Edward Augustus Freeman

“ The head shire of Lincoln now remains the whole diocese of its Bishop.
Among the small shires of Eastern Mercia one might somewhat relax the rule of a Bishop to each diocese. Huntingdon and Bedford might go together. But a separate bishopric for Leicester is as much needed as one for Suffolk. As we draw near to south-eastern England, the minds of "provincials" (not in the ecclesiastical sense) begin to be troubled: "metropolitan" (not in the ecclesiastical sense) vastness is too much for them. ”

“ Simply to divide a large district or to unite two small ones needs no geographical protest. The main boundaries live on through either process. What geography kicks at is the making a district out of mere scraps of other districts. ”

“ The bishopstool was changed, and the style of the Bishop with it, but the boundaries of the diocese remained the same.
The principle that I should try to lay down is that dioceses should follow counties. It is the principle of old Gaul, the principle of modern Germany, the principle of England at several intermediate stages, that the ecclesiastical divisions should follow the civil. It is specially needful in England, where the civil divisions are so old, where they enter into so many points of men's thoughts, feelings, and associations. ”

“ An eminent Presbyterian wept at coming to Mainz and finding only a diocesan Bishop. He did not expect to find an Elector, but he did expect to find an Archbishop of some kind. But on the principle which gave Mainz either Archbishop or Elector, it was most likely right that, when the Elector passed away, the Archbishop should pass away also.
England comes somewhere between the two. The civil divisions have, for the last thousand years, changed wonderfully little. An English shire has become something like a natural object ”

“ The bishopric of Bristol is a standing difficulty. Henry VIII. planted the bishopstool at Bristol, and made Dorset the diocese. From this the union of Gloucester and Bristol was a natural revulsion. The cry for a separate bishopric of Bristol is equally natural now. But it is an equally natural cry that the abiding frontier of the diocese of Somerset, already slightly nibbled at, must not be further disturbed by any patched-up bishopric of "Bath and Bristol," or nobody knows what. Bristol in temporal matters belongs neither to Gloucestershire nor to Somerset; it is a free city. ”

“ The Bishop was Bishop of a city, and he remains so. The English Bishop was sometimes Bishop of a city from the beginning, more commonly he was Bishop of a land or rather of a people. His title was Bishop of the South-Saxons or of the Sumorsætan. The place of the bishopstool in Gaul varied but seldom (as St. Lo was moved to Coutances) ; in England it was ever shifting. This leads to confusion. "Somerset," "Wells," "Bath," and "Bath and Wells" are simply different names for the same extent of country. So were Lichfield, Chester, Coventry, Coventry and Lichfield, Lichfield and Coventry. ”