deaconry of Berkshire. Pott subsequently held the benefices of Clifton-Hampden (1874-82) and of Sonning (1882-99). He resigned the archdeaconry in 1903, but retained his hon. canonry. In convocation Pott was a recognised authority on ecclesiastical law; and as archdeacon he showed wisdom and judgment. Although a high churchman he enjoyed the friendship of men of widely divergent opinions. He died at Windlesham, Surrey, on 28 Feb. 1908, and was buried at Chfton-Hampden. In 1855 he married Emily Harriet (d. 1903), daughter of Joseph Gibbs, vicar of Clifton-Hampden.
Besides sermons and charges, Pott published: 1. 'Confirmation Lectures delivered to a Village Congregation,' 1852; 5th edit. 1886. 2. 'Village Lectures on the Sacraments and Occasional Services of the Church,' 1854.
[The Times, 29 Feb. 1908; Guardian, 4 March 1908; Life of Samuel Wilberforce, 1883, ii. 366, iii. 399; Johnston, Life and Letters of Henry Parry Liddon, 1904, pp. 30 seq.; Cuddesdon College (1854-1904), 1904; Bloxam, Register of St. Mary Magdalen College, Oxford, 1881, vii. 357; Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1888.]
POWELL, FREDERICK YORK (1850–1904), regius professor of modern history at Oxford, born on 14 Jan. 1850 at 33 Woburn Place, Bloomsbury, was eldest child and only son of Frederick Powell, by his wife Mary (d. 1910), daughter of Dr. James York (d. 1882), 'a very clever and good physician and a pretty Spanish scholar and a handsome man.' His father, a commissariat merchant, who had an office in Mincing Lane, came of a south Wales family, and the son was proud to call himself a Welshman. Much of Powell's early life was spent at Sandgate, where he learned to love the sea and developed enduring friendships with the
fisher folk. In the autumn of 1859 he was put to a preparatory school at Hastings (the Manor House, kept by Mr. Alexander Murray). In 1864 he entered Dr. Jex Blake's house at Rugby, but though he gained a name for 'uncanny stories and remote species of knowledge,' he never rose above the lower fifth and left, chiefly for reasons of health, in July 1866. The next two years were fruitfully spent in travel and self-education. There was a visit to Biarritz, and a tour in Sweden which gave Powell, who had read Dasent's story of 'Burnt Njal' at Rugby, occasion to learn and practise a Scandinavian tongue. At
eighteen he was placed under the care of Mr. Henry Tull Rhoades at Bonchurch, and began to work at Old French, German, and Icelandic. He was already a strong socialist and agnostic, and had formed most of the tastes and prejudices which accompanied him through life — an interest in old armour, a special attraction for the art of William Blake, a passion for northern and medieval literature, and an aversion from philosophy, excepting always the work of Kant and Schopenhauer.
Powell went to Oxford in 1868, and after a year spent with the non-collegiate students was received into Christ Church, on the recommendation of Dr. George William Kitchin, censor of the non-collegiate body and formerly student and tutor of Christ Church. He gained a first class in the school of law and modern history in Trinity term 1872. After graduating B.A., Powell spent two years (1872-4) at his father's house in Lancaster Gate. He had entered at the Middle Temple on 8 Nov. 1870, and was called to the bar on 6 June 1874.
Powell's first academic appointment was to teach one of the few subjects in which he had no enthusiastic interest. In 1874 he was appointed to a lectureship in law at Christ Church, and save for a year's interlude as history lecturer at Trinity — an engagement terminated owing to the representation of some of his pupils who wished to be crammed for examinations — Powell's official teaching in Oxford was, until 1894, confined to the uncongenial subjects of law and political economy. He had however attracted the attention of Mandell Creighton [q. v. Suppl. I], one of his examiners in the schools, and was invited to contribute a volume on Early England to Longman's 'Epochs of English History,' of which Creighton was editor. The book, 'Early England to the Norman Conquest,' which was published in 1876, delighted Creighton, who pronounced it to be written 'in a charmingly simple, almost Biblical style.' Meanwhile, in 1869, Powell had met Gudbrandr Vigfusson [q. v.], who had come to Oxford in 1866 to edit the 'Icelandic-EngUsh Dictionary' for the Oxford Press. In 1877 Powell was already engaged with Vigfusson upon the Prolegomena to an edition of the 'Sturlunga Saga,' 'taking down across the table,' said Vigfvisson, 'my thoughts and theories, so that though the substance and drift of the arguments are mine, the English with the exception of bits and phrases here and there is Mr. Powell's throughout.' An 'Icelandic Prose Reader,' the notes to which were mainly the
