William John Butler

William John Butler (1818–1894) was an English churchman, Dean of Lincoln from 1885 until his death. He was previously Vicar of the Church of St Peter and St Paul, Wantage from 1847 to 1881, where he founded the Community of St Mary the Virgin. Life He was eldest son of John La Forey Butler (1786-1848), a member of the firm of H. and I. Johnstone, merchants and bankers, born in Bryanston Street, Marylebone, London, on 10 February 1818. His mother, Henrietta, daughter of Captain Robert Patrick, was of Irish, as his father was of Pembrokeshire, descent. After schooling at Enfield, he became a queen's scholar at Westminster School in 1832, and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1836. He won the Trinity essay in 1839, but, though a fair classical scholar, was unable to give sufficient time to the tripos, and took a pass degree in 1840. He commenced M.A. in 1844, and on 1 July 1847 was admitted ad eundem at Oxford, where he was made an honorary canon of Christ Church Cathedral in 1872. He was ordained by Bishop Sumner in Farnham chapel in 1841 to the curacy of Dogmersfield, under Charles Dyson. Subsequently, for one year he held the curacy of Puttenham in Surrey, and in 1844, he accepted the perpetual curacy of Wareside, a poor outlying hamlet of Ware. Here he preached the discourses included in his Sermons for Working Men (1847). Meanwhile, in June 1846, he was appointed by the dean and chapter of Windsor to the vicarage of Church of St Peter and St Paul, Wantage. There he founded, and acted as warden of, the penitentiary sisterhood of St Mary's, in 1850, his name is inseparably associated. He retained the wardenship until his death. While at Wantage he trained as his curates the Rev. A. H. Mackonochie, the Rev. G. Cosby White, the Rev. M. H. Noel, the Rev. V. S. S. Coles, Canon Newbolt and Dr Liddon. "I owe all the best I know to Butler" was a saying attributed to Liddon, but felt equally by many of the other churchmen who came under Butler's stimulating influence.