Proctor Swaby

William Proctor Swaby FRGS (1844 – 16 November 1916)^[1] was a colonial Anglican bishop from 1893^[2] until 1916.

Proctor Swaby
Bishop of Barbados and the Windward Islands
Diocese	Diocese of Barbados & Diocese of the Windward Islands
In office	1899–1916 (d.)
Predecessor	Herbert Bree
Successor	Alfred Berkeley
Other post(s)	Bishop of Guyana (1893–1899)
Orders
Consecration	1893 by Edward White Benson (Canterbury)
Personal details
Born	1844 (1844) Tetney, Lincolnshire, UK
Died	16 November 1916(1916-11-16) (aged 71–72)
Denomination	Anglican
Occupation	bishop
Alma mater	Durham University

Born in Tetney,^[3] Swaby was educated at Durham University, where he won the Barry Scholarship.^[4] He eventually gained a doctorate in Divinity^[5] He held incumbencies at Castletown, Sunderland^[6] and at Milfield before being ordained to the episcopate in 1893^[7] as Bishop of Guyana.^[8] He was consecrated a bishop on 24 March 1893, by Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Westminster Abbey.^[9]

In Guyana he encouraged the development of a Third Order of Saint Francis within the Anglican church based on the work by Emily Marshall. She was his sister-in-law and she had been an assistant from when he was in Sunderland.^[10] Swaby's archdeacon Fortunato Pietro Luigi Josa published St. Francis of Assisi and the Third Order in the Anglo-Catholic Church in 1898 in England quoting text from the order's founder but without naming her. The idea grew^[10] and when Swaby was Translated to Barbados and the Windward Islands in December 1899^[11]/1900 then the new order quickly took hold.^[10]

Swaby held the two separate Sees of Barbados and of the Windward Islands together.^[12] He died in post in 1916.

Swaby was a Fellow of the Colonial Institute and the Royal Microscopical Society.^[4]