William Edward Scudamore

William Edward Scudamore (1813-1881) was a prominent Church of England priest, historian, liturgist, chaplain, and devotional author. His popular devotional manual Steps to the Altar reached its sixty-seventh edition in 1887, and was used extensively in North America and on the Indian subcontinent in addition to in Great Britain.

Scudamore was a nephew of the eminent physician of gout Sir Charles Scudamore. Educated initially in Belgium, he matriculated at St. John's College, Cambridge in 1831, where he received the degrees of B.A. (1835) and M.A. (1838). He was admitted as a fellow of the college on March 14, 1837. Scudamore was active in the organization of women's religious life in the Church of England, serving as chaplain to a church institution for women first at Shipmeadow in Suffolk and then at Ditchingham in Norfolk where he was rector of St. Mary's Church. This became the Community of All Hallows, whose Ditchingham convent closed in April 2018.

A moderate Anglo-Catholic, Scudamore entered into public controversy with the English Church Union over church calendar revision, wafer-bread, and non-communicating attendance at the Holy Communion.