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Cosmo Gordon Lang

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"COSMO GORDON LANG (1864-), Archbishop of York, was born Oct. 31 1864 at Aberdeen, son of John Marshall Lang, sometime moderator of the Church of Scotland, and educated at Glasgow University until 1882, when he won a scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford. He took his degree in 1886, becoming fellow of All Souls in 1888. From 1883 to 1889 he was a student of the Inner Temple, but abandoned law for the church and was ordained curate of Leeds parish church in 1890. He was fellow and dean of divinity at Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1893 to 1896, and at the same time vicar of the university church of St. Mary's. In 1896 he became vicar of Portsea, when his success in administering a large working-class parish led in 1901 to his nomination as bishop suffragan of Stepney in the East End of London. In 1908 he was made Archbishop of York. The confirmation of his appointment was formally opposed on ritualistic grounds by the Protestant Truth Society ( see 6.907). He was hon. chaplain to, and a personal friend of, Queen Victoria, and published several religious books, notably The Miracles of Jesus as Marks of the Way of Life (r900) and The Opportunity of the Church of England (1906). He was a member of the royal commission appointed in 1909 to inquire into the law of divorce, and with Sir Lewis Dibdin and Sir William Anson signed the minority report. As Archbishop of the Northern Province he took a conspicuous part in the social and economic, as well as the religious, questions agitating an industrial community, while in the House of Lords his eloquence and clear common-sense gave him an influence not confined to ecclesiastical matters. These same qualities proved of value in a mission which he undertook to the United States in 1918 in connexion with the war.