Official Website of the
World Spirituality Organization

 Alexander, William

 ALEXANDER, WILLIAM, Protestant archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland, was born at Londonderry on the 13^th of April 1824 and educated at Tonbridge Grammar School and Brasenose College, Oxford.  After holding several livings in the north of Ireland he was made bishop of Derry and Raphoe in 1867, and was elevated to the primacy in 1896.  He was Bampton lecturer in 1816.  An eloquent preacher and the author of numerous theological works, he is best known to literature as a master of dignified and animated verse.  His poems were collected in 1887 under the title of St Augustine’s Holiday, and other Poems. His wife, Cecil Francis Humphreys (1818-1895), wrote some tracts in connexion with the Oxford movement, but is famous as the author of “Jesus calls us o’er the tumult,” “There is a green hill far away” and other well-known hymns (nearly four hundred in all).  A collection of her verse was published in 1896.