X-Nico

5 unusual facts about William Harris Rule


Education in Gibraltar

The regrowth of the schools can can assigned to Mary Ann Rule who was the wife of William Harris Rule a newly arrived Methodist missionary in Gibraltar.

Manuel Matamoros

For instance there is a card for Rev. William Harris Rule, a Methodist minister who had tried unsuccessfully to introduce Protestantism into Spain twenty years before Matamoros.

William Harris Rule

The Jews eventually withdrew on religious grounds and Rule was involved when the Lieutenant Governor William Houston set up the first official free school on Flat Bastion Road in 1832 and he sent his own children there.

The whole matter came to a head on the centenary of the Wesleyan Foundation in 1839 when Gibraltarians were surprised to see 400 of Rule's local school children marching down Main Street carrying banners that showed that they were committing to the Methodist approach.

Amongst others he twice met Félix Torres Amat who was the Bishop of Astorga who had translated the bible into Spanish in 1824, but had had difficulty finding money for publication.



see also