John Edward Nassau Molesworth

National Portrait Gallery's portrait of Rev. John Edward Nassau Molesworth John Edward Nassau Molesworth (1790–1877) was an English cleric of High Church views, vicar of Rochdale for around 38 years.

Family background The great-grandson of Robert Molesworth, 1st Viscount Molesworth, John Edward Nassau Molesworth was born in London on 4 February 1790, only son of John Molesworth and his wife Frances, daughter of Matthew Hill. He was educated under Alexander Crombie of Greenwich. Matriculating at Trinity College, Oxford in 1808, he graduated B.A. in 1812, M.A. in 1817, and B.D. and D.D. in 1838.

Career For sixteen years Molesworth was curate of Millbrook, Hampshire. William Howley, approving of Molesworth's first work, presented him in succession to the livings of Wirksworth, Derbyshire (1828), and St. Martin's, Canterbury (1829). He also appointed him one of the Six Preachers at Canterbury; recommended him unsuccessfully for the vicarage of Leeds when Hook was elected, and in 1839 presented him to the vicarage of Minster-in-Thanet. John Molesworth's relentless attack on the church's leaseholders of its property, who were not to build on the land in line with their covenants, resulted in the promotion of church building by matching new funds with those of parishioners. Thus, 'four churches so endowed were added to the existing fourteen'.

Molesworth also rebuilt Rochdale Grammar School and built parish schools. The value of the living increased with the spread of factories over the vicarage estate, the railway station and the canal terminus. In 1866, when his income had reached £5,000, Molesworth promoted the Rochdale Vicarage Act, by which 13 chapels of ease became better-endowed parish churches. It followed the marriage of Molesworth's eldest son, Guilford (died 1925), to Maria Bridges, earlier that year. Robert Bridges did not at first find his step-father easy to relate to, but later found him hospitable to his friend Harry Ellis Wooldridge.