CHURCH APPOINTMENTS
Osborne, 15th September 1845.
Sir Robert Peel, with his humble duty to your Majesty, begs leave to acquaint your Majesty that there remains the sum of £700 to be applied in the current year to the grant of Civil List Pensions.
Sir Robert Peel humbly recommends to your Majesty that another sum of £200 should be offered to Mr Tennyson, a poet of whose powers of imagination and expression many competent judges think most highly.
He was brought under the notice of Sir Robert Peel by Mr Hallam. His pecuniary circumstances are far from being prosperous.
There is a vacancy in the Deanery of Lincoln, but the preferment is less eligible from there being no residence, and the necessity for building one at the immediate expense of the new Dean.
Sir Robert Peel is inclined to recommend to your Majesty that an offer of this preferment should be made to Mr Ward, the Rector of St James's.
Should Mr Ward decline, there is a clergyman of the name of Maurice,24 of whom the Archbishop says: "Of unbeneficed London clergy there is no one, I believe, who is so much distinguished by his learning and literary talent as the Rev. Frederick Maurice, Chaplain of St Guy's Hospital. His private character is equally estimable."
Should Mr Ward decline25 the Deanery it might, should your Majesty approve of it, be offered to Mr Maurice. The Archbishop says that the appointment of Mr Maurice would be very gratifying to the King of Prussia.