Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Jolly, Alexander
JOLLY, ALEXANDER (1756–1838), bishop of Moray, born on 3 April 1756 at Stonehaven, Kincardineshire, was educated Marischal College, Aberdeen, was ordained deacon in the Scottish episcopal church on 1 July 1776, and admitted priest on 19 March 1777. Immediately afterwards he was appointed to the charge of the congregation at Turriff, Aberdeenshire, taking at the same time occasional duty at Parkdargue (Forgue), and latterly at Banff and Portsoy. In 1783 he published at Edinburgh `Instructions concerning the Nature and Constitution of the Christian Church, the Divine Appointment of its Governors and Pastors, and the nature and guilt of Schism' (reprinted at Oxford in 1840 and by the Scottish Tract Society in 1849). At the urgent desire of the Bishop of Aberdeen (Kilgour), Jolly, in April 1788, left Turriff for Fraserburgh. Here, as at Turriff, he impressed every one by the primitive saintliness of his character. On 24 June 1796 he was chosen coadjutor to Macfarlane, bishop of Moray and Ross. After two years of nominal coadjutorship, he was collated (22 Feb. 1798) to the sole episcopal charge of the lowland diocese of Moray, which the bishops had in Jolly's interest disjoined from the highland dioceses of Ross and Argyll, in spite of the opposition of the primus (Skinner). Jolly continued to discharge at the same time the duties of an ordinary pastor in Fraserburgh, where he lived by himself in a plain two-story house in Cross Street. He kept no regular servant, and preferred seclusion that he might spend his time in sacred study and meditation, but never neglected the scriptural duty of hospitality. He read daily a fixed number of pages of the Hebrew bible and the Greek New Testament, and portions of the primitive fathers, especially Chrysostom and Augustine. He spent his savings from his scanty income in charity or on books. He declined in 1819 the offer of the see of Ross and Argyll. In 1826 he received the degree of D.D. from Washington College, Connecticut. During the summer of the same year he published a short treatise entitled ‘A Friendly Address to the Episcopalians of Scotland on Baptismal Regeneration,’ a reply to the attacks made on Scottish episcopal teaching by the Rev. Edward Craig of Edinburgh. Later editions issued in 1840, 1841, and 1850 contain a memoir of the bishop by P. Cheyne. Jolly's most popular work was ‘Observations upon the several Sunday Services and principal Holydays prescribed by the Liturgy throughout the Year,’ 1828; 3rd edit., 12mo, Edinburgh, 1840, with memoir by J. Walker, bishop and primus. His last work was ‘The Christian Sacrifice in the Eucharist considered, as it is, the Doctrine of Holy Scripture,’ 1831. He died at Fraserburgh on 29 June 1838, and was buried on 5 July beside his brother James in Turriff churchyard. A mural tablet was erected to his memory in the church. His valuable library, which he left to the church, was deposited in the institute in Hill Street, Edinburgh, where his portrait hangs.
Jolly was of a cautious and conservative turn of mind, but his saintly character, which was widely recognised, told on the church with great effect. Hobart, bishop of New York, said he would have ‘held himself greatly rewarded’ had he ‘gone from America to Aberdeen and seen nothing but Bishop Jolly.’ Wordsworth, bishop of Lincoln, wrote that ‘his history belongs to the records of primitive Christianity on account of the devout simplicity of his character’ (Diary in France, p. 11). In his lectures on the church of Scotland, delivered in Edinburgh in 1872, Stanley, dean of Westminster, selected Jolly ‘as a choice specimen of the old episcopalian clergy.’ Hook, afterwards dean of Chichester, wrote of him, after a visit to Fraserburgh in 1825, as the venerable primitive and apostolic bishop of Moray. There are some touching lines on Jolly in Isaac Williams's ‘Thoughts in Past Years,’ 2nd edit., p. 122.
[Walker's Life of Bishop Jolly, 2nd edit.; Walker's Life of Bishop Gleig; Gent. Mag. 1838 pt. ii. pp. 547–8.]