He then studied at University College, Nottingham, with the intention of making a living as a chemist, but found himself attracted to High Anglican worship, becoming an altar server and later being sent to York Minster, where as choirmaster he trained boys in plainchant.

In 1913, Wedgwood took notice of the Old Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain and wrote a letter to Archbishop Arnold Harris Mathew.

In 1915, Wedgwood visited Australia as Grand Secretary of the Order of Universal CoMasonry and met Charles Webster Leadbeater, a leading figure in the Theosophical movement.

He was greatly impressed by the power for good which such ordination bestowed and with the splendid scope that the celebration offered for spreading spiritual blessing abroad on the world.” On his return to England, Wedgwood learned that one of the bishops of the church, Frederick Samuel Willoughby, had become enmeshed in a homosexuality scandal and as a result had been suspended by Archbishop Mathew.

He also learned that Mathew wanted all the clergy of the church to renounce Theosophy as he had heard from a non-Theosophical priest that the beliefs of the society were incompatible.

From that time forward Wedgwood travelled the world as a missionary bishop, creating the Liberal Rite (a form of Christian liturgy) in co-operation with Leadbeater, establishing missions of the church and publishing a stream of works on theology and liturgy including New Insights into Christian Worship, The Presence of Christ in the Holy Communion, Meditation for Beginners, Varieties of Psychism, The Larger Meaning of Religion, Open Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, The Lambeth Conference and The Validity of Archbishop Mathew’s Orders.

Wedgwood was a homosexual with what he described as an "almost unbelievably strong" sexual urge (he once visited 18 public toilets in two hours, explaining to police that he had been "searching for a friend").

[5] Wedgwood then enrolled as a doctoral candidate at the Sorbonne, combining his studies with experiments at the works of a celebrated organ builder and activities at Russian Orthodox and Old Catholic churches.

Whilst he was in Paris, the symptoms of secondary syphilis manifested themselves—he had contracted the disease as the result of oral sex in Sydney but had refused to admit the fact or to take any treatment.

[6] By 1924, with money running short, Wedgwood approached his old friend Annie Besant and through her influence again became involved with the church in Huizen, Netherlands, where he was offered a house and estate for his use.

He also resumed his activities with the Theosophical Society, with increasingly frequent claimed visions and meetings with masters, angels, archangels and denizens of the higher realms.

E. L. Gardner, an eminent British Theosophist who was responsible for arranging for Wedgwood to be looked after in his declining years, wrote privately, "JIW was a 'dual' - at times skilled, able and impressive.

This is what Oscar Köllerström wrote in his tribute to Bishop Wedgwood (The Liberal Catholic, July 1951): I was the blessed witness of a sacramental act of creation.

It was all so intimate, personal, and natural, and there was such tumultuous rush of doings – my mother making vestments, Pellegrini, of the Catholic shop, being charmingly voluble, the preparation of the hymn book, endless typing, and the running of errands, buying a church, and – vivid in memory – the great day when I took my first minor orders.