Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/198

 relief in poetic effort. He travelled in Spain and on the continent, and, after a short visit to England in 1830, returned to Spain with the ill-fated expedition of General Torrijos and the Spanish exiles. His love for Sterling and appreciation of the courage of Torrijos, and his enthusiasm for Spanish literature, rather than any political convictions, were the causes of this escapade. Trench was quickly disillusioned, and returned to England in 1831. In October 1832 he was ordained deacon at Norwich, and in the beginning of 1833 settled at Hadleigh, Suffolk, as curate to Hugh James Rose [q. v.] Trench identified himself with the high-church party, but his personal friendship with Sterling and Maurice gave him wide sympathies. Rose left Hadleigh before a year was out, and Trench removed to Colchester, where he acted as curate for some months, till his health broke down, and he spent the winter of 1834 in Italy. He was ordained priest on his return in July 1835, and in September appointed to the perpetual curacy of Curdridge, Hampshire, which he held for six years. At Curdridge he began the systematic patristic and theological reading of which the ‘Notes on the Parables’ in 1840 were the first fruit; and he became the intimate friend of Samuel Wilberforce, whose active patronage prevented Trench's shyness from keeping him in obscurity. In 1841 he left Curdridge and accepted the curacy of Alverstoke, of which Wilberforce was rector. In January 1843 he was special preacher at Cambridge, and in 1845 and 1846 Hulsean lecturer. The delivery of five lectures at Winchester on ‘Language as an Instrument of Knowledge,’ expanded later into the ‘Study of Words,’ marks his discovery of a field of scholarship that he made peculiarly his own. Towards the end of 1844 Lord Ashburton offered him the rectory of Itchenstoke, which he accepted. In October 1845 Wilberforce, bishop-designate of Oxford, secured Trench as his examining chaplain, and in February following he was appointed professor of divinity at King's College. The title of his professorship was changed in 1854 to that of professor of the exegesis of the New Testament. He held the post till 1858, exercising much influence upon the students. In October 1856 he was appointed to the deanery of Westminster. He instituted the evening services in the nave, and thus began the work, which his successor, Stanley, brilliantly carried forward, of bringing the abbey into touch with the people of London. The death of two sons in India at the commencement of their career cast a gloom over his private life. In November 1863 Trench was designated archbishop of Dublin, and consecrated on 1 Jan. 1864. In 1868 Gladstone began the work of disestablishing the Irish church. The archbishop tersely summed up his own policy as ‘first to fight for everything which we possess, as believing it rightly ours, recognising of course the right of parliament to redistribute within the church its revenues according to the changed necessities of the present time. If this battle is lost, then, totally rejecting the process of gradual starvation to which Disraeli would submit us, to go in for instant death at the hands of Gladstone.’ Holding these views, Trench declined Gladstone's overtures, and maintained throughout by his charges to his clergy and by his speeches in the House of Lords an opposition that was always dignified and statesmanlike. On the passing of the bill a fresh succession of difficulties awaited the archbishop in the settlement of the disestablished church. In the general convention of the church of Ireland summoned in February 1870 to draw up a constitution, Trench's influence secured a full recognition of the bishops as one of the three orders of the church. A strong party in the convention desired to make the bishops subordinate to the other two orders of clergy and laity. When the first general synod met in April 1871 a struggle began on prayer-book revision, which continued till 1877. In the offices for baptism and holy communion alterations of such a kind were proposed by the low-church party that the archbishop could not have retained his see had they been adopted. Although the high churchmen were in a minority, Trench was able to hinder any serious alterations, and kept the Irish church united until the agitation and uncertainties caused by the act of disestablishment were at an end.

In November 1875, while crossing the Irish Channel, Trench fell down a gangway and fractured both knees. A tedious illness followed, and his health never fully recovered its vigour. His advanced age incapacitated him for the duties of his office, and led in 1884 to his resignation. He died at 23 Eaton Square on 28 March 1886, and was buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey. A portrait by Sir Thomas Jones, R.H.A., hangs in the palace, Dublin. A portrait in oils and another in crayons, both by Richmond, are in private hands. A crayon portrait by Samuel Laurence belonged in 1887 to Mr. H. N. Pym (Cat. Victorian Exhib. No. 403). In May 1832 he married his cousin, Frances Mary, second daughter of his uncle, Francis Trench, and sister of the second Lord