TAIT, ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL (18'1-1882) , English divine, archbishop of Canterbury, was born at Edinburgh on Dec. 21, 1811, of Presbyterian parents. He entered Balliol college in 183o as a Snell exhibitioner from the University of Glasgow. He became fellow and tutor of Balliol and was also ordained deacon (1836) and priest (1838). and served the curacy of Baldon. He never sympathized with the principles of the Tractarian movement, and on the appearance of Tract 90 in 1841 he drafted the famous protest of the "Four Tutors" against it; but this was his only important contribution to the dispute. In 1842 he suc ceeded Arnold as headmaster of Rugby ; and, after a serious illness in 1848, accepted a less strenuous appointment as dean of Carlisle in 1849. During his residence at Carlisle he served on the Univer sity Commission, restored his cathedral and did much excellent pastoral work. There too he suffered the great sorrow of his life. He had married Catharine Spooner at Rugby in 1843 ; in the spring of 1856, within five weeks, five of their children died of scarlet fever. He was consecrated bishop of London on Nov. 22, 1856. He became archbishop of Canterbury in 1868. His last years were interrupted by illness and saddened by the death in 1878 of his only son Craufurd, and of his wife.
Tait was constant in his attendance in parliament, and pressed on many measures of practical utility. The modification of the terms of clerical subscription (1865), the new lectionary (1871), the Burials Act (188o) were largely owing to him; for all of them, and especially the last, he incurred much obloquy at the time. The Royal Commissions on Ritual (1867) and on the Ecclesiastical Courts (1881) were due to him, and he took a large part in the deliberations of both.
Tait was less successful in dealing with matters which called for the higher gifts of a ruler, and especially in his relations with (a) the liberal trend in modern thought, and (b) the Catholic revival. (i.) His object in dealing with questions of faith, as in dealing with the ritual question, was primarily a practical one: he wished to secure peace, and obedience to the law as he saw it. Consequently, after his sympathies had led him to express him self favourably towards some movement, he frequently found himself compelled to draw back. He expressed a qualified sym
pathy with some of the writers of Essays and Reviews, and then joined in the censure of it by the bishops (1861). The same kind of apparent vacillation was found in his action in other cases; e.g., in the Colenso case (1863), and in the controversy as to the use or disuse of the Athanasian symbol (1872). (ii.) Tait was con cerned with the Catholic revival during the whole of his episco pate, and above all on the side of ritual. He had to deal with the St. George's-in-the-East riots in 1859, and the troubles at St. Alban's, Holborn, in their earlier stages (1867) ; he took part as assessor in the Privy Council judgment in the Ridsdale case (1877) he was more closely concerned than any other bishop with the agitation against confession in 1858, and again in 1877. His method throughout was the same : he endeavoured to obtain a compliance to the law as declared by the courts; failing this, he made the most earnest efforts to secure obedience to the ruling of the Ordinary for the sake of the peace of the Church; after this, he could do nothing. In fact Tait could hardly realize anything but the connection between the English Church and the State. From such a position there seemed to be no escape but in legislation for the deprivation of the recalcitrant clergy; and the Public Worship Regulation Act (1874) was the result. A widespread feeling of indignation spread not only among High Churchmen, but among many who cared little for the ritual practices involved. At length, when A. H. Mackonochie was on the point of being deprived of his benefice of St. Alban's, Holborn, for contumacy, the archbishop, then on his deathbed at Addington, took steps which resulted in the carrying out of an exchange of benefices (which had already been projected), which removed him from the jurisdiction of the court. This proved to be the turning-point; and the ritual difficulty was afterwards dealt with from a different point of view, and the Public Worship Regulation Act became practically obsolete. The archbishop died on Dec. 3, 1882.
See R. T. Davidson and D. Benham, Life of Archbishop Tait, 2 vols. (1891) ; A. C. Tait, Catharine and Craufurd Tait (188o).