Lives in Cricket No 51 - Rev ES Carter

was back in England in July 1869. There is no extant detailed record of other matches played in the English summer of 1869, and perhaps only social cricket was played by Carter for he had made up his mind to follow his father’s vocation and to train to become a deacon and then priest in the Church of England. One important event that late summer remained. On 22 September 1869 Edmund Carter married Rosia Sophia Bladon, a marriage that was to provide for them at least eight children and to last for 43 years. Rosia came from Uttoxeter in Staffordshire, her father being Thomas Bladon, ‘Gentleman’, as shown on the marriage certificate. The marriage ceremony was at Edmund’s father’s church, in the parish of Slingsby, Yorkshire, where William Carter remained Rector, and was registered at Malton. To become an ordinand of the Church of England, Edmund still had to complete studies in theology so after a period at his parents’ home he returned to Oxford for the Easter and Trinity Terms of 1870 to attend lectures given by William Bright, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, and by Robert Payne Smith, Regius Professor of Divinity and later a Dean of Canterbury. Those lectures with any additional studies for his degree seemed to comprise the academic side of Carter’s training for the Church He needed to find a parish in which to work before application could be made to be ordained a deacon. That parish was to be Christ Church, Ealing. Family 25