Handley Moule


Handley Carr Glyn Moule was an evangelical Anglican theologian, writer, poet, and Bishop of Durham from 1901–1920.

Biography

Moule was schooled at home before entering Trinity College, Cambridge in 1860, where he graduated BA in 1864. He was elected a Fellow of Trinity in 1865, and became an assistant master at Marlborough College before he was ordained deacon in 1867 and priest in 1868. From 1867 he was his father's curate at Fordington, Dorset, with a stint of five years as Dean of Trinity College chapel, 1873–1877. In 1880 he became the first principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and then in 1899 became Norrisian Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, until his appointment as Bishop of Durham in September 1901. He was consecrated as a bishop in York Minster on 18 October 1901.
Moule was active in the Higher Life movement and was one of the speakers at the inaugural Keswick Convention. He is buried in St Cuthbert's Cemetery, Durham.
Moule was an Honorary Chaplain to Queen Victoria from December 1898 until her death in January 1901, then an Honorary Chaplain to Edward VII for a couple of months until he was appointed bishop. In November 1901 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford, where he had been a Professorial Fellow previously, and in December 1901 he received the degree Doctor of Divinity by diploma from the University of Durham.

Family

Handley Moule was the eighth and final son of Henry Moule, an inventor and the vicar of Fordington for over 50 years. Handley was named after his godfathers Augustus Handley, a minister at Fordington, and Carr John Glyn. His brothers George Evans Moule and Arthur Evans Moule were missionaries in China, and another brother, Charles Walter Moule, was president of Corpus Christi. Two more brothers, Horatio Mosley Moule and artist Henry Joseph Moule are chiefly remembered as friends of novelist Thomas Hardy, who was well known to the Moule family. Moule's grand-nephew C. F. D. Moule was a notable theologian.
Handley Moule married Harriet Mary Elliott on 16 August 1881; they had two children, Mary "Tesie" Moule and Isabel Catherine Moule. In 1907 Moule published a memoir on Mary's short life entitled The School of Suffering. Isabel married Robert Vere de Vere, a colonial judge.

Publications

Moule was a New Testament scholar who wrote over 60 books and pamphlets. He contributed the chapters on Paul's letters to the Romans, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges and also wrote poems on religious subjects; he won the Seatonian Prize at Cambridge for sacred poetry 1869–1873 and again in 1876. He published at least two volumes of poetry in his lifetime, in addition to the prizewinning pieces. He wrote a number of hymns, of which "Lord and Savior, True and Kind" is probably the best known.
This is an incomplete list of Handley Moule's published works:
Some of these have been reprinted in recent years; some are available as e-books for the Kindle and other readers.