Valpy French

Thomas Valpy French (1 January 1825 – 14 May 1891) was an English Christian Missionary in India and Persia, who became the first Bishop of Lahore, in 1877, and also founded the St. John's College, Agra, in 1853.[1][2]

Rev.

Thomas Valpy French
Lahore
Missionary to India, Pakistan and Persia
DioceseLahore
Installed1877
Term ended1887
PredecessorFirst
Personal details
Born(1825-01-25)25 January 1825
Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, England
Died14 May 1891(1891-05-14) (aged 66)
Muscat, Oman
BuriedMuscat, Oman
DenominationAnglican Communion
ParentsRev. Peter French
Alma materUniversity College, Oxford

After Henry Martyn, French is considered the second most important Christian missionary to the Middle East.[3]

Early life and education

Thomas Valpy French was born on New Year's Day in 1825, in Abbey, Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, England, the son of Rev. Peter French and his wife, Penelope Arabella the daughter of the educationalist, Richard Valpy of Reading, Berkshire. Thomas' father was vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Reading for forty-seven years, and he grew up in the house, which was once part of the Benedictine Abbey, on the banks of the River Trent.[4]

French started his schooling at Reading Grammar School, and at age fourteen, he joined Rugby School. In 1843, he won a scholarship to the University College, Oxford, where he was made a fellow in 1848.[1] It was at Oxford that he first felt called to mission in India.[5]

Missionary career

On 16 April 1850 French joined the missionary service of Church Missionary Society, and was sent to Agra, India. He set sail to India on East Indian Queen on 11 September 1850 and reached Calcutta on 2 January 1851.

Soon French headed off to Agra, where he was appointed for educational work. He founded the St. John's College at Agra, which formally opened in 1853, though he had started taking classes in small room with ten boys, while the college building was being built. The college was named as St. John's, after the college of another noted missionary, Henry Martyn (1781–1812) at Cambridge.[6] He also learnt seven languages,[5] including Hindustani, Punjabi, Urdu, Persian, Pashto and Arabic to properly administrate the school, as he also became school's first principal, and a post he held till the end of his seven-year stay at Agra.[5]

Later French married Miss Mary Anne Janson, whom he had met at Oxford, and one of his eight children, Ellen Penelope French (1854–1892), went on to marry Edmund Arbuthnott Knox, fourth Bishop of Manchester, (1903–1921).[7]

1861 saw French moving to the Punjab, where he started a new mission, which was the first in the area, though bad health forced him to leave for England by the end of 1862. He arrived back in Britain on 7 February 1863.[8]

In 1877, on St. Thomas' Day at Westminster Abbey, London, French was appointed the first Anglican Bishop of a large new diocese of Lahore, which included, all of the Punjab and northwestern India, and remained so until 1887,[9][10] during the time he founded the Lahore Divinity College, which opened on 21 November 1870 and also remained its Principal for many years,[11][12] he supervised the translation of the Bible and Prayer Book into Hindustani and Pashto,[13] and also made visits to Kashmir and Iran (1883), where he was the first Episcopal bishop to visit the country,[14] before returning to England, due to bad health in 1887.[5]

French reached Muscat, on his final missionary work, on 8 February 1891 and became the first missionary to visit the region;[5] he had just started setting up his work there, when his health started failing, and having been cared for by Portuguese Catholics he died on 14 May 1891 in Muscat, Oman and was buried in a Christian cemetery.[12]

Legacy

In 2007, Rowan Douglas Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, hailed French as a personal hero.[5] Williams again wrote of French in his 2016 book Being Disciples, saying of him that although he "seems to have made no converts" during his final years in the Middle East, he was not there primarily to make converts but out of "the desire to be where Jesus was ... to be in the company of Jesus Christ".[15]

References
  1. Thomas Valpy French Britannica.com.
  2. "History". Stjohnsagra.org. Archived from the original on 29 September 2008. Retrieved 24 September 2012.
  3. Legacy of Henry Martyn Avril A. Powell, University of Lincoln (SOAS)."Thomas Valpy French, just mentioned as the first bishop of Lahore, was certainly one of these, whom Martyn's late nineteenth century biographer, George Smith, considered 'the missionary bishop who most resembled Martyn in character and service'. "
  4. "Chapter I. The Man". Anglicanhistory.org. Retrieved 24 September 2012.
  5. "CMS hero". Webarchive.cms-uk.org. 4 May 2007. Archived from the original on 11 February 2012. Retrieved 24 September 2012.
  6. St John's College, Cambridge
  7. Chapter II His First Pioneer Work: The Agra College.
  8. Chapter III His Second Pioneer Work: The Frontier Mission.
  9. Churches and Ministers: Home and Foreign EventsNew York Times, 13 January 1878.
  10. An Heroic Bishop Chapter VI. His Fourth Pioneer Work: The Lahore Bishopric.
  11. Chapter V His Third Pioneer Work: The Divinity College.
  12. Chapter XI. The First Divinity Colleges Beginnings in India By Eugene Stock, D.C.L. 1912. French himself illustrated throughout his career the importance of Beginnings. He was five times a pioneer. He founded the College at Agra; he started a new Mission on the Afghan Frontier; he established the Divinity College; he was the first Bishop of Lahore; he laid down his life in the attempt to penetrate the closed doors of Arabia. His remains lie under the cliffs of that hitherto almost inaccessible Mohammedan preserve.
  13. "Church History". Morgue.anglicansonline.org. Retrieved 24 September 2012.
  14. History Archived 1 December 2012 at the Wayback Machine Anglican Diocese of Iran.
  15. Rowan Williams (21 July 2016). "Being with Jesus". Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian life (Chapter 1). SPCK. ISBN 978-0-281-07663-5.
Church of England titles
Preceded by
None		 Bishop of Lahore
1877–1887		 Succeeded by
Henry Matthew

Further reading
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