York to Canterbury

Queen Victoria once advised Cosmo Gordon Lang, long before he became Archbishop of York, to marry. He answered: "If I have a curate who is unsatisfactory, I can dispose of him, but a wife is another matter." Last week Victoria's grandson named the wit to be the 97th Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of all England, effective Nov. 12. He will be the first bachelor to have held that office for 150 years. Randall Thomas Davidson, present Archbishop of Canterbury, has been married 50 years. November 12 will mark the golden wedding anniversary of his wedding with Edith, second daughter of the late Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1868 to 1882. For that sentimental reason he last week asked his King to accept his resignation. His resignation was without precedent. Heretofore archbishops of Canterbury, ever since Augustine first held that seat (597-605), have quit office only through orthodox murder or natural death. No religia-political pressure caused Dr. Davidson's decision; not even his double defeat by the House of Commons over his efforts to revise the Book of Common Prayer. He continues one of the brightest intellects in the House of Lords.* But he is 80 and the strain of Church of England polemics have strained his once stout physique. York, the Most Reverend Cosmo Gordon Lang, who succeeds him, is 64. He looks like George Washington; is forthright and voluble in debate. Law was his first study. He was a student in the Inner Temple. But just when he might have been admitted to the British bar he suddenly chose the cloth for the gown. His father was one of the moderators of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland. /- The son preferred the more hierarchal Church of England for his career. Studies at Balliol College, Oxford (after a period at Glasgow University) had something to do with his decision. By 1901 he had become Bishop of Stepney and Canon of St. Paul's, London, and used to work with the grubby, grimy poor. In 1907, Edward VII offered him the Bishopric of Montreal. He refused. The Archbishopric of York was in his hopes. Next year he gained it. . . . Able prelates last week mooted as successors to him at York are: Frederic Sumpter Guy Warman, Bishop of Chelmsford; Herbert Hensley Henson, Bishop of Burham; Frank Theodore Woods, Bishop of Winchester; and Arthur Foley Winnington Ingram, Bishop of London. Potent have been the Archbishops of Canterbury in English history. Augustine (597-605) established Christianity in England. Bertha, queen of the fourth Saxon king of Kent, Aethelbert, was already a Christian and gave Augustine a church at Canterbury, then a seaport. Thomas Becket (1162-70), warrior-bishop, first helped Henry II subordinate Church to State. But when he became Archbishop of Canterbury he fought for Church against State. Courtiers foully murdered and mangled him on the very steps of his altar and Henry II did an abject penance. Stephen Langton (1207-22) persuaded Pope Innocent III to excommunicate King John for combating Church administration; he stirred the English barons to demand the Magna Carta of John; later (after John's death) he supported the crown against the nobles. Thomas Cranmer (1533-56), himself twice married (first to "Black Joan," relative of the landlady of the Dolphin Inn at Cambridge where he was then a fellow), pronounced Henry VIII divorced from his first Queen, Catherine (of Aragon), and legitimatized Henry's child (later Queen Elizabeth) by voluptuous Queen Anne (Boleyn). Cranmer's truckling to the king helped to cause the secession of England from the Church of Rome and to create the Church of England. . . . Communicants of the Church of England in Great Britain and northern Ireland next year and thenceforth will legally celebrate Easter on the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April. At present, and for most creeds, Easter falls on the first Sunday after the ecclesiastical full moon on or next after the spring equinox. Any Sunday between March 21 and April 25 may be Easter Sunday. The new English system fixes the holiday between April 9 and 16.

* His office gives him place there. His resignation makes him a commoner. But it is confidentially expected that the King will make him a peer. Last week the London County Council voted him the freedom of the City of London. Although few know, he has since 1904 (when he became archbishop), been a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order. But his neglect of going through the ceremony of "receiving the accolade" left him without right to the prefix "Sir," or any other official title, to his name. As suffixes he academically has D.D., D.C.L., LL.D.

/-Dr. Davidson's family also were Scotch Presbyterians.