His suffragan diocese, however, is part of a larger ecclesiastical province, nominally led by a metropolitan archbishop.
The metropolitan has few responsibilities over the suffragans in his province and no direct authority over the faithful outside of his own diocese.
English diocesan bishops were commonly assisted by bishops who had been consecrated to sees which were in partibus infidelium (titular sees that had in most cases been conquered by Muslims) before the English Reformation.
No more suffragans were appointed for more than 250 years, until the consecration of Henry Mackenzie as bishop of Nottingham on 2 February 1870.
[16] Suffragan bishops in the Church of England who have oversight of parishes and clergy that reject the ministry of priests who are women, usually across a whole province, are known as provincial episcopal visitors (PEVs) (or "flying bishops").
This concession was made in 1992 following the General Synod's vote to ordain women to the priesthood.
[citation needed] An early example of a suffragan can be seen in Wales is Penrydd, established in 1537, when the Welsh dioceses were still within the Church of England.
[citation needed] The Church of Ireland has no suffragan bishops, not even in the geographically large dioceses.
[citation needed] Suffragan bishops are fairly common in larger dioceses of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA), but usually have no responsibility for a specific geographical part of a diocese.
[citation needed] Coadjutor and assistant bishops are different episcopal offices than suffragan.
In order to achieve this, the metropolitan bishop commissions a suffragan/assistant (usually the full-time bishop senior by consecration) who becomes the episcopal commissary, but may be referred to by any number of phrases (since the commission is held from the metropolitan archbishop, she may be called archbishop's commissary; the most usual current term in the Church of England being Acting Bishop of Somewhere).