Rev. Richard Collins Collins (1872 – 1878)
Trinity dates its existence from the arrival, in Kandy, of the Rev. Richard Collins to reopen the Kandy Collegiate School which had closed down in 1863. Mr. Collins was a Master of Arts of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and came to Ceylon from the Syrian College, Travancore. In 1878 he went on furlough but did not return.
Mr. L. E. Blaze has described him as follows: “He appeared to me a man of reserves and silences. But his apparent aloofness was not due to want of sympathy, for his book ‘Missionary Enterprise in the East’ is full of intelligent appreciation of Eastern needs and habits. The feeling he inspired in us was one of mingled fear and admiration in which there was the fullest and most willing loyalty, without much personal affection.
“Mr. Collins was a man of varied gifts and talents. He was not only skilled in verse; he was not only a writer; he was also a musician, setting his own tunes to various psalms and hymns. He was, again an artist and his love of science showed itself in varied ways in Ceylon. But he was, above all, a Christian Minister, and a missionary with the outlook of a statesman.”