John Molesworth (priest)

John Edward Nassau Molesworth (1790–1877) was an English cleric of High Church views, vicar of Rochdale for around 38 years.

William Howley, approving of Molesworth's first work, presented him in succession to the livings of Wirksworth, Derbyshire (1828), and St. Martin's, Canterbury (1829).

Dissenters, led by John Bright - the "daughty quaker leader" - were campaigning for the abolition of church rates.

Initially battling Bright, Molesworth would eventually support Quakerism, but had to concede that the rates issue was a lost cause.

In 1866, when his income had reached £5,000, Molesworth promoted the Rochdale Vicarage Act, by which 13 chapels of ease became better-endowed parish churches.

[1] On a number of fronts, Molesworth wrote controversial letters and tracts, and he fell out with James Prince Lee, his bishop.

[1] Molesworth wrote a reply to John Davison's Inquiry into the Origin and Intent of Primitive Sacrifice (1826), prompted by Thomas Rennell, Dean of Winchester.

Sir Robert Affleck, 4th Baronet, and widow of John Thomas Bridges (died 1853), of St. Nicholas Court, Thanet, and Walmer.

[1][3][9] It followed the marriage of Molesworth's eldest son, Guilford (died 1925) to Maria Bridges, earlier that year.

Robert Bridges did not at first find his step-father easy to relate to, but later found him hospitable to his friend Harry Ellis Wooldridge.