such vessels had been employed. The stories of begging impostors
professing to be shipwrecked seamen were detected at once by his
cross-examinations. The sight of a ship, the society of sailors, the
embarkation on a voyage, were always sufficient to inspirit and delight
him wherever he might be."

His life, when at his mother's home on the Welsh coast, only increased
this liking, and till he went to Cambridge in 1798 his education had not
been calculated to prepare him for a clerical life. He never received
any instruction in classics; of Greek and Latin and mathematics he knew
nothing, and owing to his schools and tutors being constantly changed,
his general knowledge was of a desultory sort.

His force of character, great perseverance and ambition to excel are
shown in the strenuous manner in which he overcame all these obstacles,
and at the close of his college career at St. John's, Cambridge, became
a wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos of 1802.

After a year passed in foreign travel Edward Stanley returned home at
his brother's request, and took command of the Alderley Volunteers--a
corps of defence raised by him on the family estate in expectation of a
French invasion.

In 1803 he was ordained and became curate of Windlesham, in Surrey.
There he remained until he was presented by his father in 1805 to the
living of Alderley, where he threw himself enthusiastically into his
work.

Alderley parish had long been neglected, and there was plenty of scope
for the young Rector.

Before he came, the clerk used to go to the churchyard stile to see
whether there were any more coming to church, for there were seldom
enough to make a congregation, but before Edward Stanley left, his
parish was one of the best organised of the day. He set on foot schemes
of education throughout the county as well as at Alderley, and was
foremost in all reforms.

The Chancellor of the diocese wrote of him: "He inherited from his
family strong Whig principles, which he always retained, and he never
shrank from advocating those maxims of toleration which at that time
formed the chief watchwords of the Whig party."

He was the first who distinctly saw and boldly advocated the advantages
of general education for the people, and set the example of the extent
to which general knowledge might be communicated in a parochial school.

"To analyse the actual effects of his ministrations on the people would
be difficult, ... but the general resu