Richard Chartres

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Richard John Carew Chartres DD FSA (born July 11, 1946) is the 132nd Bishop of London, being installed on September 26, 1996. He was previously Bishop of Stepney (1992–1995) and Gresham Professor of Divinity (1987–1992).

Chartres was educated at Richard Hale School and Trinity College, Cambridge (MA) before studying theology at Cuddesdon and Lincoln Theological colleges. He was ordained as a priest in 1974. During the 1970s he was the Chaplain to Robert Runcie, then Bishop of St Albans and later Archbishop of Canterbury, and received a Lambeth BD. Chartres married a freelance writer, Caroline, in 1982, and they have four children, Alexander, Sophie, Louis and Clio.

In 1996, Chartres became Dean of the Chapels Royal and Prelate of the Order of the British Empire. He is an Honorary Bencher of the Middle Temple, a Liveryman of the Merchant Taylors' Company and Honorary Freeman of the Weavers' Company. Richard Chartres is a Privy Counsellor. He is also a patron and fellow of the Burgon Society for the study of academical dress.

He was one of the executors of the Will of the late Diana, Princess of Wales.

In January 2006 Chartres was criticised by the media for his decision to spend Easter on a cruise ship giving lectures on theology (during the course of a two month sabbatical) rather than attend the services in St Paul's Cathedral^[1].

He is a patron of Prospex, a charity which works with young people in North London.

1 Gresham lectures
2 Trivia
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Gresham lectures

Chartres wrote a book, the History of Gresham College 1597–1997. This was based upon a three-part lecture series given in May 1992, while Chartres was Professor of Divinity at Gresham College in London. During the first lecture of the original lecture series he referred to the College as a 'magical island like Atlantis' disappearing and re-emerging from the sea. This was a reference both to the Invisible College and Francis Bacon's New Atlantis. At the second lecture he disassociated himself from any apparent occult references.

Other Gresham lectures by Chartres covered prayer (which he keenly distinguished from magic), Autumn 1991, the Shroud of Turin, November 1988, and the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem where he not only made certain revelations about the Gresham Jerusalem Project but also gave a personal account of a month he spent at an ancient monastery in Egypt where he would go on moonlight walks with a Christian leader who would trace great patterns in the sand as he sought to explain abstruse points of theology, December 1989.

[edit] Trivia

Chartres criticized as sinful the pollution of the planet by people jetting away on holidays. Michael O'Leary, boss of low-cost airline Ryanair, responded that "the Bishop of London has got empty churches - presumably if no one went on holidays perhaps they might turn up and listen to his sermons. God bless the bishop!"^[2]