Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.14.4
Gallery Label:
A High Church Anglican, William Howley was a vigorous opponent of the two most important political causes of the day: Catholic Emancipation (1829) and the Great Reform Act (1832). He held the Regius Professorship in Divinity at Oxford University from 1809 before being appointed Bishop of London in 1813. His intervention in George IV’s messy divorce proceedings in 1820 earned him public criticism when he asserted the principle that the king could do no wrong either morally or physically (a manifest absurdity in this particular case). Such views did no harm to his clerical career, however, and in 1828 he was installed as Archbishop of Canterbury. Among Howley’s lesser distinctions is his claim to be the last archbishop to wear a wig, though in Chantrey’s bust the sculptor dispenses with ecclesiastical formality to show the bishop in classical style with fashionably close-cropped hair. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016
