March 2026

The Rt Revd and Rt Hon Dame Sarah Mullally is installed as Archbishop of Canterbury on 25 March, the 106^th archbishop in succession to St Augustine. The service is in Canterbury because this is head cathedral for the southern province of England. (For the northern province, it is York Minster, where all new Archbishops of York are installed). At the installation, Archbishop Sarah swears her oath on a manuscript gospel-book made in Italy in the sixth century and brought to England by St Augustine himself. It has been in Corpus Christi College Cambridge since the time of Elizabeth I, but it is taken to Canterbury for each archbishop’s oath-taking. It was also taken to Westminster Abbey for the King’s coronation, where it was carried in procession.

Canterbury rather than London is the seat of the southern archbishop for historical reasons. Augustine’s mission, sent by Pope Greogry the Great, travelled overland from Italy  and, having crossed the Channel, landed in Kent in 597. This landfall, obvious though it was geographically, made sense for political reasons too. At this time England was divided into many small kingdoms. Of these, the kingdom of Kent was particularly well connected with the Merovingian kingdom in the northern part of France, through which Augustine and his companions had just travelled. So he will have known that the pagan king of Kent was married to a Merovingian princess. She was a Christian and, by the marriage agreement, had brought a bishop with her so that she could continue to practise her faith. So this made Kent a good place for the mission to start. With the king’s support, Augustine established a cathedral in Canterbury, and there the ecclesiastical seat of the archbishop has always remained. In the mid-tenth century England finally became one kingdom under the kings of Wessex, whose capital had always been Winchester, and it continued to be so until London was made the capital of England by William the Conqueror. By the twelfth century the archbishops had come to recognise the benefit of being present in London, at least for part of the time, and so they established the residence of Lambeth Palace just across the river from the king and parliament in Westminster. It is here that the archbishop lives and works in his (now her) capacity as archbishop. The day-to-day business of the Canterbury diocese — as distinct from the overarching work of the archbishop —  is delegated these days to the Bishop of Dover.

The date chosen for the installation  is 25 March, the Feast of the Annunciation, or Lady Day as it is sometimes called. This has all kinds of symbolic resonances. It is, of course, one of the great feasts of Mary, and so is a particularly apt day for the installation of our first female archbishop. This is a new step for the Church of England, and the service of installation is being held on the day when, nine months before the Nativity, we celebrate Jesus’s conception, the most momentous new beginning of all. Furthermore, before 1 January was universally accepted as new year’s day, 25 March was often counted as the beginning of the year. In Roman times it had been the start of the tax year. More cheerfully, it is close to the spring equinox, when we enjoy the new birth of springtime and energising pleasure of enjoying more light than darkness each day. So 25 March has a great deal going for it as the date for the installation of our new archbishop.

Joyce Hill