Archbishop of Canterbury. He served in this position from December 1928 until May 1942. He was born William Cosmo Gordon Lang in Fyvie Manse, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, the 3rd son of the local Church of Scotland minister. In January 1865 the family moved to Glasgow, Scotland on his father's appointment as a minister in the Anderston district. This was followed by moves to Morningside, Edinburgh, Scotland in 1868 and, in 1873, back to Glasgow when his father was appointed minister to the historic Barony Church. In 1878, at the age of 14, he passed his matriculation examinations and began his studies at the University of Glasgow that autumn. In 1881 he travelled to Cambridge, England to stay with a friend who was studying there. A visit to King's College Chapel persuaded him that he should study at the College and the following January he passed the entrance examination. However, when he discovered that as part of his degree studies he would be examined in mathematics, a subject for which he was not well-suited, his enthusiasm waned and he applied to Balliol College at Oxford, England and was accepted. In the summer of 1882 he ended his studies at Glasgow with a Master of Arts degree, and was awarded prizes for essays on politics and church history. In 1883 he became the Oxford Union's president and the following year was a co-founder of the Oxford University Dramatic Society. In 1886 he graduated with first-class honors in History. With an ambition from early in life to practice law, enter politics and then take office in some future Conservative administration, he began his studies for the English Bar in 1887, working in the London, England chambers of W.S. Robson, a future Attorney-General. During these years he was largely aloof from religion, but continued churchgoing out of what he termed "hereditary respect". In October 1888 he was elected to an All Souls Fellowship and began to divide his time between London and Oxford. After some of his Oxford friends were training for ordination, he was drawn to it and in the Spring of 1889, he severed his connection with the Bar, renounced his political ambitions, and applied for a place at Cuddesdon College. After a year's study at Cuddesdon, he was ordained as deacon. He accepted an offer of a curacy under Edward Stuart Talbot, the Vicar of Leeds Parish Church in West Yorkshire, England, arriving at Leeds in the autumn of 1890. In addition to his normal parish duties, he acted temporarily as Principal of the Clergy School, was chaplain to Leeds Infirmary, and took charge of a men's club of around a hundred members. In May 1891 he was ordained to full priesthood and two years later he was offered the post of Dean of Divinity at Magdalen College at Oxford and he accepted in October 1893. In 1894 he was asked to add to his workload by acting as Vicar of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin The church had almost ceased to function when he took it over, but he revived regular services, chose preachers with care and slowly rebuilt the congregation. In December 1895 he was offered the post of Vicar of Portsea in Portsmouth, England, but was not ready to leave Oxford and refused. Some months later he reconsidered and after discovering that the Portsea offer was still open, he decided to accept. In January 1898 he was invited by Queen Victoria to preach at Osborne House, her Isle of Wight home. He was summoned on several more occasions and in the following January was appointed an Honorary Chaplain to the Queen. These visits to Osborne were the start of a close association with the Royal Family which would last for the rest of his life. As one of the Queen's chaplains, he assisted in the funeral arrangements after her death in January 1901. In March 1901 he was appointed Bishop of Stepney and a canon of St Paul's Cathedral, with consecration as bishop the following May. The University of Oxford honored him with the degree of Doctor of Divinity in late May of that year. In the fall of 1908 he was informed of his election as Bishop of Montreal, Canada. Letters from the Governor General of Canada and the Canadian High Commissioner urged him to accept, but the Archbishop of Canterbury asked him to refuse. A few weeks later he was informed that he had been nominated Archbishop of York, the 2nd highest position in the Church of England, and was seated at York Minster, York, England in January 1909. In addition to his diocesan responsibilities for York, he became head of the entire Northern Province, and a member of the House of Lords. Believing that the Diocese of York was too large, he proposed reducing it by forming a new Diocese of Sheffield, which after several years' work was inaugurated in 1914. In the years following his appointment, he spoke out on a range of social and economic issues, and in support