Author: Trench, Richard Chenevix
Biography:
TRENCH, Richard Chenevix (1807-1886: ODNB)
Born in Dublin on 9 Sept. 1807, Richard was the third son of a barrister, Robert Trench (1774-1860), and his wife, Melesina Chenevix Trench (q.v.). He was related to a Bishop of Waterford, Richard Chenevix, to an Archbishop of Tuam, Power Le Poer Trench, and to the writer, chemist, and pseudoscientist Richard Chenevix (q.v.). Richard’s brother, the Rev. Francis Chenevix Trench (1805-1886), was an author of travel books. Educated at Twyford School, at Harrow, and at Trinity College, Cambridge (BA 1829, MA 1833, BD 1850), he befriended Alfred Tennyson, Arthur Hallam (qq.v.), and Frederick Denison Maurice, members, like him, of the Cambridge undergraduate club the Apostles. Ordained deacon in 1832 and priest in 1835, he was curate under High Churchmen Hugh James Rose and Samuel Wilberforce, and, from 1855, rector of Itchenstoke. Trench’s career in the Church of England culminated in 1856 in his appointment as dean of Westminster. Elevated in 1864 to the archbishopric of Dublin, he played a crucial role in church affairs in the aftermath of the Irish Church’s disestablishment. Most of his thirty or more publications, including his poems, are of a religious nature. Few are now read, though his work on philology—notably On the Study of Words (1851), twenty editions by 1888, still in print—and his role in founding the Oxford English Dictionary continue to attract interest. A statement of his is often quoted: “language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved” (On the Study of Words, 33). Even in his poetry, Trench “draws on the powers of etymology” (Sperling, 41). On 31 May 1832 at Bath, Somerset, he married his cousin Frances Mary Trench (1808-1890). Together they had eleven children. Trench died on 28 Mar. 1886, at 23 Eaton Square, London. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. Probate valued his estate at almost £17,000. (ODNB 29 Mar. 2023; CCEd 30 Mar. 2023; Morning Post 12 June 1832; The Remains of the late Mrs. Trench, ed. R. C. Trench [1862]; J. Bromley, The Man of Talents: A Portrait of Richard Chenevix Trench [1959]; M. Sperling, Visionary Philology: Geoffrey Hill and the Study of Words [2014]; C. Jones, Fossil Poetry: Anglo-Saxon and Linguistic Nativism in Nineteenth-Century Poetry [2018]; C. W. Hartin, The Fitness of Scripture: Richard Chenevix Trench and Victorian Doctrine of Scripture, doctoral thesis, Univ. of Toronto, [2019]) JC