CHRISTOPHER

See also:

• WORDSWORTH, CHARLES (1806–1892)
• CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH (1774–1846)
• WORDSWORTH, CHRISTOPHER (1807–1885)
• WORDSWORTH, DOROTHY (1771-1855)
• WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM (1770-185o)

WORDSWORTH (1774–1846)  , English divine and scholar, youngest brother of the poet William Words-worth, was born on the 9th of June 1774, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow in 1798 . Twelve years later he received the degree of D.D . He took holy orders, and obtained successive preferments through the patron-age of Manners Sutton, bishop of Norwich, afterwards (1805) archbishop of Canterbury, to whose son Charles (afterwards Speaker of the House of Commons, and viscount Canterbury) he had been tutor . He had in 1802 attracted attention by his defence of Granville Sharp's then novel canon " on the uses of the definitive article" in New Testament textual criticism . In 18ro he published an Ecclesiastical Biography in 6 volumes . On the death of Bishop Mansel, in 1820, he was elected Master of Trinity, and retained that position till 1841, when he resigned . He is regarded as the father of the modern " classical tripos," since he had, as vice-chancellor, originated in 1821 a proposal for a public examination in classics and divinity, which, though then rejected, bore fruit in 1822 . Otherwise his mastership was undistinguished, and he was not a popular head with the college . He died on the 2nd of February 1846, at Buxted . In his Who wrote Ikon Basiiike ? (1824), and in other writings, he advocated the claims of Charles I. to its authorship; and in 1836 hepublished, in 4 volumes, a work of Christian Institutes, selected from English divines . He married in 1804 Miss Priscilla Lloyd (d .

1815), a

sister of Charles Lamb's friend Charles Lloyd; and he had three sons, John W . (1805–1839), Charles (q.v.), and Christopher (q.v.); the two latter both became bishops, and John, who became a fellow and classical lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge, was an industrious and erudite scholar .