Trench

Trench, RICHARD CHENEVIX, Archbishop of Dublin, belonged to an Anglo-Irish family of Galway, the Trenches of Woodlawn, and was born at Dublin, 9th September 1807. He passed from Harrow in 1825 to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1829. After a journey to Spain (its object to fight in the cause of liberty) and his ordination he was curate at Hadleigh, incumbent of Curdridge in Hampshire, and then for four years curate to Samuel Wilberforce, afterwards Bishop of Winchester; and during 1835-46 he published six volumes of poetry, which were favourably received, and which were re-issued as Poems Collected and Arranged anew (1865); the first of them was The Story of Justin Martyr. In 1845 Trench was presented to the rectory of Itchenstoke; in 1847 he became Theological Professor in King's College, London; in 1856 Dean of Westminster; and in 1864 Archbishop of Dublin, an office which he resigned in 1884. He died 29th March 1886, and was buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey. Trench's poetry was marked by sensibility and refinement, but not by genius. His theological writings laid his contemporaries under deep debt of gratitude, more for their tone and spirit than for originality or critical insight. And in the field of philology, while his interest was not in scientific problems for their own sake, he took pains to secure accuracy in his facts, and contrived to fascinate his readers with the 'fossil poetry and fossil history imbedded in language.' His principal works are Notes on the Miracles (1846; 12th ed. 1884), Notes on the Parables (1841; 15th ed. 1886), The Lessons in Proverbs (1853), Hulsean Lectures (1845; 5th ed. 1880), The Sermon on the Mount illustrated from St Augustine (1844), Sacred Latin Poetry (1849), St Augustine as an Interpreter of Scripture (1851), Synonyms of the New Testament (1854), English Past and Present (1855; 11th ed. 1881), An Essay on the Life and Genius of Calderon (1856), Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries, Select Glossary of English Words (1859), The Study of Words (1851; 15th ed. 1888), a memoir of his mother (1862), Studies on the Gospels (1867), and Lectures on Medicean Church History (1877). See his Letters and Memorials (2 vols. 1886).