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He was the third son of Sir Charles Oakeley, 1st baronet (1751-1826) and uncle to (Sir) Herbert Stanley Oakeley, the third baronet (1830-1903), who was a distinguished church musician and Professor of Music at Edinburgh University.
(See also DNB; Julian p.855)
[ DNB (Epitome) 1903/6, p.959 ]
OAKELEY, Frederick, . . . tractarian; . . . : B.A. Christ Church, Oxford, 1824; chaplain-fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, 1827; joined the tractarian movement; prebendary of Lichfield, 1830; appointed Whitehall preacher, 1837, and incumbent of Margaret Chapel, London, 1839, where he introduced ritualism; joined the Roman communion, 1845, and was an original canon of the Roman catholic diocese of Westminster, 1852; published theological works before and after his secession. [xii. 286]
[ Julian p.855 ]
Oakeley, Frederick, D.D., youngest son of Sir Charles Oakeley, Bart., sometime Governor of Madras, was b. at Shrewsbury, Sept. 5th, 1802, and educated at Christ Church, Oxford (B.A. 1824). In 1825 he gained a University prize for a Latin Essay; and in 1827 he was elected a Fellow of Balliol. Taking Holy Orders, he was a Prebendary of Lichfield Cathedral, 1832; Preacher at Whitehall, 1837; and Minister of Margaret Chapel, Margaret Street, London, 1839. In 1845 he resigned all his appoiontments in the Church of England, and was received into the Roman Communion. Subsequently he became a Canon of the Pro-Cathedral in the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical district of Westminster. He d. January 29, 1880. Miller (Singers and Songs of the Church, 1869, p.497), writing from information supplied to him by Canon Oakeley, says:--"He traces the beginning of his change of view to the lectures of Dr Charles Lloyd, Regius Professor, delivered at Oxford about the year 1827, on the `History and Structure of the Anglican Prayer Book'. About that time a great demand arose at Oxford for Missals and Breviaries, and Canon Oakeley, sympathising with the movement, co-operated with the London booksellers in meeting that demand. . . . He promoted the [Oxford] movement, and continued to move with it till, in 1845, he thought it right to draw attention to his views, to see if he could continue to hold an Oxford degree in conjunction with so great a change in opinion. The question having been raised, proceedings were taken against him in the Court of Arches, and a sentence given that he was perpetually suspended unless he retracted. He then resigned his Prebendal stall at Lichfield, and went over to the Church of Rome."
Canon Oakeley's poetical works included:--
Canon Oakeley also published several prose works, including a tr. of J.M.Horst's Paradise of the Christian Soul, London, Burns, 1850. He is widely known through his tr. of the "Adeste fideles". Several of his original hymns are also in Roman Catholic collections.
[J.J.]
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(See also DNB; Julian p.867)
[ DNB (Epitome) 1903/6, p.974 ]
OLIVERS, THOMAS (1725-1799), methodist preacher and hymn-writer; for twenty-two years itinerant preacher; supervisor of Wesleyan press, 1775-89; published tracts and composed the tune `Helmsley' and `Hymn to the God of Abraham'; buried in Wesley's tomb. [xlii.156]
[ Julian p.867 ]
Olivers, Thomas, was b.at Tregynon, near Newtown Montgomeryshire, in 1725. His father's death, when the son was only four years of age, followed by that of the mother shortly afterwards, caused him to be passed on to the care of one relative after another, by whom he was brought up in a somewhat careless manner, and with little education. He was apprenticed to a shoemaker. His youth was one of great ungodliness, through which at the age of 18 he was compelled to leave his native place. He journeyed to Shrewsbury, Wrexham, and Bristol, miserably poor and very wretched. At Bristol he heard G.Whitefield preach from the text "Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?" That sermon turned the whole current of his life, and he became a decided Christian. His intention at the first was to join the followers of Whitefield, but being discouraged from doing so by one of Whitefield's preachers, he subsequently joined the Methodist Society at Bradford-on-Avon. At that town, where he purposed carrying on his business of shoemaking, he met John Wesley, who, recognising in him both ability and zeal, engaged him as one of his preachers. Olivers joined Wesley at once, and proceeded as an evangelist to Cornwall. This was on Oct. 1, 1753. He continued his work till his death, which took place suddenly in London, in March 1799. He was buried in Wesley's tomb in the City Road Chapel burying-ground, London.Olivers was for some time co-editor with J.Wesley of the Arminian Magazine, but his lack of education unfitted him for the work. As the author of the tune Helmsley, and of the hymn"The God of Abraham praise", he is widely known. He also wrote "Come Immortal King of glory"; and "O Thou God of my salvation", whilst residing at Chester; and an Elegy on the death of John Wesley. His hymns and the Elegy were reprinted (with a Memoir by the Rev. J.Kirk) by D.Sedgwick, in 1868.
