William Maskell

William Maskell (1814–1890) was an English priest of the Church of England, liturgical scholar, and Catholic convert.

Life He was only son of William Maskell, a solicitor of Shepton Mallet, Somerset, and his wife Mary Miles, born 17 May 1814. The family moved to Bath in 1823. He matriculated on 9 June 1832 at University College, Oxford, graduating B.A. in 1836, and M.A. in 1838, having taken holy orders in 1837.

From an extreme High Church position, Maskell attacked in 1840 Edward Stanley, a latitudinarian, over subscription to the Thirty Nine Articles. His father William died in 1841. When Hawker died in 1875, his widow Pauline presented Maskell with evidence that Hawker was only kept from a Catholic conversion by the economic imperative of retaining his clerical income. Maskell asked her not to disclose it.

Maskell played the part of the country gentleman with antiquarian pursuits. He had a large library of patristic literature, and collected medieval service books, enamels and carvings in ivory, which he housed in his private chapel there; He also sold to & made museum donations, see British Museum, V&A museum for examples of his collection. He was a Justice of the Peace, and a deputy-lieutenant for Cornwall. He died in Newlyn, near Penzance on 12 April 1890. in 1875. The Industrial Arts, Historical Sketches, with numerous Illustrations, 1876, anonymous, was also for the Committee of Council on Education, London, 1876. He printed privately a catalogue of rare books in his library, as Selected Centuries of Books from the Library of a Priest in the Diocese of Salisbury, Chiswick, 1848, and a Catalogue of Books used in and relating to the public services of the Church of England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 1845.

Family Maskell married twice, but had children only with his first wife Mary Scott, daughter of Thomas Scott of Bath; she died in 1847. They had a daughter Mary Louisa Florence and three sons, William Miles Maskell, Alfred Ogle Maskell the writer, art historian and photographer, and Stuart Eaton Maskell a solicitor. His second marriage was in 1852, to Monique Theresa Stein, only daughter of John Stein of Dorset.