William Cooper (Anglican priest)

William Henry Cooper (1833 or 1834 – 1909) was a priest of the Church of England who served as a missionary in Australia and New Zealand and Canada, as well as founded St Luke's Hospital for the Clergy in London and the College of St. Barnabas in Lingfield, Surrey.

As A. Tindal Hart writes in his memoir, "William Henry Cooper’s origins are obscure. An Irish-man from the county of Tipperary in Southern Ireland, he undoubtedly sprang from an Anglo-Irish family with strong Church and Military tradition".

His exact date and place of birth is unknown, as well as the names of his parents. It however is certain, that he and his brother on leaving school went straight into the Army. William was commissioned as Ensign in the 2nd Royal Cheshire Militia on 5 May 1855, shortly after his marriage by licence to Anna Matilda Wilson. By the time he had become a Lieutenant his thoughts were turning away from the prospect of a military career towards becoming ordained into the Church of Ireland.

On 23 December 1860 he was ordained deacon by Bishop Robert Daly of Cashel in Waterford. Soon after being ordained a priest he wrote: "I determined to offer myself for missionary work." The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel accepted the new missionary, who after an interview with Bishop Perry of Melbourne sailed with his wife for Australia in April 1864. Here he held services, visited families, built two churches and a parsonage, and collected enough money for (and laid the foundations of) yet another church. Hussey Macartney, Dean and Archdeacon of Melbourne, wrote:

In June 1870, Cooper began yet another strenuous ministry in the Anglican Diocese of Christchurch, New Zealand. The considerable dangers involved in this new work are fully revealed by his reports, in one of which he commented:

Eventually he found that he could no longer ride a horse, and his doctor advised him to seek a change of climate, so in 1877 he returned to Australia. However, with an ailing wife, and worn out by his own labours, his thoughts naturally turned back to his native land.

...
Wikipedia