# Bishop of Chester

The Bishop of Chester is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Chester in the Province of York.
The diocese extends across most of the historic county boundaries of Cheshire, including the Wirral Peninsula and has its see in the City of Chester where the seat is located at the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was formerly the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Werburgh, being elevated to cathedral status in 1541. The Bishop's residence is Bishop's House, Chester.
Cheshire previously held a bishopric from 1075 when the seat was at the collegiate church of St John the Baptist until 1102. The present diocese was formed in 1541 under King Henry VIII. Mark Tanner's election as Bishop of Chester was confirmed on 15 July 2020.

## Earliest times

Chester at various periods in its history had a bishop and a cathedral, though till the early sixteenth century only intermittently. Even before the Norman conquest the title Bishop of Chester is found in documents applied to prelates who would be more correctly described as Bishop of Mercia or even Bishop of Lichfield. After the Council of London in 1075 had decreed the transfer of all episcopal sees to cities, Peter, Bishop of Lichfield, removed his seat from Lichfield to Chester, and became known as Bishop of Chester. There he chose as his cathedral collegiate church of Saint John the Baptist, an arrangement which continued until 1102.
The next bishop, however, transferred the see to Coventry on account of the rich monastery there, though he retained the episcopal palace at Chester. The Diocese of Coventry and Lichfield was of enormous extent, and it was probably found convenient to have something analogous to a cathedral at Chester, even though the cathedral itself was elsewhere; accordingly the church of St John ranked as a cathedral for a considerable time, and had its own dean and chapter of secular canons down to the time of the Reformation. But the chief ecclesiastical foundation in Chester was the Benedictine monastery of St Werburgh, the great church of which finally became the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary. The site had been occupied even during the Christian period of the Roman occupation by a church dedicated to Ss. Peter and Paul, and rededicated to St Werburgh and St Oswald during the Saxon period. The church was served by a small chapter of secular canons until 1093, when Hugh, Earl of Chester, converted it into a great Benedictine monastery, with the co-operation of St Anselm, then Prior of Bec, who sent Richard, one of his monks, to be the first abbot. A new Norman church was built by him and his successors.
This monastery, though suffering loss of property both by the depredations of the Welsh and the inroads of the sea, prospered, and in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries the monks transformed their Norman church into a gothic building.

## Tudor period

The last of the abbots of Chester was John, or Thomas, Clark, who resigned his abbey, valued at £1,003 5s. 11d. per annum, to the king at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries.
In 1541 Henry VIII, without papal sanction, created six new episcopal sees, one of which was Chester. The archdeaconry of Chester, from the Diocese of Coventry and Lichfield, and that of Richmond, from York, were combined to form the new see, and it was laid down that the abbey church, now the cathedral, was to be served by a dean and six prebends, the former abbot becoming the first dean. At first the diocese was annexed to the Province of Canterbury, but by another Act of Parliament it was soon transferred to that of York. The first bishop was the Provincial of the Carmelites, John Bird, a doctor of divinity who had attracted the king's attention by his sermons preached against the pope's supremacy. Having already been rewarded by appointment as Bishop of Bangor, he was now translated to Chester. On the accession of Mary he was deprived as being a married man, and died as Vicar of Dunmow in 1556.
Despite the origins of the diocese, it was recognised by the Roman See for the space of Queen Mary's reign. George Cotes, Master of Balliol and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and lecturer in theology, was appointed bishop by the Roman See. In 1556 he was succeeded by Cuthbert Scott, an able theologian and Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University. On the accession of Elizabeth I he was one of the four Roman Catholic bishops chosen to defend Roman Catholic doctrine at the conference at Westminster, and immediately after this he was sent to the Tower and was deprived in 1559. Being released on bail, he contrived to escape to the Continent. He died at Louvain, on 9 October 1564.

## Subsequent centuries

The present diocese covers most of the traditional county of Cheshire, including the Wirral Peninsula and has its see in the City of Chester where the seat is located at the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was formerly the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Werburgh, being elevated to cathedral status in 1541.

