A giant of the Victorian age. John Percival founded one public school (Clifton College) and reformed another (Rugby). He was head of an Oxford College (Trinity) and was an important supporter of the foundation of the University of Bristol, as well as being one of the founders and first President of Somerville College, Oxford. At first, he seemed an unlikely bishop of Hereford – a staunch supporter of temperance in a county of cider-makers
– a liberal in a fiercely Tory county – a Protestant in a diocese with High Church leanings, and a known supporter of Welsh disestablishment. He was also a rather puritanical disciplinarian - a reformer and controversialist, and whether from the pulpit or in the press, castigated the forces of inertia and reaction. Some went so far as to say that he was ‘hated like a devil’. However, he proved a pastorally-hearted bishop - always enthusiastic about education (he founded the Workers’ Educational Association) and encouraging literacy in the parishes through his Circulating Book Boxes and through the giving of prizes in parish schools. At heart, however, his interests were more national than local – he chaired the 1897 Lambeth Conference’s committee on industrial problems and became increasingly involved in educational reform. There was also a deep loneliness – partly through the death of a son and of his first wife, partly as he felt out of the thick of national events in Hereford and partly through being passed over when the archbishopric of York became vacant in 1908. Percival died on 3 December and was buried in the crypt of the chapel at Clifton College, but he is remembered in Hereford by a fine marble plaque beneath the central tower.