Horatio was born in Melksham Wiltshire on 20th October 1805 the son of George Moule and his wife Sarah Hayward. His father, a solicitor and banker, sent him to university at Queens College Oxford where he matriculated on 23 October 1824 at the age of 19; obtaining a BA degree in 1828 and an MA in 1840.
Fordington
From University, he followed in his elder brother Henry’s footsteps and decided on a career in the church. He was ordained Deacon at Bristol Cathedral on 10th Jan 1829 and awarded a stipendiary Curacy at Sutton Waldron of £50pa. His brother Henry became Vicar at St George’s in Fordington that year carrying out his first Baptism was on 28th June. St George’s was an active and prestigious church and Henry needed a curate so Horatio joined his brother there, his first recorded baptism being on 19th July. Official appointment does not seem to have been recognised until the 10th Jan 1830 when he became a priest but had to take a drop in income to £40pa.
He was a steadfast companion to his brother during the swing riots of 1830/1831 joining in the nightly patrols around Fordington and Dorchester and facing the crowds that were bent on violence and disorder. Throughout this difficult period (between 1829 and 1837 when he left to further his career in the church) he carried out 358 baptisms, marriages and burials at St George’s church.
On the 1st June 1831 he took a welcome break, travelling to Bath to conduct the wedding ceremony of his elder brother Charles Thomas Moule, who had also been born in Melksham and was about 5 years his senior. Charles had followed their fathers profession and become a Solicitor and according to the Bridgewater & Somerset Herald newspaper he married an Anne Falkner, a native of Bath, who at the tender age of 18 would have been 13 years younger than her groom.
On 7th July 1832 Horatio was back at St Georges Church in Fordington for the baptism of his brother Henry’s 4th child, another son, and was honoured when they gave the boy his own name of Horatio. To avoid confusion the family referred to the child as Horace, a name that he went by for the rest of his life.
Official Records also seem to indicate that Horatio was awarded a perpetual curacy in Nether Cerne which is 5 miles North of Fordington on 29th May 1833.
Marriage
It is not clear where Horatio went to after leaving Fordington but he married in the Church of Holy Trinity in Clapham Surrey on 9th March 1841 to Elizabeth Mary Hughes. She was the daughter of Thomas Hughes from Dublin and Mary Anna Stokes and had been born on 17 Oct 1820 in Finsbury London and baptised there on 21st December in St Luke’s Church.
Chaplin of St Paul’s Cathedral - Calcutta India
By 1845 however Horatio was serving as Senior Chaplin of St Paul’s Cathedral in Calcutta.
St Paul's Cathedral, Calcutta
He
must have arrived at an interesting time as the Church had been devastated
previously by an earthquake and construction of the new Cathedral commenced
in 1839, and mainly due to the efforts of Bishop Wilson, was completed
in 1847 after Horatio’s arrival. He is also reported to have visited
Sarawak in 1851 for the consecration of the Church of St Thomas the Apostle
on 22nd January that year.
He was still at the Cathedral when the Indian Mutiny occurred. Fires first broke out in Calcutta on 24 January 1857 and the war officially started on March 29th at the Barrackpore (now Barrackpur) parade ground, near Calcutta. The picture opposite shows one of a number of memorial tablets erected inside St Pauls Cathedral in Calcutta. This one is to 16 of the officers who fell in the Indian Revolt in the years 1857 & 1858.
Horatio had at least one son Horatio Frederick D’oyly Moule who married Banna Horsford, and raised their own family in India. Horatio was still officiating in the Cathedral at marriages in 1863.
He eventually returned to England and became the rector of Charmouth in Dorset where he served between 1875 and 1879. He then moved in 1880 to Road-cum-Woolverton in Somerset until his death at the age of 80 on 3rd June 1886.
His wife Elizabeth Mary died on 13 September 1906 in the district of Newton Abbott at the age of 86.