Cosmo Gordon Lang - Legacy

Legacy

Although Lang was a bishop in England for longer than anyone else in recent times, Hastings says that "of no other is it so hard to address his true significance". According to biographer Lockhart he was a complex character in whom "a jangle of warring personalities ... never reached agreement among themselves." Lockhart writes that while Lang's many years of high office saw progress in the cause of Christian reunion, the mark he left on the Church was relatively small; many believed it could have been larger and deeper. While Lang's oratorical and administrative gifts were beyond doubt, Hastings nevertheless claims that as Archbishop of Canterbury, Lang displayed no effective leadership or guidance, turning away from reform and content to be the "final sentinel to the ancien régime". Wilkinson says that Lang dealt conscientiously with problems as they arose, but without any overall strategy.

In Hastings's view, Lang was probably more sympathetic to Rome than any Church of England archbishop of modern times, responsible for a discreet catholicisation of the Church of England's practices. A small outward indication of this was his decision to use a cassock as everyday dress and to wear a mitre on formal occasions, the first archbishop since the English Reformation to do so. However, Lang believed that in relation to the supreme truths of the church, rituals and dress were of small account, but that if people's worship was assisted by such customs they should be allowed.

Despite Lang's long involvement with the poorest of society, after becoming Archbishop of York he increasingly detached himself from everyday life. The historian Tom Buchanan wrote that Lang's sympathy with ordinary people was replaced by "an upper class affectation and a delight in the high society in which his office allowed him to move". No archbishop has been as close as Lang to the Royal Family; a Channel Four television history of the British monarchy maintained that Lang "held a view of Christianity in which the monarchy, rather than the cross, stood centre stage as the symbol of the nation's faith". Successive generations of the Royal Family considered him their friend and honoured him. King George V appointed him to the largely ceremonial post of Lord High Almoner, and after the 1937 Coronation George VI created him a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO), a rare honour which, like the Royal Victorian Chain, lay in the private gift of the Sovereign. A friend, commenting on the transformation of Lang's perspective, said of him: "He might have been Cardinal Wolsey or St Francis of Assisi, and he chose to be Cardinal Wolsey."

Lang also received numerous honorary doctorates from British universities. His portrait was painted many times; after sitting for Sir William Orpen in 1924, Lang reportedly remarked to Bishop Hensley Henson of Durham that the portrait showed him as "proud, prelatical and pompous". Henson's recorded reply was "To which of these epithets does Your Grace take exception?"

At an early stage in his priesthood Lang decided to lead a celibate life. He had no objection to the institution of marriage, but felt that his own work would be hindered by domesticity. Years after Lang's death, his sexual orientation was questioned; journalist Michael Gove and historian David Starkey suggested that Lang was a repressed homosexual. He had close friendships with colleagues such as Dick Sheppard, and with Wilfrid Parker, his one-time Domestic Chaplain to whom he wrote admitting his personal loneliness, and of his need for "someone in daily nearness to love". However, he clearly enjoyed the company of women and confessed in 1928, after a visit to the Rowntree's chocolate factory, that the sight of the girls there had "stirred up all the instincts of my youth ... very little subdued by the passage of years".

George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester who had earlier praised Lang's work for church unity, said that Lang's failure to take a lead after the Prayer Book rejection of 1928 meant that the Church of England had been unable to revise its forms of worship or take any effective control of its own affairs. Others, however, have argued that Lang's laissez-faire approach to the Prayer Book controversy helped to defuse a potentially explosive situation, and contributed to an eventual solution. Lang himself was gloomy about his legacy; he believed that since he had not led his country back into an Age of Faith, or marked his primacy with a great historical act, he had failed to live up to his own high standard. Others have judged him more charitably, praising his industry, his administrative ability and his devotion to duty.