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

​INCE, WILLIAM (1825–1910), regius professor of divinity at Oxford, born in St. James's parish, Clerkenwell, London, on 7 June 1825, was son of William Ince, sometime president of the Pharmaceutical Society of London, by his wife, Hannah Goodwin Dakin. Educated at King's College School, London, where he began a lifelong friendship with William Henry Smith, afterwards leader of the House of Commons, he was elected to a Hutchins' scholarship at Lincoln College, Oxford, on 10 Dec. 1842. He graduated B.A. with first-class honours in classics in Michaelmas term 1846; he proceeded M.A. on 26 April 1849; and D.D. on 7 May 1878. He was ordained deacon in 1850 and priest in 1852.
Early in 1847 he was elected to a Petrean fellowship in Exeter College, became tutor of the college in 1850, and sub-rector in 1857. He held all three posts till 1878. He was at once recognised as 'one of the ablest and most popular tutors of his day' (W. K. Stride's Exeter College, 1900, p. 181), his lectures on Aristotle's 'Ethics' and on logic being especially helpful. As sub-rector he earned the reputation of a tactful but firm disciplinarian. He was a constant preacher in the college chapel.
He served the university offices of junior proctor in 1856-7; of select preacher before the university, 1859, 1870, and 1875; of Oxford preacher at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, 1860-2; and of classical examiner, 1866-8. From 1871 till 1889 he was examining chaplain to J. F. Mackerness, bishop of Oxford, who was fellow of Exeter (1844-6).
On 6 April 1878 Ince was appointed ​regius professor of divinity at Oxford and canon of Christ Church. Keenly alive to the intellectual side of his official duties, he read widely and gave his pupils the benefit of his studies. His duties included that of presenting candidates for honorary degrees in divinity, and his happily expressed and enunciated Latin speeches on such occasions recalled the days when Latin was still a spoken language. He took an active share in the administration of Christ Church, both as a cathedral body and as a college, and he showed a well-informed and even-minded judgment in such university offices as curator of the Bodleian library, chairman of the board of theological studies, and member of the hebdomadal council. He preached frequently both as professor in the university church and as canon in the cathedral, and although lacking magnetic qualities he attracted his congregations by the manliness of his dehvery and the directness of style. His theological position was that of a moderate Anglican, loyal to the formularies and to what he considered to be the spirit of the Church of England, but inclining, especially in his later days, to evangelical interpretations, and rejecting ritualism alike in form and doctrine.
He died, after some years of failing health, in his official house at Christ Church on 13 Nov. 1910, in his 86th year, and was buried on 16 Nov. in the cemetery at the east end of Christ Church cathedral. He was elected honorary fellow of King's College, London, in 1861, and of Exeter College in 1882.
He married at Alvechurch, Worcestershire, on 11 Sept. 1879, Mary Anne, younger daughter of John Rusher Eaton of Lambeth, and sister of John Richard Turner Eaton, fellow of Merton (1847-65) and rector of Alvechurch (1879-86). She died at Fairford, Gloucestershire, on 21 March 1911, and was buried in Christ Church cemetery in the same grave with her husband.
Ince published many occasional sermons, addresses, and pamphlets dealing with controversial topics in university administration or church doctrine. The following are of chief interest : 'The Past History and Present Duties of the Faculty of Theology in Oxford,' two inaugural lectures read in the Divinity School, Oxford, in Michaelmas term, 1878 (these led to a published correspondence with Rev. H. R. Bramley, fellow of Magdalen College, afterwards precentor of Lincoln, as to the patristic and liturgical interpretation of Τούτο ποιείτε, 1879). 2. 'The Education of the Clergy at the Universities,' 1882. 3. 'The Luther Commemoration and the Church of England,' 1883. 4. 'The Life and Times of St. Athanasius,' 1896 (lectures delivered in Norwich Cathedral). 5. 'The Doctrine of the Real Presence : a Letter about the Recent Declaration of the English Church Union, and its Appended Notes,' 1900. 6. 'The Three Creeds, specially the so-called Athanasian Creed: a Sermon preached before the University of Oxford, 7 Feb. 1904' (advocating the excision of the Athanasian creed from the public services of the church).
[Boase, Registrum Collegii Exoniensis (1894), p. 186; The Times, 14 Nov. 1910; Oxford Times, 19 Nov. 1910 ; appreciation by Dr. W. Walrond Jackson, rector of Exeter College, in the Stapledon Magazine, iii. 6.]
A. C.