Longley, Charles Thomas (1794-1868)

Volume one contains papers concerning Longley's early years and his appointment to Ripon. Volume two concerns his career at Ripon and his appointments to Durham and York. It reflects some of his activities at Ripon, but the papers concerning Durham and York are mainly letters of congratulation. Volume three concerns colonial bishoprics, and particularly the dispute between Bishop Gray of Capetown and J. W. Colenso, Bishop of Natal. Volume four includes correspondence relating to the Revd. Joseph Leycester Lyne (Father Ignatius), and a quantity of prayers composed by Longley. Volume five is devoted to ritualism, and volume six to the preparation of the first Lambeth Conference in 1867 and the signing of the Encyclical Letter. Volume seven contains papers on a variety of subjects, amongst which are Essays and Reviews, education, the appointment of the Royal Commission on Ritual, and the exercise of his visitorial powers. The Royal Commission on Ritual continues into volume eight, but the bulk of the volume is occupied by letters of condolence on Longley's death.

Charles Thomas Longley (1794-1868) was appointed by Viscount Melbourne to the newly created diocese of Ripon in 1836. He was translated to Durham in 1856, to York in 1860, and to Canterbury in 1862.

These form part of the Archbishops' Papers. These in turn form part of the archives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, which also comprise: Bishops' Meetings records (BM), Cartae Antiquae et Miscellaneae (Lambeth Charters) (CM), Convocation records (Conv), Court of Arches records (Arches), Faculty Office records (F), Lambeth Conference papers (LC), Temporalities records (ED and T), including correspondence on the Archbishops' estates (TR 8-36), and Vicar General records (V).

Although a general indication has been given of the contents of each volume, it should be noted that the separate deposits have caused some disruption of the original arrangement of the papers, and it is often necessary to seek papers on a particular subject in more than one volume. This difficulty is greatly compounded in volumes three to six by the totally haphazard and capricious manner in which they were bound by S. W. Kershaw. The volumes are as follows: Longley 1: Letters and papers, 1811-45; Longley 2: Letters and papers, 1846-62; Longley 3: Letters and papers (Colonial Bishoprics), 1861-68; Longley 4: Letters and papers (Father Ignatius, prayers, etc.), 1860-68; Longley 5: Letters and papers (Ritualism), 1848-68; Longley 6: Letters and papers (Lambeth Conference), 1867; Longley 7: Letters and papers, 1862-67; Longley 8: Letters and papers, 1867-1956; Longley 9: Photograph album of the Lambeth Conference.

Open

The Longley papers have been deposited in Lambeth Palace Library over a period of almost a century. In 1888 his son Henry Longley presented nine packets of papers which were bound into four volumes and briefly described by the then Librarian Samuel Wayland Kershaw (see LR/A/5 on their arrangement and binding). They form the present volumes three to six and deal mainly with the Canterbury archiepiscopate. Henry Longley retained other papers which he considered unsuitable at that time for public access, and these were eventually deposited in the library in 1956 by Bishop Wilfrid Parker, the Archbishop's grandson. They form the present volumes one and two and seven and eight.

The 19th-century Archbishops' Papers (Longley, Tait, Benson, Frederick Temple) are catalogued more comprehensively than most of the 20th-century Archbishops' Papers.

Catalogue descriptions are based on the published catalogue by J E Sayers and E G W Bill, Calendar of the Papers of Charles Thomas Longley, Archbishop of Canterbury 1862-1868, in Lambeth Palace Library (London, 1976), itself based on a catalogue prepared in 1962 by Jane Sayers, Deputy Archivist, and issued by the National Register of Archives.

Published list available to purchase exclusively from the Library.

Few papers of the early 19th century Archbishops (Manners Sutton, Howley and Sumner) have survived. From the primacy of Archbishop Longley (1862-8), the official papers and correspondence of the Archbishops of Canterbury have been deposited in the Library and kept as a separate collection of papers.

Bishop Wilfrid Parker, the Archbishop's grandson, entrusted the papers contained in volumes 1-2 and 7-8 to Claude Jenkins, Lambeth Librarian, during the Second World War for safekeeping at Oxford. They were transferred to the Library in 1956 (see vol. 8, f. 292). The papers deal unevenly with Longley's career, having been subjected to thorough and perhaps even ruthless weeding. In making his gift (volumes 3-6) in 1888, the Archbishop's son Henry Longley remarked, 'The papers are not so numerous as I expected; my father kept but few papers during his long episcopate, and was in the habit of periodically revising, with the view of expurgating, the few which he did keep. That there are as many papers as there are is due to the fact that the papers of the last two years of his life probably escaped this thinning process'. Although much has thus been destroyed, the papers which remain are for the most part those which Longley himself deemed worthy of preservation, and few will have much occasion to quarrel with his judgement in this matter.

Manuscripts sequence, including MSS 1838-9, 1840-3 (six volumes of letters from Longley to his son Henry and his sister Catherine with other miscellaneous papers), MSS 2323-6 (engagement books). Also additional Longley papers transferrred to the Library in 2004 in fulfilment of the intention of Bishop Wilfrid Parker (MSS 4545-4549).

See Lambeth Conference papers (ref: LC) for the proceedings of the Lambeth Conference 1867.