Lead, Kindly Light

Abstract This chapter examines the last phase of William’s spiritual life, when he formed his fourth and final administration. He avoided writing a spiritual autobiography, but took a close interest in the biographies of former friends and colleagues. He also reflected upon death and the future life, particularly in his published work on Bishop Butler. He spoke in public on the Armenian massacres when he was physically frail. Armenian associations with St Deiniol’s Church, Hawarden, were carried over into his state funeral in Westminster Abbey in 1898, when the hymns represented several strands of Christian tradition. A short coda on William’s memorialization argues that his story turns upon a series of collisions between the real and the ideal: between the political fixer and the lone crusader on the side of the oppressed; between the reformer who embraced modernity and the conservative upholder of tradition in church and state; between the ‘adulterer in the heart’ of Soho and the ‘distinguished parishioner’ of Hawarden.