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Disgrifiad

The Right Rev. Alfred Ollivant, D.D., Lord Bishop of Llandaff, was a son of the late Mr. William Ollivant, of Manchester, by his union with Elizabeth, a daughter of the late Alderman Sir Stephen Langston, of Great Horwood, Buckinghamshire. He was born at Manchester on Aug. 16, 1798, and educated at St. Paul's School, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained the Craven University Scholarship in 1820, and the following year graduated as sixth Wrangler and Senior Chancellor's Medallist. Soon after taking his degree he was elected a fellow of his college, and in 1822-3 carried off respectively Tyrwhitt's Hebrew Scholarship and the Middle Bachelors' and Senior Bachelors' members' prizes for Latin prose, and in 1824 proceeded in due course to his M.A. degree. Three years later, in 1827, he was appointed Vice-Principal of St. David's College, Lampeter, holding that post till 1843, when he was selected as Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and appointed Prebendary of St. David's and Brecon, having received both the B.D. and D.D. degrees from his university in 1836.

In theological matters his lord: hip inclined rather to the Evangelical party than to the Ritualist. It was only on the first day of the present month that Dr. Ollivant was presented by Lord Aberdare, on behalf of the clergy and laity of the diocese, with a portrait of himself by Mr. Ouless, the Royal Academician, executed at a cost of £500. It may also be mentioned that the late bishop, possessing as he did a deep acquaintance with the Hebrew tongue, was one of the company of revisers of the text of the Old Testament.

His death will be felt by them as a great loss, as his extensive scholarship and critical acumen were of great value in the laborious task of the revisers. Dr. Ollivant, who married, in 1828, Alicia Olivia, daughter of General William Spencer, of Bramley Grange, Yorkshire, and who was in the commission of the peace for the county of Cardigan, was in his day an active contributor to literature in regard to Church affairs, and was the author of many charges and sermons, but published few works of note.