On Easter Day, 20th April 2014, the Church of England Dioceses of Bradford, Ripon & Leeds and Wakefield, will be merged to form a new Diocese of West Yorkshire and the Dales. Although the bishop of that new diocese will in due course join other bishops in the House of Lords, the dissolution of the three former dioceses marks an end to the era of the Bishops of Bradford, Ripon & Leeds and Wakefield as Lords Spiritual. Much has been written and recorded about the wider contributions of successive occupants of these Sees, but here – in three parts – is a (very) brief history of those bishops as parliamentarians.
Part One: The Bishops of Ripon
Since its formation in 1836 there have been 12 bishops of the diocese of Ripon (and latterly, Ripon & Leeds).
Longley and Bickersteth
Its first bishop was Rt Rev Charles Longley, who served until his translation to Durham in 1856, before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury in 1862.

Longley had married the daughter of the Postmaster General in Prime Minister Lord Melbourne’s Government. However, as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography records, “Melbourne agreed that Longley need not be constrained to vote with the government on matters of Irish church policy. Longley actually voted against the government on other issues besides the Irish church, to Melbourne’s pain and displeasure… Longley opposed the Oxford University Bill of 1854 which, among other things, reduced the proportion of clerical fellows in each college and reconstituted the central government of the university. In 1854 Longley was named as one of two churchmen who would join the executive commissioners empowered to revise the statutes of the university and colleges of Oxford.” Continue reading “Lords Spiritual No Longer, Part One: The Bishops of Ripon”