The Sun.
London, England, 1861-08-10 00:00:00

THE BISHOP OF DURHAM:

The Right Rev. H. Montagu Villiers, who died
yesterday at Auckland Castle, deserves more than a
passing notice at our hands. He was a remarkable

man, and historians will doubtless refer to him often
hereafter as a good specimen of the Palmerston
Bishop. It has been Lord Palmerston's fortune

:o appoint an unusual number of men to the high

places of the Church, and, for the most part, those
whom he has selected have been less celebrated
for their intellectual cultivation than for their

practical piety, their success as parish ministers,
and their sympathy with Protestant Dissen-
ters. Montagu Villiers was a man of this stamp,
with the addition, however—which we must
not underrate—that he was of noble birth. There
may be no particular merit in it, yet people are
not unmoved when they see a man who might be
enjoying the pleasures of fashionable life giving
himself up with the most perfect devotion to
the religious, and when they see the brother
of an Earl, whose despatches are hurrying over
Europe, and read eagerly over all the world,
toiling resolutely in the dirty back streets
of a London parish, making friends with poor
cobblers, trying to comfort sick cabmen, and
luring ragged children to school. Rector of St.
George's, Bloomsbury, the Rev. H. Montagu Villiers
made himself a great name, and this not merely as
an earnest preacher, but, what is far more difficult,
as for 15 years the hard-working, much-trudging
pastor of a parish that numbered about 17,000 souls.
Spite of a recent occurrence which gave rise to
much criticism, it may safely be said that few men
have entered the Church with more disinterested
views, or have toiled in it with more self-denying
energy. He had a genial, easy nature, and his
hard work seemed to have agreed with him won-
derfully. His portly figure and rubicund coun-
tenance presented the very picture of health and
Episcopal comfort. As, he entered the house of
Lords with the pale and careworn Lord Clarendon,
people said it was easy to see which brother served
the Church, and which the State. Thirteen years
the junior of that brother, he breaks down in all
the fullness of his powers at the age of 48, and in
his death reminds us who have lately heard so much
of the fatal effects of overwork that there are other
diseases not less fatal, though they are, more easily
avoided.
Henry Montagu Villiers was the fifth son of the
Hon. George Villiers, brother of the late Earl of
Clarendon. His grandmother was the eldest
daughter of Lady Jane Hyde (Countess of Essex),
the last representative of the old Clarendon family,
and a younger son of Lord Jersey marrying her was,
in her honour, created successively Baron Hyde and
Earl of Clarendon. Of the lady's grandchildren
there now survive, Lord Clarendon ; Mr. Charles

