Archbishop of Canterbury

• 1. Introduction

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  Dame Sarah Mullally became the Archbishop of Canterbury on the 28th of January 2026, the 106th person to hold an office that stretches back more than fourteen centuries. She is the first woman ever to stand in that position. The role she inherited is one of the most layered in the world: diocesan bishop, metropolitan, Lord Spiritual, and ceremonial head of a worldwide communion of Anglicans. But how did a single bishop's seat in the county of Kent come to carry so much weight? The answer begins in 597, with a monk dispatched from Rome who landed in a pagan kingdom and changed everything.

• 2. The Mission of Augustine

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  Pope Gregory I sent Augustine to England in 597 on a mission to the Anglo-Saxons, a collection of Germanic peoples who had overrun what had been Roman Britannia. The circumstances that made Canterbury the right landing place were partly accidental. King Æthelberht of Kent had married a Christian Frankish princess named Bertha, an alliance that made his kingdom unusually open to a Christian messenger. Æthelberht permitted Augustine to preach, and around the year 598, the king converted. Canterbury became the seat of the new archbishopric, rather than London as Gregory had originally intended, because of those particular political circumstances.

  A gospel book tied directly to Augustine's mission has survived the centuries. Held in the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, it is catalogued as Cambridge Manuscript 286. Scholars have dated it to 6th-century Italy, making it one of the oldest intact books in Britain. Every new Archbishop of Canterbury still swears their oath on those pages. Since Augustine's time, his successors have been said to occupy the Chair of St Augustine, a phrase that links each new holder to the very first.

• 3. The Break With Rome

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  For nearly a thousand years, the archbishops of Canterbury remained in full communion with Rome, from Augustine through to William Warham. That continuity ended when King Henry VIII broke with the papacy and declared himself the head of the Church of England. Thomas Cranmer, appointed in 1533 initially with Rome's approval, became the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury and one of the central architects of Anglican doctrine and practice. The Reformation also had practical consequences for the archbishop's property. Knole House, built by Archbishop Bourchier in the second half of the 15th century, was forfeited to the Crown by Cranmer in 1538. Otford Palace, rebuilt by Archbishop Warham around 1515, was likewise forfeited to the Crown by Cranmer in 1537.

  Since Henry VIII's break with Rome, the British monarch has held formal authority over the appointment. The Crown Nominations Commission, a Church of England body, advises the prime minister, who in turn advises the monarch. Convention since the 20th century has settled into a pattern of alternating appointments between Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals.

• 4. Power and Its Limits

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  The Archbishop of Canterbury ranks above virtually every other individual in England in the order of precedence, second only to the sovereign and members of the royal family. The lord chancellor comes immediately below the archbishop. The role carries formal seats in the House of Lords, a place at coronations, and a title that runs in full to "Primate of All England and Metropolitan." The archbishop is legally entitled to sign their name simply as "Cantuar," the Latin for Canterbury, a privilege shared only with bishops and peers of the realm.

  Yet the archbishop's actual power inside the Church of England is deliberately constrained. The church is not highly centralised, and the archbishop and the Archbishop of York can often lead only through persuasion. Outside England, the archbishop holds no legal authority at all. Within the worldwide Anglican Communion, the title is primus inter pares, meaning first among equals: a position of convention and honour rather than command. The Archbishop does serve as ex officio bishop of the Falkland Islands, and can act as judge in ecclesiastical proceedings against the Archbishop of Wales. The Lambeth Conferences, convened by the Archbishop since 1867, bring together Anglican bishops from across the world roughly every ten years.

• 5. Ecumenical Reach

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  Geoffrey Fisher, the 99th Archbishop, was the first holder of the office to visit Rome since 1397 when he held private talks with Pope John XXIII in 1960. That visit reopened a channel of contact that had been closed since the Reformation. Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop, went further: in 2005 he became the first Archbishop of Canterbury to attend a papal funeral since the Reformation, and he also attended the inauguration of Pope Benedict XVI. Donald Coggan, the 101st Archbishop, had already marked one milestone before Williams, attending the inauguration of Pope John Paul II in 1978 as the first Archbishop ever to do so.

  Beyond relations with Rome, the office has extended into broader interfaith territory. Since 2002, the archbishop has co-sponsored the Alexandria Middle East Peace process alongside the Grand Mufti of Egypt. In July 2008, the archbishop attended a gathering of Christians, Jews, and Muslims convened by the king of Saudi Arabia. Delegates at that conference agreed on international guidelines for dialogue among followers of different religions and cultures.

• 6. Residences and Rank

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  Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth has been the archbishop's main London residence and office for centuries. The Old Palace beside Canterbury Cathedral, which incorporates some 13th-century fabric from the medieval Archbishop's Palace, provides lodgings in the city where the Chair of St Augustine sits. The list of former residences tracks the office's long entanglement with English political history. Croydon Palace served as a summer residence from the 15th to the 18th centuries. Addington Palace was purchased as a replacement for Croydon in 1807 and sold in 1897. Archbishop's Palace in Maidstone, constructed in the 1390s, was seized by the Crown at the Reformation. Archbishop's Palace in Charing dates from at least the 13th century; remnants survive today as a farmhouse.

  The archbishop also awards academic degrees, known as Lambeth degrees. The Lambeth degree, granted by the holder of the office personally, is a survival of the ecclesiastical authority that predates the university system. Justin Welby, the 105th Archbishop, was enthroned at Canterbury Cathedral on the 21st of March 2013. He announced his resignation on the 12th of November 2024 and left office on the 7th of January 2025, becoming the latest in a line of archbishops who chose not to receive a peerage on retirement.