1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wace, Henry
WACE, HENRY (1836), English divine, was born in London on the 10th of December 1836, and educated at Marlborough, Rugby, King's College, London, and Brasenose College, Oxford. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1861, and held various curacies in London, being chaplain at Lincoln's Inn in 1872 and preacher in 1880. From 1875 to 1896 he was prominently connected with King's College, London, where he was professor of ecclesiastical history, and subsequently (1883) principal. Both as preacher and writer Dr Wace, who took his D.D. degree in 1883, became conspicuous in the theological world. He was Boyle lecturer in 1874 and 1875, and Bampton lecturer in 1879; and besides publishing several volumes of sermons, he was co-editor of the Dictionary of Christian Biography (1877–1887), and editor of The Speaker's Commentary on the Apocrypha. He took a leading part as the champion of historic orthodoxy in the controversies with contemporary Rationalism in all its forms, and firmly upheld the importance of denominational education and of the religious test at King's College; and when the test was abolished in 1902 he resigned his seat on the council. In 1881 he was given a prebendal stall at St Paul's, and in 1889 was appointed a chaplain-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria. When he resigned the principal ship of King's College in 1896 he was made rector of St Michael's, Cornhill; and in 1903 he became dean of Canterbury, in succession to Dr Farrar.