Life
He was born in Derry on the 13 April 1824, the third child of the Revd Robert Alexander. He was educated at Tonbridge School and Brasenose College, Oxford.
After holding several livings in Ireland he was made bishop of Derry and Raphoe in 1867, to which see he was nominated on 27 July and consecrated on 6 October 1867. He was the last bishop of Ireland to sit in the Westminster House of Lords before the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1871 by the Irish Church Act 1869. On 25 February 1896 he translated to become Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland.
He gave the Bampton Lectures in 1876. An eloquent preacher and the author of numerous theological works, including Primary Convictions, he is best known as a master of dignified and animated verse. His poems were collected in 1887 under the title of St Augustine's Holiday and other Poems.
His wife, Cecil Frances Alexander, wrote some tracts in connection with the Oxford Movement. She is known as the author of hymns such as Once in Royal David's City, All Things Bright and Beautiful and many other well known hymns. They both lived in Milltown House, Strabane. The house is now used as a school, Strabane Grammar School.
Read more about this topic: William Alexander (bishop)
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“So that the life of a writer, whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was not so much a state of composition, as a state of warfare; and his probation in it, precisely that of any other man militant upon earth,—both depending alike, not half so much upon the degrees of his WIT—as his RESISTANCE.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“There was a heavy power in her eyes which laid hold of his whole being, as if he had drunk some powerful drug. He had been feeling weak and done before. Now the life came back into him, he felt delivered from his own fretted, daily self.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Roger Thornhill: Has life been like that?
Eve Kendall: Uhm mm.
Roger Thornhill: How come?
Eve Kendall: Men like you.
Roger Thornhill: What’s wrong with men like me?
Eve Kendall: They don’t believe in marriage.
Roger Thornhill: I’ve been married twice.
Eve Kendall: See what I mean?”
—Ernest Lehman (b.1920)