George Moberly

George Moberly (October 10 1803 - July 6 1885), English divine, was educated at Winchester and Balliol College, Oxford.

After a distinguished academic career he became head master of Winchester in 1835. This post he resigned in 1866, and retired to Brighstone Rectory, Isle of Wight, he was also a Canon of Chester Cathedral. [LondonGazette|issue=23552|startpage=5911|date=5 November 1869|accessdate=2008-02-21] Mr Gladstone, however, in 1869 called him to be Bishop of Salisbury, [LondonGazette|issue=23527|startpage=4637|date=17 August 1869|accessdate=2008-02-21] in which see he kept up the traditions of his predecessors, Bishops Hamilton and Denison, his chief addition being the summoning of a diocesan synod.

Though Moberly left Oxford at the beginning of the Oxford Movement, he fell under its influence: the more so that at Winchester he formed a most intimate friendship with Keble, spending several weeks every year at Otterbourne, the next parish to Hursley.

Moberly, however, retained his independence of thought, and in 1872 he astonished his High Church friends by joining in the movement for the disuse of the damnatory clauses in the Athanasian Creed. His chief contribution to theology is his Bampton Lectures of 1868, on "The Administration of the Holy Spirit in the Body of Christ".

His daughter Charlotte Anne Moberly became the first principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford, and co-authored under the pen name "Elisabeth Morison" "An Adventure" (1911), in which she relates her purported encounter with the ghost of Marie-Antoinette in the gardens of the Petit Trianon in 1901.

He died on July 6 1885. [LondonGazette|issue=25512|startpage=4402|date=18 September 1885|accessdate=2008-02-21]

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