Though his views were ecumenical and he was respected within a wide variety of religions, he became involved in contentious litigation under the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874.

Born in Prestbury, Gloucestershire, Fraser's father was an unsuccessful merchant who left his wife and seven children in penury when he died in 1832.

[1] Elected a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, in 1840, he worked tutoring and in the library before taking deacon's orders in 1846 and giving up his passion for hunting.

He travelled to the United States and Canada in 1865 on a commission to examine education there and his insightful report enhanced his reputation as a social analyst and leader of church opinion.

Fraser set to work to remedy this with a programme of consecrating 99 new churches and establishment of a bureaucratic structure including, of course, a Board of Education.

He was a vocal opponent of Charles Darwin’s ideas and in an address of 1871 said that they were, “merely guesses, conjectures, and inferences resting upon remote analogies”.

[4] Never overly-interested in theology, Fraser was a liberal in matters of worship who favoured the old high church school, though with little sympathy for what he saw as the excesses of the Oxford Movement.