of Natal. The privy council annulled their decision on Colenso’s appeal, but the South African bishops refused to acknowledge the council’s authority, declaring the church of South Africa independent of the church of England. The dispute was one of the causes for summoning the first Lambeth conference in 1867. Tait was from the first doubtful of the ad vantages of the conference, which ended in disagreement. The attempt made in it to organise an independent Anglican communion in South Africa, and every scheme for obtaining the legal consecration of a bishop of Maritzburg in England or Scotland, were successfully opposed. In that opposition Tait played the leading part. He considered that the recognition by the colonial dioceses of the appellate jurisdiction of the privy council was the only guarantee for the maintenance of the principles of justice, and that these principles had not been observed in the proceedings against Bishop Colenso, who, in the result, retained his see till his death [see Colenso, John William, and Gray, Robert].
Meanwhile, throughout his episcopate Tait’s zeal for evangelistic and charitable work never flagged. In August 1866, when the cholera ravaged the east of London, though he had in the spring been prostrated by an attack of internal inflammation, he gave up his usual time of rest in order to stimulate the efforts made to cope with the disease; and his wife, besides being constantly on the scene of the epidemic, provided an orphanage at Fulham for the children of those who had died. Finding the ordinary machinery inadequate for overtaking the requisite supply of clerical ministrations, even though supplemented by the Diocesan Home Mission, he founded the Bishop of London’s Fund. Its object was to subdivide the overgrown parishes, to send mission agents at once into the districts inadequately provided with clergy, and by degrees to build up the whole church system in them. It was shadowed out in the ‘Charge’ of 1862, and begun in April 1863. Churchmen of all shades of opinion supported it and worked on its council; and in the first year more than 100,000l. was subscribed, with promises of almost as much more. It has since become a permanent institution, with an annual income of from 20,000l. to 30,000l.
On 28 Oct. 1868 Archbishop Longley died, and on 12 Nov. Tait received a letter from Mr. Disraeli, then prime minister, asking his leave to nominate him for the primacy. Tait assented to the proposal, and he was enthroned as archbishop of Canterbury in February 1869.
Tait entered on the primacy at a stormy time which called forth all his powers of statesmanship. Mr. Gladstone’s suspensory bill, which was intended to be the preliminary step to the disestablishment of the Irish church, had been thrown out in the lords in the summer of 1868, Tait himself opposing it. But in the autumn the general election showed the country to be unmistakably in favour of Mr. Gladstone’s policy, and the new archbishop, accepting the inevitable, bent his mind to the consideration of the lines on which the new church system ought to be established. The queen herself addressed him, expressing her anxiety lest the rejection of the prime minister’s measure should result in a year of violent controversy. A long interview with Mr. Gladstone revealed the wish of the statesman to make the path smooth; and Tait aided powerfully in obtaining a second reading for the bill in the House of Lords, but set himself to make alterations in committee favourable to the Irish clergy. For some days he held the balance of parties in his hand, and the eventual settlement was in a great degree due to his patience and good sense, and to the confidence which he inspired on both sides of the house.
On 18 Nov. 1869 he was struck down by a cataleptic seizure, the result of overwork and anxiety. As soon as he recovered he petitioned the government to be allowed the services of a suffragan-bishop. Recourse was had to an unrepealed act of Henry VIII, and on 25 March 1870 he consecrated his first chaplain and former Rugby pupil, Edward Parry (1830–1890) [q. v.], to the titular see of Dover. With Parry’s aid he got through the year 1870, and, having passed the winter at San Remo, he returned to his post in full vigour in the spring of 1871.
It was a time of some ferment in ecclesiastical matters. Abroad the Vatican council had resulted in the formation of the old catholic body in Germany and Switzerland, and the secession of Père Hyacinthe and others in France. Though refusing to make any pronouncement at the time, the archbishop later on gave effectual aid to the work of Père Hyacinthe, and invited the old catholic bishops, Reinkens and Herzog, to Addington.
The report of the ritual commission in 1870 led to several acts of parliament, in each of which Tait took part by advice and action. In dealing with the Athanasian creed the ritual commission had recommended an explanatory rubric, but the archbishop wished that the creed, while remaining like the articles in the prayer-book, should not be used in the public services; and declared
