Derry, accepting the curacy of the cathedral parish. He received priest's orders on 16 June 1848, when the ordination sermon was preached by William Archer Butler [q. v.] Subsequently he held in turn the benefices of Termonamongan (1850), Fahan (1855), and Camus-juxta-Mourne (1860), and was appointed dean of Emly (a sinecure office) in 1864.
Meanwhile in 1850 Alexander won at Oxford the Denyer theological prize for an essay on the 'Divinity of Christ'; in 1853 he recited in the Sheldonian theatre a congratulatory ode to Lord Derby, then assuming the chancellorship of the university, and in 1860 he obtained the university prize for his sacred poem 'The Waters of Babylon.' In 1867 he was a candidate for the university professorship of poetry at Oxford,when Sir Francis Doyle [q. v. Suppl.I] was elected by a narrow majority. In the same year Alexander became bishop of Derry, being consecrated in Armagh cathedral on 6 Oct. 1867, and proceeding D.D. at Oxford. At Derry he lived for the next twenty-nine years. The requirements of his episcopal office were exacting and he diligently discharged his pastoral duties, confirmations, ordinations, visitations and the like, gaining in a marked degree the affection of his clergy. He never cared for the routine work of committees or for the details of financial organisation. The disestablishment of the Irish church in 1869 was a blow to him, and he held that it had done serious injury to religion in Ireland. By conviction a high churchman, although with no leaning to what is called ritualism, Alexander was not in full sympathy with the party which became dominant for a time in the councils of the disestablished Irish church, and synodal controversy was distasteful to his spirit. On the death of Archbishop Robert Bent Knox [q. v. Suppl. I] in 1893 he was elected by the Irish bishops to the see of Armagh and the primacy of all Ireland. It was not until his succession to the primacy, with the full concurrence of all ecclesiastical parties, that he became the recipient of that full measure of honour and respect in Ireland which had already been accorded to him in England and in the colonial churches. 'I have been, perhaps,' said Alexander of himself in 1893, with modesty and some justice, 'enough of a writer to prevent me being a very good speaker. I have been enough of a speaker to prevent me being a thinker. And I have been enough of a writer and speaker and thinker to prevent me being a very good bishop for these troublous times.' Poetry and literature were always the delight of Alexander's leisure, although not a chief occupation. Through life he wrote verses, which good critics recognised as genuine poetry. In 1886 he published 'St. Augustine's Holiday and other Poems' (with a preface of autobiographical interest), and in 1900 another edition of his poems appeared under the title of 'The Finding of the Book.' Many striking verses of his on occasions of public interest appeared in 'The Times' and the 'Spectator' during later years.
But from the early stages of his clerical career it was as an eloquent and accomplished speaker, preacher, and lecturer that he made his mark. In America his power was no less recognised than in England. Literary themes attracted him as well as religious or theological ones. A Dublin lecture on Matthew Arnold's poetry (1863) was full of suggestiveness and of nice critical discrimination. Another on Virgil and St. Augustine was printed in 1869 along with a spirited blank verse translation of part of the 'Æneid.' To the end of his days Alexander was under the spell of St. Augustine, and one of his most characteristic lectures, delivered in 1876 in St. James's, Piccadilly, dealt with St. Augustine's Confessions. Not only was he sensible of the merits of the African bishop as a theologian and a spiritual guide, but he was strongly attracted ​by his terse and epigrammatic style. The larger part of Alexander's writings and lectures, however, was on theological subjects and much of it was prepared for English pulpits. Not so powerful as Magee, he became, probably, the most brilliant Anglican preacher of his day. No one approached him as a master of felicitous and striking phrase. His sermons were not so closely reasoned as Liddon's, but their effectiveness was much enhanced by their delivery without manuscript, by a splendid and sympathetic voice and a dignified presence. 'My habit,' he wrote, 'is to prepare carefully and to take into the pulpit a complete skeleton of the discourse, and as much argumentative or illustrative matter as might occupy some minutes in delivery, trusting for the rest to the suggestions of the moment founded upon previous thought.' His sermons on great occasions were very numerous, two notable examples being his discourse at the enthronement of his old friend Magee as archbishop of York on 17 March 1891, and that before the Lambeth conference in Canterbury Cathedral on 4 July 1897. Steeped in the writings of Pearson and the great Caroline divines, he wrote and spoke with a just sense of proportion, and knew how to distinguish things essential from things of secondary importance. His Oxford prize essay on the 'Divinity of Christ' was reprinted twice in a slightly modified form, in 1854, and again in one of his latest books, 'Primary Convictions' (1893, 2nd ed. 1898). This work also contains the substance of lectures delivered in America in 1892; it deals with the main topics of the Christian creed, and in picturesque and impassioned language dwells upon its beauty, its reasonableness and its response to the aspirations of the soul. His reasoned apologetic is reverent, telling, and brilliant; but he did not read German, and he took the critical labours of Germany at second hand. In 1876 he delivered at Oxford the Bampton lectures on the 'Witness of the Psalms to Christ and Christianity' (1876; 3rd edit. 1890). This contains much that is permanently valuable and suggestive, from the theological rather than the critical side. The same may be said of the 'Leading Ideas of the Gospels' (1872, 3rd edit. 1898), which grew out of Oxford sermons preached in 1871. His commentaries on the Johannine epistles (1881) in the 'Speaker's Commentary ' and hi the 'Expositor's Bible' (1889) abound in devout and beautiful thoughts and in proofs of a refined taste.
A convinced unionist in politics, Alexander showed his rhetorical power to advantage at the Albert Hall, London, in 1893, in his speech against the second home rule bill; but he had friends in all political camps. The most delightful of hosts, his conversation was full of interest and esprit. and even in extreme old age a literary problem or nice point of criticism would be eagerly taken up by him and discussed with his old fire. With the manners and the courtesy of a grand seigneur he combined the fatherly dignity of a prince of the church. He resigned the archbishopric on 30 Jan. 1911, and died in retirement at Torquay on 12 Sept. 1911. He was buried in Derry Cathedral cemetery beside his wife who had died on 15 Oct. 1895. Alexander was hon. D.C.L. Oxon (1876), hon. LL.D. Dublin (1892), hon. D. Litt. Oxon (1907), and he received the G.C.V.O. in 1911. On 15 Oct. 1850 he married Cecil Frances (daughter of John Humphreys, D.L.), well known as a hymn writer [see Alexander, Mrs. Cecil Frances, Suppl. I], by whom he had two sons and two daughters.
Alexander's portrait was thrice painted: (1) for his family, by C. N. Kennedy, when he had been twenty-five years bishop of Derry; (2) for the palace of Armagh, by Walter Osborne; and (3) by Harris Brown for presentation to the National Gallery of Ireland by friends, representing all religious denominations, on his resignation of the primacy. A synod hall at Armagh is being built (1912) in his memory, and in Derry also his name is to be associated with a monument. A cartoon by 'Spy' appeared in 'Vanity Fair' in 1895. In addition to the works enumerated he published 'The Great Question and other Sermons' (1885; 2nd edit. 1887), and 'Verbum Crucis' (1892), and he edited Ephesians, Colossians, Thessalonians, and Philemon (1880) in the 'Speaker's Commentary.'
[The Times, 13 Sept. 1911, memoir by the present writer; Irish Times and Daily Express of same date; Sunday Mag. (August 1896), by S. L. Gwynn; Miles's Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century, 1907, pp. 59 sq.; family information; personal knowledge.]
John Ossory.