Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/553

 request of Archbishop Benson and in company with John Wordsworth, bishop of Salisbury [q. v. Suppl. II], he attended a conference of Old Catholics at Bonn, where he had an interview with Döllinger. In 1890 he testified in a different way to his desire for unity among Christians by welcoming a body of nonconformists to his palace and to the cathedral service, a proceeding which in 1895 he repeated at Bishopthorpe. So late as 1904, in an address on Christian Brotherhood, he advocated the admission of nonconformists to Holy Communion.

In 1891 Archbishop Magee died after but two months' tenure of the see of York, and Lord Salisbury offered the archbishopric to Maclagan. He was confirmed at St. George's, Hanover Square, and was enthroned in the Minster on 15 Sept. 1891. At York he worked on the same lines which he had followed at Lichfield. He introduced the same regulations restricting the preaching of deacons which he had promulgated there; on the other hand, he established guilds of youths inclined to pastoral life. In 1892 he established at York a training college for clergy under the name of ‘Scholæ Episcopi.’ From the same year onwards he spent much time in visiting his clergy, and within three years became personally acquainted with the 650 parishes of his diocese. He was generous in diocesan gifts, more especially to the Poor Benefices Fund, which he started; and on two occasions—in 1897 and in 1906—he offered to surrender 2000l. of his annual income in order to facilitate the subdivision of his diocese. He discouraged the more advanced usages, from the practisers of which his chief troubles as a bishop proceeded. In 1889 and 1890 he took part in the hearing at Lambeth of the charges against Edward King, bishop of Lincoln [q. v. Suppl. II], and was in full accordance with both Archbishop Benson and his successor, Archbishop Temple. A protracted struggle with Sir Edmund Beckett, Lord Grimthorpe [q. v. Suppl. II], vicar-general of his province and chancellor of his archdiocese, who insisted on the issue of licences to guilty divorcees, ended only in 1900 when Lord Grimthorpe was succeeded in these offices by Sir Alfred Cripps.

Maclagan was responsible, with Archbishop Temple, for the substance if not for the form of the ‘Responsio’ made in 1896 to the bull ‘Apostolicæ Curæ,’ in which Pope Leo XIII had denied the validity of Anglican orders (see Lord Halifax's account in F. D. How's Archbishop Maclagan, ch. xxxiii.). In the following year, accompanied by W. J. Birkbeck, he paid a private visit to Russia, where he was cordially received by the authorities of the Russian Church as well as by the Tsar Nicholas II and the Tsaritsa. At the coronation of Edward VII in 1902 he crowned Queen Alexandra, although it was decided that this function appertained to the Archbishop of York by grace rather than by right. In 1906 Maclagan celebrated the eightieth year of his life, and the fiftieth of his ministry, by a special offering of 2000l. for charitable purposes. But his physical powers—especially those of memory—were then declining, and in the autumn of 1908, after taking a passive part in the Lambeth Conference and many meetings incidental to the Pan-Anglican Congress, he resigned his archbishopric (thereby setting a precedent). At the beginning of 1909 he took up his abode at Queen's Gate Place, London, where, after a short illness, he died on 19 Sept. 1910. He was buried in Bishopthorpe churchyard, in the grave next to that of his lifelong friend Canon Keble. At Lichfield a large stone cross, erected by himself, marks the spot which he had chosen for his grave.

Maclagan's pastoral activity has been rarely surpassed. Although his literary style was pure and clear he never attained great renown as a preacher. Late in life he prefixed a brief monograph to an edition of ‘The Grace of Sacraments’ (1905) by Alexander Knox [q. v.], a forerunner of the Tractarians. In 1855 he published for private circulation a small volume of sonnets and other short poems. But those of his writings which will live longest are his hymns. Among them is the beautiful hymn for All Saints' Day (‘The Saints of God’), two Good Friday hymns, and one for St. Luke's Day (for list see Dictionary of Hymnology (1892), p. 709). He also composed the tunes of a number of hymns, among them those of the Communion hymn ‘Bread of Heaven,’ of Wesley's ‘O Thou before the world began,’ and of the hymn ‘Palms of Glory’ (for festivals of martyrs). He wrote some other ‘Ancient and Modern’ hymn tunes; others have been published in the ‘Church Monthly,’ a magazine begun in 1888.

Maclagan was twice married: (1) in April 1860 to Sarah Kate (d. July 1862), daughter of George Clapham, by whom he had two sons; and (2) in Nov. 1878 to Augusta Anne, youngest daughter of