Henry Albert Wilson (6 September 1876 – 16 July 1961) was an Anglican bishop and author.

Biography

Born in Port Bannatyne, Wilson was educated at Camberwell Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

Henry Wilson (bishop)

Wilson was made a deacon in Advent 1899 (on St Thomas' Day, 21 December) by Mandell Creighton, Bishop of London, at Holy Trinity, Chelsea; and ordained a priest the next Advent (23 December 1900) by Alfred Barry, assistant bishop for West London, at St Paul's Cathedral. He began his career with a curacy at Christ Church, Hampstead, in London; after which he became Vicar of Norbiton. He was then Rural Dean of Cheltenham, until his appointment to the episcopate in 1929 as the third Bishop of Chelmsford.

Henry Wilson (bishop)

He was consecrated a bishop on the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul, 25 January 1929, by Arthur Winnington-Ingram, Bishop of London, at Westminster Abbey. (He had recently taken his See by the confirmation of his election, after his predecessor had translated on 21 January, but before his own consecration on 25 January.) A proposal to expedite divorce – by having divorce cases heard in a magistrates' court rather than a higher court – prompted his strenuous objection in 1944: "the landslide in sexual morals" meant that Christianity was "hanging by a thread in this country today". He resigned effective 30 November 1950, and retired to Southwold. He had become a Doctor of Divinity (DD).

Henry Wilson (bishop)

Wilson's son was the architect Colin St John Wilson.

Works

Episcopacy and Unity, 1912

The Master and His Friends, 1925

Your Faith or Your Life, 1940

Reflections of a Back-Bench Bishop, 1948

References

1876 births

Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

Commanders of the Order of the British Empire

Bishops of Chelmsford

1961 deaths

20th-century Church of England bishops