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William Smith (bishop)

Catholic archbishop from Scotland

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 28, 2026
Entity authorityQ8018543 ↗
Source-derived summary

William Smith (3 July 1819 – 16 March 1892) was a Catholic clergyman from Scotland. He served as the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh.

Life

Born in Edinburgh on 3 July 1819, he entered Blairs College in July 1832 to begin studies for the priesthood. He continued his studies at the Scots College, Rome in August 1836 and was ordained a priest on 15 April 1843. He returned to Scotland and was appointed professor of Latin, Greek and Hebrew at Blairs. In 1852, he was tasked with the reorganization of the Scots Monastery, Regensburg. After a year and a half, he was recalled to Scotland to serve as rector of St Clement's Academy, Wellburn and as priest in charge of the Lochee mission. He later succeeded George Rigg as priest in charge of St Mary's, Edinburgh. Subsequently, he was appointed to Dalkeith, Oakley, Dunfermline and Perth. In 1869, the degree of Doctor of Divinity was bestowed upon him in recognition of his publication The Book of Moses.

Editorial summary

“William Smith (bishop)” enters the record as catholic archbishop from Scotland. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what William, Smith and bishop can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1819, 1892, 1832, 1836—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1819-07-03. Its strongest next move is a source search built around William, Smith and bishop.
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“William Smith (bishop)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, William, Smith and bishop provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8018543. VIAF identifies the subject as 36021446. The Library of Congress control number is n88259665. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1819, 1892, 1832 and 1836.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “William Smith (bishop)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.