#258, Rowland Francis COBBOLD

Rowland Francis was ordained Deacon at Ely on 18th December 1881 and Priest at Chester in 1885.  He had seved as curate of Risby, Suffolk from 1881 to 1884 and was an assistant master at Bury St. Edmunds School at the same time.  He moved to become curate of Prestbury, Cheshire in 1884 and was an assistant master at Macclesfirld Grammar School from 1884 to 1892.  It was during his time at Macclesfield Grammar that he wrote his parody of Longfellow's Hiawatha.

On 30th of June 1892 he left Liverpool for Quebec on the S.S.Sardinia and travelled across Canada to Vancouver.  He left an account of his trans-Canada journey which spurred his eldest son to do likewise some fifty years later.  He joined the R.M.S. Empress of India, arriving in Hong Kong in late August.  The record boards in St. John's Cathedral show him to have been the Bishop's Chaplain there from 1892 until 1902.  During his tenancy he will have seen the handover of the Bishopric from John Shaw Burdon to Joseph Charles Hoare #5751 in our family tree.  Just four years after Rowland had left Bishop Hoare was drowned with four students of St. Paul's College, of which he was Warden, in a typhoon during a preaching journey in Castle Peak, Tuen Mun.

It is possible that he came home on leave in 1896 but whilst in Hong Kong he met and fell in love with Lilian Hope Parkes, youngest daughter of Sir Harry Parkes, sometime Her Majesty's Minister to China and Japan and they were married on 24th February 1903 at St. Mary Abbots, Kensington.  He was appointed Rector of Beachampton (a Gonville & Caius living) in 1903 and all four of their children were born there.  His final living was as Rector of Bratton Fleming (another Gonville & Caius living) which he occupied from 1913 to 1927.  It is typical of his attention to detail and his thoughtfulness for others that before leaving Beachampton he prepared a notebook for his hitherto unappointed successor which gave in enormous detail everything he might need to know from recommended tradesmen to the layout of drains.

He was much appreciated in Bratton Fleming becoming Rural Dean of Shirwell in the Diocese of Exeter in 1922.  He and Lilian were cared for by Fanny Bennett and Alfred, the latter accompanying them to Farlingaye Hall in Woodbridge in Suffolk upon retirement.  Following their deaths a lantern in their memory was added to the south porch of St. Mary's Woodbridge by their four children.  Their grandson, Anthony arranged through the Woodbridge Society for the lantern to be restored in 2012.  Rear Admiral Richard Cobbold contributed.

Census records show: 1861 Stratford Road, Dedham; 1871 Scholar, Bury St Edmunds; 1881 Maths teacher, Bury St Edmunds; 1891 Teacher, Macclesfield; 1901 Kelvedon (actually abroad or preparing to go abroad); 1911 Clerk in Holy Orders, Beachampton.

Probate was granted 20th February 1946