# Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Heurtley, Charles Abel

​HEURTLEY, CHARLES ABEL (1806–1895), Lady Margaret professor of divinity in the university of Oxford, born on 4 Jan. 1806 at Bishop Wear mouth, in the county of Durham, was son of Charles Abel Heurtley, a banker at Sunderland, by his wife Isabella Hunter of Newcastle-on-Tyne. The father died on 13 March 1806, and the mother married a second husband, Mr. Metcalfe, shipbuilder of South Shields, and died in 1816. On his father's side he was directly descended from one Charles Abel Herteleu, a Huguenot, who in the early days of the eighteenth century migrated from his home at Rennes in Brittany in order to secure liberty to profess the protestant faith. Heurtley, who was himself a staunch protestant, always rejoiced in his descent from one who had thus suffered for his faith.
In 1813 Heurtley was sent to a school at West Boldon, near Gateshead, and in 1817 he passed on to another at Witton-le-Wear, near Bishop Auckland, a private school which at that time had a considerable reputation. Here he stayed for four years, and as his guardians were extremely desirous that he should become a man of business, he was sent in 1822 to Liverpool as a clerk in the office of Messrs. Brereton & Newsham, timber merchants. After nine months' trial of a very hard and unpromising kind of work, he was confirmed in his original purpose of going to the university with a view to holy orders. Accordingly he went back to school at Louth in Lincolnshire, Sedbergh being too full to take him, and after ten months' work there was elected in 1823 to a scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, open to boys born in the diocese of Durham.
Heurtley graduated B.A. with first-class honours in mathematics in June 1827. He was an unsuccessful candidate for a fellowship at Oriel in 1828, but after spending four ​years as second master at Brompton (1828-1831), he succeeded to a fellowship at Corpus in 1832. In 1831 he graduated M.A., was ordained and served the curacy of Wardington, near Cropredy, until 1840, when he was appointed to the college living of Fenny Compton. During this period he was also reader in Latin at Corpus (1832-5), select readier before the university (1834 and 1838), and junior dean of his college (1838). He graduated B.D. in 1838 and D.D. in 1853. He was Bampton lecturer in 1845, and was elected Margaret professor by the graduates in theology, who were also members of convocation, in 1853. This post he held for forty-two years, combining it with the rectory of Fenny Compton till 1872. He died at Oxford on 1 May 1895, and was buried beside his wife in Oseney cemetery on 3 May. He married, on 10 April 1844, Jane, daughter of the Rev. W. B. Harrison, vicar of Goudhurst, Kent; by her, who died at Christ Church on 23 Sept. 1893, he left issue one son, Charles Abel, rector of Ashington in Sussex, and three daughters, of whom the eldest, Isabella, married Sydney Linton (d. 1894), bishop of Riverina.
Learned, courteous, retiring, reading and thinking much, but writing little, Heurtley represented the older type of Oxford scholar, whose influence depended rather upon his personal relations with members of the university than upon the effect of his written works on the world at large. His appearances in public were mainly in connection with the theological questions of the day. He sat as one of the theological assessors in the court that tried Archdeacon Denison for unsound eucharistic doctrine (1856). In 1873 he entered a strong protest, on theological grounds, against the bestowal of an honorary degree upon Professor Tyndall, and in the same year he protested against the precedence accorded to Cardinal Manning at the jubilee dinner of the Oxford Union. His action in these matters was typical of his theological position. He had a profound devotion to the church of England, and conceived its position mainly on the lines of the evangelical party. But he was not a party man, as was shown in a very striking way when in advanced years (1890) he preached a sermon in the cathedral deploring hasty and unmeasured condemnation of the 'higher criticism.' His practical gifts were displayed in his parish at Fenny Compton, where he organised a small company to provide a proper water supply for the village. The scheme was successful, and the village has in consequence been spared from constant visits of epidemic disease.
Heurtley's written work is small in amount, and consists largely of sermons. Of these the most considerable volume is the Bampton lectures on 'Justification' (1845). But he also published a series of works on 'Creeds and Formularies of Faith,' the main subject of his study and of his lectures, of which 'De Fide et Symbolo' (1864) has reached a second edition, and is very largely used. His latest work was 'A History of the Earlier Formularies of the Western and Eastern Churches, to which is added an Exposition of the Athanasian Creed' (1892). Posthumously was published 'Wholesome Words; Sermons . . . preached before the University of Oxford . . . edited with a ... Memoir . . . by William Ince, D.D., Canon of Christ Church' (London, 1896, 8vo).
[Memoir by Dr. W. Ince, Reg. Prof, of Divinity at Oxford, prefixed to a volume of sermons entitled 'Wholesome Words,' 1896; private information ; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1710-1886.]
T. B. S.