William Capel (cricketer)

The Honourable & Reverend William Robert Capel (1775–1854), sportsman, Vicar of Watford, Hertfordshire, Rector of Raine, Essex, and a chaplain-in-ordinary to HM Queen Victoria.

Capel, was born 28 April 1775 in England third son of the 4th Earl of Essex and his second wife, Harriet Bladen. The Capel Earls of Essex were seated at Cassiobury Park, Watford, Hertfordshire and subsequently elected to spell their family's surname Capell.

He married 7 June 1802, Sarah, daughter of T Samuel Salter, brewer of Moneyhill House, Rickmansworth and they had three sons and four daughters. He died 3 December 1854 at The Vicarage in Watford, Hertfordshire and was buried at St Mary's in Watford on 8 December.

Capel was appointed vicar of St Mary's Watford, Hertfordshire on 8 June 1799 and rector of Raine, Essex on 30 January 1805, both in the gift of the Earl of Essex.

In 1829 it appeared to the new Bishop of London, of his own knowledge, that the ecclesiastical duties of the vicarage and parish church of Watford were inadequately performed, by reason of the vicar's negligence. After three months without the instructed appointment being made by Capel the Bishop appointed a curate with a stipend. Capel refused to allow the curate to officiate and the stipend was not paid. "Capel resisted stoutly, and on one occasion the rector and the curate had a race for the reading-desk in church".

In 1832 the dispute was brought to the Hertfordshire Assizes. Bishop Blomfield's, very expensive, case was lost on a technicality. Capel v. Child (2C. & J. 558)

A few years afterwards Blomfield came down from London to preach a charity sermon at Watford, and was Capel's house-guest. Capel "came down to breakfast in an old grey dressing gown and red slippers, much to the surprise and something to the discomfiture of his Diocesan". Asked, before the event, by a close friend how he had managed to have his invitation accepted Capel's reply was said to have been: "How, why I gave him a good licking and that made him civil. We are very good friends now."

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