Diocese of Canterbury

“ At Canterbury, during the stormy period of the Reform Bill, his talents, which were allied with a combative temperament, found abundant occupation, and both by voice and pen he became recognised as the leader of the church party in the diocese. But he was no less a zealous parish priest, and to him is due the first venture in cheap church periodical literature. ”

“ The principal dimensions of the cathedral arc: length (outside) 522 ft., nave 178 ft., choir 180 ft. The nave is 71 ft. in breadth and 80 ft. in height.
The archbishop of Canterbury is primate of all England; the ecclesiastical province of Canterbury covers England Province and diocese. and Wales south of Cheshire and Yorkshire; and the diocese covers a great part of Kent with a small part of Sussex. The following is a list of archbishops of Canterbury:—
The archbishop has a seat at Lambeth Palace, London. ”

“ It is the privilege of the archbishop of Canterbury to crown the kings and queens of England. He is entitled to consecrate all the bishops within his province and was formerly entitled, upon consecrating a bishop, to select a benefice within his diocese at his option for one of his chaplains, but this practice was indirectly abolished by 3 and 4 Vict. ”

“ The conversion of the Pagan inhabitants of Kent proceeded so rapidly that St. Augustine, with the assistance of King Ethelbert, soon founded another episcopal see at Rochester, and thus divided the Kentish kingdom into two dioceses: the eastern, or diocese of Canterbury; the western, or diocese of Rochester. ”

“ Defeat never made him idle or despondent, and his noblest triumphs, the conversion of the last heathen people of English race, were won in exile. At the same time, he was hasty, impolitic, and perhaps over-jealous for his own honour. In the part that the two archbishops took against him it is hard not to see some fear lest the magnificence of the northern prelate should endanger the authority of Canterbury in Northumbria, though they certainly acted for the good of the Church in insisting on the division of his vast diocese. ”

“ Educated at Oxford, he soon began to teach in the university, of which he became chancellor, probably after he had studied in Paris and in Bologna. About 1235 he became chancellor of the diocese of Canterbury under Archbishop Edmund Rich, and he was with the archbishop during his exile in France. Having returned to England some time after Edmund's death in 1240 he became vicar of Deal and chancellor of Canterbury for the second time. ”

“ The archdeacon cited the abbot to appear before him, and on his refusal cited him before the bishop. The abbot refused to acknowledge the bishop's authority, and Grosseteste excommunicated him. When the bishop sent lay visitors to Bardney to bring the monks to submission, the door was shut in their faces. He threatened to bring ruin on the convent, and the abbot appealed to the Canterbury chapter. The bishop then deposed the abbot, and the king seized on the temporalities. The Canterbury monks then assembled fifty priests of the diocese, and solemnly excommunicated the bishop. ”

“ He began by confiscating all the property of Canterbury situated in Mercia, and then he appealed to the Pope that the bishop of Lichfield should be made an archbishop. The Pope assented, a council held at Chelsea in 785 also agreed, and Higbert, the new bishop, became archbishop, with the bishoprics of Worcester, Leicester, Lincoln, and Hereford, parts of the old diocese of Mercia, as well as Elmham and Dunwich, to make up his province. Offa died in 796, and immediately a stir was made to restore Canterbury to its old dignity. ”

“ But to return to Thomas. In 1071 he went with Lanfranc to Rome to receive the pall. The question of precedence was there argued, and the Pope decided in favour of Canterbury. Afterwards, at a synod held by William, it was decided that the Archbishop of York should swear allegiance to Canterbury, and must be consecrated in Canterbury Cathedral, that the diocese of York from that time should not extend south of the Humber, and that the archbishop should lose his authority over the see of Worcester. ”

“ Before his consecration the average number of confirmations in the diocese had not exceeded twenty-seven a year, and no bishop, it was said, had been seen within man's memory in three out of every four parishes. The number of confirmations under Parry's régime rose at once to eighty or ninety annually, and after several years of strenuous labour there remained no incumbency of the archdeaconry in which he had not at least officiated once, while the annual visitations which he held at Canterbury were opportunities for strengthening his intimacy with both clergy and laity in the diocese. ”

“ In October 1896 he was nominated by Lord Salisbury to the archbishopric of Canterbury. A meeting took place at the Guildhall on 18 Jan. 1897 to commemorate his London episcopate, when the lord mayor and corporation of the City of London attended in state and at least 1500 persons were present, and many presentations were made to the archbishop. The 'Morning Post' stated that 'the history of church work in London since Dr. Temple entered upon the diocese has scarcely a parallel in the history of church work during the century.' He was enthroned in Canterbury Cathedral in 1897. ”

“ It was only very gradually that these dioceses acquired legislative independence and a determinate organization. At first, sees were created and bishops were nominated by the crown by means of letters patent; and in some cases an income was assigned out of public funds. Moreover, for many years all bishops alike were consecrated in England, took the customary "oath of due obedience" to the archbishop of Canterbury, and were regarded as his extra-territorial suffragans. ”

“ The passers-by of to-day are not those whom we should see, for we should bend our mind’s eye on monk, priest and pilgrim, on knight, dame and squire, or king, queen and prince; it needs no vivid imagination to call up these shades of the past. But above all and through all the pageantry of old days looms the church; Canterbury is a city of churches, of priories, monasteries, hospitals. There is St Dunstan’s, where in the Roper vault they say is the head of Sir Thomas More ”

“ This much is known from authentic records, that the present constitution of the convocation of the prelates and clergy of the province of Canterbury was recognized as early as in the eleventh year of the reign of Edward I. (1283) as its normal constitution; and that in extorting that recognition from the crown, which the clergy accomplished by refusing to attend unless summoned in lawful manner (debito modo) through their metropolitan, the clergy of the province of Canterbury taught the laity the possibility of maintaining the freedom of the nation against the encroachments of the royal power. ”

