1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Trench, Richard Chenevix

TRENCH, RICHARD CHENEVIX (1807-1886), Anglican archbishop and poet, was born at Dublin on the 9th of September 1807. He went to school at Harrow, and graduated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1829. In 1830 he visited Spain. While incumbent of Curdridge Chapel near Bishops Waltham in Hampshire, he published (1835) The Story of Justin Martyr and Other Poems, which was favourably received, and was followed in 1838 by Sabbation, Honor Neale, and other Poems, and in 1842 by Poems from Eastern Sources. These volumes revealed the author as the most gifted of the immediate disciples of Wordsworth, with a warmer colouring and more pronounced ecclesiastical sympathies than the master, and strong affinities to Tennyson, Keble and Monckton Milnes. In 1841 he resigned his living to become curate to Samuel Wilberforce, then rector of Alverstoke, and upon Wilberforce's promotion to the deanery of Westminster in 1845 he was presented to the rectory of Itchenstoke. In 1845 and 1846 he preached the Hulsean lecture, and in the former year was made examining chaplain to Wilberforce, now bishop of Oxford. He was shortly afterwards appointed to a theological chair at King's College, London. In 1851 he established his fame as a philologist by The Study of Words, originally delivered as lectures to the pupils of the Diocesan Training School, Winchester. His purpose, as stated by himself, was to show that in words, even taken singly, "there are boundless stores of moral and historic truth, and no less of passion and imagination laid up"—a truth enforced by a number of most apposite illustrations. It was followed by two little volumes of similar character—English Past and Present (1855) and A Select Glossary of English Words (1859). All have gone through numerous editions and have contributed much to promote the historical study of the English tongue. Another great service to English philology was rendered by his paper, read before the Philological Society, "On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries" (1857), which gave the first impulse to the great Oxford New English Dictionary. His advocacy of a revised translation of the New Testament (1858) aided to promote another great national undertaking. In 1856 he published a valuable essay on Calderon,with a translation of a portion of Life is a Dream in the original metre. In 1841 he had published his Notes on the Parables, and in 1846 his Notes on the Miracles, popular works which are treasuries of erudite and acute illustration.

In 1856 Trench was raised to the deanery of Westminster, probably the position which suited him best. Here he instituted evening nave services. In January 1864 he was advanced to the more dignified but less congenial post of archbishop of Dublin. A. P. Stanley had been named, but rejected by the Irish Church, and, according to Bishop Wilberforce's correspondence, Trench's appointment was favoured neither by the prime minister nor the lord-lieutenant. It was, moreover, unpopular in Ireland, and a blow to English literature; yet the course of events soon proved it to have been most fortunate. Trench could do nothing to prevent the disestablishment of the Irish Church, though he resisted with dignity. But, when the disestablished communion had to be reconstituted under the greatest difficulties, it was found of the highest importance that the occupant of his position should be a man of a liberal and genial spirit. This was the work of the remainder of Trench's life; it exposed him at times to considerable misconstruction and obloquy, but he came to be appreciated, and, when in November 1884 he resigned his arch-bishopric from infirmity, clergy and laity unanimously recorded their sense of his "wisdom, learning, diligence, and munificence." He had found time for Lectures on Medieval Church History (1878); his poetical works were rearranged and collected in two volumes (last edition, 1885). He died in London, after a lingering illness, on the 28th of March 1886.

See his Letters and Memorials (2 vols., 1886).