Lee, Frederick George (1832 -1902)

This is a stamp of a descendant of John Lee of Warwick (Visitation of 1520) who was the third son of Sir Robert Lee of Quarendon. Clements thought that it might have been used by his great grandson Humphrey Lee, born in 1630, who is known to have used the mullet on his seal. However, as the stamp is on an inserted piece of leather, it is unlikely to be so old, and it seems probable that it is the stamp of the Reverend Frederick George Lee, whose bookplate with the same arms occurs in the book. The eldest son of Frederick Lee of Thame, Rector of Easington in Oxfordshire, and Mary, only daughter and heir of George Ellys of Aylesbury, he was educated at Thame Grammar School and St Edmund's Hall, Oxford, but did not graduate, although he won the Newdigate Prize for his English poem on `The martyrs of Vienne and Lyons'. He was admitted a Student of Civil Law of the University of Oxford in 1854, and after spending some time at Cuddesdon Theological College, was ordained by the Bishop of Oxford. He was Assistant Minister at Berkeley Chapel in London in 1856. After a stormy tenure as incumbent of St John's Church, Aberdeen, he returned to London, and was in 1867 appointed Vicar of All Saint's, Lambeth, and ministered to the poor of the parish for thirty two years. He was an uncompromising high churchman, and campaigned for the unity of the Church of England and that of Rome, was the leader of the Order of Reunion, secretly consecrated bishop in Roman Catholic orders, and took the name of Bishop of Dorchester. In 1879 he was made an honorary Doctor of Divinity of the Washington and Lee University in Virginia, and he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1857, but resigned in 1892. He married, 9 June 1859, Elvira Louisa, daughter of Joseph Duncan Ostrehan, Vicar of Creech St Michael in Somerset, and they had three sons and one daughter. A voluminous writer, poet, and novelist, he retired in 1899, when his Church was bought by the South Western Railway and demolished. After his retirement he entered the Church of Rome.