Charles Daubeny (priest)

The second son of George Daubeny, a Bristol merchant, he was baptized 16 August 1745, educated at a private school at Philip's Norton, and sent when 15 years old to Winchester College.

On his return to England in 1772 he resided for some months at Oxford to prepare for holy orders, a necessary qualification to his admission to a fellowship at Winchester College.

He was at first unpopular with his parishioners, both on account of his orthodoxy (most of the inhabitants being dissenters), and because he had pulled down cottages to enlarge the vicarage grounds.

In 1790 his health was weak and he wintered in Bath, Somerset and while there interested himself in promoting the erection of a free church.

In 1808 he founded and endowed an almshouse for four poor inhabitants of North Bradley, and also built a school at the same place at his own expense.

In 1821 he published seventeen sermons, by Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, which he had modernised with the view of making them more popular.

During the following year his parishioners expressed a wish that a church should be erected at Road to serve a distant part of the parish, and Daubeny set about collecting subscriptions for the purpose.

Daubeny was rigidly orthodox; in his theories of the dignity and importance of the Church of England and her ministers he anticipated the Tractarians.