The 321 volumes in this collection cover the whole of his life, although the bulk of the material comprises his official correspondence at Canterbury (Vols. 1-186). There is a subject series of 94 volumes (Vols. 1-94) covering the years 1920-42 (some York papers are included) and a chronological series of 92 volumes (Vols. 95-186) for the period 1928-42. The remaining 136 volumes include family correspondence, sermons, appointment diaries, notebooks, journals, photograph albums, and press cuttings, many of which were deposited in the Library after his death by his literary executor Alan Don, Dean of Westminster.
Lang, Cosmo Gordon (1864-1945)
This material is held atLambeth Palace Library
- Reference
- GB 109 Lang
- Dates of Creation
- 1864-1947
- Language of Material
- English
- Physical Description
- 321 files
Scope and Content
Administrative / Biographical History
Cosmo Gordon Lang (1864-1945) was appointed Archbishop of York in 1908 and was translated to Canterbury in 1928. He retired in 1942.
Arrangement
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).
Access Information
Open
Other Finding Aids
Most 20th-century Archbishops' Papers (Davidson, Lang, Fisher) are catalogued more summarily than the 19th century papers. The indexes to most of the 20th-century papers give a guide to the overall contents to the subjects of individual files, but people are not indexed unless they are the subject of the file (e.g. appointments) - so not every correspondent will appear in the index.
Individual correspondents have not always been noted in the catalogue descriptions. Catalogue descriptions based on 'Summary catalogue of the papers of Cosmo Gordon Lang, archbishop of Canterbury, 1928-1942' (typescript, 1986), by Geoffrey M. B. Pick, Assistant Archivist.
Bibliography
'Anglicans in the Antipodes: an indexed calendar of the papers and correspondence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, 1788-1961, relating to Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific', ed. R. & L. Frappell, R. Withycombe, and R. Nobbs (1999) [Z6622.L6L2]. 'The Baptist Quarterly: Journal of the Baptist Historical Society', vol. 34, no. 7 (July 1992) [H6495.A8]: includes an article on M. E. Aubrey by W. M. S. West, which refers to Lang and Davidson papers from Lambeth Palace Library. R. W. F. Beaken, 'Cosmo Gordon Lang, archbishop of Canterbury, 1928-1942: a re-assessment' (unpublished thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of London, 2009) [ H5199.L2B3]. Robert Beaken, 'Cosmo Lang: Archbishop in War and Crisis', I.B. Tauris 2012 [Lambeth Palace Library H5198.L25B3]. Robert Beaken, 'The Church of England and the Home Front 1914-1918' (Woodbridge, 2015) [Lambeth Palace Library H5102.B3]. Andrew Chandler and David Hein, 'Archbishop Fisher, 1945-1961: Church, State and World' (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012) [H5198.A1F5]. A. Chandler, 'The Church of England in the Twentieth Century: the Church Commissioners and the Politics of Reform, 1948-1998', 2006 [H5150.C4]. A. Chandler, "A question of fundamental principles: the Church of England and the Jews of Germany, 1933-1937", Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 38 (1993) pp. 221-261 [D856.C4, H5102.C4]. A. Chandler (ed.), 'Brethren in adversity: Bishop George Bell, the Church of England and the Crisis of German Protestantism, 1933-1939', Church of England Record Society vol. 4 (1997) (a collection of documents from the Bell and Lang Papers). A. Chandler, "The death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer", 'Journal of Ecclesiastical History' (July 1994). A. Chandler, 'George Bell, Bishop of Chichester' (Grand Rapids, 2016) [Lambeth Palace Library H5199.B3C4 2016] Dan Cruickshank, 'The Theology and Ecclesiology of the Prayer Book Crisis, 1906–1928' (Palgrave, 2019) Grass, Tim, The Lord's work (Eugene, 2017) [Lambeth Palace Library H6565.G7] D.Hein, 'Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury' (Cambridge: James Clarke and Co, 2008) [Lambeth Palace Library H5198.F5H3] Timothy Willem Jones, 'Sexual politics in the Church of England' (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013) [Lambeth Palace Library D115.S3J5] T. Lawson, 'The Church of England and the Holocaust: Christianity, memory and Nazism', 2006 [H5102.L2] Loane, Edward, William Temple and church unity (Palgrave, 2016) [H5198.T35L6 2016] Bernard Palmer, 'A class of their own: six public school headmasters who became Archbishop of Canterbury' (1997) S. Parker and T. Lawson ed. 'God and war: the Church Of England and armed conflict in the twentieth century' (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013) [Lambeth Palace Library H5157.G6] Robbins, Keith, and Fisher, John, 'Religion and Diplomacy: Religion and British Foreign Policy 1815 to 1941' (St, Louis, Dordrecht, 2010) [Lambeth Palace Library A65.I7R6] E.S.S. Sunderland, "Dibdin and the English Establishment: the public life of Sir Lewis Dibdin, Dean of the Arches 1903-34" 1995 Peter Webster, "The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chamberlain and the Censorship of the Theatre, 1909–49", in 'Studies in Church History', volume 48 (The Church and Literature) 2012 , pp. 437-448 Philip Ziegler, 'King Edward VIII: the official biography' (1990) [KA580.Z5]