Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Sumner, Charles Richard
SUMNER, CHARLES RICHARD (1790–1874), bishop of Winchester, born at Kenilworth on 22 Nov. 1790, was third son of the Rev. Robert Sumner, vicar of Kenilworth and Stoneleigh, Warwickshire (d. 9 Oct. 1802), by his wife Hannah (d. Godalming, 10 Dec. 1846, aged 89), daughter of John Bird, alderman of London. John Bird Sumner [q. v.], archbishop of Canterbury, was his elder brother.
Charles Richard was educated by his father at home until June 1802, when he was sent to Eton as an oppidan. In 1804 he obtained a place on the foundation, and remained at Eton until 1809, during which time he made many friends destined to be well known in after years. Among them were Dr. Lonsdale, bishop of Lichfield, Dean Milman, and Sir John Taylor Coleridge. While at Eton he wrote a sensational novel, ‘The White Nun; or the Black Bog of Dromore,’ which he sold for 5l. to Ingalton, the local bookseller. It was issued as by ‘a young gentleman of Note,’ the publisher explaining to the author that every one would see that ‘note’ was ‘Eton’ spelt backwards.
There were but two vacancies at King's College, Cambridge, during 1809–10, and in the latter year Sumner was superannuated, having previously been elected Davis's scholar. He was consequently entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, on 17 Feb. 1810, and then went to Sedbergh for a few months to read mathematics with a popular tutor called John Dawson, after which he made a short tour in the Lakes, calling on Coleridge and Wordsworth. He matriculated on 13 Nov. 1810, and was admitted scholar on 10 April 1812. He graduated B.A. in 1814 and M.A. in 1817. On 5 June 1814 he was ordained deacon, and on 2 March 1817 priest. At Cambridge he was the last secretary of the ‘Speculative’ Society, afterwards merged in the body known as the ‘Union.’
In the summer of 1814 Sumner accompanied Lord Mount-Charles (who had been a fellow undergraduate at Trinity College), and Lord Francis Nathaniel Conyngham, the eldest and second sons of Marquis Conyngham, through Flanders and by the Rhine to Geneva, where he unexpectedly met J. T. Coleridge; Coleridge introduced them to J. P. Maunoir, M.D., professor of surgery in the college of that city. The professor's wife was an English lady, and to the eldest of their three daughters, Jennie Fanny Barnabine, Sumner became engaged in January 1815. Gossip asserted that he took this step to forestall similar action on the part of the elder of his pupils, whose father secured Sumner's preferment in the church by way of showing his gratitude. During the winter months of 1814–15 and the autumn and winter of 1815–16 he ministered to the English congregation at Geneva. On 24 Jan. 1816 he married Miss Maunoir at the English chapel of Geneva. From September 1816 to 1821 Sumner served as curate of Highclere, Hampshire, and took pupils, Lord Albert Conyngham and Frederick Oakeley being among them.
In 1820 Sumner was introduced by the Conynghams to George IV at Brighton, where he dined with the king, and talked with him afterwards for three hours. His handsome presence, dignified manners, and tact made a most favourable impression. In April of the following year George, without waiting for the approval of Lord Liverpool, the prime minister, announced to Sumner that he intended to promote him to a vacant canonry at Windsor. The prime minister refused to sanction the appointment, and an angry correspondence took place between king and minister (Yonge, Life of Lord Liverpool, iii. 151–4). For a time it seemed as if the offer of this desirable preferment to the young curate might jeopardise the life of the ministry, but George IV reluctantly gave way. A compromise was effected. The canonry was given to Dr. James Stanier Clarke [q. v.], and Sumner succeeded to all Clarke's appointments. These included the posts of historiographer to the crown, chaplain to the household at Carlton House, and librarian to the king, and George IV also made him his private chaplain at Windsor, with a salary of 300l. a year, ‘and a capital house opposite the park gates.’ Other promotions followed in quick succession. From September 1821 to March 1822 (in 1822 his first and last sermons in the church were published in one volume) he was vicar of St. Helen's, Abingdon; he held the second canonry in Worcester Cathedral from 11 March 1822 to 27 June 1825, and from the last date to 16 June 1827 he was the second canon at Canterbury. He became chaplain in ordinary to the king on 8 Jan. 1823, and deputy clerk of the closet on 25 March 1824. In January 1824 the new see of Jamaica was offered to him, but George IV refused to sanction his leaving England, asserting that he wished Sumner to be with him in the hour of death, and in July 1825 he took at Cambridge, by the king's command, the degree of D.D. On 27 Dec. 1824 he was with Lord Mount-Charles when he died at Nice.
On 21 May 1826 Sumner was consecrated at Lambeth as bishop of Llandaff, and in consequence of the poverty of the see he held with it the deanery of St. Paul's (25 April 1826), and the prebendal stall of Portpoole (27 April 1826). Within a year he made his first visitation of the diocese. When the rich bishopric of Winchester became vacant in 1827 by the death of Dr. Tomline, the king hastened to bestow it upon Sumner, remarking that this time he had determined that the see should be filled by a gentleman. Sumner was confirmed in the possession of the bishopric on 12 Dec. 1827, and next day was sworn in as prelate of the order of the Garter. He was just 37 years old when he became the head of that enormous diocese, with its vast revenues and its magnificent castle.
Though he opposed the Reform Bill in 1832, the strong tory views which he held in early life were soon modified. He voted for the Roman Catholic Relief Bill of 1829 (a step which he regretted later), with the result that he forfeited the affection of George IV, and another prelate was summoned to attend the king's deathbed (Southey, in Letters of Lake Poets to Stuart, p. 427).
