William Henley Pearson-Jervis (1813–1883) was an English cleric and ecclesiastical historian of France.

Life

The second son of Hugh Nicholas Pearson, he was born on 29 June 1813 at Oxford. In 1824 he was sent to a preparatory school at

Mitcham, Surrey Mitcham is an area within the London Borough of Merton in South London, England. It is centred southwest of Charing Cross. Originally a village in the county of Surrey, today it is mainly a residential suburb, and includes Mitcham Common. It ha ...

, moving two years later to

Harrow School (The Faithful Dispensation of the Gifts of God) , established = (Royal Charter) , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent schoolBoarding school , religion = Church of E ...

. In 1831 he entered

Christ Church, Oxford Christ Church ( la, Ædes Christi, the temple or house, '' ædēs'', of Christ, and thus sometimes known as "The House") is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, the college is uniqu ...

, where illness from spinal complaint lost him a year of study. In June 1835 he graduated B.A. (M.A. 1838); in July of the following year he was ordained deacon, and in 1837 was instituted to the rectory of St. Nicholas, Guildford. He was appointed by his father, then Dean of Salisbury, a prebendary of the collegiate church of Heytesbury, Wiltshire. In 1848 Pearson married Martha Jervis Markham, daughter of Osborne Markham, a barrister and youngest son of William Markham the

Archbishop of York The archbishop of York is a senior bishop in the Church of England, second only to the archbishop of Canterbury. The archbishop is the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of York and the metropolitan bishop of the province of York, which covers th ...

. Osborne Markham's second wife Martha Ricketts was a niece and heiress of

Edward Jervis Jervis, 2nd Viscount St Vincent Edward Jervis Jervis, 2nd Viscount St Vincent (1 April 1767 – 25 September 1859) was a Viscount in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. Early life Jervis was born Edward Jervis Ricketts, the second son of William Henry Ricketts and Mary Jervis. ...

, and on her death in 1865 Pearson assumed the surname of Jervis. For his health, Pearson and his wife lived abroad for six years (November 1856 to July 1862), mainly in the south of France and in Paris. Here he studied, in the archives of Pau,

Bayonne Bayonne (; eu, Baiona ; oc, label= Gascon, Baiona ; es, Bayona) is a city in Southwestern France near the Spanish border. It is a commune and one of two subprefectures in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine re ...

, and other places, as well as in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, papers on the ecclesiastical history of France. Jervis died on 27 January 1883, in his 70th year. He was buried in

Sonning Sonning is a village and civil parish in Berkshire, England, on the River Thames, east of Reading. The village was described by Jerome K. Jerome in his book ''Three Men in a Boat'' as "the most fairy-like little nook on the whole river". Geogr ...

churchyard, near his brother

Hugh Pearson Hugh Pearson may refer to: * Hugh Pearson (canon of Windsor) (1817–1882), vicar of Sonning and canon at Windsor * Hugh Pearson (dean of Salisbury) (1776–1856), his father, Anglican priest * Hugh Pearson (racing driver), American NASCAR driver, ...

. Books collected by Jervis for his church history were presented by his widow to the

London Library The London Library is an independent lending library in London, established in 1841. It was founded on the initiative of Thomas Carlyle, who was dissatisfied with some of the policies at the British Museum Library. It is located at 14 St James's ...

by his widow, who died 8 March 1888.

Works

Jervis published in 1872 ''A History of the Church of France from the Concordat of Bologna to the Revolution'', 2 vols. Ten years later he published a sequel to this, ''The Gallican Church and the French Revolution''. A shorter work in Murray's series of manuals was ''The Student's History of France''.

Notes

Attribution {{DEFAULTSORT:Pearson-Jervis, William Henley 1813 births 1883 deaths People educated at Harrow School Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford 19th-century English Anglican priests 19th-century English historians