Beginning in 1890, his early ministry was served in slum parishes in Leeds and Portsmouth, except for brief service as Vicar of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford.

[2] At the university Lang's tutors included some of Scotland's leading academics: the Greek scholar Richard Claverhouse Jebb, the physicist William Thomson (who was later created Lord Kelvin) and the philosopher Edward Caird.

[7] In February 1883 his first speech at the Oxford Union, against the disestablishment of the Church of Scotland, was warmly received; the chairman likened his oratory to that of the Ancient Greek statesman, Demosthenes.

[9] In 1886 Lang graduated with first-class honours in History;[1] in October he failed to secure a Fellowship of All Souls College, blaming his poor early scholastic training in Glasgow.

[19] In addition to his normal parish duties, Lang 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.

Lang chose Magdalen; the idea of being in charge of young men who might in the future achieve positions of responsibility was attractive to him and, in October 1893, with many regrets, he left Leeds.

[20] In 1894 Lang was asked to add to his workload by acting as Vicar of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, where John Henry Newman had begun his Oxford ministry in 1828.

[37] Lang's liberal conservatism enabled him to associate easily with Socialist leaders such as Will Crooks and George Lansbury, successive mayors of Poplar; he was responsible for bringing the latter back to regular communion in the Church.

Temple observed that, in contrast to the Bishop of London's sermons, listening to Lang brought on an intellectual rather than emotional pleasure: "I can remember all his points, just because their connexion is inevitable.... And for me, there is no doubt that this is the more edifying by far.

"[46] Lang was a member of the cathedral's governing body, the Dean and Chapter, and was responsible for the organisation of special occasions, such as the service of thanksgiving for King Edward VII's recovery from appendicitis in July 1902.

Strong opponents of Anglo-Catholic practices, they maintained that as Bishop of Stepney Lang had "connived at and encouraged flagrant breaking of the law relating to church ritual".

[56] After playing a prominent role in King George V's coronation in 1911, Lang became increasingly close to the Royal Family, an association which drew the comment that he was "more courtier than cleric".

[60] 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 the Kaiser kneeling with King Edward VII at the bier of Queen Victoria.

[61] He applied all his organisational skills to the Archbishop of Canterbury's National Mission of Repentance and Hope,[63] an initiative designed to renew Christian faith nationwide, but it failed to make a significant impact.

[64] As a result of the Battle of Jerusalem of December 1917, the British Empire's Egyptian Expeditionary Force captured the Holy City, bringing it under Christian control for the first time since the Crusades.

In 1920, as chairman of the Reunion Committee at the Sixth Lambeth Conference, he promoted an "Appeal to all Christian People", described by Hastings as "one of the rare historical documents that does not get forgotten with the years".

[68] It was unanimously adopted as the Conference's Resolution 9, and ended: "We [...] ask that all should unite in a new and great endeavour to recover and to manifest to the world the unity of the Body of Christ for which He prayed.

Partly through the advocacy of the fervently evangelical Home Secretary, Sir William Joynson-Hicks, the revision was twice defeated in the House of Commons, in December 1927 by 238 votes to 205 and, in June 1928, by 266 to 220.

In 1933 the Church of England assembly formed a Council on Foreign Relations and, in the following years, numerous exchange visits with Orthodox delegations took place, a process only halted by the outbreak of war.

[90] As the threat of war increased later in the decade, Lang 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".

[90] Earlier that year, contrary to his former stance, he had supported the Anglo-Italian agreement to recognise the conquest of Abyssinia, because he believed that "an increase of appeasement" was necessary to avoid the threat of war.

[97][98] Near the end of his term in office Lang led a deputation from several church groups to the Ministry of Education, to present a five-point plan for the teaching of religion in state schools.

[109] The speech was widely condemned for its lack of charity towards the departed king[110] and provoked the writer Gerald Bullett to publish a satirical punning rhyme:[b] My Lord Archbishop, what a scold you are!

Alan Don, Lang's secretary and chaplain, wrote in his diary entry for Tuesday 15 December; "A perfect deluge of letters – the majority abusive and even vituperative", and went as far as to venture a rare criticism of his master; "C. C. was a little unfair to the poor King.

"[117] Supposedly the archbishop fumbled with the Crown[d] but Lang himself was fully satisfied: "I can only be thankful to God's over-ruling Providence and trust that the Coronation may not be a mere dream of the past, but that its memories and lessons will not be forgotten.

[121] He opposed strategies such as indiscriminate bombing, and on 21 December 1940, in a letter to The Times signed jointly with Temple and Cardinal Hinsley, Lang expressed support for the pope's Five Peace Points initiative.

"[133] Lockhart writes that while Lang's many years of high office saw progress in the cause of Christian reunion, the mark he left on the Church was relatively small; many believed it could have been larger and deeper.

The historian Tom Buchanan wrote that Lang's sympathy with ordinary people was replaced by "an upper class affectation and a delight in the high society in which his office allowed him to move".

However, he enjoyed the company of women and confessed in 1928, after a visit to the Rowntree's chocolate factory, that the sight of the girls there had "stirred up all the instincts of my youth... very little subdued by the passage of years".

[133] Lang himself was gloomy about his legacy; he believed that since he had not led his country back into an Age of Faith, or marked his primacy with a great historical act, he had failed to live up to his own high standard.