Randall Thomas Davidson, 1st Baron Davidson of Lambeth, (7 April 1848 – 25 May 1930) was an Anglican bishop who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1903 to 1928. He was the longest-serving holder of the office since the Reformation, and the first to retire from it.
Born in Edinburgh to a Scottish Presbyterian family, Davidson was educated at Harrow School, where he became an Anglican, and at Trinity College, Oxford, where he was largely untouched by the arguments and debates between adherents of the high-church and low-church factions of the Church of England. He was ordained in 1874, and, after a brief spell as a curate, he became chaplain and secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archibald Campbell Tait, in which post he became a confidant of Queen Victoria. He rose through the church hierarchy, becoming Dean of Windsor and domestic chaplain to Queen Victoria (1883), Bishop of Rochester (1891) and Bishop of Winchester (1895). In 1903 he succeeded Frederick Temple as Archbishop of Canterbury, and remained in office until his retirement in November 1928.
Davidson was conciliatory by nature, and spent much time throughout his term of office striving to keep the church together in the face of deep and sometimes acrimonious divisions between evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics. Under his leadership the church gained some independence from state control, but his efforts to modernise the Book of Common Prayer were frustrated by Parliament.
Though cautious about bringing the church into domestic party politics, Davidson did not shy away from larger political issues: he played a key role in the passage of the reforming Parliament Act 1911; urged moderation on both sides in the conflict over Irish independence; campaigned against perceived immoral methods of warfare in the First World War and led efforts to resolve the national crisis of the 1926 General Strike. He was a consistent advocate of Christian unity, and worked, often closely, with other religious leaders throughout his primacy. On his retirement he was made a peer; he died at his home in London at the age of 82, eighteen months later.
Davidson was born in Edinburgh on 7 April 1848, the eldest of the four children of Henry Davidson, a prosperous grain merchant, and his wife Henrietta, née Swinton. Both parents were Church of Scotland Presbyterians – Henry's father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were Presbyterian ministers. The family was, nonetheless, in Davidson's words, "very undenominational ... I have no recollection of receiving any teaching upon Churchmanship, either Episcopal or Presbyterian, the religion taught us being wholly of the personal sort but beautiful in its simplicity." Davidson's biographer George Bell writes that the Davidsons were deeply religious without being solemn, and that it was a happy household. Davidson was educated by his mother and a succession of governesses and private tutors, before being sent, aged 12, to a small private school at Worksop in the English Midlands. The teaching there was inadequate; in particular, Davidson regretted all his life his lack of grounding in Latin and Greek.
In 1862, at the age of 14, Davidson became a pupil at Harrow School. The school was Anglican in its religious teachings and practices, and he took part in confirmation classes. Scarlet fever prevented him from being confirmed along with the other boys at Harrow, and he was confirmed in June 1865 at St George's, Hanover Square by the Bishop of London, Archibald Campbell Tait, a longstanding friend of Henry Davidson. The greatest influences on Davidson at Harrow were Henry Montagu Butler, the headmaster, and Brooke Foss Westcott, his second housemaster. Davidson was inspired by Butler's sermons and by Westcott's wide-ranging instruction on topics from architecture and poetry to philosophy and history. Davidson and Westcott became lifelong friends, and each came to turn to the other for advice.
In the summer holidays of 1866, before his final year at Harrow, Davidson suffered an accident that affected the rest of his life. While rabbit-shooting along with his brother and a friend, Davidson was accidentally shot in the lower back. The wound was severe and could have been fatal, but he slowly recovered. He recalled:
I got about at first on crutches, which I had to use for a long time, and it was supposed that my leg would always be more or less helpless; but by degrees this went away, and I got back full power, save for a permanently weak ankle, which seems a strange effect to follow from a wound in the hip. There were also other troubles inaugurated, which have never passed away, though I have been able to ignore them more or less. Had anyone prophesied in those autumn months that I should a couple of years later be winning a cup at racquets at Oxford, it would have been ludicrous.
Although Davidson gradually made an unexpectedly good recovery, the accident marred his last year at Harrow, where he had hoped to compete for several senior prizes; it also ruined his chances of an Oxford scholarship.
Davidson went up as a commoner to Trinity College, Oxford, in October 1867. The college was undistinguished at the time, and Davidson found the Trinity faculty disappointingly mediocre. Although high-church versus low-church controversies were rife in Oxford, he was not greatly interested in them, being, as always, more concerned with religious than with liturgical considerations. His chief aim was to complete his studies and go on to be ordained as a priest. His health affected his studies; he had hoped to study Greats (classics and philosophy), but as a result of his injuries he had, he later said, "intense difficulty in concentrating thought on books" and opted for the less demanding subjects of law and history. He graduated with a third class Bachelor of Arts degree, conferred in November 1871.
After leaving Oxford, Davidson rejoined his family in Scotland and then went with his parents on a six-week tour of Italy. On his return he began a course of study in London with Charles Vaughan, Master of the Temple, with a view to ordination. Davidson's health was still precarious, and after three months he was obliged to abandon his studies. After further rest and another leisurely holiday, this time in the Middle East, he resumed his studies in October 1873 and completed them the following March.
One of Davidson's closest friends from his Oxford days was Craufurd Tait, son of Archibald Campbell Tait. Like Davidson, Craufurd was preparing for ordination; his father was by now Archbishop of Canterbury, and the two friends were accepted for ordination as deacons in the Archbishop's diocese. They were ordained in March 1874, and Davidson was assigned as curate to the vicar of Dartford in Kent. He was ordained priest the following year. During his two and a half years at Dartford, Davidson served under two vicars; the first was a moderate high churchman and the second a moderate evangelical. Bell writes that the young curate learnt a good deal from each, "both in pastoral work and in piety".
Late in 1876 Craufurd Tait, who was working as his father's resident chaplain and private secretary, wished to move on and the Archbishop chose Davidson to succeed him. In May 1877 Davidson began work at Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop's home and headquarters, beginning what Bell describes as "an association with the central life of the Church of England which lasted more than fifty years". Craufurd Tait died after a brief illness in May 1878; his mother never recovered from this blow and died within the year. Despite the Archbishop's offers of several attractive parishes over the following years, Davidson felt his place was at the side of the bereaved Tait, who came more and more to rely on him, and called him a "true son". Bell sees this as altruism on Davidson's part; later biographers have suggested that there may also have been an element of personal ambition in his decision to remain at the centre of church affairs.