[2] Reared in New York City, he attended grammar school until age 14, at which time he began working as a clerk in a wholesale dry good store.

[1] William Paret was ordained a deacon on July 2, 1852, in Trinity Church, Geneva, New York, by Bishop Carlton Chase.

[1][3] He received his priest's orders in Grace Church, Rochester, New York, on June 38, 1853, from Bishop DeLancey.

Paret exchanged public letters concerning church practices with Rev.

[1] Paret was consecrated the sixth bishop of Maryland on January 8, 1885, at his own Church of the Epiphany in Washington, D.C.[1][3] At the Maryland Episcopal Diocesan Convention of 1894, Paret denounced – "a stinging philippic fell from his lips" – those parishes that used incense and other ritualstic practices, such as the use of confessionals, which was an attack on high church Anglican parishes such as Mount Calvary Church in Baltimore and St. Andrew's Church in Princess Anne, Maryland.