Beilby Porteus
|
The Right Reverend and Right Honourable Beilby Porteus |
|
|---|---|
| Bishop of London | |
 |
|
| Church | Church of England |
| Diocese | Diocese of London |
| Elected | 1787 |
| Term ended | 1809 (death) |
| Predecessor | Robert Lowth |
| Successor | John Randolph |
| Other posts |
Bishop of Chester 1776–1787 |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 1757 (priest) |
| Consecration | 1777 |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
8 May 1731 York, Great Britain |
| Died | 13 May 1809 (aged 78) Fulham Palace, London |
| Buried | St Mary's Church, Sundridge |
| Nationality | British |
| Denomination | Anglican |
| Residence | Fulham Palace, London |
| Alma mater | Christ's College, Cambridge |
Beilby Porteus (or Porteous; 8 May 1731 – 13 May 1809), successively Bishop of Chester and of London, was a Church of England reformer and a leading abolitionist in England. He was the first Anglican in a position of authority to seriously challenge the Church's position on slavery.
Although the Porteus family was of Scottish ancestry, his parents were Virginian planters who had returned to England during the difficult times and economic problems in that province during the early eighteenth century and who in 1720, for the sake of his father Robert’s health, eventually relocated to York, where Porteus was born in 1731, last but one of nineteen children. Educated at York and at Ripon Grammar School, he was a classics scholar at Christ's College, Cambridge, becoming a fellow in 1752. In 1759 he won the Seatonian Prize for his poem Death: A Poetical Essay, a work for which he is still remembered.
He was ordained as a priest in 1757, and in 1762 was appointed as domestic chaplain to Thomas Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury, acting as his personal assistant at Lambeth Palace for six years. It was during these years that it is thought he became more aware of the conditions of the enslaved Africans in the American colonies and the British West Indies. He corresponded with clergy and missionaries, receiving reports on the appalling conditions facing the slaves from Revd James Ramsay in the West Indies and from Granville Sharp, the English lawyer who had supported the cases of freed slaves in England.
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