Tait, ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL, Archbishop of Canterbury, was born at Edinburgh, 22d December 1811, and was educated at the Edinburgh Academy and Glasgow University, whence he passed as a Snell exhibitioner to Balliol College, Oxford. In due time he became fellow and tutor, and was one of the four tutors who in 1841 protested against Newman's Tract 90. In 1842 he was appointed successor to Dr Arnold as head-master of Rugby, in 1849 became Dean of Carlisle (where he lost five little girls at once by scarlet fever), and in 1856 Bishop of London, as successor to Blomfield. Here he did much to bring the teaching of the church home to the people, instituting evening sermons in St Paul's, and encouraging open-air preaching; whilst the 'Bishop of London's Fund' for building schools, churches, and parsonages attained by his efforts to the amount of £350,000. A friend of compromise, though a foe to needless innovations, he showed much tact and personal kindness in dealing with various controversies as to vestments and confession; condemned the Essays and Reviews, but promoted moderate measures; and though strongly hostile to Colenso's views, intervened to secure him fair-play. The same love of the via media, which caused him now to be accused of bigotry and now of indifference, he manifested when (having declined the Archbishopric of York in 1862) he was in 1868 made Primate of all England by Mr Disraeli. He assisted in composing the strifes raised by the question of Irish disestablishment, but was less successful with the Public Worship Regulation Act and the Burials Bill. He took a keen interest in missions, and greatly helped to extend and improve the organisation of the church in the colonies. The Lambeth Conference of 1878 took place under his auspices. He lost in 1878 both his only son, the Rev. Craufurd Tait, and his wife, a daughter of Archdeacon Spooner, whom he had married in 1843; and he himself died 3d December 1882.
See the Life by his son-in-law Bishop Davidson and the Rev. W. Benham (2 vols. 1891), and the Memoir of Catharine and Craufurd Tait by Benham (1879).