Page:The Cyclopedia of India (Specimen Issue).pdf/23

 THE MOST REV. REGINALD STEPHEN COPLESTON, B.A. (Oxon), D.D., Lord Bishop of the See of Calcutta and Metropolitan in India and the Island of Ceylon.

THE MOST REV. REGINALD STEPHEN COPLESTON, Bishop of the See of Calcutta and Metropolitan in India and the Island of Ceylon, f was born in 1845. The Lord Bishop is the eldest son of the Rev. R. E. Copleston, Vicar of Edmonton, Middlesex, and was educated at Merton College, Oxford, where he took his B.A. in 1869. Contemporary with Bishop Copleston in his College days were Bishop Mandel Creigh¬ton (London), and Bishop Richardson of Zanzibar, Fellow and Tutor of St. John’s Col¬lege, t86<> to 1875. Bishop Copleston was consecrated to the See of Colombo on Decent- Iter 28th. 1S75, at West¬minster Abbey, and transferred to Calcutta on the resignation of Bishop Welldon in 1902. Bishop Cople- ston'a literary achieve¬ments have lain in the direction of the Classics, and he is the author of " .-Kschylus " in “ Clas¬sics for English Read¬ers " and “ Buddhism, Primitive and Present." He married in 1882, Edith, daughter of Archbishop Trench (Dublin).

In writing this short sketch of the Lord Bishop of Calcutta, it may not be uninterest¬ing to recall a few in¬cidents in the history of the Bishopric which is the most ancient in the East Indies. The first holder of the See was Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, who was appointed in the year of Grace, 1814. In the interesting language of such documents, the letters patent of that idatc set out that:—“Whereas the doctrine and discipline of the United Church of England and Ireland are pro¬fessed and observed by a considerable portion of Our loving subjects, resident within out territories under the Government of the United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies. And whereas no sufficient provision has been made for the supply of persons duly ordained to officiate as Ministers of the United Church of England and Ireland within the said territories, and our aforesaid sub¬jects are deprived of some offices prescribed by the liturgy and usage of the Church afore¬said, for want of a Bishop residing within the same. For remedy of the aforesaid incon¬veniences and defects We have determined to erect the afore¬said territories into a Bishop’s See, and we do by these presents erect, found, ordain, make, and constitute the said British Terri¬tories in the East Indies to be a Bishop's See, and to be called hence¬forth the Bishopric of Calcutta1'he same letters patent appointed Archdeacons at Madras and Bombay under the Bishop of Calcutta. The Provinces of Mad¬ras and Bombay were placed under charge of separate Bishops thirty years later—Madras on the 15th June, 1835, and Bombay on the 1st of October, 1S37.

Calcutta has been fortunate in having a succession of exception¬ally interesting person alities in the divines who have filled the See. Bishop Copleston'5 predecessors were Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, 1814 : Reginald Heber, 1S23; John Thomas James, 1827 ; John Mathias Turner, 1820:	Daniel Wilson, 1832; George Edward Lynch Cotton, 1858; Robert Milman, 1867; Edward Ralph Johnson, 1876; and James Edward Cowell Welldon, 1899