William Fiddian Moulton

William's father, James Moulton, was a Wesleyan Methodist minister and he had at least three other brothers, and probably two sisters. Like his father and grandfather, William became a Wesleyan minister and in 1875 the first headmaster of The Leys School, Cambridge. He remained headmaster for the rest of his life; one of the school's houses is named after him.

He was elected President of the Methodist Conference at Bristol in 1890.[1]

On a stormy afternoon in 1898, he was on his way to visit a sick parishioner when he suffered a heart attack in the grounds of the school. A gardener found him and bought him back to his house, where he died soon after, aged sixty-two. He was interred in Histon Road Cemetery, Cambridge, and has a memorial in Wesley's Chapel, London. The Memorial Chapel, The Leys School was built as a memorial to him; the chapel was consecrated on 27 October 1906.

In his biography, his son James noted that "So genuine was his sense of unworthiness that praise to him became a positive pain. He would walk out of the room rather than hear a laudatory passage about himself."

He wrote a concordance of the Greek New Testament, and some titles with his son James. He sat on various inter-denominational committees concerned with translations of the New Testament.

Selected writings

• The History of the English Bible (1st ed.). 1878. Moulton, William Fiddian (1882). 2nd edition, revised. Moulton, William Fiddian (1911). 5th edition, revised & enlarged by the sons of Rev. W. F. Moulton.[2]
• A Treatise on the Grammar of New Testament Greek by G. B. Winer, translated from the German.
• Concordance to the Greek Testament, with Alfred Shenington Geden , (subsequently revised by his grandson Harold Keeling Moulton, ISBN 0 567 08571 6)
• The Story of the Manchester Mission
• The Old World and the New Faith, Notes Upon the Historical Narrative Contained in the Acts of the Apostles

Biography

• William F. Moulton, a memoir written by his two sons, William Fiddian Moulton Jr. and James Hope Moulton.

• John Fletcher Moulton, brother
• Richard Green Moulton, brother
• James Egan Moulton, brother
• James Hope Moulton, son

• Norgate, Gerald le Grys (1901). "Moulton, William Fiddian" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography (1st supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• John Wesley's School at Kingswood by John Telford