Alfred Blunt

Alfred Walter Frank Blunt (24 September 1879 – 12 June 1957) was an English Anglican bishop. He was the second Bishop of Bradford from 1931 to 1955 and is best known for a speech that exacerbated the abdication crisis of King Edward VIII. Birth and education Blunt was born on 24 September 1879 in Saint-Malo, Ille-et-Vilaine, France, where he was brought up before his mother returned the family to England in 1887. He was younger son in second marriage of Captain Francis Theophilus Blunt (1837–1881) of the British colonial service, ultimately Chief Civil Commissioner for the Seychelles. His older brother was Edward Arthur Henry Blunt. He was privately educated by his widowed mother, and attended Church Hill preparatory school at Crondall near Farnham, Hampshire, before entering Marlborough College in 1893. He entered Exeter College, Oxford, where he graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1901, receiving first-class honours in literae humaniores, and was promoted to Master of Arts in 1904. He was later granted by the same university the degrees of Bachelor of Divinity in 1918 and, honoris causa, Doctor of Divinity in 1932. Teaching and priesthood Blunt was elected as a tutorial Fellow of Exeter College in March 1902, and as Assistant Master of Wellington College later in 1902 before studying for priesthood at Cuddesdon Theological College. He was ordained deacon in 1904 and priest in 1905 by Francis Paget, Bishop of Oxford, in whose diocese he served as a licensed preacher until 1907, when he became curate at Carrington, Nottingham, an industrial parish. He became its perpetual curate, or vicar, in 1909. He also became examining chaplain to Edwyn Hoskyns (and his successor Bernard Heywood), Bishop of Southwell, its diocesan, from 1911 until 1927.