William John Butler

William John Butler (1818–1894) was an English churchman, Dean of Lincoln from 1885.

He was eldest son of John Laforey Butler (1786-1848), a member of the firm of H. and I. Johnstone, merchants and bankers, born in Bryanston Street, Marylebone, London, on 10 February 1818. His mother, Henrietta, daughter of Captain Robert Patrick, was of Irish, as his father was of Pembrokeshire, descent. After schooling at Enfield, he became a queen's scholar at Westminster in 1832, and was elected to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1836. He won the Trinity essay in 1839, but, though a fair classical scholar, was unable to give sufficient time to the tripos, and took a pass degree in 1840. He commenced M.A. in 1844, and on 1 July 1847 was admitted ad eundem at Oxford, where he was made an honorary canon of Christ Church in 1872 (Foster).

He was ordained by Bishop Sumner in Farnham chapel in 1841 to the curacy of Dogmersfield, under Charles Dyson. Subsequently for one year he held the curacy of Puttenham in Surrey, and in 1844, he accepted the perpetual curacy of Wareside, a poor outlying hamlet of Ware. Here he preached the discourses included in his 'Sermons for Working Men' (1847). Meanwhile, in June 1846, he was appointed by the dean and chapter of Windsor to the vicarage of Wantage. There he founded, and acted as warden of, the penitentiary sisterhood of St. Mary's, in 1850, his name is inseparably associated. He retained the wardenship until his death.

While at Wantage he trained as his curates the Rev. A. H. Mackonochie, the Rev. G. Cosby White, the Rev. M. H. Noel, the Rev. V. S. S. Coles, Canon Newbolt, and Dr. Liddon. 'I owe all the best I know to Butler' was a saying attributed to Liddon, but felt equally by many of the other churchmen who came under Butler's stimulating influence. Upon the deposition of Bishop Colenso in 1864 by the Cape Town Metropolitan synod, Butler was elected to replace him at a synod of the diocese of Natal; but the election was disapproved by Archbishop Longley, to whose views Butler loyally subordinated his own wishes. He was a great believer in obedience, and 'a still greater in submission.'

In 1874, he was elected to convocation as proctor for the clergy of Oxford, and often brightened the debates by the short speeches in which he excelled. In politics he was rather conservative than otherwise. In 1880, however, he was nominated by Gladstone to a residentiary canonry at Worcester Cathedral, and while there did much good work in connection with the internal government of the cathedral, the establishment of a separate school for the choristers, and the formation of a girls' high school in the city. In 1885 Gladstone advanced him to the deanery of Lincoln in the room of Blakesley. To him the cathedral at Lincoln owes the evening service in the nave and numerous other improvements in the services.

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