Diocesan Histories: Chester. By the Rev. Rupert H. Morris, D.D.
(S.P.C.K.)—As a diocese Chester has no great antiquity. It was constituted in 1541, but insufficiently endowed (out of the revenues of the suppressed Abbey of St. Werbergh). At first it was in the province of Canterbury, but was transferred to York in the following year. Originally, it was of very large extent. Two Sees, Ripon and Manchester, have been, wholly or in part, made out of it, and another large slice was cut off in 1856 and added to the diocese of Carlisle. In three hundred and fifty-five years there have been, including Dr. Jayne, the present occupant of the See, no less than thirty-three Bishops. Many of these were translated, the poverty of the See being one of the causes of this change. Every Bishop, from Dr. Keene (1752) down to the present occupant, was translated except Dr. Jacobson (1865-84). The most eminent of the number was perhaps Pearson, author of "The Exposition of the Creed." Among other prelates of dis Unction may be mentioned Brian Walton, Beilby Porteous, C. J. Blomfield, J. B. Sumner, and W. Stubbs, translated to Oxford in 1888. Dr. Morris, of course, goes back beyond the foundation of the See, and has much that is interesting to tell us about the early days of Christianity in this part of England, and of the history of the Church in Anglo Saxon and mediaeval times.
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