Edwin James Palmer (called James) was the Bishop of Bombay from 1908 until 1929. He was born in 1869 into a noted family and educated at Winchester College and Balliol College, Oxford. Made deacon in 1896 and ordained priest in 1898, he was elected a Fellow of his old college and was Tutor and Chaplain there until his appointment to the Episcopate where (according to his Times obituary) he was “moderate in opinion and accommodating in all things except where basic beliefs and principles were involved”. Palmer was the subject of a clerihew which acquired some currency at Oxford: "J. A. Smith