This pen and ink sketch was produced by Sir Bernard Partridge to comment on the Prayer Book Controversy of 1927, and appeared in Punch, a popular British magazine of humour and satire. The image shows Randall Thomas Davidson, the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, wearing traditional Bishop's Choir Dress and holding a pastoral staff firmly aloft. With ‘The New Prayer Book' beneath his feet acting as a raft, he stares resolutely ahead, while the sea of ‘controversy' rages all around him.

As a staunch supporter of the revised edition of the Prayer Book, and also the spiritual leader of the Church of England throughout the revision process, Davidson was at the centre of this crisis, as this image suggests.

Increasing pressure in the 19^th Century for changes to be made to the 1662 Prayer Book had led to a new Prayer Book being proposed in 1927. Approval was granted by the Church of England authorities as well as by the House of Lords but was later rejected by the House of Commons, with MPs William Joynson-Hicks and Rosslyn Mitchell claiming the proposed book was ‘papistical'. Davidson was said to be inconsolable. The Prayer Book controversy continued into 1928 when finally the Church took matters into its own hands and declared that the Bishops' approval was sufficient without Parliamentary authority. After this crisis, a different process was used, whereby alternative prayer books were produced, rather than attempts being made to change the earlier edition.

This drawing, which is now bound with the Library's manuscript sequence, complements other records in the Library, most notably Davidson's papers as Archbishop of Canterbury. One of our largest collections of Archbishop's papers, running to over 800 volumes, it covers a vast range of topics, including the First World War and Davidson's visits to the Western Front.