Charles James Blomfield
Charles James Blomfield
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Charles James Blomfield

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Charles James Blomfield

Charles James Blomfield (29 May 1786 – 5 August 1857) was a British divine and classicist, and a Church of England bishop for 32 years.

Charles James Blomfield was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, the eldest son (and one of ten children) of Charles Blomfield (1763–1831), a schoolmaster (as was Charles James's grandfather, James Blomfield), JP and chief alderman of Bury St Edmunds, and his wife, Hester (1765–1844), daughter of Edward Pawsey, a Bury grocer. He was therefore unusual in becoming a Bishop of London not from an ecclesiastical, aristocratic or landowning background. His brother was Edward Valentine Blomfield, a classical scholar.

He was educated at the grammar school at Bury St Edmunds, declining a scholarship to Eton College after a brief stay there.

Blomfield matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1804. At Cambridge, he was tutored by John Hudson, mathematician and clergyman. Blomfield won the Browne medals for Latin and Greek odes, and the Craven scholarship. He graduated B.A. (3rd wrangler and 1st Chancellor's medal in classics) in 1808, M.A. in 1811, B.D. in 1818, D.D. (per lit. reg.) in 1820.

Blomfield was elected to a fellowship at Trinity College in 1809. The first-fruits of his scholarship was an edition of the Prometheus of Aeschylus in 1810; this was followed by editions of the Septem contra Thebas, Persae, Choephori, and Agamemnon, of Callimachus, and of the fragments of Sappho, Sophron and Alcaeus.

Blomfield, however, soon ceased to devote himself entirely to scholarship. Ordained deacon in March 1810 and priest in June 1810, he held a curacy at Chesterford, then the following livings:

Whilst at Dunton he educated George Spencer (later Ignatius Spencer), and they corresponded for several years after. In 1817 he was appointed private chaplain to William Howley, Bishop of London. In 1819 he was nominated to the rich living of St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, and in 1822 he became Archdeacon of Colchester. Two years later he was raised to the bishopric as Bishop of Chester where he carried through many much-needed reforms.

In 1828, he was appointed a Privy Counsellor and translated becoming Bishop of London, a post which he held for twenty-eight years making him the third longest-serving post reformation incumbent. He was also the youngest known Bishop of London – his five youngest children were born in Fulham Palace – and his energy and zeal did much to extend the influence of the church. He was one of the best debaters in the House of Lords (members of the Upper House of the Canterbury Convocation confessed to trimming their quill pens before his arrival!), took a leading position in the action for church reform which culminated in the ecclesiastical commission, and did much for the extension of the colonial episcopate; and his genial and kindly nature made him an invaluable mediator in the controversies arising out of the tractarian movement. In 1840 he officiated at the marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Between 1833 and 1841 he consecrated four of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries of London. He also made a number of changes at Fulham Palace, including planting a great number of trees which remain today.

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