Talk:Lords Spiritual

Numbers

The 'numbers' section could do with some accuracy work. Ripon's creation was balanced out with the merging of Bristol and Gloucester: apparently (see Talk:historical development of Church of England dioceses) the original plan was to merge Bangor & St Asaph to balance out Manchester, but that got delayed. If there were 21 in 1836, there would only have been 22 when Manchester was created: so the 26 cap would have been planned in advance rather than a reaction to a growing plague of bishops. Morwen - Talk 13:28, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't the Welsh bishops have taken up some of the remaining places? Timrollpickering 16:12, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Right. The cap was set at 26, which was the number of dioceses extant from 1550-1836, including four Welsh ones. Ta-da. Doops | talk 17:00, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Since 1550 the number of Lords Spiritual has been 26. Was the number of dioceses limited at the time of the English Reformation, for esoteric reasons (and therafter kept constant), since the number 26 is associated with the Divine Name in Judeo-Christian numerology? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.141.57.164 (talk) 20:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC) The establishment of 26 Lords Spiritual took place during the Anglican Refomation. The Anglican Reformation took place during th six year reign of Edward VI (1547-1553) when Thomas Cramner, the architect of the Prayer Book, was Archbishop of Cantebury. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.141.57.164 (talk) 21:10, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Church of Scotland

The Church of Scotland isn't exactly 'established', at least not in the same way as the CofE. How about 'the national Church of Scotland'? Anyone any better suggestions? --Nodrog75 (talk) 23:31, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Accuracy challenge : Lords Spiritual vs Bishops

Disputed accuracy : "Lord Bishop" has been in use since ca. 300AD - bishops, abbots, some priors, are Lords Spiritual whether or not they are members of the HL Neuralwarp (talk) 14:20, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Thats Because they held the feudal rank of Lord with all the title and privliges that entailed. WatcherZero (talk) 12:07, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

It's accurate usage. From OED 2nd edn: "Lords Spiritual: the bishops who are peers of the realm (and in England before the Reformation, the mitred abbots)". It may that a lesser Bishop is styled Lord Bishop, but they are not included in the Lords Spiritual, which is consistently used to mean prelates in a Parliamentary context. "The Lords Spiritual and Temporal" is synonymous with the House of Lords, and is used to this day - see http://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/lords-spiritual-and-temporal/. FrankP (talk) 12:33, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Voting Patterns

I removed this statement:

"The Lords Spiritual normally do not vote on matters of law or state in the House of Lords, but they have done so in special cases, such as during the passage of the Parliament Act 1911."

Because it's simply not true. Here's the Bishop of Bristol voting on ID Cards last week: [1]. The Lords Spiritual vote on controversial issues all the time, although there's usually only a handful present, since they have a Church to run. A thorough, though unofficial, record of their votes can be found at [2]. 160.39.222.194 (talk) 03:51, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

If so, which it appears from the foregoing comment, then it would improve the article if such condition(s) were included in the article. It seems that that prevailing general belief is that the Lords Spiritual only vote on religious matters. The true practices should be included to dispel erroneous assumptions.--TGC55 (talk) 07:11, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Reform

Has anything about reforming the Lords spirtual been done?Dwanyewest (talk) 04:23, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

No, not since the 19th century I believe. Reform has been talked about as part of the larger Lords reform debate over the last decade or two, but has come to nothing so far. As the CofE is just introducing women bishops there has been talk of trying to accelerate any new women into the Lords somehow. But this would require primary legislation (amending the Bishopric Act 1878) and might open the can of worms of Lords Spiritual reform again. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29570819 FrankP (talk) 12:14, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

See Lord Steel's reform proposals for some interesting proposals from the Lib-Dem peer. Arrivisto (talk) 18:30, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

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