William Walsham How

1823-1897. Bishop and hymnwriter. A solicitor's son, educated at Shrewsbury and Oxford, he held several parochial posts before his consecration in 1879 as bishop of Bedford, where he became known as “the poor man's bishop.” In 1888 he became the first bishop of Wakefield. Although he published a commentary on The Four Gospels (1870) and numerous sermons, he is remembered chiefly for several of his fifty-four hymns. These were contributed to a collection of Psalms and Hymns, compiled with T.B. Morrell (1854), and to Church Hymns (1871) which he edited jointly with J. Ellerton.* B.L. Manning thought him possibly the greatest nineteenth-century hymnwriter. He wrote, e.g., “For all the saints,” “O Jesu, Thou art standing,” “O Word of God Incarnate,” “It is a thing most wonderful,” and “We give Thee but Thine own.”