John Bird Sumner

1780-1862. Archbishop of Canterbury from 1848. Educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, he taught briefly at Eton, was ordained in 1803, became a canon of Durham (1820), and in 1828 was consecrated bishop of Chester, a see he held for twenty years before going to Canterbury. A strong Evangelical like his brother, C.R. Sumner,* he nevertheless like him voted for the Catholic Emancipation Bill in 1829. Later he opposed the Oxford Movement* and denied that baptismal regeneration was a fundamental doctrine of the Church of England. His published works include Apostolical Preaching (1815), A Treatise on the Records of the Creation (2 vols., 1816), and The Evidence of Christianity (1824).