Thomas Fanshaw Middleton (28 January 1769 – 8 July 1822) was a noted

Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

bishop A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy who is entrusted with a position of Episcopal polity, authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance and administration of di ...

Life

Middleton was born in

Kedleston Kedleston is a village and civil parish in the Amber Valley district of Derbyshire, approximately north-west of Derby. Nearby places include Quarndon, Weston Underwood, Mugginton and Kirk Langley. The population at the 2011 Census was less ...

Derbyshire, England Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire to the north, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south-east, Staffordshire to the south an ...

, the son of Thomas Middleton, Rector of Kedleston and educated at

Christ's Hospital Christ's Hospital is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school (English Private schools in the United Kingdom, fee-charging boarding school for pupils aged 11–18) with a royal charter, located to the south of Horsham in West Sussex. T ...

. He then went up to

Pembroke College, Cambridge Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college is the third-oldest college of the university and has over 700 students and fellows. It is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from ...

, and on graduation was ordained in the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...

. He was appointed curate of

Gainsborough Gainsborough or Gainsboro may refer to: Places * Gainsborough, Ipswich, Suffolk, England ** Gainsborough Ward, Ipswich * Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, a town in England ** Gainsborough (UK Parliament constituency) * Gainsborough, Saskatchewan, Ca ...

(1792), Rector of Tansor (1795), Rector of Bytham (1802), Prebendary of Lincoln (1809), Archdeacon of Huntingdon and Vicar of St Pancras. In 1814, Middleton became the first Bishop of Calcutta. This

diocese In Ecclesiastical polity, church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided Roman province, prov ...

included not just India, but the entire territory of the

British East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...

(EIC). When he arrived in India he found that he was not allowed to ordain "Natives of India", as all ordinations were carried out by the EIC in London. In response, he founded Bishop's College in Calcutta, which admitted Britons Indians and

Anglo-Indian Anglo-Indian people are a distinct minority group, minority community of mixed-race British and Indian ancestry. During the colonial period, their ancestry was defined as British paternal and Indian maternal heritage; post-independence, "Angl ...

s, some of whom could go on to ordination. However although the college was built for seventy students, they still only had eight students fourteen years after it opened. In May 1814, Middleton was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

on the basis of being "a Gentleman well known to the literary world as the author of several classical works, and conversant with various departments of science" He died in Calcutta of sunstroke on 8 July 1822 and is buried under the altar of St. John's Church, the then cathedral of Calcutta. There is also a memorial to him in

St Paul's Cathedral St Paul's Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of St Paul the Apostle, is an Anglican cathedral in London, England, the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral serves as the mother church of the Diocese of London in the Church of Engl ...

."Memorials of St Paul's Cathedral" Sinclair, W. p. 464: London; Chapman & Hall, Ltd; 1909.

Works

*
The Doctrine of the Greek Article Applied to the Criticism and Illustration of the New Testament
' (1841)

References

External links

* *Charles Webb Le Bas,
The Life of the Right Reverend Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, D.D., Late Lord Bishop of Calcutta
', London: Rivington, 1881; digital version on archive.org.
January 28, 1769 • Thomas Fanshawe Middleton Was the First Bishop of Calcutta
Christian History Institute, gospelcom.net (archived version). *Dan Graves

christianity.com.
Online Books by T. F. Middleton (Middleton, T. F. (Thomas Fanshaw), 1769-1822)
The Online Books Page, University of Pennsylvania, upenn.edu.

- 1832 marble sculpture of Middleton. 1769 births 1822 deaths People from Kedleston 19th-century Anglican bishops in Asia Anglican bishops of Calcutta Archdeacons of Huntingdon Fellows of the Royal Society Anglican bishops of West Malaysia {{Anglican-bishop-stub