Villiers,who took a prominent part in the free-trade
controversy, and is at this moment President of the
Poor Law Board; and Lady Theresa Lewis, who is
well known both as an authoress and as the wife of
one of our foremost statesmen. Mr. Montagu
Villiers was born in London on the 4th of January,
1813. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford,
and took his degree in 1834. Shortly afterwards
he was ordained by Dr. Sumner, now Archbishop
of Canterbury, and commenced his work as a.
curate in Lancashire. At this time, however,
we infer from a passage in one of his lectures
that he did not regard himself as in any true
sense worthy of his high calling. In a lecture to
the Christian young men of London he says,
" One of my earliest and dearest friends in the
ministry—one who was faithful to me before I was
myself in the faith—one whose memory, now that
he is entered into his rest, is most dear to me, was
a linendraper's apprentice before we were fellow-
curates together in Lancashire." The great ques-
tion which the chief admirers of Bishop Villiers
will wish to have answered—namely, when did he
come to be "in the faith ?"—it is not in our power
to solve. We can only deal with the external facts
of his life, and tell that in 1837 he was admitted
into Priest's orders ; that in the same year he was
appointed to the living of Kenilworth ; that in 1841
he was translated to the metropolitan rectory of St.
George's, Bloomsbury ; and that in 1847 he was
made a Canon of St. Paul's. It was as rector of
St. George's that he made his reputation. He dis-
played great ability and en untiring zeal in the
management of his parish, though in cordially
acknowledging the great good which he effected.
we must take into account the good which he left
undone. Mr. Villiers was the lowest of Low
Churchmen, and his style of preaching was not cal-
culated to attract men of education. He laid him-
self out for a different class. He preached to the
poor. Like most Low Churchmen, he understood
the Divine precept too literally, and preached too
uniformly to the poor in intellect as well as to the
poor in spirit and the poor in pocket. Yet, as we
cannot expect everything from a man, let us dwell
rather on what he did than upon what he could not
do. If his creed was narrow in one direction it was
wide in another. If he hated High Church doc-
trines, if he shrank from the shadow of Roma*
Catholic practices, if he told young men to avoid.
theatres as an "unmixed evil," and to look well to
their steps in the ballroom,—if by that plainness of
preaching which some call " gospel simplicity," and
others, using a more scriptural phrase, " the foolish-
ness of preaching," he failed to win over men a
cultivation, yet on the other hand he worked vigor-
ously with the Dissenters; there were Dissenters
in his vestry who eagerly supported him ; he turned.
the City mission to account, and with men of every
sect and stamp who belong to the so-called Evan-
gelical order he had the most ample sympathy.
No minister in London was more popular than
Mr. Villiers when in 1856 he was appointed by
Lord Palmerston to the Bishopric of Carlisle. It
was a step to a still higher promotion, for only last
year he was translated to the see of Durham. He
proved himself not less energetic in a diocese than
he had been in a parish, and there seemed to be
before him long years of useful work. Durham is
the diocese, of all others in the country, in which
the increase of papulation has lately been greatest,
and in which the spiritual provision has been most
deficient. Great things were expected from the
energy and tact of Dr. Villiers, and the Evangelical
party regarded with particular interest the man who
filled so princely a chair and undertook so vast
work. His first csnspicuous act in his new sphere
of labour certainly disappointed his admirers,
though his premature death will now be considered,
if not to justify, yet to excuse it; for he has died
by no means a rich man, and leaves a widow, three
daughters besides Mrs. Cheese, and two sons. Row-
ever incautiously he may have acted on the occa-
sion to which we refer, he never lost the esteem of
those who knew him best; and the strong interest
which vast numbers of people, Dissenters as well as
Churchmen, have taken in his last illness is the
most eloquent of all comments upon his life and.
character. Not only in his diocese but throughout
the country, in all the largo towns, Dissenters of
every denomination have combined with Church-
men to offer up prayers for his recovery. Seldosi
are ecclesiastical dignitaries the object of such
affectionate solicitude ; seldom is their departure
felt so universally as a great public loss.

THE BRAIDWOOD TESTIMONIAL.-Yesterday, St
3 o'clock, a meeting of the committee for managing the
fund now being raised for a testimonial to the memory °',
the late Mr. James Braidwood, was held at the Mansion-
house—the Lord Mayor in the chair. It was announced hi
Mr. Baddesley, secretary, that the fund now amounted to
nearly £6OO, and while the committee were sitting a
dons'
tion a£2l was received from the Fishmongers' Company
It was stated during the meeting that the fire insurance'
companies had voted a sum of £7OOO to the widow and
family of the deceased, and that his personal estate had
been sworn as under the value of £5,000. A very genera'
opinion was expressed by the shole committee that the
knowledge of those circumstances had materially operatel
to check the public subscriptions to the memorial fond!
which had in consequence been comparatively abortive. it
conversation ensued as to the appropriation of the fun:,
in hand, in the course of which several members .1
the committee expressed themselves to the effect that
as through the bounty of the fire offices, and
the private fortune of the deceased himself, his wide'_
and family were placed above the reach of dependence, 12eu_
greater part, if not the whole of it, might properly be t
~dare
toted to the comfort of his aged sisters, for whose Wel. _A
he always felt the deepest concern. The question stra
over for consideration eventually at a future meeting, I'm
the committee adjourueii.