WM minister, born in Brixton, London, he was educated at Queen's College, Taunton and Ashville College, Harrogate and at University College, London, before training for the ministry at Didsbury College. A founder member of the Wesley Historical Society, he served from 1919 as its General Secretary and from 1941 as President. His leisure time and retirement years were devoted to Methodist history and he was an expert on John Wesley and the eighteenth Century. His history of Early Methodism in and around Chester, 1749-1812 was published in 1903. He built up a network of contacts by correspondence with Methodist historians across the world. He died in Sunderland on 3 March 1956 and his library became the nucleus of the Wesley Historical Society's Library, which moved to Westminster College, Oxford in 1993 and is now on the campus of Oxford Brookes University.