Henry Michell Wagner

Wagner paid for and oversaw the building of five churches in the rapidly growing seaside resort, and "dominated religious life in the town" with his forceful personality and sometimes controversial views and actions.

The "Purchas affair", involving one of Wagner's curates and a proprietary chapel, was "the most extraordinary event" in Brighton's Victorian-era religious history and was reported nationally.

Wagner put his hand in front of his face, which saved his life: the bullet lodged in the bone, causing an injury which took months to heal.

[2] Nevertheless, in March 1816 he started his version of the Grand Tour with a boat trip to Dieppe, from where he travelled to places such as Fontainebleau, Geneva, Milan, Florence, Rome and Messina.

His interview was successful, and after another visit to Paris Wagner returned to England to meet the Duke's sons—the ten-year-old Marquess of Douro and Lord Charles Wellesley, who was a year younger.

An unknown blackmailer sent an anonymous letter to her husband William Beauclerk, 9th Duke of St Albans, fraudulently using the name of a prominent firm of Brighton solicitors and claiming to have been written on behalf of Wagner and Thomas Read Kemp.

It was a higher-class district, and more money was spent on the building; it was designed by prolific church architect George Cheesman, Jr. in the Early English Gothic Revival style, and there was a tower with a spire.

Other donors included Queen Victoria (£50), Member of Parliament for Brighton Adolphus Dalrymple (£25) and local landowner Frederick Hervey, 1st Marquess of Bristol (£100).

[53] Thomas Walker Horsfield's History, Antiquities and Topography of the County of Sussex (1835) was critical of the "tasteless and unsightly edifice",[17] and inside it was cramped and old-fashioned, resembling an 18th-century preaching-house.

Wagner offered to pay for this and commissioned George Frederick Bodley to design a new building, but the Marquess refused: the tenants of his land did not want to give it up and the residents were said to be happy to walk to St Helen's Church at Hangleton.

[69] Church rates, which had severely affected the early part of his incumbency, accordingly ceased to be a problem in 1852; and Wagner's workload was reduced further in 1854 when Brighton was incorporated as a town.

[70][71] Wagner's reputation in Brighton was damaged again in 1853 when he was an involved in an incident with popular preacher Frederick William Robertson of Holy Trinity Church in Ship Street.

John Purchas—formerly one of his own curates—was of greater national significance because of the controversial ritualist practices Purchas brought in when he took over the incumbency of St James's Chapel in Kemptown.

Protests spread from Brighton itself to the Bishop of Chichester and then to the Church of England's ecclesiastical court; and the affair took up much of Wagner's time and energy during the last four years of his life.

[77][78] Purchas relented for a time, but after further complaints in 1868 he reacted by inviting 1,500 people to a special service at the chapel in September of that year, at which ultra-ritualist practices were given full rein.

He abandoned a proposed trip to Jerusalem and sailed back to Malta, but was made even more ill by the inadequate food on board: too weak to eat proper meals, he could only manage gruel.

He preached as normal on 18 September and attended a meeting with the Bishop of Chichester Richard Durnford the following day, but afterwards he was confined to bed by complications of his chronic gout.

[86] An earlier healthcare facility was the Brighton Dispensary (founded in 1809), which was partly superseded by the Royal Sussex County Hospital but changed its focus and expanded in 1850.

There were none in Brighton in 1824, when Wagner arrived in the town; by the time of his death in 1870, he had founded nine, including the architecturally magnificent Church Street National School in the North Laine.

[88] Wagner was also "instrumental in securing" the Swan Downer School's move from a cramped building in the North Laine to purpose-built premises at 11 Dyke Road.

His mother was buried at St Nicholas' Church in the Michell family vault, as was his first wife; his sister's grave is in Brighton Extra Mural Cemetery.

She was "a ... lady of too great Victorian piety for comfort": letters between her and Wagner during their courtship discussed administrative matters and philosophical principles rather than love and romance.

Thomas Coombe—Perpetual curate of All Saints Church—got into a disagreement with him after altering the interior to add extra pews for rent, and tried to prevent Wagner entering the church.

"He strode down the aisle ... and stationed himself between them for the rest of the service", and when they asked for an apology for the embarrassment caused to them he instead demanded that they apologise for their conduct, otherwise he would write to his friend the Duke of Wellington and inform him about his officers' behaviour.

[107] A sense of fairness and personal responsibility was also demonstrated in his reaction to the Marquess of Abergavenny's refusal to allow the rebuilding and reopening of St Peter's Church, West Blatchington.

[56] One of Wagner's main strengths was his speaking—both as a preacher (the Brighton Gazette's obituary praised his "short ... clear, pointed and vigorous" sermons) and when making appeals for political or financial purposes.

[10] On another occasion, though, after two evenings in her company he commented "Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat" (Those whom God would destroy, He first makes mad).

Although on one occasion Wagner was formally "censure[d] ... for his improper conduct in the chair",[62] and often acted in a "high-handed" fashion as chairman, he always treated his opponents courteously—even when meetings became so heated that they reputedly threatened to throw him down the Town Hall's stairs.

[22] Wagner's confident and forthright manner of defending compulsory rates and supporting the Vestry led one of his main opponents to remark in 1852 "although you have many faults, I am proud of you ... if you had gone into the army, you would, with your indomitable energy and your great ability, have made a second Wellington".

[112] Wagner's experiences with Barnard Gregory and St Margaret's Chapel showed that he could sometimes compromise in the spirit of conciliation,[113] but the reasons for his opposition to Edward Everard's appointment as Perpetual curate are unknown.