of improved working conditions. Despite this seemingly progressive approach, his instincts remained conservative. He voted against the 1914 Irish Home Rule Bill and opposed liberalization of the divorce laws. After playing a prominent role in King George V's coronation in 1911, he became increasingly close to the Royal Family. When World War I broke out in August 1914, he concluded that the conflict was righteous and was active in recruiting campaigns throughout his province. At a meeting in York in November 1914 he caused offence when he spoke out against excessive anti-German propaganda, and recalled a "sacred memory" of Kaiser Wilhelm II kneeling with King Edward VII at the bier of Queen Victoria. The strain of this period, coupled with the onset of alopecia (hair loss), drastically altered his relatively youthful appearance to that of a bald and elderly-looking man. After the war, his primary cause was that of church unity. In 1920, as chairman of the Reunion Committee at the 6th Lambeth Conference, he promoted an "Appeal to all Christian People," that was unanimously adopted as the Conference's Resolution 9. Despite initial warmth from the English Free Churches, little was achieved in terms of practical union between episcopal and non-episcopal churches, and the initiative was allowed to lapse. However, it is considered the starting-point for the more successful ecumenical efforts of later generations. In April 1923 King George V awarded him the Royal Victorian Chain, an honor in the personal gift of the Sovereign. In 1926 he baptized Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen Elizabeth II, in the private chapel of Buckingham Palace. In December 1928 he was installed as Archbishop of Canterbury, replacing Archbishop Randall Davidson who resigned the previous July. His first three years at Canterbury were marked by intermittent illnesses, which required periods of convalescence away from his duties and after 1932, he "had almost unbroken health" for the rest of his life. He presided over the 1930 Lambeth Conference, which gave limited church approval to the use of contraception. Throughout the 1930s, he became a strong supporter of the government's policy of appeasing the European dictators, declaring the Sunday after the Munich Agreement of September 1938 to be a day of thanksgivings for the "sudden lifting of this cloud." On the domestic front, he supported campaigns for the abolition of the death penalty. He upheld the right of the Church to refuse the remarriage of divorced persons within its buildings, but he did not directly oppose A.P. Herbert's Matrimonial Causes Bill of 1937, which liberalized the divorce laws. During the abdication crisis of 1936, in which the newly installed English King Edward VIII gave up the throne to marry the divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson, his advice was sought by both King Edward VIII and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. With the advent of World War II in September 1939, he saw his main duty as the preservation of spiritual values during what he deemed to be an honorable conflict. He opposed strategies such as indiscriminate bombing, and expressed support for the Pope Pius XII's Five Peace Points initiative. During the summer of 1941 he considered retirement. His main concern was that a Lambeth Conference would need to be called soon after the war, and he felt that he would be too old to lead it and that he should make way for a younger man, preferably William Temple. On 27 November he informed Prime Minister Winston Churchill of his decision to retire on 31 March 1942. His last official act in office, on 28 March, was the confirmation of Princess Elizabeth. On his retirement, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Lang of Lambeth in the County of Surrey, and was able to remain in the House of Lords. On December 5, 1945 he was due to speak in a Lords debate on conditions in Central Europe and on his way to Kew Gardens station in Richmond, Surrey, England to catch the London train, he collapsed and was taken to hospital, but was dead on arrival. A post-mortem attributed the death to heart failure at the age of 81. His body was cremated and the ashes taken to the Chapel of St Stephen Martyr, a side chapel at Canterbury Cathedral, where they were interred under the altar table. During his life, he authored several books, including the novel "The Young Clanroy" (1897), "The Miracles of Jesus" (1901), "The Opportunity of the Church of England" (1905), "Thoughts on Some of the Parables of Jesus" (1909), "The Unity of the Church of England" (1925), and "The Oppression of Religion in Russia" (1930). He was portrayed by actor Maurice Denham in the television drama series "Edward & Mrs. Simpson" (1978) and was also portrayed by actor Derek Jacobi in the film "The King's Speech" (2010).