Hannington, JAMES

Hannington, JAMES, first Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, born 3d September 1847, at Hurstpierpoint in Sussex, became a student of St Mary Hall, Oxford, in 1868, and was ordained in 1873. In 1882, after seven years' earnest labour in his native parish, he volunteered for missionary work in Africa, and was sent out by the Church Missionary Society to reinforce their missionaries in Uganda. But his health broke down when he reached Kagei, on the south shore of Victoria Nyanza, and he was obliged to return home to England. His health improving, he was, on 24th June 1884, consecrated Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, and in the following January entered his new diocese, taking up his quarters at Frere Town, near Mombasa. In July 1885 he started once again for the interior, the object of his journey being to reach the mission-station of Rubaga, in Uganda. But, after successfully surmounting the difficulties and dangers of the road through the land of the Masai, he was slain by order of Mwanga, king of Uganda, on 29th October 1885, at a place not far from the right bank of the Nile. See his Life by Dawson (1887) and his Last Journals (edited in 1888).