# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Moule, Handley Carr Glyn

​MOULE, HANDLEY CARR GLYN (1841–1920), bishop of Durham, was born at Fordington, Dorset, 23 December 1841, the eighth son of the Rev. Henry Moule [q.v.], by his wife, Mary Mullett Evans. From home, where his father educated his sons and other pupils, a home full of scholarly and literary as well as of religious and missionary keenness, Handley Moule passed to a brilliant career at Trinity College, Cambridge (1860), being bracketed second classic (1864) and elected fellow of his college (1865). He also read for the voluntary theological examination, but ‘the distressing pains involved in the mere growth of thinking’ had raised doubts in his mind, and he hesitated to be ordained. From 1865 to 1867 he was an assistant master at Marlborough College. Then, mainly through his mother's influence, all hesitation vanished: he was ordained at Ely. He first acted as his father's curate at Fordington, keeping in touch with Cambridge, where he gained for several years the prize for a sacred poem. Recalled in 1873 to Trinity, he ​acted as dean, being also curate at St. Sepulchre's church, until 1877, when his mother died, and he returned home as curate until his father's death (1880).
At that moment the evangelical party in the Church of England was planning the erection of Ridley Hall at Cambridge as a theological college for ordinands: Moule accepted the principalship, and held it for nineteen years. He married in 1881 Harriot Mary, daughter of the Rev. C. Boileau Elliott, F.R.S., rector of Tattingstone, Suffolk, by whom he had two daughters. This was a period of great happiness and influence: his wife was in whole-hearted sympathy with his aims; he won the devoted allegiance of colleagues and pupils; he preached regularly at Trinity church, and often before the university; inspired and guided many religious movements in the university; spoke often at Keswick conventions and Church Congresses, and published numerous books. In 1899 he was elected Norrisian professor of divinity, and, while professor, was brought into close touch with the leaders of other sections of the Church by taking part in a round table conference on the doctrine of the Holy Communion, impressing them much by his spirituality, and being impressed by them.
In 1901 Moule was appointed to the see of Durham. As a bishop, his strength lay in his personal and spiritual appeal; he was in touch with clergy and laity alike, with quick sympathy for all suffering, with charity to those who differed from him, an enthusiastic leader in all missionary effort and in preventive and rescue work. Rather un-English in temperament—of French ancestry on his father's side, of Welsh on his mother's—he was naturally timid and high-strung, but his whole life was one of persistent development in power. He became fearless in asserting the truth, unruffled in the face of difficulty and sorrow, deepened and even brightened by the sorrows of later life, when he lost a daughter and his wife. But, while growing in power and in toleration, he remained unchangingly within the limits of the faith as he had learned it in his father's house. He wrote much—treatises theological, devotional, exegetical, biographies, poems, hymns—notably, Outlines of Christian Doctrine (1889), Thoughts on Christian Sanctity (1885), Veni Creator (1890), Charles Simeon (1892), Christus Consolator (1915), Philippian, Colossian, and Ephesian Studies (1897–1900). His writings form the most spiritual and scholarly expression in his generation of the Christian faith as held by evangelical churchmen, proud of the Reformers, and holding that their teaching is ‘the most loyal in proportion and emphasis to the New Testament standard’. He died at Cambridge 8 May 1920.
[Bishop Handley Moule's Memories of a Vicarage, 1913; J. B. Harford, Letters and Poems of Bishop Moule, 1921; J. B. Harford and F. C. Macdonald, Handley C. G. Moule, Bishop of Durham. A biography (with bibliography), 1922.]
W. L.