The Daily Telegraph 30-Apr-1976 MR J.GURNEY BARCLAY Banker and missionary The Bishop of Worcester writes: Gurney Barclay, who has just died at the age of 97 had a unique and widely respected career as banker and missionary. The third son of Robert Barclay of High Leigh, he was educated at Harrow and Trinity College Cambridge, where he got a first class in Natural Sciences. He entered the family bank, but after some years he abandoned a promising career and went off to work as a missionary in Japan in 1908. Although his young wife Gillian died soon after reaching the Far East, he remained there for some 17 years building up the small Christian Church and exercising a remarkable influence in Japan before and during the Great War. As an inheritor of both Quaker and Evangelical Anglican enthusiasm he was dedicated to the betterment of the people of the Far East and is still remembered there. He married secondly in 1915, and returned to Britain in 1926 to work for the Church Missionary Society, the Bible Society and other Christian causes. His ability as an administrator, financier and expert on Far Eastern affairs was much in demand by the overseas work of the Church between the wars. At the same time he demonstrated an adaptability and understanding of theological and religious changes that was not always the case with narrow evangelicals of his generation. He was never ordained but be was a lay reader and a good preacher. While pursuing his missionary convictions he also became a notable naturalist and an authority on ferns and butterflies; at the same time he was an unusually good shot and a skilled fisherman. He continued travelling to London regularly until he was 92. He will be remembered as one remarkably versatile in his rare abilities and ably supported by his second wife for more than 60 years of married life