The family moved in 1818 to Florence. After his father's death in 1828 his mother settled in Bath, and he was sent to a strict evangelical school at Redland, Bristol. He was admitted in 1832 to Wadham College, Oxford, where he took first-class honours in 1836. His mother, meanwhile, was remarried to Thomas Crokat, a widowed Englishman of Leghorn. In 1838, he was elected fellow of Oriel College. One of his contemporaries, Richard Mitchell, commenting on this election, said: "There is such a moral beauty about Church that they could not help taking him". He was appointed tutor of Oriel in 1839 and was ordained the same year. He was a close friend of John Henry Newman in this period and closely allied to the Tractarian movement. In 1841 Tract 90 of "Tracts for the Times" appeared and Church resigned his tutorship.