William Stephens

William Richard Wood Stephens (5 October 1839 – 22 December 1902) was Dean of Winchester from 1895 to 1902.

Career Stephens was born in Gloucestershire in 1839 the youngest son of Charles Stephens, a banker. He was educated privately before proceeding to Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1862 with a first class in Literae humaniores.

Ordained deacon in 1864 and a priest in 1865. He started his career with a curacy in Staines. In 1866 he became the curate of Purley, Berkshire. On 31 August 1869 he married Charlotte Jane Hook, the youngest daughter of Walter Farquhar Hook, the Dean of Chichester.

In 1880 he was chosen by the clergy of Chichester Diocese as their proctor in Convocation. Then in 1894, when the Dean of Winchester (George Kitchin) became Dean of Durham, Stephens was nominated to replace him as the dean of Winchester. In 1895 he was elevated to the Deanery at Winchester. When he took over it seems that the funds of the chapter were much reduced, and so 'private' resources were needed to support his position. He remained as dean of Winchester until his death. His death in Winchester deanery, on 22 December 1902, about six weeks after the banquet, was attributed to typhoid fever as a result of eating an infected Emsworth oyster. He was buried in the graveyard of Winchester Cathedral on 27 December 1902.

Publications Life and Times of St John Chrysostom (1872) Memorials of the South Saxon See and Cathedral Church of Chichester (1876) Christianity and Islam (1877) Life and Letters of W.F. Hook, DD (1878, 4th edn. 1881) Memoir of William Page Baron Hatherley (1883) Hildebrand and His Times (1888) Helps to the Study of the Prayer-Book (1891) Life and Letters of E.A. Freeman, DCL (1895) Memoir of Richard Durnford, DD, sometime Bishop of Chichester (1899) Joint Editor with Rev. W. Hunt, A History of the English Church, (Journal), 1899-1910