Randall Davidson - Ministry

Ministry

Davidson served as chaplain to Archibald Campbell Tait when Tait was Archbishop of Canterbury and married his daughter. After Tait's death he remained at Lambeth Palace as chaplain to Edward White Benson when he became Archbishop of Canterbury. A favourite of Queen Victoria, he was appointed Dean of Windsor at a very young age. The Queen relied heavily on him for advice regarding church appointments and only reluctantly agreed to his preferment to episcopal office. His memory for people was prodigious. He was subsequently Bishop of Rochester between 1891 and 1895 and Bishop of Winchester between 1895 and 1903 before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury in 1903. He played a major part in the funeral ceremonies for Queen Victoria in 1901, taking care, along with James Reid, of the wake at Osborne House, Isle of Wight. Roger Lloyd, Church of England historian, thought that Davidson was one of the two or three greatest Archbishops of Canterbury. He was the first Archbishop of Canterbury to retire, all his predecessors having died in office, and the longest serving in that office since the English Reformation. As there was no procedure for resignation a commission of three bishops was hastily appointed to receive his letter of resignation and convey it to the King.

Davidson presided over two Lambeth Conferences and was present at five of the first six, Bell's biography suggests that at least part of the reason for his resignation was his natural reluctance to face the work and worry of the seventh conference, eventually held in 1930.

Davidson reacted to the papal bull Apostolicae Curae by stressing "the strength and depth of the Protestantism of England" and regarded other differences with Rome as much more important than its views on Anglican orders. This view seems to have been widely held at the time, judging from the reaction of Cardinal Herbert Vaughan, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster.

Davidson's time of office covered the climax of the struggle for women's suffrage. Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) suffragette prisoners adopted the tactic of hunger and thirst strikes. To counter this in 1909 the authorities began force feeding. The high point of this battle between the authorities and the suffragettes came in 1913 with the passing of the Cat and Mouse Act.

In 1913 the WSPU decided to launch a full scale campaign to expose the horrors of force feeding. Many clergy were sympathetic to the women's movement and, in 1913, a number of them marched to Downing Street to protest against the "Cat and Mouse Act" and had also held a meeting in December 1913 in Queen's Hall, London, to protest against forcible feeding. The WSPU may, therefore, have hoped to win full support from the church for their wider cause of suffrage by pressing on the issue of forcible feeding and to that end church leaders were targeted by the WSPU

Davidson, when pressed, chose not to allow the church be drawn into a battle between the WPSU and the authorities and held to a line that militancy was a precursor to forcible feeding and militancy was against the will of God.

He resigned after Prayer Book revision failed to pass the House of Commons in 1928.

Davidson was appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) in 1902, a Privy Counsellor in 1903 and a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO) in 1904. In 1928 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Davidson of Lambeth, of Lambeth in the County of London.