He was educated at
Norwich School, and at
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, becoming a fellow in 1849 and where his brother
Edward was later Master. After holding a chair in
King's College London, he became, in 1862, the fourth
vice-principal of
St Davids College, Lampeter, a college with which he was already familiar, for he had been external examiner between 1851 and 1852. The ageing Principal of the college took a back seat, and Perowne effectively 'took the reins' until his departure from Lampeter in 1872. In 1868 he was elected
Hulsean lecturer, taking as his subject
Immortality or rather
conditional immortality; stating
"The immortality of the soul is a phantom which eludes your eager grasp." He was elected canon of
Llandaff in 1869,
dean of Peterborough 1878, and in 1891 succeeded
Henry Philpott as
bishop of Worcester. While at Lampeter, Perowne had gained a great respect for the theology of his predecessor in the role of Vice-Principal,
Rowland Williams, and when he became a bishop, he went to great lengths to avoid taking action against modernists in the church. Indeed, a work by one of his incumbents, which denied the
Trinity, the
Virgin Birth, the Divinity of Christ, the
Atonement, and the concepts of the
Resurrection of Christ and the
Ascension was described by Perowne as '' 'an honest attempt to deal with great spiritual problems' ''. He resigned his see in late 1901. In 1884 he served as president of the
Midland Union of Natural History Societies. Perowne was a respected
Hebrew scholar of the traditional type and sat on the Old Testament Revision Committee. He is best remembered as the general editor of the
Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges. His chief works were a
Commentary on the Book of Psalms (2 vols., 1864–1868) and a life of
Bishop Thirlwall (1877–1878). ==Descendants==