Percy Dearmer

Percival Dearmer (27 February 1867 – 29 May 1936) was an English Anglican priest and liturgist best known as the author of The Parson's Handbook, a liturgical manual for Anglican clergy, and as editor of The English Hymnal. A lifelong socialist, he was an early advocate of the public ministry of women (but not their ordination to the priesthood) and concerned with social justice. Dearmer, with Ralph Vaughan Williams and Martin Shaw, helped revive and spread traditional and medieval English musical forms. His ideas on patterns of worship have been linked to the Arts and Crafts Movement, while The English Hymnal reflects both folkloric scholarship and Christian Socialism. At his death, he was a canon of Westminster Abbey, where he ran a canteen for the unemployed.

Early life and ordination

Dearmer was born on 27 February 1867 in Kilburn, Middlesex, to an artistic family; his father, Thomas Dearmer, was an artist and drawing instructor. Dearmer attended Streatham School and Westminster School in the early 1880s, before going to a boarding school in Switzerland. From 1886 to 1889 he studied modern history at Christ Church, Oxford, receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1890. He was associated with Pusey House and acted as secretary to its principal, Charles Gore.

Dearmer was made a deacon in 1891 and ordained to the priesthood in 1892 at Rochester Cathedral. On 26 May that year, he married 19-year-old Mabel White (1872–1915), the daughter of Surgeon-Major William White, a writer (known as Mabel Dearmer) of novels and plays. She died of typhus in 1915 while they were both serving with an ambulance unit in Serbia during the First World War. They had two sons, both of whom served in the First World War. The elder, Geoffrey, lived to the age of 103, one of the oldest surviving war poets. The younger, Christopher, died in 1915 of wounds received in battle in the Dardanelles.