Archbishop of Canterbury | Church of England, Primate, History, & Facts | Britannica (original) (raw)

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archbishop of Canterbury, in the Church of England, the primate of all England and archbishop of the ecclesiastical province of Canterbury, which approximately includes the area of England south of the former counties of Cheshire and Yorkshire. Although no individual is recognized as being the head of all the churches that constitute the Anglican Communion, the archbishop of Canterbury is considered the senior bishop, the first among equals. The archbishop of Canterbury presides, as host and chairperson, over the Lambeth Conference, a decennial meeting of the bishops of the Anglican Communion. In addition to a palace in Canterbury, the archbishop has an office and official residence at Lambeth Palace in London.

The first archbishop of Canterbury was St. Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604/605), a Benedictine monk who was sent from Rome by Pope Gregory I to convert the Anglo-Saxons in England. Augustine arrived in 597 and was well received by Aethelberht I, king of Kent, who gave him a place to live in Canterbury and permitted him to preach. The Reformation caused no break in the continuity of the office. Thomas Cranmer (archbishop 1533–56) accepted the Act of Supremacy (1534) that made the English sovereign, rather than the pope, the head of the Church of England.

Randall Davidson became the first archbishop of Canterbury to voluntarily to resign, retiring in 1928. Since that time only William Temple has died in office (in 1944). In 2009 the church’s General Synod and parliament passed legislation that specified that the archbishop of Canterbury must retire at 70. Rowan Williams resigned before retirement age in 2012 amid growing schism in the church, announcing that he planned to returned to the University of Cambridge. Justin Welby, his successor, resigned in 2024 over his involvement in the mishandling of an abuse scandal.

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The archbishops of Canterbury and their tenures are provided in the following table.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Melissa Petruzzello.