James Hannington
| James Hannington | |
|---|---|
| former Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa | |
James Hannington
|
|
| Church | Church of England |
| Diocese | Diocese of Eastern Equatorial Africa |
| Successor | Alfred Tucker |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
3 September 1847 Hurstpierpoint, Sussex |
| Died | 29 October 1885 (aged 38) Busoga, Uganda |
| Sainthood | |
| Feast day | 29 October |
James Hannington (3 September 1847 – 29 October 1885) was an English Anglican missionary, saint and martyr. He was the first Anglican bishop of East Africa.
In the nineteenth century missionaries pushed through African jungles and deserts, learned local languages, and braved pestilential climates to create schools, hospitals, and churches. Some were killed, others contracted debilitating diseases, but by the century's end a global missionary presence was in place. Disease and martyrdom claimed great numbers.
Hannington was born on 3 September 1847 at Hurstpierpoint in Sussex, England, about eight miles from Brighton, where his father ran a warehouse, and was part of the family that ran Hannington's Department stores. His father, Charles Smith Hannington, had recently acquired the property known as St. George’s, a pleasant mansion with its ample grounds. An adventurous child, at one point he blew off his thumb with black powder. The boy was an eager collector, and his cases and cabinets increased in size and number. In these pursuits he was helped and encouraged by his mother—“the gentlest, sweetest, dearest mother that, ever lived”, as he once called her. Her understanding love was the greatest influence in the early life of the excitable, high-spirited and sometimes wayward boy.
For James’s early education a tutor had been engaged, but when he was thirteen he was sent to the Temple School at Brighton, where he remained for the next two-and-a-half years. Despite the kindness and sympathy of a discerning headmaster, academic studies did not, at this stage, appeal to him.
A poor scholar, he left school at fifteen to work in his father's Brighton counting house. The monotony was, however, broken by many a cruise in the family yacht and by extensive European travel. In addition to these activities he obtained a commission in the 1st Sussex Artillery Volunteers and rose to the rank of major. He proved an excellent officer and, under his training and supervision, his detachment won more than one valuable prize at the annual camp competitions.
In 1867 the chapel which his father had built in the grounds of his property was licensed for Anglican services. At twenty-one, Hannington decided to pursue a clerical career, and entered university at St Mary Hall, Oxford, where he again proved to be a desultory student. He seems to have gone in for amusement rather than study, being President of the Red Club and captain of the St. Mary Hall Boat. In 1872, the death of his mother spurred a change in Hannington's life; he was awarded his B.A., and on 1 March 1874 was ordained as a deacon, and took charge of the small parish of St Peter in Trentishoe, Devon. In 1875 James became curate-in-charge at St George’s, Hurstpierpoint where he stayed until volunteering for missionary work in east Africa in 1882. He had by then been married for five years.
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Wikipedia