A monument marks his grave in Gloucester Cemetery; and a brass has been erected to his memory in the north transept of the Cathedral.

The death of Dean Law was followed by a series of changes. The Rev. EDWARD H. BICKERSTETH was nominated his successor early in January, 1885. On the 28th of the same month he was installed; but before the month had closed he accepted the Bishopric of Exeter. The vacant office was soon filled by the appointment of Dr. HAROLD MONTAGUE BUTLER, the popular Master of Harrow School, and Gloucester rejoiced in its acquisition of such a broadminded and genial-hearted Dean. Fears, however, were entertained that his stay would be brief, and so it proved. In October, 1886, it was announced that Dr. Butler had been appointed to the Mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge. He will be gratefully remembered as having originated the popular week-evening Sacred Music Services in the nave of the Cathedral. Early in November the Rev. H. D. M. SPENCE, M.A., vicar of St. Pancras, London, and Hon. Canon of Gloucester, was nominated to the office, making the fourth who had held it within two years!

EDWARD GIRDLESTONE, Canon of Bristol, who ought to be long and gratefully remembered by agricultural labourers as their fearless and faithful friend, was closely connected with Gloucestershire. In 1854 he was appointed Canon residentiary of Bristol Cathedral, and in 1858, vicar of Wapley. In 1862, he removed to Halberton, Devonshire; but in 1872 returned to this county as vicar of Olveston. Deeply impressed by the wrongs and sufferings of our rural labouring classes, he was the first to suggest the formation of an Agricultural Labourers' Union, a movement which has so greatly affected their social and political condition.

He died at Bristol, in his eightieth year, on the 4th December, 1884, having taken a severe cold in travelling to Sandringham, to preach before the Prince of Wales. He was buried, amidst many manifestations of sorrow

T

and honour, in the graveyard of Bristol Cathedral.

Another Church dignitary, large of heart and earnest of purpose, may be claimed as a Gloucestershire man. "JAMES FRASER," says his biographer, Mr. Thomas Hughes, "" was born on the 18th of August, 1818, at Oaklands House, in the parish of Prestbury, a Gloucestershire village nestling under he Cotswolds." He was the son of respectable but not aristocratic parents. His father, who had acquired property in India, was connected with some mining enterprises in the Forest of Dean, and died in 1832. James was sent first to Bridgenorth School and then to Shrewsbury School, afterwards entering Lincoln College, Oxford. After acting as tutor for five years at Oriel College, he accepted the living of Cholderton, in Wilts, in 1847, which he exchanged for that of Upton Nervet, near Reading, in 1860. In 1870 he was elevated to the See of Manchester, by Mr. Gladstone. Of his energy, enthusiasm, and self-sacrificing devotion as a Bishop, Mr. Hughes has well told. His labours were incessant and had reference to matters affecting education, commerce, wages, and other social questions, as well as things religious and ecclesiastical; his catholic charity gained for him the title of "The Bishop of all Denominations;" his earnestness and honesty secured him universal respect.

His active life closed unexpectedly. Only a day or two before his death he was in his Cathedral, standing, says one of his friends," erect as a dart, and singing with the simplicity of a boy :

'Oh, bless the Shepherd, bless the sheep,

That guide and guided both be one;

One in the faithful watch they keep,

Until this hurrying life is done.'

When

The death of Dr. Fraser was followed in two days by that of Dr. JAMES RUSSELL WOODFORD, Bishop of Ely, twenty years of whose clerical life were spent in Gloucestershire. Upper and Lower Eastons were formed into an ecclesiastical parish from portions of St. George's and Stapleton, in 1848 Mr. Woodford was the first incumbent of the new church of

St. Mark's. In 1855, he was presented by Bishop Monk to the valuable living of Kempsford, whence, in 1868, he removed to become Vicar of the grand old Parish Church of Leeds. He was consecrated Bishop of Ely in 1873. He died, after a short illness, October 24, 1885, in the sixty-sixth year of his age.

NOTE.

1.-Vide-Sketch of Sydney Dobell.

NOTABLE NONCONFORMISTS.

HE Nonconformists of Gloucestershire have been an important element in its history. Quakers, Baptists, Independents, Unitarians, and Methodists have formed no inconsiderable portion of its population; and notwithstanding persecutions, civil disabilities, and social and educational disadvantages, have exercised no mean influence upon its character and condition. Facts already recorded have shown that they have had among them men, who to high excellence have joined great force of character, living earnest lives and doing much good work. The records of every denomination would supply many further examples. Some few names which have attained a degree of celebrity may be mentioned.

In the middle of last century ANDREW PURVER was an active member of the Society of Friends meeting for worship in the little meeting house, on Frenchay Common. This remarkable man, the son of poor parents in Hampshire, had served his apprenticeship to a shoemaker; but impelled by an intense love of literature, he acquired such an acquaintance with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, together with much other knowledge, that he established a thriving boarding school at Frenchay. While successfully conducting his academy and labouring usefully as a minister of the religious society to which he belonged, he also entered upon a new translation of the Scriptures from the original tongues. This great work, which was not completed till after his removal to Andover, occupied him thirty years, and was published in two folio volumes in 1764, at the cost of the celebrated Dr. Fothergill.

Purver held Tyndale and his translation in great esteem; and always spoke of the man with affection and of his work with reverence. He died at Andover.

The Rev. SAMUEL JONES, who was for some years Master of an Academy at Gloucester, and afterwards at Tewkesbury, was eminent in his profession, and remarkable as the tutor of Archbishop Secker, Bishop Butler, Dr. Chandler, the Rev. Richard Pearsall and other men of note. His nephew, JEREMIAH JONES, who kept a school at Nailsworth and ministered to a Nonconformist congregation at Avening, wrote a learned work, in three volumes, on the canonical authority of the Old Testament. and died in 1724, at the age of thirty-one.

The Rev. JOSHUA PARRY, who for thirty-four years was Minister of the Old Nonconformist Chapel in Gosditch Street, Cirencester, was a man of considerable local note. His memoir, written by his grandson, the late Mr. Charles Henry Parry, F.R.S., and edited by Sir John E. Eardley-Wilmot, Bart., was published in 1872. Mr. Parry, who was born in Pembrokeshire, in 1719, settled at Cirencester in 1742, where he married Miss Hillier, the daughter of a wealthy woolstapler of the town, and passed the remainder of his life. During this period he was on very intimate terms with Allen, Lord Bathurst, conspicuous alike for his own wit and powers of oratory, and for the patronage he extended to the wits and poets of the time. His acquaintance with this nobleman brought him into contact with many interesting men; and his memoir abounds in facts and anecdotes illustrative of some phases of the religious, literary, and political condition of England through the middle of last century. Mr. Parry died in 1776.

One of his sons, Dr. Parry, became eminent as a physician in Bath, and was the father of Sir Edward Parry, the celebrated Arctic explorer.

The RYLANDS, whose name is honourably interwoven with modern Baptist history, were members of an old Gloucestershire family-John Ryland being settled at