John Mason Neale (1818-1866)

Church of England clergyman, author, ecclesiologist, hymnologist, and poet. Attended Sherborne School from 1833 to 1835.

John Mason Neale was born at 40 Lamb’s Conduit Street, London, on 24 January 1818, the first child and only son of the Rev. Cornelius Neale (1789-1823) and his wife, Susanna Good (1789-1860). Cornelius had been a senior wrangler and first Smith’s prizeman at Cambridge in 1812, and in 1813 was elected fellow of St. John’s College, however, he died at Chiswick on 15 August 1823, when his son was only five years old.

Neale attended a number of schools. He was taught for a while at Shepperton by the rector, William Russell, then moved to Blackheath in 1829 and to Sherborne in 1833.

Neale attended Sherborne School, probably as a day boy, from 1833 to 1835. The Headmaster was then the Rev. Ralph Lyon (1795-1856), MA, Trinity College, Cambridge. Masters known to have taught at the School between 1833 and 1835 are Thomas James (1794-1866), MA, St John’s College, Cambridge; John Langdon (1811-1890), BA, St John’s College, Cambridge; George Masters Gould (1793-1877), BA, St John’s College, Cambridge; and James Taylor (1810-1898), BA, Trinity College, Cambridge. The School’s then strong links with Cambridge University probably account for Neale attending Sherborne School.

Very few accounts of Neale’s time at Sherborne School survive, although it is recorded that in 1834 he won both the English Essay Prize and the Latin Essay Prize, which had been founded by the School Governors in 1831.

It was later claimed in The Shirburnian (June 1907) that ‘there is no doubt that during those two years Sherborne harboured within her walls, and, it may fairly be claimed, influenced by her beauty and her history, a very remarkable man.’ His biographer, Eleanor Towle, noted that at Sherborne Neale had been impressed by the great tenor bell in the Abbey. Known as Wolsey’s Great Bell, the 46 cwt bell was believed to have been presented to Sherborne Abbey in 1514 by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (1475-1530) and carries the inscription, ‘By Wolsey’s gift I measure time for all, To grieve, To church I serve to call.’ Another feature of the locality that impressed Neale was the village of Oborne, which he believed was the ‘Sweet Auburn’ of Oliver Goldsmith’s poem ‘The Deserted Village.’

Wolsey’s Great Tenor Bell, which so impressed Neale during his time at Sherborne School.

Neale’s departure from Sherborne in 1835 may have been as a result of a scarlet fever epidemic that broke out at the School in March 1835. Four boarders at the School died in the epidemic and there was much concern in the town, which resulted in the local doctors putting in April 1835 a notice in the Sherborne Mercury reassuring residents that no other cases had been detected in the town or neighbourhood.

The family moved to Farnham in Surrey, and in 1836 Neale studied for his university entrance examination under James Challis FRS (1803-1882), who was that year appointed director of the Cambridge Observatory and Plumian Professor.

In 1836 Neale won a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was acknowledged to be the best classicist of his year. In 1838 he won the members’ prize for Latin verse and in 1839 the Latin essay prize. In 1845 he won the Seatonian Prize for the best English poem on a sacred subject, and he went on to win the prize on ten more occasions.

In May 1839 Neale co-founded with a group of Cambridge undergraduates the Cambridge Camden Society, which from 1845 was known as the Ecclesiological Society. Set up as a group for those with an interest in Gothic church architecture, it went on to define what it saw as the correct principles of church architecture and decoration, ritual and music.

In 1841 Neale was ordained deacon at St Margaret’s, Westminster, by the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol (Dr James Henry Monk) and briefly held posts at Downing College, Cambridge, and as assistant curate at St Nicolas’ church in Guildford, but as a ‘Camdenian’ the Bishop of Winchester (Dr Charles Richard Sumner) would not license him in his diocese. In May 1842 Neale was ordained priest by Bishop Monk at St Margaret’s, Westminster, and accepted the small living of Crawley in Sussex, but due to ill health caused by consumption he was not instituted. On 27 July 1842 Neale was married to Sarah Norman Webster (1814-1873) and, for the sake of his health, over the next few years he divided his time between Madeira and England.

In 1846 Neale was appointed by the patrons (Lady De La Warr and her husband, the fifth earl) to the wardenship of Sackville College, East Grinstead, a charitable institution founded in 1608 by Robert Sackville, second earl of Dorset, for the shelter and maintenance of 30 poor and aged householders. Neale remained at Sackville College for the rest of his life, raising with his wife their five children (Agnes, Cornelius, Mary, Katherine Ermenild, and Margaret). In 1855 he founded the Society of Saint Margaret as a nursing order to care for the college pensioners. The sisterhood flourished and daughter houses were later established in Aberdeen (1864) and London (1866).

A prodigious author, his many publications include theological and ecclesiological works, hymns, and books for children.

As a hymn-writer, Neale’s translations from the Latin restored medieval hymns to Anglican use. Amongst his best-known hymns are ‘Good King Wenceslas’, ‘Good Christian Men, Rejoice’, ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’, ‘Jerusalem the Golden’, ’O Happy Band of Pilgrims’, ‘All Glory, Laud and Honour’. One-eighth of the hymns in Hymns Ancient & Modern were written by Neale, either as originals or as translations.

Neale’s hymns are today still sung at Sherborne School. The Uppingham-Sherborne Hymn Book (1874), compiled by Headmasters Hugo Daniel Harper and Edward Thring, included ten hymns written by Neale, and its replacement, Hymns for the use of Sherborne School, compiled in 1888 by Headmaster E.M. Young, included sixteen hymns written by Neale.

John Mason Neale died at Sackville College on 6 August 1866, aged 48, and was buried on 10 August 1866 at St Swithun’s church, East Grinstead.

Online resources:
Obituary for J.M. Neale (The Shirburnian, October 1866)
Book review of Eleanor Towle’s memoir of J.M. Neale (The Shirburnian, June 1907)
J.M. Neale by Chris Zealley (OS Record, 2008)
An Early Ecclesiological Tour, by Professor Graham Parry, University of York, 2020
Hymns for the use of Sherborne School
The Songs of Sherborne School
Sherborne’s Festival of Five Lessons and Carols
The Carmen

Links:
J.M. Neale material in the Lambeth Palace Library and Archives
Archive catalogue of St Margaret’s East Grinstead
Sackville College, East Grinstead
Society of Saint Margaret
John Mason Neale, Project Canterbury
J.M. Neale, Hymnary.org

For further information please contact the School Archivist.

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