William Maskell


William Maskell was an English priest of the Church of England and Catholic convert, known as a liturgical scholar.

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. In 1842 he was instituted to the rectory of Corscombe, Dorset, and concentrated on research into the history of Anglican ritual. Having resigned Corscombe, he was instituted in 1847 to the vicarage of St Mary Church, Torquay, and appointed domestic chaplain to Henry Phillpotts, the Bishop of Exeter.
For Phillpotts, Maskell conducted the examination of George Cornelius Gorham on his views of baptism, when Gorham was being considered for presentation to the vicarage of Brampford Speke, near Exeter. The Gorham case was escalated through the courts to the Privy Council. Soon afterwards Maskell resigned his living, and was received into the Roman Catholic Church.
Not taking Catholic orders, and indeed unable to do so after his second marriage in 1852, Maskell spent his later life in retirement in Bude, Cornwall. His father's fortune allowed him to retire. Robert Stephen Hawker, a good friend, was nearby with the living at Morwenstow. 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; and made museum donations. He was a Justice of the Peace, and a deputy-lieutenant for Cornwall. He died at Penzance on 12 April 1890.

Views

Maskell's views of baptism and the Eucharist were set out in his 1849 volume of sermons. A believer in the Catholic doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, Maskell regretted its definition by Pope Pius IX in 1854. He acquiesced only with reluctance in the decree of Vatican I defining the dogma of papal infallibility.

Works

Maskell published:
For the Committee of Council on Education, Maskell edited in 1872 A Description of the Ivories, Ancient and Modern, in the South Kensington Museum,' with a preface reprinted separately as Ivories Ancient and Mediæval 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 : they had a daughter Mary, and three sons, William Miles Maskell, Alfred Ogle Maskell the art historian, and Stuart, a solicitor. His second marriage was in 1852, to Monique Stein.