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ROBERT GRAY (1809-1872)

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Originally appearing in Volume V12, Page 392 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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ROBERT GRAY (1809-1872)  , first bishop of Cape
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Town and metropolitan of South Africa, was born at Bishop Wearmouth, Durham, and was the son of Robert Gray, bishop of Bristol . He was educated at
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Eton and Oxford, and took orders in 1833 . After holding the livings of Whitworth, Durham, 1834-1845, and Stockton-on-
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Tees 1845-1847, he was consecrated bishop of Cape Town in 1847; the bishopric having been endowed through the liberality of
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Miss (afterwards Baroness) Burdett-Coutts . Until 1853 he was a suffragan of Canterbury, but in that
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year he formally resigned his see and was reappointed by letters patent metropolitan of South Africa in view of the contemplated establishment of the suffragan dioceses of Graham's Town and
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Natal . In that capacity his coercive jurisdiction was twice called in question, and in each case the judicial committee of the privy council decided against him . The best-known case is that of Bishop Colenso, whom Gray deposed and excommunicated in 1863, The spiritual validity of the sentence was upheld by the convocation of Canterbury and the Pan-
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Anglican synod of 1867, but legally Colenso remained bishop of Natal . The privy council decisions declared, in effect, that the Anglican
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body in South Africa was on the footing of a voluntary religious society . Gray, accepting this position, obtained its recognition by the
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mother church as the Church of the Province of South Africa, in full communion with the Church of England . The first provincial synod was held in 1870 . During his episcopate Bishop Gray effected a much-needed organization of the South
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African church, to which he added five new bishoprics, all carved out of the
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original diocese of Cape Town . It was also chiefly owing to his suggestions that the
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universities'
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mission to Central Africa was founded .

End of Article: ROBERT GRAY (1809-1872)
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