Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/552

 Stirling, on 10 May 1901, and was buried in Stirling cemetery.

 MACLAGAN, WILLIAM DALRYMPLE (1826–1910), successively bishop of Lichfield and archbishop of York, born in Edinburgh on 18 June 1826, was fifth son of Dr. David Maclagan, 'physician to the forces,' who served with distinction as a medical officer in the Penisular war, and was president of both the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons at Edinburgh. His mother was Jane, daughter of another physician, Dr. Philip Whiteside, and granddaughter of Dr. William Dalrymple of Ayr ('D'rymple mild') [q. v.]. His eldest brother. Sir Douglas Maclagan (1812–1900), who was knighted in 1880, distinguished himself at Edinburgh in his father's profession, being president, like his father, of the two Scottish royal colleges and serving as professor of medical jurisprudence and public health at Edinburgh University from 1869 to 1896.

William, after education at the Edinburgh High School, attended law classes in the university, and in 1846 became a pupil in the office of Messrs. Douglas & Co. As early as 1843 he had joined the episcopal church. Changing his plans, he sailed for India in Feb. 1847, and in April landed at Madras, where he joined the Madras cavalry. He retired from the army in Oct. 1849, when, having attained the rank of lieutenant, in obedience to urgent medical advice he came home invalided. He drew his modest military pension to the last. In later periods of his life there were signs of his training as a soldier and of the habit which it had engendered of expecting as well as yielding obedience to orders.

In 1852 he went into residence at Peterhouse, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1857 as a junior optime in the mathematical tripos of the previous year. Among his college contemporaries was his lifelong friend George Palmer (afterwards canon and a successor of his at Newington); out of college he was intimate with Montagu Butler (the present Master of Trinity). To his college Maclagan remained warmly attached through the rest of his life. On Trinity Sunday 1856 he was ordained and was licensed to the curacy of St. Saviour's, Paddington. From 1858 he served as curate at St. Stephen's (Avenue Road), Marylebone, until 1 Jan. 1860, when he became organising secretary of the London Diocesan Church Building Society, in which capacity his power of organisation first found scope. Shortly before this he had issued a popular tract, 'Will you be confirmed ? a Word to the Young. By a London Curate' (1859). From 1865 to 1869 he was curate in charge at Enfield, where some of the first parochial missions were held during his tenure of office. In Sept. 1869 he was appointed by the lord chancellor, Lord Hatherley, to the rectory of the large south London parish of Newington, where he remained till 1875. His labours there are commemorated by an east window in the little mission church of St. Gabriel, the building of which had at first exposed him to many attacks. Always a moderate high churchman, Maclagan in 1870 and 1872 edited with Dr. Weir, vicar of Forty Hill, Enfield, two series of essays entitled 'The Church and the Age,' treating of the 'principles and position' of the Church of England. To the earlier series Maclagan contributed an essay, 'The Church and the People,' which is distinguished by its candid and cheerful tone, but still more by a characteristic determination to apply direct and practical remedies to the alienation of the working classes from the church and her services. In 1873 he visited Rome and Naples with Dr. Weir in the interests of his health. In 1875 he was transferred to the living of St. Mary Abbots, Kensington, where his renown as a parish clergyman and as the organiser of parochial religious agencies rapidly rose. In 1876 he declined Lord Beaconsfield's offer of the bishopric of Calcutta; but in 1878, after being named prebendary of Reculverland in St. Paul's Cathedral and chaplain-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria, he accepted the bishopric of Lichfield, vacant by the death of George Augustus Selwyn [q. v.].

He was enthroned at Lichfield Cathedral on 11 July 1878. Practical work and efficient discharge of pastoral duties distinguished his episcopate. He brought his clergy together in synods and retreats, and directed the aid of the laity into various concurrent channels. He issued many letters to the diocese in the 'Lichfield Diocesan Magazine,' the most important of them being a series addressed 'Ad Clerum.' A volume of 'Pastoral Letters and Synodal Charges,' published by him later, in 1892, notably illustrates his spirit of moderation and gentle sympathy. In October 1887, at the 