William Henry Bliss (26 April 1835 – 8 March 1909[1]) was an English scholar and Anglican convert to Catholicism.
[3] He served as Curate of Honington for four years from 1858, then moved to St James, Plymouth until 1865 and took the Vicarage of North Hinksey on the outskirts of Oxford in 1866.
In 1867 Bliss published his first major work, The Canons of the First Four General Councils, in Greek and English.
Many members of the group converted to Catholicism, including John Henry Newman.
Bliss was increasingly turning towards Catholic theology and doubting the historical legitimacy of the Church of England.
In 1877 the Public Record Office asked Bliss to go to Rome to do research in the Vatican Archives on its behalf.
[3] He accepted the offer and spent most of his time searching the mediaeval Papal Registers in order to find all the dealings between the Papacy and Great Britain and Ireland.
[5] He won them over and by 1886 he was the English Tutor to Victor Emmanuel, heir to the Italian crown.
[6] In the Vatican Bliss produced a series called the Calendar of The Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to British Isles Volumes I and II.