▶Date of birth:  13 November 1851     Place of birth: Belbroughton, Worcestershire

▶Father:  Jonathan Lord Hobbes     Mother: Mary Anne Fosbroke

▶Spouse(s): (1) Mary Stock; (2) Ada Frances Power     Date(s) of marriage:  (1) 31 January 1889; (2) 14 April 1902     Place(s) of marriage: (1) St Lawrence’s Church, Northfield, Birmingham; (2) St Stephen’s Church, Paddington

▶Occupation: Clergyman (Anglican); Tutor

▶Lifestory: After studying at Oxford, the Revd. William Ernest Hobbes’s clerical career brought him as a Curate to Cheltenham in 1903, before assuming his first position as Recror at Long Marston, Gloucestershire, in 1905. He was born in 1851 in Belbroughton, Worcestershire, the fifth son of Jonathan Lord Hobbes MD, surgeon and general practitioner, of Belbroughton, and his wife Mary Anne (née Fosbroke). On leaving school he worked as a Tutor  in Handsworth, Birmingham, before matriculating without college affiliation at the University of Oxford in 1876, BA 1882, MA 1885. Entering the Church, he was ordained Deacon in 1882, and Priest (both Worcester) in 1883.

He was licensed to his first curacy at St Matthew’s, Malvern Link, Worcestershire 1882-5, after which he became Curate of Bartley Green, Birmingham 1885-8 (and also in 1886 to Northfield, Birmingham); in 1889 he married Mary, eldest daughter of Thomas Shutt Stock Esq.. JP, The Priory, Northfield, at King’s Norton, Birmingham. In 1888 he moved as Curate to Dartington, Devon, until 1891, by which time he was in temporary charge of the parish, when he was licensed Curate of Newton Abbot, Devon, where he remained until 1892. In 1892 he was appointed Vicar of Ocle Pychard in Herefordshire, and while he was there he tutored pupils, four of whom lived with him.

He moved to All Saints, Cheltenham, again as Curate, between 1903 and 1905. After the death of his wife, apparently in late 1900, he married again, in 1902 to Ada Frances, daughter of Henry Power, surgeon, and widow of chartered accountant Francis Cooper, of 14 George Street, Mansion House; the couple had one son. Between 1904 and 1905 the family lived at Fernbank (now Berkhampstead School), Pittville Circus Road.

Hobbes left Cheltenham in 1905, when he was appointed first as Rector of Marston Sicca (Long Marston) in Gloucestershire (now Warwickshire), where he lived briefly, and then later that year as Vicar of Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire; at the time of the 1911 census he lived with his wife and son at the Vicarage in Bidford-on-Avon itself. He resigned from his post at Bidford in 1913, on account of his increasing deafness but continued to provide clerical and other assistance, with the help of his wife, in the parish. In 1914 he stepped in temporarily to take over the Curate’s duties at Belper, Derbyshire, before the arrival of a new Curate.

Around 1926 the Revd. Hobbes and his wife moved to the White House on Reigate Heath, where again he frequently assisted at St Mark’s Church. The household then moved to West Street, St Albans, where he died in 1936, at the age of eighty-four. Hobbes should not be confused with the Revd. William Ernest Hobbes, born in Gloucestershire in 1868.

▶Moved to Pittville from: Ocle-Pychard, Herefordshire       Moved from Pittville to: Long Marston, Gloucestershire

▶Date of death:   23 September 1936     Place of death: West Street, St Albans

▶Date of burial:  26 September 1936       Place of burial: Reigate, Surrey

▶Notes:  Henry Power, A brief sketch of my life: a fragment (1912); Surrey Mirror 25e September 1936      ID: 15176

Contributor(s):  John Simpson/Alan Munden