“ To this the King's messengers replied, "Appoint from among yourselves, my lords, men whom you may send to make these proposals to the lord King; for we, knowing that his wrath is roused, fear to tell him of them." When the clergy had done so, the King's anger broke forth, and giving way to furious rage, he declared the Archbishop of Canterbury himself and all the clergy of England outside his guardianship and protection ”

“ But both ways we usually fall short of the fact; they were most picturesque, most uncomfortable. We have seen how once upon a time the Cathedral, now so decorously grey,{67} blazed with purple and fine linen; so too was it with all life; the very streets now so sober-minded were then a veritable kaleidoscope; all life was highly coloured, save that of the cloister. In those times in the good city of Canterbury it must have been as difficult when one took his walk abroad to avoid the sight of a hospital or of a holy house as to-day to escape from the clangour of church bells. ”

“ This grievous error, which has the necessary effect of repelling and ultimately offending and alienating the whole body of the inferior clergy, a body who constitute the active strength of the Establishment, we must hope to see henceforth totally changed. In the higher view of the case, an Archbishop of Canterbury possesses every advantage for giving an honourable and meritorious popularity to the Church. ”

“ This splendid church, representing the finest achievement of Norman master-builders and workmen, rising high above the domestic quarters of the monastery and standing forth conspicuously from every part of the little walled city, then consisting, to a considerable extent, of low wooden houses, had now reached the stage in its development when it was to be the scene of the murder which was to make Canterbury the most famous resort of pilgrims in Europe. ”

“ After the church, after opus dei, the life of a monk may be said to have centred in the cloister. Here the novices and junior monks “learned their lessons,” which were many and arduous; here the elders put those lessons into daily practice. It cannot have been a sybaritic life; far from it. Then the refectory, or frater, which at Canterbury ran along the north side of the cloisters—and here again we may well recall one of the old college halls, or that beautiful hall of the Middle Temple ”

“ The ground of the quarrel was the right of the town to the appointment of bishops. The Pope had canonically appointed Stephen Langton to the see of Canterbury, and the monks of Canterbury refused to submit to any other archbishop. John, however, was determined that his favourite, John de Gray, Bishop of Norwich, should receive the appointment, and he sent two knights with a body of soldiers to Canterbury, to drive the rebellious monks out of the country. ”

“ Most Nonconformists with an instinct for English history could see something poetic and national about the Archbishop of Canterbury as an Archbishop of Canterbury. It is when he does the rational British statesman that they very justifiably get annoyed. ”

“ Before closing this chapter it would be well to draw attention to the evidence which may be rightly adduced concerning the style and appearance of Christ Church, Canterbury, from the earliest seal of the Cathedral foundation. It is attached to twelfth-century muniments, but is undoubtedly earlier, possibly of the middle of the tenth century, after Archbishop Odo had raised the walls of the Church and made other improvements, and before the fire of 1067. ”

“ A few steps onward up the steep little Harbledown Hill and we have a view of Canterbury Cathedral across the River Stour—a view which has delighted the eye and heart of many pilgrims, whether ancient or modern. Nearly a mile downhill and we come to St. Dunstan's Church in the environs of Canterbury. Here in a vault is the head of a nobler martyr than Becket—of a man with all Becket's constancy and faith, with more than Becket's intellect, and without his haughty spirit and violent temper. ”

“ And indeed dead as she is and silent, Canterbury is worthy of resurrection if only because she is as it were a part of him and a part, too, of our origins, the well, though not the source from which the Faith was given us. For some thirteen hundred years when men have spoken of Canterbury, they have had in mind the metropolitan church of England, the great cathedral which still stands so finely there in the rather gloomy close behind Christ Church gate, rightly upon the foundations of its predecessors, Roman, Saxon, and Norman buildings. ”

“ There is always a certain sociological interest in the public utterances of an Archbishop of Canterbury. He is a great State official who automatically registers the level of the public opinion of the respectable classes. ”

“ It granted that the church of the Saviour (ecclesia Salvatoris) , situated in Canterbury, the mother and lady of all the churches in the kingdom of England, should be free, and that no one should have any right therein save the archbishop and the monks there serving God. The whole tenor of the charter, and more particularly the words last referred to, "archiepiscopum et monachos ibidem deo famulantes," seem to me to indicate the cathedral church, and no other. ”

“ By walking outside Canterbury, a mile distant to Saint Thomas’s Hill, on the Whitstable Road, you shall see how thoroughly the Cathedral dominates the city; and arrive, by an exploration of the narrow lanes and the meads below, at an understanding of how this great Minster was Canterbury, and how subservient to it was all else. Affairs are now very different. A vigorous and pulsing life belongs to the streets and lanes, while it is the Church that has passed away from the intimate life of the people, and sunk back into retirement. ”

“ Thomas of Canterbury would not grant him such things as he asked, contrary to the liberties of the Church, first banished him out of this realm; and at his return he was slain at his own church, for the right of Holy Church, as many holy fathers have suffered now of late: as that holy father the Bishop of Rochester: and he doubteth not but their souls be now in heaven.
“He saith and believeth that he ought to have a double obedience: first, to the King’s Highness, by the law of God; and the second to the Bishop of Rome, by his rule and profession. ”

“ In 1540 he was associated with Cranmer, Lord-chancellor Rich, and other commissioners in the work of remodelling the foundation of Canterbury Cathedral, ousting the monks and supplying their place with secular clergy. He profited largely by the dissolution of the monasteries, obtaining many grants of land which had belonged to them in Kent. He died a bachelor in June 1541, and was buried at Hackington or St. Stephen's, near Canterbury. ”