Edward Lee Hicks (23 December 1843 – 14 August 1919) was an eminent

Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...

priest A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particu ...

and author who served as Bishop of Lincoln 1910–1919.

Life and works

Born in Oxford in 1843, Hicks was educated at Magdalen College School and

Brasenose College, Oxford Brasenose College (BNC) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It began as Brasenose Hall in the 13th century, before being founded as a college in 1509. The library and chapel were added in the mi ...

and

ordained Ordination is the process by which individuals are consecrated, that is, set apart and elevated from the laity class to the clergy, who are thus then authorized (usually by the denominational hierarchy composed of other clergy) to perform va ...

in 1886. After a spell as

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

and

Tutor TUTOR, also known as PLATO Author Language, is a programming language developed for use on the PLATO system at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign beginning in roughly 1965. TUTOR was initially designed by Paul Tenczar for use in co ...

Corpus Christi College, Oxford Corpus Christi College (formally, Corpus Christi College in the University of Oxford; informally abbreviated as Corpus or CCC) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1517, it is the 12th ...

he was Rector of

Fenny Compton Fenny Compton is a village and parish in Warwickshire, England, about eight miles north of Banbury. In the 2001 census the parish had a population of 797, increasing to 808 at the 2011 census. Its name comes from the Anglo-Saxon ''Fennig Cumbtū ...

before becoming

Warden A warden is a custodian, defender, or guardian. Warden is often used in the sense of a watchman or guardian, as in a prison warden. It can also refer to a chief or head official, as in the Warden of the Mint. ''Warden'' is etymologically identic ...

of Hulme Hall in 1886. After this he was a

canon residentiary A canon (from the Latin , itself derived from the Greek , , "relating to a rule", "regular") is a member of certain bodies in subject to an ecclesiastical rule. Originally, a canon was a cleric living with others in a clergy house or, later, i ...

wasof

Manchester Cathedral Manchester Cathedral, formally the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Mary, St Denys and St George, in Manchester, England, is the mother church Mother church or matrice is a term depicting the Christian Church as a mother ...

, then

Rural Dean In the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion as well as some Lutheran denominations, a rural dean is a member of clergy who presides over a "rural deanery" (often referred to as a deanery); "ruridecanal" is the corresponding adjective. ...

of Salford until his elevation to the

episcopate A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ca ...

. He had not been supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury for the post. ‘I do not think Hicks would do for Lincoln .... ‘ The Archbishop regarded Hicks as a ‘faddist’ who threw ‘himself eagerly not to say fanatically into any cause which he espouses’. But at that time Prime Minister

H. H. Asquith Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, (12 September 1852 – 15 February 1928), generally known as H. H. Asquith, was a British statesman and Liberal Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom f ...

was the key figure in episcopal appointments and, influenced by Hicks as a ‘strong Liberal in politics’, recommended him to the Crown for the post at Lincoln. During the Great War, unlike other bishops, Hicks did not encourage recruitment to the Forces nor did he condemn Germany. He was peace-loving, and had promoted ‘an honourable neutrality of Great Britain'. He was accused of cowardice, and produced a strong reply to his critics showing prescience of what the Great War would involve. ‘Anyone who knows what war means - its stoppage of industry, its heaping up of debt and taxation, its unemployment, its famine, its missing at home, its paralysis of all effective work and expenditure on Social Reform, not to mention the horrible carnage of the battlefield, the agonies of the wounded, the visitations of disease and pestilence that always follow campaigns and battles - will be the last to tax me with cowardice if I confess to a loathing of war.’ During the Great War, he lost a son, Edwin, in 1917 and gave up part and eventually the whole of his palace, first for the use of Belgian refugees and then to the Red Cross. Novelist and biographer Penelope Fitzgerald was his granddaughter.The Guardian
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Life and works

References

Further reading