Henry Michell Wagner

Henry Michell Wagner (1792–1870) was a Church of England clergyman who was Vicar of Brighton between 1824 and 1870. He was a descendant of Melchior Wagner, hatmaker to the Royal Family, and married into a wealthy Sussex family who had a longstanding ecclesiastical connection with Brighton. Wagner paid for and oversaw the building of five churches in the rapidly growing seaside resort, and "dominated religious life in the town" with his forceful personality and sometimes controversial views and actions.^[4] His son Arthur Wagner (1824–1902) continued the family's close association with Brighton.

Wagner tutored the Duke of Wellington's sons for several years, and the Duke was responsible for appointing Wagner to the position of Vicar of Brighton—a role fulfilled by his grandfather Henry Michell in the 18th century. "This appointment was to have very considerable implications for the Anglican Church in Brighton" for the next century,^[5] as Wagner (and, later, his son) built new churches, founded and endowed charitable causes, imposed their strong characters on the town and became embroiled in regular disputes and controversies. The "Purchas affair", involving one of Wagner's curates and a proprietary chapel, was "the most extraordinary event" in Brighton's Victorian-era religious history and was reported nationally.^[6]