John Keble was an English Anglican priest and poet, and one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Born on 25 April 1792 in Fairford, Gloucestershire, where his father was vicar of Coln St Aldwyns, he studied at Oxford University, having won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, and achieved a double first-class honours in Latin and maths.
While still at Oxford, he was ordained, in 1816, and became a curate to his father and then curate of St Michael and St Martin's Church, Eastleach Martin, in Gloucestershire, although he still lived in Oxford. On the death of his mother in 1823, he left Oxford and returned to live with his father and two surviving sisters at Fairford.
His most famous moment was his Assize Sermon on "National Apostasy" in 1833. The Assize Sermon marked the opening of a term of the civil and criminal courts and officially addresses the judges and officers of the court, exhorting them to deal justly. This sermon, together with seven ‘Tracts for the Times’ on faith and practice, were the stimulus for what has become known as the Oxford Movement, a theological movement of High-Church members of the Church of England which gave birth to the wing of the church we now know of as Anglo-Catholicism. Along with his colleagues, John Henry Newman and Edward Pusey, he became a leading light in the movement. The Assize Sermon was delivered on 14 July 1833, which is why John Keble is remembered each year on July 14th.
In 1835, his father died, and Keble and his sister retired from Fairford to Coln. In the same year he married Charlotte Clarke, and became Vicar of All Saints', Hursley in Hampshire, where he remained for the rest of his life as parish priest. He died in Bournemouth on 29 March 1866 at the Hermitage Hotel, while recovering from a long-term illness for which he believed the sea air would help. He is buried in All Saints' churchyard in Hursley.
Keble College in Oxford, where our former Diocesan Bishop, Geoffrey Rowell, was once Chaplain, was established in 1870 as a monument to John Keble. He is also remembered for four poems which were later made into hymns, including ‘Blest are the pure in heart’ and ‘New every morning is the love.’
PIcture above of John Keble, by Donkin (Miss) - http://www.100megsfree4.com/dictionary/theology/tdick.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2658182
