Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bullock, William Thomas
BULLOCK, WILLIAM THOMAS (1818–1879), divine, was the second son of John Bullock by Mary Soper. The Bullock family were for several generations landowners in Leicestershire and Rutlandshire. John Bullock settled in London, and there William Thomas was born. He entered Magdalen Hall (now Hertford College), Oxford, as a gentleman commoner, and took his B.A. degree in 1847, obtaining a fourth class in Literis Humanioribus. The same year he was ordained deacon, and licensed to the curacy of St. Anne’s, Soho. Here he worked devotedly until June 1850, when he was appointed assistant secretary to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. On the death of the Rev. Ernest Hawkins in 1865 Bullock succeeded him as chief secretary of the society, an office which he held during the remainder of his life. In 1867 he was appointed chaplain to the royal household in Kensington Palace, where he occupied the chaplain’s apartments. In 1875 Bullock was presented to the prebendal stall of Oxgate in St. Paul's Cathedral. Bullock helped to extend very widely the usefulness of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. No fewer than forty-two new sees were added to the colonial episcopate, while church operations were extended beyond the bounds of the empire by the appointment of missionary bishops in the Niger territory, Honolulu, Ningpo, Madagascar, Central Africa, and Melanesia. Missions, too, were opened in three new countries, independent Burmah, China, and Japan (S. R. G. Reports for 1878-81, p. 10). In the same time the income of the society increased from 98,000l. to 145,000l. (Mission Field, April 1879). It was at Bullock’s instigation that the society undertook the publication of 'The Missionary Record,' ‘The Gospel Missionary,’ and ‘The Mission Field,' which were conducted under his immediate supervision (ibid.) In 1878 he took an active part in the arrangement for the Pan-Anglican synod. At the close of this year his declining health compelled him to seek rest from his arduous labours, and having obtained six months' leave of absence he went abroad, and died at Mentone of paralysis on 27 Feb. 1879. He married in 1862 Alice Oke Alford, elder daughter of the Dean of Canterbury, by whom he left two daughters. Bullock was the author of some seventy articles in Smith's ‘Dictionary of the Bible,’ and of one on the Book of Ecclesiastes in the ‘Speaker's Commentary.’ In 1878 he published, by request of the Archbishop of Canterbury, a sermon, ‘Builders of the Temple,’ preached by him at the consecration of the Bishop of Newfoundland. He left in manuscript a commentary on the Book of Daniel, written for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and some months after his death a volume of sermons (edited by his widow) was published, on missions and other subjects, most of them preached by him at Kensington Palace Chapel.
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