He was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the University Pitt Club[1] and graduated as MA in 1845.
[2] After being ordained priest in 1850, he became successively parish Rector of Willey, Shropshire 1850–53; Blymhill, Staffordshire in 1853-64 (besides Rural Dean of Brewood in 1863); and of Wigan, Lancashire from 1864 until his death.
[2] He was JP for the counties of Shropshire and Staffordshire and an early trustee of the William Salt Library, Stafford.
[2] He began to study his family history, and contributed several articles to Archaeologia Cambrensis.
The outcome of his research into genealogy was History of the Princes of South Wales (1876).