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Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

1815-1881. Dean of Westminster. Son of a rector who had private means and noble connections, he was educated at Rugby and Balliol, coming into touch with Pusey and the Tractarians.* He was elected a fellow of University College, Oxford, in 1839 and was ordained. In 1856 he became professor of ecclesiastical history at Oxford. Like the Tractarians, he desired more earnestness and order in the Church of England, which at this time suffered from lack of devotion, absenteeism, plurality, and indifference, but he was the antithesis of a sacramentalist. He was noted rather for Broad Church views, was strongly in favor of the state connection, and wanted a truly comprehensive Church of England. He would not have barred Unitarians, and he worked for the admission of Nonconformists to the universities. After he became dean of Westminster in 1863 he invited Keble, Liddon, and Pusey to preach; all refused, feeling that to do so would compromise them in view of Stanley's sympathy with German liberalism. Queen Victoria liked him, however, and would have made him a bishop but for Palmerston and Gladstone. He was a member of the NT revision committee of 1870 and one of those who wanted to remove the anathemas from the Athanasian Creed in 1872. He opposed the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. A widely traveled man, Stanley produced many books, including Commentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians (1855), Lectures on the Eastern Church (1861), and Memorials of Westminster (1868).