He was the son of William Copeland, surgeon, of Chigwell, Essex, where he was born on 1 September 1804.
He was first taught at Chigwell School,[1] then at eleven years old admitted to St Paul's School, London (11 September 1815), where he won the English verse prize (1823) and the high master's prize for the best Latin essay (1824).
In 1829 he was ordained to the curacy of St Olave, Jewry; for the next three years he was curate of Hackney; and in 1832 he went to Oxford.
Part of his library passed, by the agency of his nephew William Copeland Borlase, to the National Liberal Club.
Newman dedicated to Copeland his ‘Sermons on Subjects of the Day’ as the kindest of friends, and Copeland edited eight volumes of Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons (1868), an edition which was reprinted, besides printing a volume of selections.