[1][2] The title, which takes its name after the town of Bedford, was created under the Suffragan Bishops Act 1534.
[2] Richard Atkinson, formerly Archdeacon of Leicester, was consecrated by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, in St Paul's Cathedral on 17 May 2012.
The suffragan was always intended to take responsibility for the East End; by 1887 this meant the rural deaneries of Spitalfields, of Hackney and of Stepney.
[4] To these were added the rural deaneries of Islington, Shoreditch, St Sepulchre (the part outside the City), and Enfield in 1888,[5] such that the bishop's area became known as "East and North London" — i.e. the east and north of the then-County of London (inside the diocese).
Billing called himself Bishop-Suffragan for East London,[6] and this responsibility passed to the Bishop of Stepney (which See was newly-erected under the Suffragans Nomination Act 1888) on Billing's resignation of his London duties in 1895.