Diocese of Chester

Diocese of Chester Church of England
Province:	York
Bishop:	Peter Forster
Cathedral:	Chester Cathedral
Organisation
Suffragan bishop(s):	Bishop of Birkenhead, Bishop of Stockport
Archdeaconries:	Chester, Macclesfield
No. of parishes:	275
No. of churches:	368
Details
Website:	chester.anglican.org

The Diocese of Chester is a Church of England diocese in the Province of York covering Cheshire.

The diocese was created by King Henry VIII as part of the Henrician Reformation, in 1541, and at the time of its creation it was much larger, encompassing Lancashire also and parts of Cumberland, Flintshire, Westmorland and Yorkshire. The Victorian church reorganisations created new dioceses in the industrial areas, cutting Chester down to its home county.

History

The Diocese of Chester when created in 1541

The deaneries of the Diocese of Chester in 1835

Map showing the areas loost to the Diocese of Chester

Ancient diocese

Before the sixteenth century the city possessed a bishop and a cathedral, though 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 Bishop of Lichfield. After the Council of London in 1075 had decreed the transfer of all episcopal chairs to cities, Peter, Bishop of Lichfield, removed his seat from Lichfield to Chester, and became known as Bishop of Chester. There he chose The Collegiate Church of St John the Baptist as his cathedral. 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 cathedra itself were 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.

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 Saints 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 Lupus, Earl of Chester, converted it into a major Benedictine monastery, in which foundation he had 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. The 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 which, though not be reckoned among the greatest cathedrals of England, yet is not unworthy of its rank, and affords a valuable study in the evolution of Gothic architecture. It has been said of it that "at every turn it is satisfying in small particulars and disappointing in great features". The last of the abbots was John, or Thomas, Clark, who resigned his abbey, valued at £1,003 5s. 11d. per annum, to the king.

1541 to 1836

The Diocese of Chester was created, during the Henrician Reformation, on 14 August 1541, from the Chester archdeaconry of the Diocese of Lichfield and Coventry. On its creation, it covered Cheshire and Lancashire, and the Richmond Archdeaconry of the Diocese of York. The diocese was originally formed as part of the Province of Canterbury, but was quickly transferred to the Province of York later in the same year. The twenty deaneries of the new diocese were: Amounderness, Bangor, Blackburn, Boroughbridge, Catterick, Chester, Copeland, Frodsham, Furness, Kendal, Leyland, Lonsdale, Macclesfield, Malpas, Manchester, Middlewich, Nantwich, Richmond, Warrington, and Wirral. The deaneries as shown in the accompanying map, were established by 1224 and remained largely unchanged until the nineteenth century.

Since 1836

Starting in 1836, a series of boundary changes saw the diocese eventually greatly diminished in size to cover Cheshire alone. A sequence of five major boundary changes to the diocese began. In 1836, the deaneries of Boroughbridge, Catterick, and Richmond, and half of the deanery of Lonsdale were taken from Chester to form part of the newly created Diocese of Ripon which also had parts taken from the Diocese of York. In 1847, the deaneries of Amounderness, Blackburn, Leyland, and Manchester, together with another large part of the deanery of Lonsdale and roughly one third of the deanery of Kendal were taken to form the then new Diocese of Manchester. Additionally, part of the deanery of Warrington (Leigh) was also transferred to this new Diocese of Manchester. At the same time, the deanery of Bangor was transferred to the Diocese of St Asaph. This left the deaneries of Copeland, Furness, and the remaining parts of the deaneries of Kendal and Lonsdale detached from the main part of the diocese around Chester, provision was made to transfer these to the Diocese of Carlisle, but this required the assent of the then Bishop of Carlisle, or the appointment of a successor. In 1849, the part of the deanery of Chester that extended into Flintshire was transferred to the Diocese of St Asaph. The detached deaneries in the north of Lancashire and in the Lake District were eventually transferred to the Diocese of Carlisle in 1856, on the appointment of Henry Villiers to the See. Finally, in 1880, the remaining part of the deanery of Warrington was used to create the new Diocese of Liverpool. From that point, the Diocese of Chester had been reduced to its present size.

Present day

The Bishop of Chester is assisted by two suffragan bishops, the Bishop of Birkenhead and the Bishop of Stockport. The suffragan See of Stockport was created in 1949 and was the sole suffragan bishopric in the diocese until the See of Birkenhead was created in 1965. Since 1994 the Bishop of Beverley (currently the Right Reverend Glyn Webster, consecrated in 2013) has provided "alternative episcopal oversight" in this diocese (among eleven others in the Province of York) to those parishes which cannot in conscience accept the sacramental ministry of bishops who have participated in the ordination of women.

There are two archdeaconries, Chester and Macclesfield, which are further divided into 18 deaneries. There are consequently two archdeacons: the Archdeacon of Chester and the Archdeacon of Macclesfield. The Dean of Chester is primarily responsible for the running of Chester Cathedral.

Bishops

The diocesan Bishop of Chester is supported by two suffragan bishops, the Bishop of Birkenhead and the Bishop of Stockport. There are five retired honorary assistant bishops licensed in the diocese.

Excluding early mediæval bishops who may have been referred to as 'Bishop of Chester', the bishops of the diocese have been:

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.
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	Died in office.
1689	1707	Nicholas Stratford	Died in office.
1708	1714	William Dawes	Translated from 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 from 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 Law	Translated to Bath and Wells.
1824	1828	Charles Blomfield	Translated to London.
1828	1848	John Sumner	Translated to Canterbury.
1848	1865	John Graham	Died in office.
1865	1884	William Jacobson	Died in office.
1884	1889	William Stubbs	Translated to Oxford.
1889	1919	Francis Jayne	Resigned or 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.
1996	present	Peter Forster
Sources:

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Diocese of Chester)

• Diocese of Chester

References

• Dunn, F. I. (1987). The ancient parishes, townships and chapelries of Cheshire. Chester: Cheshire Record Office and Cheshire Diocesan Record Office. ISBN 0-906758-14-9. 
• Elrington, C. R. (Ed.) (1980). The Victoria history of the county of Chester, Volume III. Oxford: The University of London Institute of Historical Research (Oxford University Press). ISBN 0-19-722754-6. 
• Phillips, A. D. M.; Phillips, C. B. (2002). A new historical atlas of Cheshire. Chester, UK: Cheshire County Council and Cheshire Community Council Publications Trust. ISBN 0-904532-46-1.