George Gresley Perry

George Gresley Perry (1820–1897) was an English churchman and academic, known as a church historian and Archdeacon of Stow.

Life Born at Churchill, Somerset, he was the twelfth and youngest child of William Perry, a friend and neighbour of Hannah More. He was educated at Ilminster under the Rev. John Allen, and in 1837 he won a scholarship on the Bath and Wells foundation at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1840 he graduated B.A. with a second class in literae humaniores, and obtained the Wells fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford with the support of Mark Pattison. He graduated M.A. in 1843, and was ordained by the bishop of Oxford, as deacon in 1844 and priest in 1845.

Perry held for a short time, first, the curacy of Wick on the coast of Somerset, and then that of Combe Florey. In 1847 he returned to Oxford as college tutor at Lincoln, a post he held until 1852. During the last year of his fellowship he supported Pattison in the contest to become Rector of the college.

Among Perry's other works were:

The Bishop's Daughter, 1860; Vox Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1868, extracts from English theologians; History of the Crusades, no date; Victor, a Story of the Diocletian Persecution, no date; Croyland Abbey, no date. The Student's English Church History, (3 vols. the Second Period (1509-1717) appearing in 1878, the First Period (596-1509) in 1881, and the Third Period (1717-1884) in 1887.

Perry also wrote for periodicals and the Dictionary of National Biography. He left two posthumous works. One was the Diocesan History of Lincoln (1897), for the S.P.C.K, which he took up after the death of Edmund Venables. The other was the Lives of the Bishops of Lincoln from Remigius to Wordsworth, with John Henry Overton.

Family In October 1852 Parry married Eliza Salmon, sister of George Salmon; she died in 1877. They had three sons and four daughters.