Wayte was born in Calne, a town in southwestern England on September 4, 1829. In 1853, Wayte received his B.A. and became a deacon in the Church of England. Most deacons serve as assistant curates in parish churches, a ministry that usually continues through into their ordination to the priesthood. Some are individuals who intend to stay deacons rather than seeking the priesthood. He also became an assistant master at Eton College, a position he held until 1875.
After becoming a priest in 1854 Wayte went on to receive his MA degree in 1856. In 1862, he took on the position of Select Preacher at the University of Cambridge. In 1876, Wayte became a professor of Greek at University College London. His interest in Greek lead to his editing the 5th edition of Plato's Protagoras in 1888, the 2nd edition of Demosthenes' Androtion and Timocrates in 1893 and the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.
In his chess exploits Wayte was one of a group of ministers who played a prominent role in early Victorian Era English chess. Other members of the group included George MacDonnell, John Owen, Charles Ranken, Edmund Thorold, and Arthur Skipworth. I did a post on the vitriolic Arthur Skipworth HERE.
Chess book authors Mike Fox and Richard James remarked, "The English parsons were a talented mob; presumably quiet country parishes in the nineteenth century gave one the leisure needed to become a star. Most of them played under an alias so that their parishioners wouldn't know what they were up to on those long weekends in London." Wayte's alias was "W.H.C."
Wayte played in a number of tournaments in England between 1861 and 1893
1868: second behind Thorold at the 4th Counties Chess Association Congress in York.
1871: second behind Skipworth at the 3rd British Chess Association Challenge Cup in Malvern.
1872: third behind Ranken and Thorold in the first-class section at the 8th Counties Chess Association Congress in Malvern
1873: second behind Skipworth at the 9th Counties Chess Association Congress in Bristol.
1876: Tied for 2nd–4th at Cheltenham with James Minchin and Owen, behind Amos Burn
1877: defeated Minchin in a match held in London
1878: he won the Loewenthal Cup in London
1879: he again won the Loewenthal Cup in London.
With his chess career advancing, Wayte left his professor position at the University College London in 1879 and continued tournament play with his best result being in 1884 when he won the 19th Counties Chess Association tournament in Bath with 5 of 6 possible points and finished ahead of such players as Henry Bird and Rev. MacDonnell.
In 1884, he defeated Thorold in a match held in London (+7 -5 =4). Wayte also wrote for the British Chess Magazine.
In the following game in the databases Wayte’s opponent is given as Oxoniensis which is a pseudonym for Robert B. Brien (source The British Chess Magazine, October 1891).
In 1853, Robert Wormald a fair amateur player who has a variation of the Ruy Lopez named after him, authored a few opening books, edited a chess column and composed problems, once played a match with Brien from whom he received odds of Pawn and two moves. The final score was 3½-3½.
In 1854, Howard Staunton, sold the Chess Player's Chronicle to Brien who at one time was Staunton’s main supporter. Later, Lowenthal hired Brien to serve as his second in his match against Staunton.
The following game was played in London in 1883, but not in the London International Tournament which was won by Zukertort ahead of Steinitz. It was the first tournament in which double clocks were used. Time control was 15 moves in two hours, and if you failed to make the time limit, you forfeited the game.
The clocks consisted of two balanced clocks on a seesaw beam so that when one was tilted, it stopped and the other started. It was manufactured by Fattonini and Sons of Bradford, England. In other chess happenings in 1883, the first International Problem Tourney for Ladies was won by Frideswide Beechey and the first Forsyth notation for giving positions was used in the Glasgow Weekly Herald.
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