| Proctor Swaby | |
| Bishop of Barbados and the Windward Islands | |
| Term: | 1899–1916 (d.) |
| Predecessor: | Herbert Bree |
| Successor: | Alfred Berkeley |
| Consecration: | 1893 |
| Consecrated By: | Edward White Benson (Canterbury) |
| Birth Place: | Tetney, Lincolnshire, UK |
| Religion: | Anglican |
| Occupation: | bishop |
| Alma Mater: | Durham University |
William Proctor Swaby FRGS (184416 November 1916)[1] was a colonial Anglican bishop from 1893[2] until 1916.
Born in Tetney,[3] Swaby was educated at Durham University, where he won the Barry Scholarship.[4] He eventually gained a doctorate in Divinity[5] He held incumbencies at Castletown, Sunderland[6] and at Milfield before being ordained to the episcopate in 1893[7] as Bishop of Guyana.[8] He was consecrated a bishop on 24 March 1893, by Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Westminster Abbey.
In Guyana he encouraged the development of a Third Order of Saint Francis within the Anglican church based on the work by Emily Marshall. She was his sister-in-law and she had been an assistant from when he was in Sunderland.[9] Swaby's archdeacon Fortunato Pietro Luigi Josa published St. Francis of Assisi and the Third Order in the Anglo-Catholic Church in 1898 in England quoting text from the order's founder but without naming her. The idea grew[9] and when Swaby was Translated to Barbados and the Windward Islands in December 1899/1900 then the new order quickly took hold.[9]
Swaby held the two separate Sees of Barbados and of the Windward Islands together. He died in post in 1916.
Swaby was a Fellow of the Colonial Institute and the Royal Microscopical Society.