William Winstanley Hull

William Winstanley Hull (1794–1873) was an English barrister, After studying under John Dawson, Hull enrolled at Brasenose College at the University of Oxford in 1811. Elected a fellow in 1816, he would leave the fellowship when he married Frances Wilson in Manchester Cathedral on 27 December 1820. On 16 June 1820, Hull was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn. Despite his departure from Oxford, Hull remained involved in its affairs and maintained lifelong close friendships with fellow Oxford students Thomas Arnold, John Taylor Coleridge, and Richard Whately. In 1828, Hull had published a pamphlet, (Hull's 1828 pamphlet was entitled An inquiry concerning the means and expedience of proposing and making any changes in the canons, articles, and liturgy, or in any of the laws affecting the interests of the Church of England.) He drew upon John Jones's 1749 Free and Candid Disquisitions in proposing that the three Sunday morning services—Morning Prayer, the Litany, and Holy Communion—be combined into a single, shorter rite. Hull's liturgical proposals also favoured the removal of all creeds from daily offices, with some exceptions for the Apostles' Creed. Historian Ronald Jasper, while holding that these early 19th-century liturgical reform efforts were lacking in liturgiology, noted that the 1928 proposed prayer book's failure would justify Hull and Berens in their suggestions for "ordered liturgical experiment".

Selected bibliography