Reginald Heber (21 April 1783 – 3 April 1826) was an English Anglican bishop, a man of letters, and hymn-writer. After 16 years as a country parson, he served as Bishop of Calcutta until his death at the age of 42. The son of a rich landowner and cleric, Heber gained fame at the University of Oxford as a poet. After graduation he made an extended tour of Scandinavia, Russia and Central Europe. Ordained in 1807, he took over his father's old parish, Hodnet, Shropshire. He also wrote hymns and general literature, including a study of the works of the 17th-century cleric Jeremy Taylor.
He was consecrated Bishop of Calcutta in October 1823. He travelled widely and worked to improve the spiritual and general living conditions of his flock. Arduous duties, a hostile climate and poor health led to his collapse and death after less than three years in India. Memorials were erected there and in St Paul's Cathedral, London. A collection of his hymns appeared soon after his death. "Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty" remains popular for Trinity Sunday, while "Brightest and Best" is frequently sung during Epiphany.
The surname "Heber" probably derives from "Haybergh", a hill in the Craven district of Yorkshire, where the family originated. The Hebers held the lordship of the manor of Marton, and were granted a coat of arms during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Richard Heber was the son of Thomas Heber and Elizabeth Atherton, the granddaughter of Richard Atherton.
In 1752 Richard Heber received the manor and estate of Hodnet Hall in Shropshire as a bequest from a cousin of his wife. This included patronage of the parish of Hodnet. On Richard Heber's death in 1766 his brother Reginald, who was co-rector of the parish of Malpas in Cheshire, inherited the Shropshire estate and additionally became rector of Hodnet. His first marriage, to Mary Baylie, produced a son, Richard Heber, who became a noted book collector and Member of Parliament for Oxford University. His second marriage to Mary Allanson, after Mary Baylie's death, produced two further sons, the elder, born at Malpas on 21 April 1783, being named Reginald after his father.
At the age of eight the younger Reginald began five years at the local grammar school at Whitchurch. In 1796 he was sent to Bristow's, a small private school in Neasden a few miles north of Central London. This provided intensive learning for around a dozen boys, preparing them for eventual entry to Oxford or Cambridge. At Bristow's he met John Thornton, who became a lifelong friend, sharing an interest in church history and beliefs; a lengthy letter from Heber to Thornton is described by Heber's biographer Arthur Montefiore as worthy of a learned theologian. In October 1800 Heber entered Brasenose College, Oxford; Thornton's decision to go to Cambridge was a matter for Heber's regret.
There were family connections with Brasenose, Heber's brother Richard being a fellow at the time and his father was a former fellow. The head of the college was William Cleaver, a friend of Reginald Senior and frequent visitor to Hodnet Hall. In his first year, Heber won the University Prize for Latin Verse, and began to develop local repute as a Romantic poet. In 1803 he entered a long poem, "Palestine", for the Newdigate Prize. He had been helped in composing it by Walter Scott, a family friend, before Scott's years of fame. The poem was enthusiastically received when Heber declaimed it at that year's Encaenia ceremony. It was later published and set to music by William Crotch (who had been professor of music at Oxford since 1797), and translated into Welsh by W. Owen Pughe in 1822. Montefiore, in 1902, described it as "the most successful and popular piece of religious verse of the first half of the [19th] century". Heber's later biographer Derrick Hughes finds its contemporary acclaim puzzling: "It is not a good, not even a mediocre poem; it is leaden".
The death of Reginald Senior in February 1804 left the living of parish of St Luke, Hodnet vacant, and may have prompted Heber's decision to seek ordination, though he delayed it for some years. In his degree examinations he did honourably rather than brilliantly; Montefiore quotes a contemporary view that Heber's main contribution to university life was in fields outside formal academic success, particularly as a thinker, a poet and an orator: "Reginald Heber was a star whose lustre was as steady as it was clear." He took his bachelor's degree in the summer of 1804 and was elected to a fellowship of All Souls College, Oxford. He also won the university's Bachelor's Prize for an English prose essay.
Heber and Thornton had planned to follow their graduation with a Grand Tour of Europe. However, in 1804 the Napoleonic Wars made much of Europe inaccessible, and so they delayed their departure until the summer of 1805 and took a route through Sweden, Norway and Finland to Russia, instead of the usual journey through France and Italy. In July 1805, they sailed for Gothenburg in Sweden, then travelled northward by stage coach, via Vänern and Uddevalla, to Kristiania (Oslo) in Norway. After a short stay there, they moved through the wild Dovre Region to Trondheim, where they observed the practice of skiing for the first time (Heber referred to it as "skating").
They then turned south-east, re-entered Sweden and travelled through Uppsala to Stockholm. Towards the end of September they crossed the Gulf of Bothnia to Åbo (Turku), site of Europe's most northerly university, in the part of Finland then under Swedish rule. They proceeded eastwards and reached St Petersburg at the end of October. They spent two months in the city; through influential British Embassy contacts they visited places generally closed to the public, including Tsar Alexander's private quarters in the Winter Palace. They experienced Muslim worship at first hand as the city's large Muslim population observed Ramadan; Heber described the crowds gathered for prayer in an improvised mosque as "the most decent and attentive congregation [he] had seen since leaving England."
Heber and Thornton had meant to remain in St Petersburg until after the New Year, then if possible return home through Germany. This was thwarted by Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz on 2 December 1805 and the treaties that followed. Instead they extended their stay in Russia, leaving St Petersburg on 31 December 1805 by sledge for the 500-mile journey to Moscow, where they arrived on 3 January. They found it a hospitable city—in a letter home Heber refers to it as an "overgrown village"—and they made friends with many of its leading citizens and clergy. They left by stage coach on 13 March, heading south towards the Crimea and the Black Sea. This took them through the Cossack country of the Don River Basin. Heber sent home a vivid account of the night celebrations for Easter at Novo Tcherkask, the Cossack capital: "The soft plaintive chaunt of the choir, and their sudden change at the moment of daybreak to the full chorus of 'Christ is risen' were altogether what a poet or a painter would have studied with delight".
In the Crimea, Heber observed the manners and practices of the region's large Muslim community. He expressed pleasure at being greeted with the oriental salaam. The course of the war in Europe had meanwhile shifted to allow Heber and Thornton to pass through Poland, Hungary, Austria and Germany to the port of Hamburg, by way of Austerlitz, where they heard accounts of the recent battle. While making sketches of the scene, Heber was briefly mistaken for a French spy by local farmers. At Hamburg the two travellers boarded Lord Morpeth's private yacht and sailed for England, arriving at Great Yarmouth on 14 October 1806.
On his return to England, Heber prepared for Holy Orders at Oxford, where he found time for literary pursuits, was active in university politics and led a busy social life. He was ordained as deacon at the end of February 1807 and received full priest's orders from the Bishop of Oxford on 24 May 1807. He was then inducted into the family living, as rector of Hodnet; he was later to describe his role as "a half-way station between a parson and a squire". At first he divided his time between his parish and Oxford, where he fulfilled duties at All Souls. He had not at this time determined his own doctrinal position; writing to Thornton he admitted that he was still searching: "Pray for me, my dear friend, that I may have my eyes open to the truth ... and if it please God that I persevere in his ministry I may undertake the charge with a quiet mind and a good conscience". A High churchman by upbringing, Heber was a strong opponent of factional rivalry; he eventually found a place around the midpoint of the Anglican spectrum between the High Church and evangelical wings, with perhaps a slight inclination towards the evangelicals.