Paul de Labilliere
Paul Fulcrand Delacour de Labillière was the second Bishop of Knaresborough from 1934 to 1937; and, subsequently, Dean of Westminster.Career
Born on 22 January 1879 into a legal family he was educated at Harrow and Merton College, Oxford.
After ordination in 1903 he served a s a curate in Liverpool and Plymouth before his appointment as Chaplain to the Bishop of Durham and then missionary work in South Africa. In South Africa he met and married Ester Morkel, they had a son and a daughter.
He was successively Clerical Superintendent of the Liverpool Scripture Readers, Chaplain of Wadham College, Oxford, Lecturer at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and Vicar of Christ Church, High Harrogate before a 4-year stint as Suffragan Bishop of Knaresborough and Archdeacon of Leeds.
A quiet but effective priest, his final professional appointment was as Dean of Westminster. He is remembered for a last minute change in the Abbey's Armistice Day service in 1938 after Kristallnacht when he included a prayer for the Jewish people 'in their trouble.'
The Deanery was destroyed in the 1941 Blitz and it is said the King and Queen offered him alternative accommodation at Buckingham Palace but he found a new place to live close to the Abbey.
Dean de Labillière died of a brain haemorrhage on 28 April 1946.
