William J. Irons

William Josiah Irons (1812–1883) was a priest in the Church of England and a theological writer.

Life

Irons, born at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, 12 September 1812, was second son of the Rev. Joseph Irons (1785–1852), by his first wife, Mary Ann, daughter of William Broderick. His mother died in 1828. His father, a popular evangelical preacher, born at Ware, Hertfordshire, on 5 November 1785, commenced preaching in March 1808 under the auspices of the London Itinerant Society, was ordained an independent minister on 21 May 1814, was stationed at Hoddesdon from 1812 to 1815, and at Sawston, near Cambridge, from 1815 to 1818, and was minister of Grove Chapel, Camberwell, Surrey, from 1818 until his death at Camberwell on 3 April 1852.

William Josiah, after being educated at home, matriculated from Queen's College, Oxford, on 12 May 1829, and graduated B.A. 1833, M.A. 1835, BD 1842, and DD 1854. He was curate of St. Mary, Newington Butts, Surrey, from 1835 till 1837, when he was presented to the living of St. Peter's, Walworth. He became vicar of Barkway in Hertfordshire in 1838, vicar of Brompton, Middlesex, 17 September 1840, prebendary of St Paul's Cathedral December 1860, rector of Waddingham, Lincolnshire, 6 April 1870, and on 7 June 1872 rector of St. Mary Woolnoth with St. Mary Woolchurch-Haw in the city of London, on the presentation of William Ewart Gladstone, the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. In 1870 he was Bampton lecturer at Oxford, and his published lectures, Christianity as taught by St. Paul, reached a second edition in 1876. He died at 20 Gordon Square, London, on 18 June 1883. He married first, in 1839, Ann, eldest daughter of John Melhuish of Upper Tooting, who died 14 July 1853; and secondly, on 28 December 1854, Sarah Albinia Louisa, youngest daughter of Sir Lancelot Shadwell; she died 15 December 1887.