The Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 June 1883
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)

Right Rev Dr. Colenso
DURBAN, June 20.—Dr. Colenso, English Bishop of Natal, is dead.
John William Colenso was born in Cornwall, January 24, 1814, and graduated from Cambridge University in 1830. He afterward taught there and at Harrow, and in 1846 was appointed rector of Forncett St. Mary, Norfolk. In 1853 he was named Bishop of Natal, South Africa. He was the author of numerous works on mathematics, but his most notorious book was the "First Part of the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua Critically Examined" calling in question the historical accuracy and Mosaic authorship of these books, which appeared in 1863. This work was condemned by insignificant majorities in both Houses of Convocation of the province of Canterbury in 1864, and its author was declared to be deposed from his see by the Metropolitan Bishop of Cape Town. The deposition was declared to be "null and void in law," on an appeal to the Privy Council in March, 1865, the ground of the decision being that the Crown has no legal power to constitute a bishopric, or to confer coercive jurisdiction within any colony possessing an independent legislature, and that as the letters patent purporting to create the sees of Cape Town and Natal were issued after these colonies had acquired legislatures, the sees did not legally exist, and neither bishop possessed in law any jurisdiction whatever. The bishops forming the Council of the Colonial Bishoprics Fund having, notwithstanding this decision refused to pay him his income on the ground that he had no coercive jurisdiction, he appealed to the Court of Chancery, and the Master of the Rolls delivered an elaborate judgment on October 6, 1866, ordering the payment in future of his income, with all arrears and interest, and declaring that, if his accusers refused to pay his income, on the ground of heretical teaching, he should have felt it his duty to try that issue—an offer which they declined to accept. Bishop Colenso had many sympathizers in England and on August 26, 1866, a meeting of the subscribers to the "Colenso Fund" was held. $16,500 was presented to him as a token of respect on his leaving for his distant diocese. The final result was that the Anglican community at the Cape was divided into two hostile camps. Bishop Colenso still remained the only Bishop of the Church of England in Natal, but the Rev William Kenneth Macrorie was consecrated Bishop of Maritsburg for the Church of the Province of South Africa, at Cape Town, January 25, 1869. Towards the close of the year 1874, Bishop Colenso paid a visit to England in order to report to the Archbishop of Canterbury and other heads of the church the position maintained, in spite of all discouragements, by the members of the Church of England in the Cape Colony, of unwavering attachment to the mother church, and to consult them as to the relations in which the diocese of Natal stood to the new bishop of Cape Town, who had taken the oath of canonical obedience to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but with a reservation or explanation which by many was thought to deprive that oath of its natural meaning, as also to arrange some of the matters which were needed for the future welfare and programs of the branch of the Church of England which existed in the Cape Colony. During his stay in England he was inhibited from preaching in their respective dioceses by the bishops of Exford, Lincoln and London.

Contributed by Bob Bolitho