George Evans Moule was born on 28 January 1828, the second of eight sons of Rev Henry Moule [1801-1880] and his wife Mary Mullett Evans. He was duly baptised by his father in the church of St Mary the Virgin in Gillingham on 14 April that year. In 1829 however
his father became the Vicar of St George’s church in Fordington and he spent his youth at the vicarage there. He was initially taught by his father along with other paying pupils that he prepared for University.
Education
Like his elder brother he was educated at the University of Cambridge entering Corpus Christi College at the age of 16 on 20th May 1844. He soon won a Mawson scholarship and obtained his Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1850. Later he was to be made a Doctor of Divinity [1880] and eventually an Honorary Fellow of the college in 1905.
Curate of Fordington
He was ordained Deacon in Salisbury in 1851 & priest the following year, serving as curate to his father in Fordingtonbetween 1851 and 1855, and then also as Chaplain of the Dorset County Hospital from 1855 to 1857. It was in that year that he was accepted as a missionary by the Church Missionary Society.
Church Missionary in China
After patient preparation and despite doctors warning him that he would probably fail under Far Eastern conditions he sailed for Ningpo in China, landing in 1858 at Hong Kong on the way to be married to his cousin, Adelaide Sarah the widow of Captain Henry Charles Griffiths. Adelaide had been Baptised on 12 November 1828 in Melksham the daughter of his fathers brother Frederick Moule, an attorney of law. She had married Captain Griffiths in Bengal India on 1st February 1847. Six months earlier her elder sister Fanny Elizabeth Moule had also married in Bengal on 6th August 1846 to a George Augustus Frederic Hervey. I have not however been able to trace Captain Griffiths death or found any reference to children. It is difficult to see when George Evans and Adelaide would have met (apart perhaps from family visits with his father prior to Adelaide going to India) so it may have been an arranged marriage suitable to both parties. During this period George’s uncle Horatio Moule was Chaplin at St Paul’s Cathedral in Calcutta, so he may also have been involved.
Taiping Rebellion
George started work at the Chekiang Mission in Ningpo in 1858 and was joined by his brother and lifelong colleague, Arthur Evans Moule in 1861. They experienced at first hand the Taiping Rebellion which still stands as the second bloodiest conflict in history with an estimated 20 million killed between the years 1850 and 1864.
They were repeatedly in imminent danger when Ningpo was taken and retaken. It is a time George was later, as Archdeacon Moule, to preserve a vivid memory of in his book “Fifty Years in China”. The rebels took and sacked Hangchow in 1863. The following year at the earnest insistance of his Chinese helpers, George Moule became the first representative of the CMS to serve away from a treaty port. He opened missionary work in the humbled and decimated city and formed a permanent mission there.
First Converts
After he had been at the station 18 months a regular congregation of about 40 were accustomed to meet together for service on Sunday mornings and on Whitsun Day 1866 five converts were baptised - the first fruits of Hang-chau. From that time he took up residence in that city, where he lived until 1911. He had a small house whose garden door opened onto a narrow lane in the heart of the city. In time it became a beloved abode to him and his many European visitors who described its simple refined charm and the delights of the small garden where his intense love of flowers found some scope.
George & Adelaide had 7 children , all but 1 born in China but only four outlived him. He must have paid several visits home as there is a picture of him and Adelaide with the rest of the Moule family on the lawn at Fordington Vicarage dated 5th August 1869.
He evangelised widely, on river banks and in the hill districts and while at Hang-chau translated portions of the Prayer Book, consisting of the Morning and Evening Prayer, and the Litany, into the Hang-chow colloquial dialect which was printed there in 1874.
Bishop of Mid China
In the year 1876 he returned to England and carried out pastoral work in Dorset among old friends and made many new ones. He was consecrated in 1880 in St Paul's Cathedral as the first Bishop of Mid-China with charge of a part of the old North China Diocese. His work steadily developed and visits to the different stations in his diocese involved him in long journeys covering annually some thousands of miles (for example he covered over 3,000 miles in 1892). He ordained many converts as deacons and priests for ministration to their own countrymen. A remarkable display of the affection in which he was held took place at the celebration of his 70th birthday, when he was the recipient of many gifts from his fellow missionaries representing various denominations in England and America. On this occasion the native Christians who owed their faith largely to the zeal and sympathy of their Bishop presented him with a scroll of embroidered satin 90 feet long on which were inscribed the names of 2,300 native Christians in Hang-chau.
Boxer Rebellion
George not only witnessed the Taiping troubles but also the Boxer crisis which lasted from Nov 1899 to September 1901. Hangchow was threatened and he was reluctantly, at last, persuaded by the Consul to retire for a time to Shanghai. When he returned it was to find that his friends, the Chinese officials, had kept his house and its contents intact from injury. He resigned as Bishop in 1907, and his wife Adelaide died the following year on 29th March 1909 at Hangchow having been an active missionary by his side for 52 years.
Return to England
He returned to England in 1911 when ill health and advancing years compelled him to relinquish active service abroad. George died after a long a painful illness on Sunday 3rd March 1912 at Auckland Castle in Bishop Auckland at the residence of his younger brother Handley Moule who was the Bishop of Durham. Perhaps his greatest legacy was aptly quoted in the Times newspaper when he died in1912 :-
“When George had originally gone to China protestant converts numbered a few thousand at most. By 1900 very many thousands suffered death with calm courage and since then Chinese Christendom has rapidly increased”
Publications
Author of :- Notes on Hangchow Past and Present & Faith and Duty.