RARE "British Divine" Charles James Blomfield Signed Free Frank Dated 1839 For Sale

Up for sale a RARE! "British Divine" Charles James Blomfield Signed Free Frank Dated 1839. 

ES-3992

Charles

James Blomfield (29

May 1786 – 5 August 1857) was a British divine and classicist, and a Church of England bishop for 32 years. Blomfield was born

in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, and educated at the grammar

school at Bury St Edmunds, declining a scholarship to Eton College after a brief stay there. Blomfield

matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge in

1804. At Cambridge, he was tutored by John Hudson,

mathematician and clergyman. Blomfield won the Browne medals for Latin and Greek odes, and the Craven

scholarship. He graduated B.A. (3rd wrangler and

1st Chancellor's medal in classics) in 1808, M.A. in

1811, B.D. in 1818, D.D. (per lit. reg.) in

1820. Blomfield was elected to a fellowship at Trinity College in 1809. The first-fruits of his scholarship was an

edition of the Prometheus of Aeschylus in 1810; this was followed by editions of

the Septem contra Thebas, Persae, Choephori, and Agamemnon, of Callimachus, and of the fragments however, soon ceased to devote himself entirely to

scholarship. Ordained deacon in March 1810 and priest in June 1810, he held a curacy at Chesterford, then the following livings:

(1817–24)

Whilst at Dunton he educated George

Spencer (later Ignatius Spencer), and

they corresponded for several years after. In 1817 he was appointed private

chaplain to William Howley, Bishop of London. In 1819 he was nominated to the rich and in 1822 he became Archdeacon of Colchester.

Two years later he was raised to the bishopric as Bishop of Chester where he carried through many

much-needed reforms.

In 1828, he was appointed a Privy

Counsellor and translated becoming Bishop of London, a post which he held for twenty-eight years.

During this period, his energy and zeal did much to extend the influence of the

church. He was one of the best debaters in the House of Lords (members of the Upper House of the

Canterbury Convocation confessed to trimming their quill pens before his

arrival!), took a leading position in the action for church reform which

culminated in the ecclesiastical commission, and did much for the extension of

the colonial episcopate; and his genial and kindly nature made him an

invaluable mediator in the controversies arising out of the tractarian movement.