Charles Fuge Lowder (22 June 1820 – 9 September 1880) was a priest of the Church of England. He was the founder of the Society of the Holy Cross, a society for Anglo-Catholic priests. Early life Charles Lowder was born on 22 June 1820 at Lansdown Crescent, Bath, England, the eldest of two sons and four daughters of Charles Lowder, a banker, and his wife Susan Fuge. In 1835 he went to King's College School, London, before going to Exeter College, Oxford in February 1840. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree, a second in Greats in 1843 and a Master of Arts degree in 1845. While at Oxford he attended the University Church of St Mary the Virgin where he heard John Henry Newman preach. Under Newman's influence Lowder was drawn into the Oxford Movement and decided to enter the priesthood. Early parish ministry Lowder was ordained deacon at Michaelmas 1843 and became a curate at Walton near Glastonbury. He was ordained priest in December 1844 by Bishop Denison of Salisbury and became chaplain of the Axbridge workhouse. From 1845 to 1851 he was curate of Tetbury, Gloucestershire. However, Lowder wished to move to a parish with a more Catholic pattern of worship and in 1851 he became assistant curate to James Skinner at St Barnabas' Church, Pimlico. St Barnabas', a chapel of ease to St Paul's Knightsbridge was at the time at the vanguard of the Ritualist movement. The church lay at the heart of an area of slums, having been built to serve the poor. There was, however, controversy regarding St Barnabas' use of Catholic ritual. A Mr Westerton, an opponent of the high-church worship at St Barnabas', stood for the post of churchwarden in an attempt to bring them to a stop and hired a man to parade up and down the street wearing a sandwich-board canvassing for votes. In what he later called "a moment of madness" Lowder gave money to the choirboys to buy rotten eggs and encouraged them to pelt the board carrier. As a result, Lowder was called in front of a magistrate and fined. He was also reprimanded by his bishop and suspended from duty for six weeks. Keeping a low profile, Lowder travelled to France and stayed at Yvetot seminary. While there he read a life of St Vincent de Paul. The example of Vincent and the Lazarists had a