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  attributed by the newspapers of the day to the injuries inflicted upon him by Grantley Berkeley (see quotations in Fraser's Magazine, 1841, xxiv. 628–30).

[Literary Gazette, 9 Oct. 1841, p. 660; Gent. Mag. 1841, new ser. xvi. 553; Grantley Berkeley's Life and Recollections, 1865–6, 4 vols.; Fraser's Mag. January 1837, pp. 100–43; W. Bates's Maclise Portrait Gallery, 1883; Notes and Queries 4th ser. vii. 31, 211, 5th ser. v. 249.]  FRASER, JAMES (1818–1885), bishop of Manchester, eldest son of James Fraser, of a branch of the family of Fraser of Durris, a retired India merchant, by his wife Helen, a daughter of John Willim, solicitor, of Bilston, Staffordshire, was born 18 Aug. 1818 at Prestbury, Gloucestershire. His father lost money in ironstone mines in the Forest of Dean, and dying in 1832 left his widow and seven children poorly provided for. Fraser's early years were chiefly spent at his maternal grandfather's at Bilston, but when his father removed to Heavitree, Exeter, he was put to school there. In 1832 he was placed under Dr. Rowley at Bridgnorth school, Staffordshire, and in 1834 removed to Shrewsbury school, where, first under Dr. Butler and then under Dr. Kennedy, he remained till 1836. Though entered at Balliol, and an unsuccessful competitor for scholarships at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he was elected a scholar of Lincoln College and matriculated 16 March 1836, and went into residence in January 1837. He was a strong athlete, and had a passion for horses; but his poverty compelled him to deny himself the gratification of such tastes. As an undergraduate he lived a very recluse life, and no doubt acquired then his remarkable self-mastery. In 1837 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Hertford scholarship, but in 1838 he all but won, and in 1839 did win, the Ireland scholarship. In November 1839 he took a first class in final honour schools, graduated B.A. 6 Feb. 1840, and was elected a fellow of Oriel. At this time he impressed his friends as shy and immature. At the end of his year of probation at Oriel he became reader of sermon notes, and tutor from 1842 to 1847; he graduated M.A. on 18 May 1842, and in January 1844 became subdean and librarian. Though in no respect a great tutor, his sympathies gave him unusual popularity among the undergraduates. On 18 Dec. 1846 he took deacon's orders, and, having indulged himself with a last fortnight's hard hunting in Leicestershire, forswore that pleasure for the rest of his life. He took some parochial work in Oxford, entered priest's orders Trinity Sunday 1847, and in July accepted the college living of Cholderton, Wiltshire, which on this occasion was made tenable with a fellowship. Till 1856 he took pupils, and for twenty years occasionally was examiner at Oxford and elsewhere. In 1858 he examined for the Ireland, and in 1866 for the Craven scholarship at Oxford. On 12 Dec. 1851 he preached his first sermon as select preacher at Oxford, and was select preacher subsequently in 1861, 1871, 1877, and, though he did not preach any sermon, in 1885. In 1854 he became examining chaplain and subsequently in 1858 chancellor to Dr. Hamilton, bishop of Salisbury. Several of his sermons at Salisbury were published. On Bishop Hamilton's recommendation he was appointed assistant commissioner to the Royal Commission on Education in 1858 for a district of thirteen poor law unions in Dorsetshire, Devonshire, Somersetshire, Herefordshire, and Worcestershire. His report, made May 1859 and published in 1861, is, according to Mr. Thomas Hughes, ‘a superb, I had almost said a unique, piece of work.’ In 1860 he resigned his fellowship, on accepting the rectory of Ufton Nervet, Berkshire. In this parish, where he accomplished many parochial improvements, he developed his great capacity for business and for leadership. In March 1865 he was appointed a commissioner to report on education in the United States and America, and was in Canada and the United States from May till October. His report, made in 1866, stamped him as a man who was destined for ecclesiastical promotion, and in that year Lord Cranborne made him the offer of the bishopric of Calcutta, which he declined. In 1867 he prepared for the Commission on the Employment of Children in Agriculture, on the recommendation of the home secretary, a masterly report on the south-eastern district, comprising Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Sussex, and Gloucestershire. In June 1869 he preached before the queen, and on 18 Jan. 1870, expressly on the ground of his authority on educational questions, he received the offer of the bishopric of Manchester, and accepting it was consecrated on 25 March.

His new sphere was the most difficult of its kind in the kingdom. It was almost a new diocese. Its late bishop, Dr. Prince Lee, had lived a retired and a comparatively inactive life. It was a huge industrial community, with little interest in ecclesiastical affairs. Nonconformists of all denominations were numerous, and the district was in the crisis of the education question. To a new bishop the nonconformists' attitude was critical, and on the part of many hostile. The machinery of diocesan organisation was defective, and little was being done for church extension. Fifteen years afterwards Fraser died universally