Arthur Morris

Arthur Harold Morris (20 February 189815 October 1977) was an Anglican bishop in the 20th century. Education and family Born the son of E. H. Morris (of Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire), Arthur was educated at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, taking the degrees Bachelor of Arts (BA) and Bachelor of Laws (LLB) in 1920, and proceeding Cambridge Master of Arts (MA Cantab) in 1924. Morris went straight from school into the army, and was commissioned into the King’s (Liverpool) Regiment in 1916 and became a second lieutenant in 1917. After only 113 days, he was deemed unfit for service because of a heart defect possibly resulting from an attack of pneumonia in the spring of 1915. This left him free to study and he trained for the ministry at Ridley Hall, Cambridge and was ordained a deacon on Trinity Sunday (11 June) 1922 and a priest the next Trinity Sunday (27 May). He married Evelyn Ethel Woods in 1924 and they had three sons before he was widowed in 1953. Priest Following his title post, as assistant curate of All Soul, Harlesden, Morris' first incumbency was as Vicar of Great Clacton with Little Holland (1926–1930), after which he served the Church Pastoral-Aid Society as Metropolitan Secretary (from 1930). He then returned to vicaring, at St Mark's Hamilton Terrace (in Marylebone, London, from 1933), later (1939–1946) also becoming Rural Dean of the St Marylebone area. He was as an RAF chaplain in World War II (1940–1945) and served, briefly, as a Proctor in Convocation for London in 1945. After the war had ended — in 1946 —, he became both Archdeacon of Halifax and a canon (of St Hilda) of Wakefield Cathedral, and was elected a Proctor for that diocese. Bishop In 1949, he was moved to a different archdeaconry and canonry of the same diocese and cathedral — Archdeacon of Pontefract and St Chad's canon — and additionally appointed to the episcopate as the third Bishop of Pontefract, the bishop suffragan of the diocese. His appointment to the suffragan See was approved in August 1949 and he was ordained and consecrated a bishop on All Saints' Day (1 November) at York Minster. Morris was appointed Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich after it had been vacant for over one year. The diocese had expressed a wish not to have an administrator like the retired bishop but ‘a man of God’.