Charles Manners-Sutton

Charles Manners-Sutton (né Manners; 17 February 1755 – 21 July 1828) was a British clergyman in the Church of England who served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1805 to 1828.

Manners-Sutton was the fourth son of Lord George Manners-Sutton (third son of John Manners, 3rd Duke of Rutland) and his wife Diana Chaplin, daughter of Thomas Chaplin. His younger brother was Thomas Manners-Sutton, 1st Baron Manners, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. His father, Lord George, had assumed the additional surname of Sutton in 1762 on inheriting – from his elder brother Lord Robert – the estates of their maternal grandfather Robert Sutton, 2nd Baron Lexinton. He was called Charles Manners before 1762.

Manners-Sutton was educated at Charterhouse School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge (matriculated 1773, graduated B.A. as 15th wrangler 1777, M.A. 1780, D.D. 1792).

He married at age 23, and probably eloped with, his cousin Mary Thoroton, daughter of Thomas Thoroton and his wife Mary (Levett) Thoroton of Screveton Hall, Nottinghamshire, in 1778. (Col. Thomas Blackborne Thoroton later moved to Flintham Hall, Flintham, near Screveton, Nottinghamshire. He was later known as Thomas Thoroton Hildyard. Both Thoroton and his stepbrother Levett Blackborne, Esq., a Lincoln's Inn barrister, had long acted as advisers to John Manners, 3rd Duke of Rutland, and Col. Thoroton was often resided at Belvoir Castle, the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Rutland.)

In 1785, Manners-Sutton was appointed to the family living at Averham with Kelham, in Nottinghamshire, and in 1791, became Dean of Peterborough. He was consecrated Bishop of Norwich in 1792, and two years later received the appointment of Dean of Windsor in commendam.

He had long been the favourite candidate for Canterbury. On the death of Archbishop John Moore in January 1805, the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, wished to appoint his former tutor George Pretyman Tomline to Canterbury. George III overruled Pitt, exercising the royal prerogative to appoint Manners-Sutton. During his primacy, the old archepiscopal palace at Croydon was sold and the country palace of Addington was bought with the proceeds. He presided over the first meeting which issued in the foundation of the National Society, and subsequently lent the scheme his strong support. He also exerted himself to promote the establishment of the Indian episcopate. As Archbishop of Canterbury, Manners-Sutton appointed his cousin, Evelyn Levett Sutton, a chaplain to Lord Manners, as one of six preachers of Canterbury Cathedral in 1811.

In 1819, he presided over the christening of the future Queen Victoria at Kensington Palace.

He died at Lambeth on 21 July 1828, and was buried on 29 July at Addington, in a family vault.