INTRODUCTION

The new see of Ripon was established in the province of York in 1836 by the statute of 6 & 7 Will. IV c. 77. It was to consist of the Yorkshire deaneries of the archdeaconry of Richmond, which had been in Chester diocese since the foundation of that diocese in 1541, the deanery of Craven and lands in the west of the county currently in the diocese of York. The new bishop of Ripon was to be subject to the archbishop of York. Ripon collegiate church, whose average income 1828–31 had been £633, was to be raised to the status of cathedral, and its chapter was to become the cathedral chapter, with the six canons of the collegiate church now called canons of the cathedral. A 'fit residence' was to be provided for the new bishop. The office of archdeacon of Richmond was to be transferred from the diocese of Chester, and a new archdeaconry, that of Craven, established. These provisions were approved and ratified by an Order in Council of 5 October 1836, to come into force forthwith. Ten days later, the king presented Charles Thomas Longley to the new bishopric. A further Order in Council of 22 December 1836 fixed the bishop's annual income at £4,500. (fn. 1)

It was the custom, when Ripon was still a collegiate church, for the dean of Ripon to nominate three clerical candidates for a vacant canonry, and this nomination was known as a 'commendum'. One of the three (mostly, but not always the first-named) was then chosen by the archbishop of York. Ripon cathedral retained six canonries for only four years, because in 1840 the statute of 3 & 4 Vic. c. 113 enacted that two of them should be suspended, namely the first and third to become vacant, and that all the canonries should henceforth be in the patronage of the bishop of Ripon.

Thomas Duffus Hardy, whose revision of John Le Neve's Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae was published in 1854, supplied the bishops, deans, archdeacons and canons up to about 1847, drawing upon information in the Bishop's Certificates in the Public Record Office as his source. The records, both diocesan and capitular, are good.

Footnotes