Henry Charles Beeching (15 May 1859 – 25 February 1919)[1] was a British clergyman, writer and poet, who was Dean of Norwich from 1911 to 1919.

[3] He was educated at the City of London School and at Balliol College, Oxford.

[4][5] He took holy orders in 1882, and began work in a Liverpool parish at Mossley Hill.

[6] He was Rector of Yattendon from 1885 to 1900; Clark Lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1900; professor of Pastoral Theology at King's College London from 1900 to 1903; Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn from 1900 to 1903;[7] Canon of Westminster Abbey from October 1902 until 1911[8][9] and Dean of Norwich from 1911 until his death.

[11] To him is attributed the popular epigram on Benjamin Jowett: This is the first verse of The Masque of B-ll—l (1880), a scurrilous undergraduate production in 40 verses satirising Balliol figures.