MIDDLETON, Thomas Fanshawe, D.D., the first English Bishop of Calcutta, was born at the village of Redleston in Derbyshire, on the 26th of January 1769, where his father, Rev. Thomas Middleton, was rector. He received his early education at Christ's Hospital, London, and then entered Pembroke Hall, in the university of Cambridge, where he graduated with honours in 1792. Having received ordination, he became a curate at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, where he for some time edited a periodical publication called the Country Spectator. In 1795 he was presented by Dr. Pretyman, Archdeacon of Lincoln (to whose sons he had for some time been tutor), to the rectory of Tansor in Northamptonshire; and in 1799 he was made curate of St Peter's, Mancroft. His former patron in 1802 presented him to the rectory of Bytham in Lincolnshire, when he commenced to write The Doctrine of the Greek Article, applied to the Criticism and Illustration of the New Testament,—a work which caused considerable controversy, especially among the Unitarians, on its first appearance in 1808. In 1812, after taking his degree of Doctor of Divinity at Cambridge, he received the archdeaconry of Huntingdon, and took up his residence at St Pancras, Middlesex, of which he had been recently appointed vicar.
Calcutta having about this time been made a bishop's see, Dr. Middleton was appointed the first bishop on the 8th May 1814. In this position he displayed great diligence and zeal in promoting the cause of Christianity. He founded the Bishop's College at Calcutta for the education of missionaries for Asia in 1820, and instituted a consistory court at Calcutta. He died of fever at this eastern capital on the 8th of July 1822. Some of his sermons, charges, &c., were collected into a volume, and published at London, with a memoir of the author prefixed by Dr. H. K. Bonney in 1824.