August 1793. On 7 Sept. 1794 Oakeley handed over the government to Lord Hobart, and, returning to England, received, on 5 Aug. 1795, the thanks of the court of directors for his eminent services.
Always much attached to the county of his birth, he settled at the Abbey, Shrewsbury, near the residence of his father, who was now rector of Holy Cross, Shrewsbury, and lived there till in 1810 he removed to the Palace, Lichfield. A seat in parliament had been offered him by Sir William Pulteney during his first visit to England in 1789, but the offer was declined. Shortly after his final return he was sounded as to his willingness to accept the governor-generalship, but this he was equally unwilling to accept. He corresponded with Dundas on Indian affairs from time to time, but for the most part occupied himself with classical studies and the education of his sons. At the time of the expected invasion by Bonaparte he commanded a volunteer regiment of foot raised in Shrewsbury. His last years were marked by unaffected piety and open-handed benevolence, and the administration of local charities owed much to his care. Having been acquainted with the educational work in Madras of Dr. Andrew Bell [q. v.], he assisted warmly in the establishment of the National Society's schools on Bell's system in Shrewsbury and Lichfield. He died at the Palace, Lichfield, on 7 Sept. 1826, and was buried privately at Forton. There is a monument to his memory by Chantrey in Lichfield Cathedral. He married, on 19 Oct. 1777, Helena, only daughter of Robert Beatson of Kilrie, Fifeshire, a woman of great energy and artistic talent. By her he had eleven children, ten of whom survived him. Of these, two sons, Sir Herbert and Frederick Oakeley, are separately noticed; a third son, Henry, became a judge of the supreme court, Calcutta, and predeceased his father on 2 May 1826.
[Autobiographical Account of the Services of Sir Charles Oakeley, edited by his son, Sir Herbert, 1836, privately printed; Cornwallis Corresp. ed. 1859, ii. 170, 226; Gent. Mag. 1826, pt. ii. p. 371.]
OAKELEY, FREDERICK (1802–1880), tractarian, youngest child of Sir Charles Oakeley, bart. [q. v.], formerly governor of Madras, was born on 5 Sept. 1802 at the Abbey House, Shrewsbury, from which, in 1810, his family removed to the bishop's palace, Lichfield. Ill-health prevented his leaving home for school, but in his fifteenth year he was sent to a private tutor, Charles Sumner, afterwards bishop of Winchester [q. v.] In June 1820 he matriculated from Christ Church, Oxford. Though shyness and depression of spirits somewhat hindered his success in the schools, he gained a second class in literæ humaniores in 1824. After graduating B.A. he worked in real earnest, and won the chancellor's Latin and English prize essays in 1825 and 1827 respectively, and the Ellerton theological prize, also in 1827. In this latter year he was ordained, and was elected to a chaplain fellowship at Balliol. In 1830 he became tutor and catechetical lecturer at Balliol, and a prebendary of Lichfield on Bishop Ryder's appointment. In 1831 he was select preacher, and in 1835 one of the public examiners to the university. The Bishop of London (Dr. Blomfield) appointed him Whitehall preacher in 1837, when he resigned his tutorship at Balliol, but he retained his fellowship till he joined the church of Rome.
During his residence at Balliol as chaplain-fellow (from 1827) Oakeley became connected with the tractarian movement. Partly owing to the influence of his brother-fellow, William George Ward [q. v.], he had grown dissatisfied with the evangelicalism which he had at first accepted, and in the preface to his first volume of Whitehall Sermons (1837) he avowed himself a member of the new Oxford school. In 1839 he became incumbent of Margaret Chapel, the predecessor of All Saints, Margaret Street, and Oxford ceased to be his home.
Perhaps the most interesting years of Oakeley's life were the six that he passed as minister of Margaret Chapel (1839–45), where he became, according to a friend's description, the ‘introducer of that form of worship which is now called ritualism.’ He was supported by prominent men, among the friends of Margaret Chapel being Mr. Serjeant Bellasis, Mr. Beresford-Hope, and Mr. Gladstone. The latter wrote of Oakeley's services that they were the most devotional he had ever attended. Oakeley, like his friend Newman, had an intense inherited love of music, and paid much attention to the work of his choir.
The year 1845 was a turning-point in Oakeley's life. As a fellow of Balliol he had joined in the election to a fellowship there of his lifelong friend and pupil, Archibald Campbell Tait, the future primate; but his mind was disturbed by Tait's action in signing, with three others, the first protest against ‘Tract XC.’ The agitation against the famous tract led Oakeley, like Ward, to despair of his church and university; and in two pamphlets, published separately at the time both in London and Oxford, he asserted a claim ‘to hold, as distinct from teaching, all Roman doctrine.’ For this avowal he