[J.J.]
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[Julian p.1685a]
Owens, Priscilla Jane, was born July 21, 1829, of Scotch and Welsh descent, and [was] resident at Baltimore, where she engaged in public-school work. For 50 years Miss Owen interested herself in Sunday-school work, and most of her hymns were written for children's services. Her hymn in the Scottish Church Hymnary, 1898, "We have heard a joyful sound" (Missions), was written for a Sunday-school Mission Anniversary, and the words were adapted to the chorus "Vive le Roi" in the opra The Huguenots.[J.B.]
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W.A.Dunkerley, called Arthur to distinguish him from his father William, was born into an actively Congregationalist family. His father was Sunday School Superintendent, deacon and Treasurer of Chorlton Road COngregational Church, Manchester; and Arthur himself maintained a committed interest throughout his life. He entered the family firm of wholesale provision merchants on completing his student days at Victoria University, Manchester, and for some years managed a French subsidiary of the firm at Rennes, where he learnt to speak French fluently.
A period in America followed, to set up a New York office for the firm; but a business set-back caused him to look for other work, and he spent some time in Florida and Georgia looking for a ranch to purchase for sheep-farming. This came to nothing; and he returned to England, and to the family business, at the end of 1878.
The U.K. business was also declining, however; and in 1881 he accepted a surprise offer from an American publisher to join the management of a new London office for the Detroit Free Press. This was his first experience of publishing and of journalism; and it marked a crucial change in his life.
With his new colleague Robert Barr, and later also with J.K.Jerome, he shared in the launching of a number of periodicals, and began himself to write fiction for publication. At the outset, however, he determined not to risk a conflict of interest, and all his published work was written under a pseudonym whose identity he went to great lengths to keep secret, even (and especially) from his business colleagues. His first story was published under the name `Julian Ross'; but thereafter he signed himself with a name drawn from one of his favourite boyhood books - Charles Kingsley's "Westward Ho!", a copy of which had been given to him by his Sunday School teacher at Chorlton Road.
The secret was carefully kept for many years, but inevitably leaked out eventually; by that time, however, the popular demand for books and stories by `John Oxenham' was such that he had been able to relinquish his publishing duties and concentrate on writing.
His first full length novel "God's Prisoner" (the first of 41 books written during his working life) was published in 1898; but his verse-writing belonged to a later period. The missionary play "The Pageant of Darkness and Light", written for a London Missionary Society Exhibition in 1908, contained several hymns (among them `In Christ there is no East or West'); but his first main collection of verses Bees in Amber was not published until 1913. He could not find an interested publisher for it, and he had 1000 copies printed at his own expense; but thereafter it became a best-seller, selling 9000 copies in the first year and nearly 150,000 by 1918. His daughter wrote in 1942 that sales had exceeded 286,000 and it was still selling.
After publication of Bees in Amber he continued to write popular religious verse for the next ten years; but in 1924 he began to develop an interest in writing stories based on the life of Christ, or on imaginary reconstructions of it, and he published a number of books of this type during the following decade.
In June 1877 he had married the step-sister-in-law of John MacFadyen, minister of Chorlton Road Congregational Church, at whose house he and his parents had been frequent visitors. Margery (`Madgie') Anderson herself came from a strongly Congregationalist home in Greenock, and throughout her married life she supported her husband's continued loyalty to the church and faith of his youth. She died in 1925, but he continued to write and to travel with his family until ill-health confined him to his home for the last two years of his life.
He had six children, the youngest of whom - Hugo - was killed in a motor accident in Kenya in 1937. The next youngest - Erika - has written a biography, largely consisting of extracts from his extensive letters, in which she refers to her father throughout as `J.O.', and which is published under the name Erika Oxenham (not Dunkerley). It is evident that, even if there was no legal change of name, it was by his nom-de-plume that he became unversally known, within his family as well as elsewhere.
For many years he had repeatedly to refute
"the very definite and quite groundless statements that I have become a convert to the Roman branch of the Church on earth. I enjoy the good friendship of many very charming Roman Catholics. I admire their whole-heated devotion. I can indeed, from the spectacular point of view, occasionally enjoy their ornate ritual, though I cannot claim to understand all its hidden meanings. But farther than that I cannot go.My father was a staunch Congregationalist all his life and I was brought up in his faith. I claim it now as my own as being the simplest and widest that I know. If sect-divisions have, with the passing years, come to mean very little to me, that is, to my thinking, a sign of healthy growth. I regret that they should exist, but they do not trouble me. Any man, whose face is set steadfast towards `the Son and His Fair Light', I welcome as a fellow-traveller whose hand I am glad to grip."
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(The Rejoice & Sing Enchiridion:edited by David Goodall; last amended 11/5/03)