Neither Open nor Conservative

Abstract

"John Charles Ryle was born in Macclesfield on 10 May 1816, the son of a wealthy banker. A predictable life lay ahead: Eton, Oxford, some military service followed by a career in banking or politics. This course was shattered by his father’s bankruptcy in 1841. Ryle fled from Macclesfield into the arms of the church in Winchester and years of obscurity and poverty and illness in the swamps of the New Forest. He was rescued from this by appointment to Helmingham in Suffolk and, subsequently, Stradbroke, both then in the diocese of Norwich. There followed 36 years of steadfast rural ministry. To almost universal surprise, quite a lot of questioning and not a little ridicule, he was appointed as first Bishop of Liverpool in 1880. Although a section of prominent Liverpool gentlemen admired Ryle as a speaker at London conferences, it is largely speaking correct to see his elevation to the episcopacy as a personal snub to Gladstone by the outgoing Prime Minister, Disraeli"