Born in Edinburgh to a Scottish Presbyterian family, Davidson was educated at Harrow School, where he became an Anglican, and at Trinity College, Oxford, where he was largely untouched by the arguments and debates between adherents of the high-church and low-church factions of the Church of England.

Davidson was conciliatory by nature, and spent much time throughout his term of office striving to keep the church together in the face of deep and sometimes acrimonious divisions between evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics.

Though cautious about bringing the church into domestic party politics, Davidson did not shy away from larger political issues: he played a key role in the passage of the reforming Parliament Act 1911; urged moderation on both sides in the conflict over Irish independence; campaigned against perceived immoral methods of warfare in the First World War and led efforts to resolve the national crisis of the 1926 General Strike.

He recalled: I got about at first on crutches, which I had to use for a long time, and it was supposed that my leg would always be more or less helpless; but by degrees this went away, and I got back full power, save for a permanently weak ankle, which seems a strange effect to follow from a wound in the hip.

[9]Although Davidson gradually made an unexpectedly good recovery,[n 1] the accident marred his last year at Harrow, where he had hoped to compete for several senior prizes;[12] it also ruined his chances of an Oxford scholarship.

[24] Late in 1876 Craufurd Tait, who was working as his father's resident chaplain and private secretary, wished to move on and the Archbishop chose Davidson to succeed him.

[21] In May 1877 Davidson began work at Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop's home and headquarters, beginning what Bell describes as "an association with the central life of the Church of England which lasted more than fifty years".

[27][28] Despite the Archbishop's offers of several attractive parishes over the following years, Davidson felt his place was at the side of the bereaved Tait, who came more and more to rely on him, and called him a "true son".

Davidson took the lead on Tait's behalf in the controversy in 1881 between high-church proponents and evangelical opponents of ritualism; in 1882 he played an important part in discouraging Anglican overtures to the Salvation Army, an organisation in which he thought too much power was in the hands of its general.

[2][n 4] When Benson was chosen to succeed Tait, Victoria asked Davidson's views on who should be the next Bishop of Truro; she also consulted him about a successor to the Dean of Windsor, Gerald Wellesley, who died in 1882 after 28 years in the post.

[36] Davidson remained at Lambeth Palace as chaplain and secretary to Benson, but in May 1883 the new Dean of Windsor, George Connor, died suddenly after only a few months in office.

He continued to be Benson's close and loyal ally in the work of the church, particularly during 1894–95 when Halifax and other high churchmen attempted to draw the Archbishop into negotiation with Rome to seek papal recognition of Anglican orders.

[n 8] He relished the ability to contribute to debates, but he had suffered three more spells of illness during his four years in south London, and it became plain that his health was too poor for him to continue in the exceptionally demanding post of Bishop of Rochester.

His grasp of the issues impressed the Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, who recorded that "the Bishop has the art of stating with great clearness and sympathy the gist of opinions from which he differs" and said that he understood the position of Halifax and the Anglo-Catholic lobby better after discussing it with Davidson.

[n 13] In August 1904 Davidson, accompanied by his wife, sailed to the United States to attend the triennial convention of the American Episcopal Church; he was the first Archbishop of Canterbury to visit the US.

Balfour said that if invited by the King, he would consider forming a minority Conservative government, so that the question of creating new Liberal peers would not arise; he subsequently decided that he would not be justified in doing so.

[80] A week after this meeting Edward VII died, and was succeeded by George V.[80] The Lords continued to resist the will of the Commons, even after a general election fought on the issue.

He believed that were the bill not passed, the creation of what he called "a swamping majority" of peers would make Parliament and Britain a worldwide laughing-stock, and would have grave constitutional implications for church and state.

At the government's request he took the lead in collaborating with a large number of other religious leaders, including some with whom he had differed in the past, to write a rebuttal of the Germans' contentions[2] but unlike some of his colleagues in the church, Davidson, in Bell's words, "felt the horror of war too keenly to indulge in anti-German rhetoric".

[2] Davidson protested against the false information put out to hide British military reverses,[n 21] the use of poison gas, the punitive bombing of Freiburg in April 1917 and the targeting of non-combatants.

He spoke against the death sentence passed on Sir Roger Casement for his part in the Easter Rising, and post-war condemned the violence of the Black and Tans.

[110] Other resolutions of the conference welcomed the League of Nations "as an expression of Christianity in politics", affirmed the eligibility of women for the diaconate, and declared marriage an indissoluble and life-long union, with no acceptable ground for divorce except adultery.

[110][111] In May 1926 a general strike was called by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in an attempt to force the government to do something to prevent wage cuts and ameliorate worsening conditions for British coal miners.

[112] Davidson sought to play a conciliatory role; the historian G. I. T. Machin calls his intervention "probably the most celebrated actions of his twenty-five years as Archbishop of Canterbury".

[115] The initiative was only partly successful – though the strike was called off, the miners' grievances were not remedied – but the joint action by Davidson and the other religious leaders was a further step in the direction of unity.

[117] Davidson – like his Tudor predecessor Thomas Cranmer, according to The Times – had "immense and perhaps excessive faith in a new Prayer-book as a means of composing differences and restoring discipline within the Church".

[6] He also considered that a modern Prayer-book would enrich Anglican services and make them relevant to 20th-century needs unforeseen when Cranmer and his colleagues wrote the original version in the 16th century.

[124] The Times said: Few people, whether they desired a revised Prayer-book or not, failed to sympathize with the Archbishop in his personal disappointment, or to regret that the 25 years of his Primacy should not have ended with what must have seemed its crowning achievement.

William Temple, his successor-but-one at Canterbury, wrote that "some sort of disestablishment is (I suppose) the necessary result";[126] Henson, previously a strong supporter of establishment, now began to campaign against it.

If towards the end of his years the firmness of his grasp faltered a little, as it seemed to do over the matter of the Revised Prayer Book, he had nevertheless raised his high office to a pinnacle of eminence and a height of authority which it had never before known.