The son of Dr. William Willis Moseley, who kept a school at Newcastle-under-Lyme, and his wife Margaret (née Jackson according to published sources, but genealogical evidence is that her maiden name was Robins), he was born on 9 July 1801.
In 1853 he was presented to a residential canonry in Bristol Cathedral; in 1854 he became vicar of Olveston in Gloucestershire, and was appointed chaplain in ordinary to the Queen in 1855.
[1] While at Portsmouth Moseley wrote his first paper, "On measuring the Depth of the Cavities seen on the Surface of the Moon" (in Tilloch's Philosophical Magazine lii.
This work first appeared in a memoir On the Dynamical Stability and on the Oscillations of Floating Bodies, read before the Royal Society, and published in Philosophical Transactions in 1850.
[1] Moseley married, on 23 April 1835, Harriet, daughter of William Nottidge of Wandsworth Common, Surrey.