History
The new diocese was founded relatively recently by an Order in Council on 4 May 1877, implementing the Bishopric of St Albans Act 1875.
The diocese was established from parts of the large Diocese of Rochester, extending the new bishop's jurisdiction over more than 600 parishes in the two counties of Essex and Hertfordshire.
The first Bishop of St Albans was Thomas Legh Claughton, who served from 1877 to 1890.
The see is in the City of St Albans, where the cathedra (bishop's seat) is located in St Albans Cathedral. The cathedral building itself dates from 1077. It was an abbey church (part of St Albans Abbey) prior to its dissolution in 1539, and then a parish church (purchased by the town in 1553) until its elevation to cathedral status in 1877.
In 1914, the new Diocese of Chelmsford was formed, removing Essex from the St Albans diocese. A few months later the county Archdeaconry of Bedford was added from the Diocese of Ely, thereby providing the diocese substantially with its current boundaries.
The suffragan bishopric of Bedford was revived in 1879 and again in 1935 and that of Hertford was created in 1968.
Read more about this topic: Diocese Of St Albans
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Indeed, the Englishman’s history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
—Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)