Stubbs, William, historian, was born at Knaresborough, 21st June 1825, and was educated at Ripon grammar-school and Christ Church, Oxford, graduating with a classical first-class in 1848. He was at once elected to a fellowship at Trinity College, took orders, and became vicar of Navestock, Essex, in 1850. He acted as diocesan inspector of schools from 1860 till 1866, when he was appointed regius professor of Modern History at Oxford, with the year following a fellowship at Oriel. He was appointed librarian to Archbishop Longley at Lambeth in 1862, a curator of the Bodleian in 1868, rector of Cholderton, Wiltshire, in 1875, and canon residentiary of St Paul's in 1879. He was consecrated Bishop of Chester in 1884, and translated to the see of Oxford in 1889. Bishop Stubbs's historical work is marked by vast learning and rare impartiality and sagacity. The reader may follow him with complete confidence, and the only thing left to desiderate is a more supple and expressive style. Of his many works the chief are Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum: an attempt to exhibit the course of Episcopal succession in England (1858); Mosheim's Institutes of Ecclesiastical History, thoroughly revised and brought down to the present time (3 vols. 1863); Select Charters and other Illustrations of English Constitutional History, from the earliest period to the reign of Edward I. (1870); the altogether invaluable Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development down to the accession of the House of Tudor (3 vols. 1874-78); The Early Plantagenets in 'Epochs of Modern History' (1876); and Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Mediæval and Modern History (1886).
Besides these he has edited, in the Records publications, of the reign of Richard I., the Itinerarium and Epistolæ Cantuarienses (2 vols. 1864-65); Benedict of Peterborough's Gesta of Henry II. and Richard I. (2 vols. 1867); Roger de Hovedon's Chronicle (4 vols. 1868-71); The Historical Collections of Walter of Coventry (2 vols. 1872-73); Memorials of Saint Dunstan (1874); the Historical Works of Master Ralph de Diceto (2 vols. 1876); the Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, covering the reigns of Stephen, Henry II., and Richard I. (2 vols. 1879-80); Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I. and Edward II. (2 vols. 1882-83); The Five Books of William of Malmesbury De Regum Gestis Anglorum, and the Three Books of his Historiæ Novellæ (2 vols. 1887-89). Bishop Stubbs received honorary degrees from Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Dublin, and is a corresponding member of the Institute of France, and other learned societies of Massachusetts, Denmark, Göttingen, Kieff, &c. He began with the Rev. A. W. Haddon the publication of a collection of Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland, based on the Concilia of Spelman and Wilkins (3 vols. 1869-78).