Thomas Fanshawe Middleton (28 January 1769 – 8 July 1822) was a noted

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 ...

bishop 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 ...

Life

Middleton was born in

Kedleston Kedleston is a village and civil parish in the Amber Valley district of Derbyshire, approximately north-west of Derby. Nearby places include Quarndon, Weston Underwood, Derbyshire, Weston Underwood, Mugginton and Kirk Langley. The population a ...

Derbyshire, England Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nort ...

, the son of Thomas Middleton, Rector of Kedleston and educated at Christs Hospital. He then went up to

Pembroke College, Cambridge Pembroke College (officially "The Master, Fellows and Scholars of the College or Hall of Valence-Mary") is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college is the third-oldest college of the university and has over 700 ...

, and on graduation was ordained in the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...

. He was appointed curate of

Gainsborough Gainsborough or Gainsboro may refer to: Places * Gainsborough, Ipswich, Suffolk, England ** Gainsborough Ward, Ipswich * Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, a town in England ** Gainsborough (UK Parliament constituency) * Gainsborough, New South Wales, ...

(1792), Rector of Tansor (1795), Rector of Bytham (1802), Prebendary of Lincoln (1809), Archdeacon of Huntingdon and Vicar of St Pancras. In 1814, Middleton became the first Bishop of Calcutta. This

diocese In Ecclesiastical polity, church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided Roman province, pro ...

included not just India, but the entire territory of the

British East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

(EIC). When he arrived in India he found that he was not allowed to ordain "Natives of India", as all ordinations were carried out by the EIC in London. In response, he founded Bishop's College in Calcutta, which admitted Britons Indians and

Anglo-Indian Anglo-Indian people fall into two different groups: those with mixed Indian and British ancestry, and people of British descent born or residing in India. The latter sense is now mainly historical, but confusions can arise. The ''Oxford English ...

s, some of whom could go on to ordination. However although the college was built for seventy students, they still only had eight students fourteen years after it opened. In May 1814, Middleton was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

on the basis of being "a Gentleman well known to the literary world as the author of several classical works, and conversant with various departments of science" He died in Calcutta of sunstroke on 8 July 1822 and is buried under the altar of

St. John's Church St. John's Church, Church of St. John, or variants, thereof, (Saint John or St. John usually refers to John the Baptist, but also, sometimes, to John the Apostle or John the Evangelist) may refer to the following churches, former churches or other ...

, the then cathedral of Calcutta. There is also a memorial to him in

St Paul's Cathedral St Paul's Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in London and is the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral serves as the mother church of the Diocese of London. It is on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London and is a Grad ...

."Memorials of St Paul's Cathedral" Sinclair, W. p. 464: London; Chapman & Hall, Ltd; 1909.

Works

*
The Doctrine of the Greek Article Applied to the Criticism and Illustration of the New Testament
' (1841)

External links

*Warwick William Wroth
Middleton, Thomas Fanshaw (DNB00)
''

Dictionary of National Biography The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...

'', 1885–1900, Volume 37. *Charles Webb Le Bas,
The Life of the Right Reverend Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, D.D., Late Lord Bishop of Calcutta
', London: Rivington, 1881; digital version on archive.org.
January 28, 1769 • Thomas Fanshawe Middleton Was the First Bishop of Calcutta
Christian History Institute, gospelcom.net (archived version). *Dan Graves

christianity.com.
Online Books by T. F. Middleton (Middleton, T. F. (Thomas Fanshaw), 1769-1822)
The Online Books Page, University of Pennsylvania, upenn.edu.

- 1832 marble sculpture of Middleton.

References

1769 births 1822 deaths People from Kedleston 19th-century Anglican bishops in Asia Anglican bishops of Calcutta Archdeacons of Huntingdon Fellows of the Royal Society Anglican bishops of West Malaysia {{Anglican-bishop-stub