ome
ways stronger, than the State, meant a vast deal. The successor of
Augustine was often called a Pope of his own world--that world of
Britain which lay apart from the larger world of the European
continent. Down to the Reformation, the English primates possessed a
power which made some of them almost a match for the English kings.
Dunstan, Lanfranc, Anselm, Thomas (Becket), Hubert, Stephen Langton,
Arundel, Warham, were among the foremost statesmen of their time.
After Henry VIII.'s breach with Rome, the Primate of England
received some access of dignity in becoming independent of the
Pope; but, in reality, the loss of church power and church wealth
which the Reformation caused lowered his political importance. In
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, there were still
some conspicuous and influential prelates at Canterbury--Cranmer,
Pole, Whitgift, and Laud the best remembered among them. After the
Revolution of 1688, a time of smaller men begins. The office
retained its dignity as the highest place open to a subject, ranking
above the Lord Chancellor or the Lord President of the Council, but
the Church of England, having no fightings within, nor anything to
fear from without, was lapped in placid ease, so it mattered
comparatively little who her chief pastor was.

Bishoprics were in those days regarded chiefly as pieces of rich
preferment with which prime ministers bought the support of powerful
adherents. But since the middle of the nineteenth century, as the
Anglican Church has become at once more threatened and more energetic,
as more of the life of the nation has flowed into her and round her,
the office of a bishop has risen in importance. People show more
interest in the appointments to be made, and ministers have become
proportionately careful in making them. Bishops work harder and are
more in the public eye now than they were eighty, or even fifty, years
ago. They have lost something of the antique dignity and social
consideration which they enjoyed. They no longer wear wigs or ride in
State coaches. They may be seen in third-class railway carriages, or
sitting on the tops of omnibuses. But they have gained by having
countless opportunities opened up to them for exerting influence in
philanthropic as well as in religious movements; and the more zealous
among them turn these opportunities to excellent account.

Whatever is true of an ordinary bishop is true _a fortiori_ of the
Archbishop of Ca