George Vicesimus Wigram

WIGRAM, George Vicesimus. b. Walthamstow, Essex, 28 March 1805; d. London, 1 January 1879. He was the twentieth (hence the name ‘Vicesimus’) child of the wealthy Sir Robert Wigram (1744-1830) and his wife Eleanor, and younger brother of Joseph Cotton Wigram (1798-1867), who became Bishop of Rochester. George Vicesimus entered the army as a young man, but underwent a conversion and entered Queen’s College, Oxford, with the intention of taking Holy Orders. But he left Queen’s without a degree and was never ordained. Instead he became associated with the Brethren, and founded a congregation in London. In the process he met John Nelson Darby*, with whose radical views he sympathized: when Darby...