Abstract
Archibald Campbell Tait (1811–82) was a commanding figure in the mid-Victorian church and politics, as Bishop of London then Archbishop of Canterbury for over 25 years (1856–82). Historians have variously described him as the most powerful archbishop since William Laud and as Queen Victoria’s most distinguished archbishop, so a new biography is to be warmly welcomed. Rather remarkably, its sole predecessor was published as long ago as 1891, by two intimates of Tait, including Randall Davidson, his son-in-law and eventual successor at Lambeth; that book, unsurprisingly, lacked critical distance from its subject.
John Witheridge has written a highly accessible and engaging study that, like the best biographies, throws light on Victorian society as well as on Tait himself. Tait’s broad church sympathies were shaped by his presbyterian upbringing in Scotland and infused with Thomas Arnold’s liberal Anglicanism. His independence of mind and generosity of spirit, which Witheridge brings out well, led him to adopt measured positions in controversies over Anglican doctrine, which prompted critics to see him as inconsistent and unreliable. Tait’s boundless ambition was furthered by the enormous dedication and energy he brought to all the posts he held: he had the daunting task of following Arnold as headmaster of Rugby (1842–50) and had more success there, Witheridge maintains, than is usually acknowledged; he was a reforming dean of Carlisle (1850–6), and then an influential pastor, adept parliamentarian and ecclesiastical statesman at London and Canterbury. Something of the measure of the man may be gauged from his first charge to the London clergy, which lasted five unbroken hours, and his novel practice of preaching outdoors, especially in the East End.
All this is the more striking given Tait’s constant tribulations with poor health and family tragedies, including the dreadful experience of losing five daughters to scarlet fever in five weeks in 1856, to which the book title refers. The career and the personal did interact, in important ways: Tait achieved some popularity at Rugby after nearly dying of rheumatic fever in 1848; he was offered the deanery of Carlisle in 1850 as a less demanding position in order to protect his delicate health; and his promotion to London (1856) owed much to Queen Victoria’s response to his ‘Christian fortitude’ (p. 77) in the face of such devastating private losses. Her decisive backing of Tait for Canterbury in 1868 reflected her admiration for his time at London but also her feeling that the two were now united by tragedy, following Prince Albert’s death in 1861. Tait’s stroke in 1869, and the consequent need to ease the burdens of his office, led to the revival of the suffragan bishopric of Dover, vacant since 1597. More broadly, Witheridge traces Tait’s mixed fortunes as archbishop in and outside parliament, including the unsuccessful Public Worship Regulation Act (1874), and his notable role in the first two Lambeth Conferences of 1867 and 1878. The book ends with Tait’s death and misses the opportunity to offer a broad assessment of his career, significance and legacy.