WEATHERS, WILLIAM. - Bishop, born 12 Nov. 1814, died at Isleworth on 4 March 1895.
Having converted to Catholicism after his father’s death, he was educated by the Franciscans at Baddesley. Ordained priest in 1838, he entered Old Hall College, where he remained for thirty years, rising from post to post until he became rector, an office he held from 1851 to 1868. His stay at Old Hall marked a memorable period in the history of Catholicism in southern England, for it was at the College governed by W. that the young British clergy were for the most part trained after the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in the United Kingdom (1850). An incomparable educator, a master of spirituality, and a most wise director of consciences, he trained hundreds of priests for the apostolate, thus becoming the most valuable collaborator of the English episcopate of his time. In 1868 Pius IX summoned him to Rome among the theologians entrusted with the preparatory work for the Vatican Ecumenical Council and conferred upon him the dignity of domestic prelate; four years later he promoted him to the titular see of Amycla and appointed him coadjutor to the Archbishop of Westminster, the future Cardinal Manning. While carrying out valuable and intense pastoral activity, W. was then able to resume the scientific studies that he had favoured in his youth and to publish, under the transparent pseudonym of Amyclanus—derived from his episcopal title—a volume entitled An enquiry into the nature and results of electricity and magnetism (1876).