Archibald Tait
|
The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Archibald Campbell Tait |
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|---|---|
| Archbishop of Canterbury | |
 |
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| Installed | 1868 |
| Term ended | 3 December 1882 |
| Predecessor | Charles Longley |
| Successor | Edward White Benson |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
21 December 1811 Edinburgh, Edinburghshire, Scotland |
| Died | 3 December 1882 (aged 70) Addington, Surrey, England |
| Buried | Church of St Mary the Blessed Virgin, Addington, London |
Archibald Campbell Tait (21 December 1811 – 3 December 1882) was an Archbishop of Canterbury in the Church of England.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of Craufurd Tait (1777-1832) and Susan née Campbell (1777-1814) Tait was educated at the Royal High School and at the Edinburgh Academy, where he was twice elected dux. His parents were Presbyterians but he early turned towards the Scottish Episcopal Church. He was confirmed in his first year at Oxford, having entered Balliol College in October 1830 as a Snell Exhibitioner from the University of Glasgow. He won an open scholarship, took his degree with a first-class in literis humanioribus in 1833 and became a fellow and tutor of Balliol. He was ordained deacon in 1836 and priest in 1838 and served a curacy at Baldon.
Rapid changes among the fellows found him, at age 26, "the senior and most responsible of the four Balliol tutors." The experience gained during this period stood him in good stead afterwards as a member of the first Oxford University Commission (1850–52). He never sympathised with the principles of the Oxford Movement and, on the appearance of Tract XC in 1841, he drafted the famous protest of the "Four Tutors" against it; but this was his only important contribution to the controversy. On the other hand, although his sympathies were on the whole with the liberal movement in the university, he never took a lead in the matter.
In 1842, he became an undistinguished but useful successor to Arnold as headmaster of Rugby School (one of his pupils was Lewis Carroll); and a serious illness in 1848, the first of many, led him to welcome the comparative leisure that followed upon his appointment to the deanery of Carlisle in 1849. His life there, however, was one of no little activity; he served on the University Commission, he restored his cathedral, and he did much excellent pastoral work. There, too, he suffered the great sorrow of his life. He had married Catharine Spooner at Rugby in 1843. In 1856, within five weeks, five of their children died due to virulent scarlet fever.
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