Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/173

  partly read at Gresham College in Hilary Term 1844,’ London, 1844, 8vo.

[Guardian, 28 April 1858; Gent. Mag. 1843 pt. ii. p. 181, 1858 pt. i. p. 679; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Brit. Mus. Cat.]  PALMER, WILLIAM (1811–1879), theologian and archæologist, eldest son of William Jocelyn Palmer, rector of Mixbury, Oxfordshire, by Dorothea Richardson, daughter of the Rev. William Roundell of Gledstone, Yorkshire, was born on 12 July 1811. Archdeacon Palmer and Roundell Palmer, first earl of Selborne [q. v.], were his brothers. He was educated at Rugby and Oxford, where he matriculated on 27 July 1826, and was elected to a demyship at Magdalen College. In 1830 he obtained the chancellor's prize with a Latin poem, ‘Tyrus,’ and a first-class in the classical schools. In 1831 he graduated B.A. (17 Feb.), and in 1832 took deacon's orders and a Magdalen fellowship. In 1833 he proceeded M.A., and gained the chancellor's prize with a Latin ‘Oratio de Comœdia Atticorum,’ printed the same year. During the next three years he was tutor in the university of Durham, during the three years 1837–9 examiner in the classical schools at Oxford, and from 1838 to 1843 tutor at Magdalen College.

An extreme high churchman, Palmer anticipated in an unpublished Latin introduction to the Thirty-nine Articles composed for the use of his pupils in 1839–40 the ingenious argument of the celebrated ‘Tract XC.’ He took, however, little active part in the tractarian movement, but occupied his leisure time in the study of various forms of ecclesiastical polity and theological belief. In 1840 he visited Russia in order to examine oriental christianity in its principal seat, and to obtain if possible an authoritative recognition of the Anglican claim to intercommunion. Letters of commendation and introduction from Dr. Martin Joseph Routh [q. v.], president of Magdalen College, and the British ambassador at the Russian court, gained him the ear of the highest functionaries in the Russian church. The difficulty of persuading them that the church of England was a branch of the catholic church was greatly aggravated by the recent admission to communion by the English chaplain at Geneva of Princess Galitzin and her eldest daughter, both of whom had renounced the Greek church. Prince Galitzin had sought by letter, but had failed to obtain, from Archbishop Howley [q. v.] an opinion on the question whether apostates from the Russian church could lawfully take the communion in the church of England. At the prince's desire Palmer corresponded with the ladies, the younger of whom he induced to return to the Russian church. During his stay in St. Petersburg he edited R. W. Blackmore's translation of Mouravieff's ‘History of the Church in Russia,’ Oxford, 1842, 8vo. His claim for admission to communion in the Russian church, pressed with the utmost pertinacity and ingenuity for nearly a year, was at length decisively rejected by the metropolitan of Moscow.

On his return to England in the autumn of 1841, Palmer submitted to Bishop Blomfield, as ordinary of continental chaplains, the question on which Archbishop Howley had maintained so discreet a reserve, and received an affirmative answer. Too late to break a lance in defence of ‘Tract XC.,’ he was in time to repel with animation a charge of ‘Romanism’ levelled at himself (cf. his Letter to the Rev. C. P. Golightly; his Letter to a Protestant-Catholic, both published at Oxford in 1841, 8vo; and his Letter to the Rev. Dr. Hampden, Oxford, 1842, 8vo). An able ‘Protest against Prusso-Anglican Protestantism,’ which he lodged with Archbishop Howley in reference to the recently established Jerusalem bishopric, was, at the archbishop's request, withheld from publication. He issued, however, the notes and appendices thereto, under the title ‘Aids to Reflection on the seemingly Double Character of the Established Church,’ Oxford, 1841, 8vo, and recurred to the same topic in an anonymous ‘Examination of an Announcement made in the Prussian State Gazette concerning the “Relations of the Bishop of the United Church of England and Ireland in Jerusalem” with the German Congregation of the Evangelical Religion in Palestine,’ Oxford, 1842, 8vo.

Bent on renewing his application for admission to communion in the Greek church, Palmer early in 1842 visited Paris, and laid the whole case before Bishop Luscombe [q. v.], in whose chapel the Princess Galitzin, then resident in Paris, was in the habit of communicating. He had several interviews with the princess, but failed to alter her views. Bishop Luscombe refused, however, to furnish her with a certificate of communion on the eve of her departure for Russia, and thus Palmer on his return to St. Petersburg was able to exclude her from communion in the English chapel there. His second application for admission to communion in the Russian church, though supported by letters commendatory from Bishop Luscombe and a vast magazine of ingenious dissertations of his own on the position of the church of England in the economy of Chris-