Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/44

 CHAMPNEYS, JOHN (fl. 1548), religious writer, born near Bristol, is described by Strype as living in later life at 'Stratford-on-the-Bow,' near London. He was a layman and an ardent reformer. He published in London in 1548 a controversial treatise in English, 'The Harvest is at hand wherein the tares shall be bound and cast into the fyre and brent,' London (by H. Powell), 1548. Some extreme Calvinistic opinions advanced in this work and in others by the same writer, which are not now known, offended Archbishop Cranmer, who insisted on the author's recantation on 27 April 1548. The proceedings are described at length in Strype's 'Cranmer,' ii. 92-4. At the beginning of Elizabeth's reign a writer of the same name, who had had to recant some Pelagian heresies, published anonymously a reply to Jean Veron's 'Fruteful Treatise of Predestination' (1563?), which Veron answered in his 'Apology.'

Another (d. 1566) was a skinner of London; was sheriff in 1522 and lord mayor in 1534, when he was knighted. Stow states that he was struck blind in his later years, a divine judgment for having added 'a high tower of brick' to his house in Mincing Lane, 'the first that I ever heard of in any private man's house, to overlook his neighbours in this city.' He was son of Robert Champneys of Chew, Somersetshire, and was buried at Bexley, Kent, 8 Oct. 1556 (, Diary, Camd. Soc. p. 115). His epitaph is given in Thorpe's 'Registrum Roffense,' p. 924. His family long continued in Kent.  CHAMPNEYS, WILLIAM WELDON (1807–1875), dean of Lichfield, was eldest son of the Rev. William Betton Champneys, B.C.L. of St. John's College, Oxford, by his marriage with Martha, daughter of Montague Stable, of Kentish Town. He was born in Camden Town, St. Pancras, London, 6 April 1807, and was educated by the Rev. Richard Povah, rector of St. James's, Duke's Place, city of London, and having matriculated from Brasenose College, Oxford, on 3 July 1824, was soon after elected to a scholarship. He took his B.A. degree in 1828, and his M.A. in 1831, was then ordained to the curacy of Dorchester, near Oxford, whence he was transferred three months afterwards to the curacy of St. Ebbe's, in the city of Oxford, and in the same year was admitted a fellow of his college. In this parish he established national schools, the first that were founded in the city, and during the severe visitation of the cholera in 1832 he assiduously devoted himself to the sick. He was in 1837 appointed rector of St. Mary's, Whitechapel, London, a parish containing thirty-three thousand people, where, mainly through his personal exertions in the course of a short time, three new churches were built. Here also he erected schools for boys and girls, and a special school for infants; but finding that many children could not attend in consequence of being in want of suitable apparel, he set up a school of a lower grade, which was practically the first ragged school opened in the metropolis. In connection with the district he founded a provident society, assisted in the commencement of a shoeblack brigade, with a refuge and an industrial home for the boys, and co-operated with others in the work of building the Whitechapel Foundation Commercial School. He was the originator of a local association for the promotion, health, and comfort of the industrial classes, and also of the Church of England Young Men's Society, the first association of young men for religious purposes and mutual improvement which was seen in Whitechapel. The London coal-whippers were indebted to him for the establishment of an office, under an act of parliament in 1843, where alone they could be legally hired, instead of as before being obliged to wait in public-houses. His principles were evangelical and catholic. His sermons attracted working men by plain appeals to their good sense and right feeling. On 3 Nov. 1851, on the recommendation of Lord John Russell, he was appointed to a canonry in St. Paul's, and the dean and chapter of that cathedral in 1860 gave him the vicarage of St. Pancras, a benefice at one time held by his grandfather. The rectory of Whitechapel had been held by him during twenty-three years, and on his removal he received many valuable testimonials and universal expressions of regret at his departure. He was named dean of Lichfield on 11 Nov. 1868; attached to the deanery was the rectory of Tatenhill, and his first act was to increase the stipend of the curate of that rectory from 100l. to 600l. a year, and to expend another 600l. in rebuilding the chancel of the church. He died at the deanery, Lichfield, on 4 Feb. 1875, and was buried in the cathedral yard on 9 Feb. He married, 20 March 1838, Mary Anne, fourth daughter of Paul Storr, of Beckenham, Kent. He was a voluminous author of evangelical literature, but it is doubtful if many of his writings continue to be read. His no me is found appended to upwards of fifty works, but a large 