y was dissolved in 1540. The next year a new Foundation, called the Dean and Chapter, was constituted by Royal Charter. Today there is a Dean and four Residentiary Canons in the Chapter, who, with the Precentor, make up the establishment of full-time clergy.Canterbury Cathedral is linked to the lives of many great ecclesiastical and national figures. Among the former are the Saints of Canterbury – Augustine, Theodore, Odo, Dunstan, Alphege, Anselm, Thomas and Edmund - all of whom were Archbishops of Canterbury and held in universal respect.The one who became most famous of all was Thomas Becket, who was murdered in his cathedral on 29 December 1170. Appointed by his King and friend, Henry II, to bring the Church to the heel of the monarchy, he did the reverse. He espoused its rights in the face of the King’s desire to control them. Four knights, with their own agendas of complaint, thinking to ingratiate themselves with the King, came to Canterbury and killed the Archbishop in his own Cathedral.In the Reformation period Canterbury had a series of distinguished Archbishops, among them Thomas Cranmer, who compiled the first two Prayer Books and established what was to become the liturgical tradition of the Church of England and Anglican Churches the world over. Cardinal Pole was Archbishop during the reign of Mary I, the period of the Catholic Restoration, and Matthew Parker and John Whitgift were the greatest of Elizabeth I’s Archbishops. With the Civil War, the Cathedral was sacked by the Puritans (1642), the Cathedral Chapter was dissolved, and it was not until the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 that the Church of England was re-established and life returned to the Cathedral. The fabric was repaired, the daily services were resumed and Chapter re-established.Few changes occurred until the middle of the nineteenth century, when a series of energetic Archbishops and equally vigorous Deans, began a transformation of...