## List of bishops

List of bishops of Chester after the foundation of the modern diocese of Chester in 1541.
Earlier the midland diocese had for a time had its see at Chester, for which see List of the Bishops of the Diocese of Lichfield and its precursor offices.
Bishops of Chester :
| From | Until | Incumbent | Notes |
| 1541 | 1554 | John Bird | Translated from Bangor; deprived by Mary I. |
| 1554 | 1555 | George Cotes | Died in office. |
| 1556 | 1559 | Cuthbert Scott | Deprived by Elizabeth I. |
| 1561 | 1577 | William Downham | Died in office. |
| 1579 | 1595 | William Chaderton | Translated to Lincoln. |
| 1595 | 1596 | Hugh Bellot | Translated from Bangor; died in office. |
| 1597 | 1604 | Richard Vaughan | Translated from Bangor; translated to London. |
| 1604 | 1615 | George Lloyd | Translated from Sodor and Man; died in office. |
| 1616 | 1619 | Thomas Morton | Translated to Lichfield and Coventry then Durham. |
| 1619 | 1646 | John Bridgeman | Deprived of the see when the English episcopy was abolished by Parliament on 9 October 1646. Died in 1652. |
| 1646 | 1660 | The see was abolished during the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. | The see was abolished during the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. |
| 1660 | 1661 | Brian Walton | Died in office. |
| 1662 | 1662 | Henry Ferne | Died shortly after consecration. |
| 1662 | 1668 | George Hall | Also Archdeacon of Canterbury; died in office. |
| 1668 | 1672 | John Wilkins | Died in office. |
| 1673 | 1686 | John Pearson | Died in office. |
| 1686 | 1689 | Thomas Cartwright | Followed James II into exile after the Glorious Revolution and died of dysentery shortly after arriving in Dublin. |
| 1689 | 1707 | Nicholas Stratford | Died in office. |
| 1708 | 1714 | Sir William Dawes, Bt. | Translated to York. |
| 1714 | 1725 | Francis Gastrell | Died in office. |
| 1726 | 1752 | Samuel Peploe | Died in office. |
| 1752 | 1771 | Edmund Keene | Translated to Ely. |
| 1771 | 1776 | William Markham | Translated to York. |
| 1776 | 1787 | Beilby Porteus | Translated to London. |
| 1788 | 1800 | William Cleaver | Translated to Bangor then St Asaph. |
| 1800 | 1809 | Henry Majendie | Translated to Bangor. |
| 1810 | 1812 | Bowyer Sparke | Translated to Ely. |
| 1812 | 1824 | George Henry Law | Translated to Bath and Wells. |
| 1824 | 1828 | Charles James Blomfield | Translated to London. |
| 1828 | 1848 | John Bird Sumner | Translated to Canterbury. |
| 1848 | 1865 | John Graham | Died in office. |
| 1865 | 1884 | William Jacobson | Retired. |
| 1884 | 1889 | William Stubbs | Translated to Oxford. |
| 1889 | 1919 | Francis Jayne | Retired. |
| 1919 | 1932 | Luke Paget | Translated from Stepney. |
| 1932 | 1939 | Geoffrey Fisher | Translated to London then Canterbury. |
| 1939 | 1955 | Douglas Crick | Translated from Stafford. |
| 1955 | 1973 | Gerald Ellison | Translated from Willesden; translated to London. |
| 1974 | 1981 | Victor Whitsey | Translated from Hertford. |
| 1982 | 1996 | Michael Baughen | Retired to London and Southwark; now honorary assistant bishop in Guildford. |
| 1996 | 2019 | Peter Forster | Retired 30 September 2019. |
| 2019 | 2020 | Keith Sinclair, Bishop of Birkenhead | Acting diocesan bishop |
| 2020 | present | Mark Tanner | Translated from Berwick 15 July 2020 |
| Sources: ||||

## Assistant bishops

Among those who have served as assistant bishops in the diocese have been:
* 1934 – 1948: Norman Tubbs, Archdeacon of Chester and Canon Residentiary until 1937, Dean of Chester thereafter; former Bishop in Tinnevelly and Bishop of Rangoon
* 1962 – 1965 (res.): Tom Greenwood, Vicar of Whitegate and former Bishop of Yukon