Colonial Despatches

Longley received an application from Bishop Hills requesting that the diocese, which consisted of both the Vancouver Island and British Columbia colonies, be divided and an additional bishopric be appointed.1 Although Longley approved of the request, Seymour opposed the plan, suggesting that dividing the diocese would exacerbate a jealous rivalry between the colonies and should be avoided until they were politically incorporated.1

Prior to his bishopric, Longley served as a vicar, a tutor, and the headmaster of Harrow School.3 He later held office as the Bishop of Ripon beginning in 1836, the Bishop of Durham in 1850, and the Archbishop of York in 1860, before assuming the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury as his fourth see in 1862.4

Longley was the sixteenth of seventeen children and had seven children with his wife, Caroline Sophia Parnell. He was close friends with, and the most photographed male subject of, Charles Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Caroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland.5

• 1. Longley to Cardwell, 7 October 1864, 9283, CO 60/20, p. 288.
• 2. Seymour to Cardwell, 2 May 1865, 6396, CO 60/21, p. 383.
• 3. Garrard, J. R., Longley, Charles Thomas, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
• 4. Ibid.
• 5. Ibid.