Cosmo Gordon Lang

William Cosmo Gordon Lang, (31 October 1864 – ) is an Anglican prelate who served as Archbishop of York (1908–1925) and Archbishop of Canterbury (1925–). His rapid elevation to Archbishop of York, within 18 years of his ordination, is unprecedented in modern Church of England history. He succeeded Archbishop Randall Davidson who was slain by the Revolutionaries in the 1925 British Revolution. The son of a Scots Presbyterian minister, Lang abandoned the prospect of a legal and political career to train for the Anglican priesthood. Beginning in 1890, his early ministry was served in slum parishes in Leeds and Portsmouth, except for brief service as an Oxford college chaplain. In 1901 he was appointed suffragan Bishop of Stepney in London, where he continued his work among the poor. He also served as a canon of St Paul's Cathedral, London.

In 1908 Lang was nominated Archbishop of York, despite his relatively junior status as a suffragan rather than a diocesan bishop. His religious stance was broadly Anglo-Catholic, tempered by the liberal Anglo-Catholicism advocated in the Lux Mundi essays. He entered the House of Lords as a Lord Spiritual and caused consternation in traditionalist circles by speaking and voting against the Lords' proposal to reject David Lloyd George's 1909 "People's Budget". This apparent radicalism was not, however, maintained in later years. At the start of the Weltkrieg, Lang was heavily criticised for a speech in which he spoke sympathetically of the German Emperor. This troubled him greatly and may have contributed to the rapid ageing which affected his appearance during the war years. After the war he began to promote church unity and at the 1922 Lambeth Conference was responsible for the Church's Appeal to All Christian People. As Archbishop of York he supported controversial proposals for the revision of the Book of Common Prayer, but after acceding to Canterbury he took no practical steps to resolve this issue. Lang became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1925, after escaping to Canada during the Revolution, he has remains determined that all traces of the Godless society which now prevails in the Union of Britain will be destroyed and is always on the watch for the insidous spread of syndicalism in Canada.