James Hannington

Son of a merchant who scorned his father's calling and at Oxford preferred sport to study, James Hannington showed little promise, and even after deciding on a clerical career he neglected his studies.

Sent down for a course of reading with a tutor at Martinhoe in Devon, he won new laurels as a climber and for the ability with which he cut a footpath along dizzy cliffs to the caves - but not for reading. It was the death of his mother that changed him.

He passed his bishop's examination at the second attempt and became curate here for seven years at the church his father had built. The murder of two missionaries on the shores of Victoria Nyanza induced him to offer himself as a missionary, and in 1882 he headed a party of six missionaries to Uganda. In Africa hardships and fever broke his health and he was compelled to return home to recuperate.

As soon as his native air here had restored his health he again volunteered for Africa. His noble qualities and gifts of leadership and organisation having manifested themselves, it was decided to give him charge of the Church Missionary Society's churches in Eastern Equatorial Africa, and to this end he was consecrated bishop at 37.

His life in the new see was brief but active, effective, and fruitful. With an eye for country, as we say, he realised the desirability of creating a new and shorter route through the Masai country to Lake Victoria Nyanza, and within six months of his arrival he headed an expedition with 226 supporters.

The size of the caravan soon involved serious difficulties as to food, and Hannington realised that, his progress being constantly retarded and menaced by hostile natives, commissariat troubles would grow increasingly embarrassing. He therefore took 50 of his best men and pushed on with them, and in a week made a splendid march of 170 miles, which to his joy brought him to the shore of the lake.

Meantime Mwanga, King of Uganda, had grown suspicious of the intentions of Hannington and, regarding him as a dangerous invader, had him seized and lodged in a hut teeming with rats.

At that moment this courageous man looked at his enemies as they fell back for a moment before him. He bade them say to their king that he was dying for the people of Uganda and had purchased the road to Uganda with his life. Then he knelt down and a gun was fired, and at that signal two soldiers plunged their spears into his body.

So, as one of his biographers has finely said, the great and noble spirit leapt forth from its broken house of clay and entered with exceeding joy into the presence of the King of Kings.

We found in the ancient library of Chichester one fragment of modern history, telling us this:

that Bishop Hannington's son baptised the son of the man who murdered his father.

 

 

 

 

 

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