William Maclagan

William Dalrymple Maclagan (18 June 1826 – 19 September 1910) was Archbishop of York from 1891 to 1908, when he resigned his office. He was succeeded in 1909 by Cosmo Gordon Lang, later Archbishop of Canterbury. As Archbishop of York, Maclagan crowned Queen Alexandra in 1902.

Maclagan, the fifth son of a distinguished Scottish physician David Maclagan FRSE (1785–1865), was born in Edinburgh in 1826, and educated at the Royal High School. His elder brother was the surgeon and scholar Douglas Maclagan. He served five years in the Indian Army rising to the rank of lieutenant and resigning on grounds of ill health.

In 1852, he matriculated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he received a degree in mathematics four years later; he was made a deacon that year (1856) in London, and served in the Church of England thereafter; he was ordained priest in 1857. In 1869, he became rector of Newington, and in 1875, vicar of St Mary Abbots, Kensington; both parishes being in the London conurbation. During this period, he composed several hymns. On 24 June 1878, he became Bishop of Lichfield, in the same year that he made a prestigious second marriage.

He was consecrated a bishop by Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury, on the Feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist 1878 (24 June) at St Paul's Cathedral.

In 1891 (possibly 28 July 1891), he was translated Archbishop of York, which position he held for the next seventeen years. He was appointed to the Privy Council after the accession of King Edward VII 24 January 1901. He made a private visit to Russia in 1897 and in the same year, he tried to create two new bishoprics, one in Sheffield. To do this, the Archbishop was prepared to surrender two thousand pounds of his considerable income – one thousand pounds for each new diocese, but the project still came to nothing. Maclagan complained that from 1891, he had been more Bishop than Archbishop owing to the large population and territory of the diocese. In 1906, he revived the idea, specifically naming Sheffield and Hull as the preferred seats for the new dioceses. By the end of his tenure, there were still only nine dioceses in the province. Sheffield did not get its own Bishop until 1914.

Maclagan was apparently a strong High Churchman, but his private beliefs had to be subsumed often. In 1899, he sat assessor with his ecclesiastical superior Frederick Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1902), when the decision was given against the use of incense and other ritualistic practices, and was obliged loyally to uphold the primate's opinion. He was president of the Church Society for the Promotion of Kindness to Animals.

Maclagan resigned his office in 1908, possibly on grounds of ill health. Archbishop Maclagan died in London on 19 September 1910, and was survived by his second wife Augusta (1826–1915).

Maclagan was twice married. His first wife was Sarah Kate Clapham (1836–1864), whom he married in 1860 at the age of 34. By her he had two sons, Cyril and Walter.