One of the first acts of Sumner as bishop of Winchester was to purchase with the funds of the see a town house in St. James's Square, London. Another was to issue sets of queries for the beneficed clergy of the diocese to answer, no information having been obtained in that way since 1788, and in August and September 1829 he made his first visitation of the counties under his charge. He pressed upon the clergy the necessity of providing schools for the poor, pleaded with landlords for the provision of better houses for their tenants, and protested against trading on Sundays. During his occupation of the bishopric of Winchester he made ten visitations, the last being in October and November 1867, and he twice issued a ‘Conspectus’ of the diocese (1854 and 1864). By 1867 there were 747 permanent or temporary churches in the diocese, 201 being new and additional, and 119 having been rebuilt since 1829. During the same period there had been provided 312 churchyards and cemeteries, and the new districts, divided parishes, and ancient chapelries formed into separate benefices, amounted to 210, while nearly every living had been supplied with a parsonage-house. He proved himself an admirable administrator.
Sumner's munificence and energy were beyond praise. His revenues were great, but his liberality was equal to them. In 1837 he formed a church building society for the diocese, in 1845 he instituted a ‘Southwark fund for schools and churches,’ and in 1860 he set on foot the ‘Surrey Church Association.’ When the lease for lives of the Southwark Park estate lapsed in the summer of 1863, he refused to renew it, and entered into negotiations with the ecclesiastical commissioners. They bought out his rights for a capital sum of 13,270l., and for an annuity of 3,200l. during the term of his episcopate. The whole of this sum, both capital and income, he placed in the hands of the two archdeacons and the chancellor of the diocese for the purpose of augmenting poor benefices. It ultimately amounted to 34,900l.
The religious views of Sumner were evangelical, and most of the preferments in his gift were conferred upon members of that party. But he bestowed considerable patronage upon Samuel Wilberforce, who succeeded him in the see, and he conferred a living on George Moberly, afterwards bishop of Salisbury. The appointment of Dr. Hampden to the see of Hereford was not approved of by him, and he was vehement against the action of the pope in 1850 in establishing bishoprics in England. He was attacked in 1854 as being lukewarm over the revival of convocation. Though he strongly opposed the establishment of the ecclesiastical commission, he loyally aided in carrying out its designs, and from 1856 to 1864 was a member of its church estates committee.
The bishop was seized with a paralytic stroke on 4 March 1868, and in August 1869 he sent to the prime minister the resignation of his see. John Moultrie [q. v.] addressed some lines to him on this event, beginning, ‘Last of our old prince bishops, fare thee well.’ He took a smaller pension from the revenues of the see than he might have claimed, and an order in council continued to him the possession of Farnham Castle as his residence for life. He died there on 15 Aug. 1874, and was buried on 21 Aug. in the vault by the side of his wife under the churchyard of Hale, where he had built the church at his own cost. His wife was born on 23 Feb. 1794, and died at Farnham Castle on 3 Sept. 1849. They had issue four sons and three daughters.
To Sumner was entrusted the editing of the manuscript treatise in Latin of the two books of John Milton, ‘De Doctrina Christiana,’ discovered by Robert Lemon (1779–1835) [q. v.] in the state paper office in 1823. By the command of George IV it was published in 1825, one volume being the original Latin edited by Sumner, and another consisting of an English translation by him. William Sidney Walker [q. v.], then a resident at Cambridge, where the work was printed, superintended the passing of the work through the press. In this task he took upon himself to revise ‘not only the printer's, but the translator's labour’ (Moultrie, Memoir of Walker, 1852, p. lxxviii; Knight, Passages from a Working Life, ii. 29–31). Macaulay highly praised the work in the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ August 1825 (Works, ed. 1871, v. 2). The Latin version was reprinted at Brunswick in 1827, and the English rendering was reissued at Boston (United States) in 1825, in two volumes.
Sumner published many charges and sermons, as well as a volume entitled ‘The Ministerial Character of Christ practically considered’ (London, 1824, 8vo). It was an expansion of lectures which he had delivered before George IV in the chapel at Cumberland Lodge, and it passed through two editions. Bernard Barton [q. v.] dedicated to him in December 1828 his ‘New Year's Eve,’ for which he was quizzed by Charles Lamb (Letters, ed. Ainger, ii. 210), and visited him at Farnham Castle in 1844. The world insisted on identifying Sumner with Bishop Solway in Mrs. Trollope's novel of ‘The Three Cousins,’ but she had no knowledge of him (Life of Mrs. Trollope, ii. 79).
Sumner's portrait was painted in 1832 by Sir Martin Archer Shee; it was presented by his family to the diocese, and now hangs in the noble hall at Farnham. An engraving of it was made by Samuel Cousins in 1834. At the request of the authorities of Eton College he sat for the portrait, which is preserved in the college hall. A print of him drawn on stone by C. Baugniet is dated 1848.
[A Life of Sumner was published by his son, George Henry Sumner, in 1876; cf. Le Neve's Fasti, i. 49, ii. 257, 317, 429, iii. 21, 81; Stapylton's Eton Lists, p. 42; Lady Granville's Letters, i. 255; Burke's Landed Gentry; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Gent. Mag. 1802 ii. 1066, 1847 i. 108; Times, 17 and 18 Aug. 1874; Guardian, 19 and 26 Aug. 1874; Pennington's Recollections, pp. 149–65; Ashwell and Wilberforce's Bishop Wilberforce, i. 65–82, 103–4, 150, 160, 263–4, 317, 401, ii. 248, iii. 61–2; Lucas's Bernard Barton, pp. 108–9, 161; information from Mr. W. Aldis Wright.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.262
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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