Fisher, Geoffrey

views updated May 29 2018

Fisher, Geoffrey (1887–1972). Archbishop of Canterbury. Born in Leicestershire of a clerical family and educated at Exeter College, Oxford, Fisher taught at Marlborough. After succeeding William Temple as headmaster of Repton (1914–32), he was successively bishop of Chester (1932), bishop of London (1939), and archbishop after Temple's sudden death (1945). His considerable administrative skills were evident in London especially during the blitz and at Canterbury where he accomplished the most substantial canon law reform since Bancroft. As archbishop, he was the first to travel world-wide in the Anglican Communion and the first since the Reformation to visit the pope. Headmasterly in manner, both as bishop and archbishop, he took a central position between Anglo-catholics and evangelicals, thus assuaging earlier antagonisms. On retirement to Trent village in Dorset (1961) he was active as parish curate.

Revd Dr William M. Marshall