Bishops in the Lords?

The appointment of Sarah Mullally as the next Archbishop of Canterbury naturally raises the question of the role of bishops in the British constitutional settlement. Even in the few years since Justin Welby was consecrated, the nation has become more secular and the Church of England has seen a noticeable decline both in attendance and in authority.

In English history, only the monarchy itself is an older, continuously filled post, although in both cases the word continuously needs to be qualified. In the case of the monarchy by the Cromwellian interregnum that also affected the role of Archbishop of Canterbury, which has had additional gaps mainly caused by disagreements between the Canterbury monks, the King and the Pope. The delay in appointing Mullally is not, in the historic context, unusual.

This antiquity is important as although Mullally cannot be in the apostolic succession to St. Augustine, because of the break that took place at the Reformation, she is in a direct line from him in the post that she will shortly hold. In that roll call, there are over two dozen saints and a number of martyrs, including St. Alphege and St. Thomas Beckett, as well as Simon Sudbury, who was hacked to death by a mob during the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, while both Thomas Cranmer and William Lord were executed following Parliamentary attainders.

It is thus a role that has been of major historic note. It is also of constitutional significance. St. Dunstan, who crowned Edgar as King of England in Bath Abbey in 973, used a ceremony that in all essentials was the same as the one used by Justin Welby to crown the King. The most notable change is that the liturgy is now in English.