John Saul Howson

Howson was another of those amazingly energetic clerics that Scott encountered throughout his career. He was a student at Trinity College Cambridge, when Peacock was tutor and Whewell the Master of the college, and in 1839 became one of the first members of the Cambridge Camden Society. In 1849 he became the Principal of the Liverpool Collegiate Institution which, like Brighton, was a newly founded boys’ school with evangelical tendencies catering for the needs of the professional and middle classes of the city. Liverpool College, as it became in 1864, was housed in buildings designed by Harvey Lonsdale Elmes, as a result of a competition held in 1840 in which Scott and Moffatt came second out of twenty-eight entries. As Principal of the College, Howson became a figure of some importance in Liverpool and in 1854 was able to set up the Liverpool Northern School of Art. However, in October 1865 he left Liverpool to become the Vicar of Wisbech, only to return to the area twenty months later when appointed Dean of Chester. He then raised £80,000 for the restoration of Chester Cathedral between 1868-72. During one of Scott’s bouts of illness in 1870, Scott stayed with him and his wife for five weeks to recouperate.