James Fleming (priest)

A canon of York Minster, he became chaplain in ordinary to Queen Victoria and Edward VII, and was a close friend of the British royal family.

[1][2] Born at Carlow on 26 July 1830, he was from a Scots-Irish background, the youngest of five children of Patrick Fleming, M.D., of Strabane, who had married in 1820 Mary, daughter of Captain Francis Kirkpatrick.

During the period parochial schools and local churches increased and a convalescent home built at Birchington, for which a parishioner gave Fleming £23,500l.

Outside his parish his main interests were Dr. Barnardo's Homes, the Religious Tract Society, of which he was an honorary secretary from 1880; and the Hospital Sunday Fund, to which his congregation made annual contributions.

[3] In 1880 Beaconsfield wanted to appoint Fleming first Bishop of Liverpool, but local pressure caused John Charles Ryle to be preferred.

He later declined the Bishopric of Sydney, in November 1884, and for financial reasons Lord Salisbury's successive offers of the deaneries of Chester (20 December 1885) and of Norwich (6 May 1889).

[3] Fleming, who early in 1877 denounced the "folly, obstinacy, and contumacy" of the ritualists in The Times (25 January 1877), ceased to wear the black gown in the pulpit after the judgment in Clifton v. Ridsdale (12 May 1877).

Ernest Harold Pearce in the Dictionary of National Biography wrote that "personal charm and grace of speech made him popular, but he was neither a student nor a thinker".

[3] Fleming made a number of sound recordings for the Gramophone & Typewriter Ltd (later HMV, then part of EMI), of readings from literary works by Alexander Pope, Leigh Hunt and Thomas Hood, The Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson, etc.

[7] He also recorded part of the Gramophone album of discs in 1908 giving a service for the Church of England Morning Prayer, but died before completing the set (which was taken over by the Reverend Joshua Parkyn).