Cyril Mayne

William Cyril Mayne (14 April 1877 – 20 July 1962) was an English clergyman and classical scholar. He was Dean of Carlisle from 1943 to 1959. Early life William Cyril Mayne was born in Gloucester, the son of the Revd Jonathan Mayne and his wife, Lydia Dorothea Hawksley. He was educated at Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in Classics in 1899. He was an assistant master at Eastbourne College and Malvern College before being made Deacon in the Church of England on 23 December 1906. An assistant master at Rugby School from 1907 until 1912, he was ordained Priest by Bishop Huyshe Yeatman-Biggs of Worcester on 22 December 1907. He became Assistant Curate at All Saints, Poplar in 1912. In July 1914 he was appointed Vice-Principal of Bishops' College, Cheshunt. Military chaplain Mayne was commissioned as a temporary Chaplain to the Forces, 4th class, Army Chaplains Department on 30 October 1914. He was posted on attachment to the 29th Division, and left England for the Dardanelles, via Egypt, on 29 April 1915. He served on operations at Gallipoli and in France and Flanders, winning golden opinions: "I knew him when he was a chaplain in the famous 29th Division, and I recall his holding a confirmation class in a regimental aid post which was little more than a hole in the ground and a few sandbags. He was much loved and known to all of us as a front line padre" (Dr. J.F. Mayne [no relation]). Mayne also met William Wand, a future bishop of London, in Gallipoli. Wand was an unattached chaplain awaiting a placement and Mayne took him temporarily under his wing. "Many years later", wrote Wand in his autobiography A Changeful Place, "when he was Dean of Carlisle, I had the pleasure of meeting him again and thanking him for the good deed done to an impotent man away back in 1915". He was promoted temporary Chaplain to the Forces, 3rd class, on 23 November 1916, and was posted as Senior Chaplain to the Forces to the 33rd Division.