James Fleming (priest)

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Canon James Fleming, 1899 caricature

James Fleming (1830โ€“1908) was an Irish clergyman of the Church of England, public speaker and fund-raiser. A canon of York Minster, he became chaplain in ordinary to Queen Victoria and Edward VII, and was a close friend of the British royal family.[1][2]

Early life

Born at Carlow on 26 July 1830, he was from a Scots-Irish background, the youngest of five children of Patrick Fleming, M.D., of Strabane, who had married in 1820 Mary, daughter of Captain Francis Kirkpatrick. From 1833 to 1836 he was in Jamaica, his father having become paymaster to the 56th Regiment; and on his father's death in 1838 his mother, who survived to September 1876, moved to Bath, Somerset. His two brothers, William and Francis, were sent to Sandhurst, but ultimately took orders; William, a traditional Protestant, died vicar of Christ Church, Chislehurst, in May 1900.[3]

Fleming went to

King Edward VI's Grammar School, Bath, in 1840, and to Shrewsbury School in 1846, under Benjamin Hall Kennedy. He was in the school cricket team, and won the Millington scholarship, matriculating on 15 November 1849 at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He graduated B.A. there in 1853, proceeding M.A. in 1857 and B.D. in 1864.[3]

Priest and canon

Ordained deacon in 1853 and priest in 1854, he was curate, first, of St. Stephen, Ipswich (1853โ€“5), and then of St. Stephen, Lansdown, in the parish of Walcot, Bath (1855โ€“9), with charge of the chapel of All Saints. His plain evangelical preaching attracted congregations.[3]

Fleming started classes of instruction in

Dr. Barnardo's Homes, the Religious Tract Society, of which he was an honorary secretary from 1880; and the Hospital Sunday Fund, to which his congregation made annual contributions.[3]

On 30 May 1879

Lord Beaconsfield nominated Fleming to a residentiary canonry in York Minster. Archbishop William Thomson made him succentor there on 20 August 1881, and precentor with a prebendal stall on 3 January 1883.[3]

Later life

In 1880 Beaconsfield wanted to appoint Fleming first

Lord Salisbury's successive offers of the deaneries of Chester (20 December 1885) and of Norwich (6 May 1889).[3]

Honorary chaplain to Queen Victoria (1876) and chaplain in ordinary to her (1880) and to Edward VII (1901), Fleming from 1879 preached almost yearly before the Queen and Prince of Wales, at

Haberdashers' Company.[3]

Fleming, who early in 1877 denounced the "folly, obstinacy, and contumacy" of the

C. H. Spurgeon, William Morley Punshon and other nonconformist leaders were good.[3]

Fleming died at St. Michael's Vicarage on 1 September 1908, and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery.

Ernest Harold Pearce in the Dictionary of National Biography wrote that "personal charm and grace of speech made him popular, but he was neither a student nor a thinker". A reredos and choir stalls in memory of him were placed in St. Michael's (1911), and a statue of King Edwyn in York Minster.[3]

Works

Fleming's Bath Penny Readings of 1862 covers one of the origins of the

common-place book to Science and the Bible (1880) inadvertently, in reply to an 1887 pamphlet accusing him of plagiarism from Talmage's Fifty Sermons.[3]

On 24 January 1892 Fleming preached at Sandringham the sermon in memory of the

Queen Alexandra: the Gordon Boys' Home and the British Home and Hospital for Incurables.[3]

Fleming made a number of sound recordings for the

Tennyson, etc.[6] His rendering of Edgar Allan Poe's The Bells, where the first three verses occupied one 10-inch single-sided disc, and verse 4 took the whole of a second disc, exhibits throughout his fine control of spoken and extended pitch. The phonetician Daniel Jones employed the first of the 'Bells' discs as one of his illustrations of 'intonation curves'.[7] He also recorded part of the Gramophone album of discs in 1908 giving a service for the Church of England
Morning Prayer, but died before completing the set (which was taken over by the Reverend Joshua Parkyn).

Family

Fleming married, on 21 June 1853, at

Holy Trinity, Brompton, Grace Purcell, elder daughter of Admiral Purcell; she died on 25 May 1903. They had three sons and three daughters.[3]

Notes

  1. ^ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help) (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ISBN 978-1-84619-082-7
    .
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Lee, Sidney, ed. (1912). "Fleming, James" . Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). Vol. 2. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  4. ISBN 978-0-87413-697-5
    .
  5. ^ James Fleming (1862). Bath Penny Readings; their origin and progress. p. 25.
  6. ^ See the database of '78rpm' discs in the EMI Archives at https://www.kellydatabase.org/
  7. ^ Jones, D. (1909), Intonation curves: a collection of phonetic texts, in which intonation is marked throughout by means of curved lines on a musical stave, Leipzig and Berlin, Teubner. Available online at: https://archive.org/details/intonationcurves00jonerich/mode/2up
Attribution

Wikisource This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1912). "Fleming, James". Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). Vol. 2. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

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