Anglican Bishop. The third Bishop of Virginia, he was a founder of the Virginia Theological Seminary and later served as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America. Born to a distinguished family, he was raised in what was then a wilderness area of Virginia, graduated as valedictorian of his class at Princeton University (then, Nassau Hall) in 1808, then read theology with the Reverend Walter Addison of Maryland. Ordained to the Diaconate at Williamsburg's historic Bruton Parish in 1811, he was ordained a Priest in 1814. While serving as rector of a number of parishes, including Christ Church, Alexandria, he was part of the 1823 founding of the Virginia Theological Seminary where he to be president for a time. Though Meade had freed his own slaves and was personally opposed to the peculiar institution he did not view the practice as sin from a Biblical perspective and tried to chart a middle course, being active in the American Colonization Society from 1818 on and encouraging masters to treat their subjects well and provide for their religious education. Meade received a Doctor of Divinity degree from the College of William and Mary in 1827 then in 1829 was Consecrated Bishop and named as auxilliary to Bishop Richard Channing Moore. Continuing his preaching and Seminary teaching, he also authored several texts and was a central figure in the fight against the Oxford Movement, a 19th. century attempt to move the Anglican Church closer to the Roman Catholic Church. Promoted to Bishop of Virginia upon Dr. Moore's death in 1841, he was active evangelization efforts as well as in a number of major church discipline cases against Priests and Bishops. With the steadily worsening sectional strife of the 1850s Meade stood firmly against both secession and war but reluctantly followed when Virginia left the Union. When northern troops invaded his state, however, he changed his views, becoming a full supporter of the Confederate Army and of a separate Southern Church. After a period of steadily declining health he died while in Richmond for the Consecration of Bishop Richard Hooker Wilmer of Alabama. Bishop Meade gave his final blessing to General Robert E. Lee whom he was the only man to call by his first name.