author
Thomas Pelham Dale
1821–1892
Remembered as a fiercely committed Anglo-Catholic clergyman, he became one of the best-known figures in the Victorian battles over ritual in the Church of England. His life also reached beyond church controversy into science, sketching, and architecture.
1 Audiobook
A commentary on Ecclesiastes
by Thomas Pelham Dale
About the author
Thomas Pelham Dale (1821–1892) was an English priest whose name became closely tied to the 19th-century ritualist controversies in the Church of England. Educated at King's College London and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, he later served as rector of St Vedast, Foster Lane, in the City of London.
He is best known for resisting legal attacks on Anglo-Catholic worship practices and was prosecuted and imprisoned over those disputes, which made him a notable and controversial public figure in Victorian religious life. Accounts of his life also describe him as a man of wide interests, including science and architectural work, giving him a broader profile than that of a church controversialist alone.
Much of what is known in detail about him was preserved in the posthumous memoir The Life and Letters of Thomas Pelham Dale, edited by his daughter Helen Pelham Dale in 1894.