William Wharton Cassels (11 March 1858 – 7 November 1925) was an

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 ...

Early life and education

Cassels was born in

Oporto Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropo ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

, the sixth son of John Cassels, a merchant, and Ethelinda Cox, a distant relation of

Warren Hastings Warren Hastings (6 December 1732 – 22 August 1818) was a British colonial administrator, who served as the first Governor of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal), the head of the Supreme Council of Bengal, and so the first Governor-Genera ...

. He was educated at Percival House School,

Repton School Repton School is a 13–18 co-educational, independent, day and boarding school in the English public school tradition, in Repton, Derbyshire, England. Sir John Port of Etwall, on his death in 1557, left funds to create a grammar school whi ...

and

St John's College, Cambridge St John's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corpo ...

Work

He was

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 ...

deacon A deacon is a member of the diaconate, an office in Christian churches that is generally associated with service of some kind, but which varies among theological and denominational traditions. Major Christian churches, such as the Catholic Churc ...

(

Rochester Rochester may refer to: Places Australia * Rochester, Victoria Canada * Rochester, Alberta United Kingdom *Rochester, Kent ** City of Rochester-upon-Medway (1982–1998), district council area ** History of Rochester, Kent ** HM Prison ...

) on 4 June 1882 and priest on 10 June 1883. He was a

curate A curate () is a person who is invested with the ''care'' or ''cure'' (''cura'') ''of souls'' of a parish. In this sense, "curate" means a parish priest; but in English-speaking countries the term ''curate'' is commonly used to describe clergy w ...

at All Saints' South Lambeth from 1882 to 1885. A member of the famous ‘ Cambridge Seven’, he joined the

China Inland Mission OMF International (formerly Overseas Missionary Fellowship and before 1964 the China Inland Mission) is an international and interdenominational Evangelical Christian missionary society with an international centre in Singapore. It was founded i ...

in 1885, together with Arthur T. Polhill-Turner and

Montagu Proctor-Beauchamp Sir Montagu Harry Proctor-Beauchamp, 7th Baronet (19 April 1860 – 26 October 1939) was a British Anglican Christian missionary. Biography Proctor-Beauchamp was the fourth son of Sir Thomas William Brograve Proctor-Beauchamp, 4th Baronet, ...

, the three established a proper

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 ...

diocese in Szechwan. In 1895, he became the Bishop of

Western China Western China (, or rarely ) is the west of China. In the definition of the Chinese government, Western China covers one municipality ( Chongqing), six provinces (Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Qinghai), and three autonomous re ...

( Hua Hsi Diocese). One of the foremost missionaries of his time, who possessed great gifts of organisation, he understood the Chinese and was held in great veneration by them.

Family and death

Cassels married Mary Louisa Legg, daughter of Edward Legg, at Holy Trinity Cathedral in

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

, on 4 October 1887. They had several children. He died on 7 November 1925 at Paoning, Szechwan, buried in the garden of St John's Cathedral of Paoning. Mrs Cassels died eight days later. He had a son Harold Cassels born in Szechwan.

Publications

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References

Bibliography