Charles Mackenzie (bishop)

Charles Frederick Frazier Mackenzie (1825–62) was a Church of England bishop of Central Africa. He is commemorated in some Anglican Church Calendars.

Life

He was born at Portmore, Peeblesshire, Scotland, the ninth son of Colin Mackenzie and Elizabeth Forbes.^[1] Anne Mackenzie, editor of all 31 years of The Net Cast in Many Waters: Sketches from the Life of Missionaries, London, 1866–1896, was his unmarried sister. He was educated at Bishop Wearmouth school and Edinburgh Academy, and entered St John's College, Cambridge in 1844. He migrated to Caius College, where he graduated B. A. as Second Wrangler in 1848, and became a Fellow of Caius.^[2]

He was ordained as a priest in 1852 and served as curate of Haslingfield near Cambridge, 1851-4. In 1855, he went to Natal with Bishop Colenso and served as Archdeacon of Natal. They worked among the English settlers till 1859 when he returned to England briefly to raise support for more direct missionary work.^[3] In 1860, Mackenzie became head of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa and he was consecrated bishop in St George's Cathedral, Cape Town, on 1 January 1861. Following Dr David Livingstone's request to Cambridge, Bishop Mackenzie took on the position of being the first missionary bishop in Nyasaland (now Malawi).

Bishop Mackenzie's grave with the cross placed there by David Livingstone in 1863

Moving from Cape Town, Bishop Mackenzie sailed up the Zambezi and Shire rivers with a small group to start work. He arrived at Chibisa’s village in June 1861 with the goal to establish a mission station at Magomero, near Zomba. He directly opposed the slave trade causing the enmity of the Yao. Bishop Mackenzie worked among the people of the Manganja country until January 1862 when he went on a supplies trip together with a few members of his party. The boat they were travelling on sank and as their medical supplies were lost, Bishop Mackenzie’s malaria could not be treated. He died of Blackwater fever on 31 January 1862 on an island in the Shire River. Dr Livingstone erected a cross over his grave a year later.

An International school in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, is named after him.

See also

• Church of the Province of Central Africa

References

• Goodwin, Harvey Memoir of Bishop Mackenzie; second edition. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, 1865
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "^{article name needed}". New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.

Further reading

• Biography in Frances Awdry, An Elder Sister: a short sketch of Anne Mackenzie, and her brother the missionary bishop, London, 1878, 3rd ed. 1904.
• William Hunt, "Mackenzie, Charles Frederick (1825-1862), also including Anne Mackenzie", rev. Landeg White, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 6 Dec 2010