author's inscription inside front cover reads: "Edwin Molesworth with the kind regards of the author, August 1st 1915" A biography of Dr. Molesworth written by his youngest son Sir Guilford Lindsey Molesworth & with a foreword by the granddaughter of Dr. Molesworth. For sixteen years he was curate of Millbrook, Hampshire, and while there wrote, at the instigation of Dr. Rennell, dean of Winchester, a reply to Davison's Inquiry into the Origin and Intent of Primitive Sacrifice' (1826), a work which procured him the friendship of Dr. Howley, then bishop of London, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury. Howley presented him in succession to the livings of Wirksworth, Derbyshire (1828), and St. Martin's, Canterbury (1829); appointed him one of the 'six preachers' at Canterbury; and in 1839 presented him to the vicarage of Minster-in-Thanet, and a few months later (3 March 1840) to Rochdale. The last preferment he held for thirty-eight years. At Canterbury, during the stormy period of the Reform Bill, his talents, which were allied with a combative temperament, found abundant occupation, and both by voice and pen he became recognised as the leader of the church party in the diocese. But he was no less a zealous parish priest, and to him is due the first venture in cheap church periodical literature. The 'Penny Sunday Reader' which he edited and very largely wrote for five years, is said to have enjoyed an extraordinary popularity among the working men of many large towns. At Rochdale Molesworth had an ample field for all his activities. He succeeded an Erastian and absentee vicar, and found church life and work in the town at the last gasp. Dissenters at this time were agitating for abolition of church rates, and in Rochdale they had a doughty leader in the quaker John Bright, who fleshed his virgin sword in this controversy. Each party started a magazine, in which their case was defended and their opponents ridiculed. Molesworth fought in behalf of the rates, with a vigour and determination which, according to Bright (Speeches, ii. 517), was not 'surpassed in any other parish in the kingdom,' but his cause was a lost one, and defeat for his party inevitable.