Stuart Blanch

He resigned in 1983, and was the first retiring Archbishop of York to be made a life peer immediately, being created Baron Blanch of Bishopthorpe in the County of North Yorkshire on 5 September 1983.

In 1981 Blanch suffered a breakdown in his health. He was absent from his ecclesiastical work for only a month, but thereafter, according to The Times:

Blanch was enthroned as ninety-fourth Archbishop of York on 25 February 1975. Of his years as Archbishop, Williams writes, "A superb pastor, he presided over a happy diocese and travelled widely in his province. … No lover of bureaucracy, he was described as the most unecclesiastical of archbishops." One admirer, noting his common touch, said that he wore a flat cap underneath his mitre. In fact, as an evangelical, Blanch was not enthusiastic about vestments and seldom wore a mitre.

In 1974 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey announced his forthcoming retirement. His successor was the Archbishop of York, Donald Coggan, an evangelical. In view of the church's tradition of balance it was widely expected that Coggan's successor at York would be a higher churchman. The two candidates most tipped were Robert Runcie (Bishop of St Albans) and Kenneth Woollcombe (Bishop of Oxford). There was a long delay in making the appointment, and it was rumoured that at least three bishops had declined the post. The Times later named one of them as Runcie. The offer of the archbishopric to Blanch came as a surprise to him. He said that the Prime Minister's invitation "came in one of those plain white envelopes that you open with caution. I am only now beginning to get over the shock." He told the press that he found the prospect daunting because he was at a loss with high formality, was not well up on central church administration and had not much political experience.

While Bishop of Liverpool, Blanch had numerous invitations to give lectures, as far afield as Alabama and Bermuda. The first of his ten books, The World our Orphanage (1972) was based on a series of lectures he gave in York.

In 1966, the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, invited Blanch to succeed Clifford Martin as Bishop of Liverpool. On opening Wilson's letter Blanch is said to have taken it for a prank by Rochester students. He was not altogether pleased by the offer. Because he had acquired his faith not from churchgoing but from his private reading of the New Testament, he was, in the words of The Independent, "uncoloured and uninfluenced by anything ecclesiastical and failed to see the relevance of much of it." The prospect of exchanging academic life for the complexities of a bishop's duties was daunting. The Times later said, "He was at that time a bad chairman of committees and councils (he got better at it) and he knew there would be plenty of both. He did not know Lancashire. But he knew his duty and off he went to Merseyside." Aged 47 he was the youngest Anglican bishop of his day.

The chairman of the governing body of Wycliffe Hall was the Bishop of Rochester, Christopher Chavasse. Nearing the end of his twenty-year reign at Rochester, Chavasse wished it to culminate in the foundation of an evangelical theological college for mature students. He persuaded Blanch to become the founding head of the college and Oriel canon of Rochester Cathedral. Blanch was Warden of Rochester Theological College from 1960 to 1966. The Independent's obituary of Blanch said of this period:

In the 1960s Liverpool underwent large-scale rehousing, with residents of inner city slums being moved to new housing estates on greenfield sites outside the city. Blanch supervised the resulting reorganisation of parishes and construction of new churches. The diocese was predominantly evangelical, but there was a substantial high church minority whose relations with some previous Bishops of Liverpool had been difficult. The Guardian said that one of Blanch's greatest achievements during his years in Liverpool (and later at York) was reconciling evangelical and high church Anglicans: "it was universally acknowledged that he left behind him a peaceful and reconciled diocese." The Times comments that Blanch and his wife "threw themselves into the richness of Liverpool life. He grew to love Scouse humour and resilience. He bicycled to work … he played squash most Saturday mornings … whenever he could, he went to listen to the Philharmonic concerts (Sir Charles Groves, the then conductor, becoming a firm friend)."

He was ordained as a priest in 1949, and spent three years as a curate and five years as a vicar in and around Oxford where he had studied for the priesthood. He was vice principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford from 1957 to 1960, the founding head of Rochester Theological College from 1960 to 1966, Bishop of Liverpool from 1966 to 1975, and Archbishop of York from 1975 to 1983.

On demobilisation Blanch was accepted for ordination training at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. His ability impressed the principal, Canon J P Thornton-Duesbery, who arranged for him to be matriculated at St Catherine's Society. He obtained a first class degree in theology in 1948, and was ordained priest in 1949. After three years as a curate in the Oxford parish of Highfield, he was appointed vicar of Eynsham a few miles out of the city. He remained there for five years, building up a small congregation into a large one, described by The Times as "thoroughly committed to Christian outreach." He formed close ties with the local Roman Catholic, Baptist, and Methodist churches. This was Blanch's only experience as a parish priest. While he was at Eynsham three of the Blanches' five children were born, all daughters. He was a part-time lecturer during this period, and his lectures on the New Testament led to an invitation to return to Wycliffe Hall as tutor and vice-principal to F J Taylor, who had succeeded Thornton-Duesbery as principal. Blanch took up the appointment in 1957

In the RAF he served as a corporal in the force's police, and then volunteered for aircrew duties. After training as a navigator, he was commissioned as a flight lieutenant. He flew reconnaissance missions over Burma from Calcutta. During this period he became an Anglican lay reader and sought ordination as a priest. In 1943 he married Brenda Gertrude Coyte. His biographer R H L Williams writes, "Their years of wartime separation were bridged by a remarkable correspondence in which they explored their faith together."

Blanch was born at Viney Hill Farm, Blakeney, Gloucestershire in the Forest of Dean, the youngest of three sons of a farmer, William Edwin Blanch, and his wife, Elizabeth, née Yarworth. William Blanch was killed in a shooting accident in 1923 and his widow and youngest child moved to London, where the two older sons were already living. Blanch attended Alleyn's School, Dulwich, winning a scholarship after the first year. His mother could not afford to pay for him to go to a university, and after leaving school at the age of 18 he started work. He would have preferred to become a journalist, but found that "journalism in particular was hard to get into without contacts." He gained employment in the office of the Law Fire Insurance Society Ltd in Chancery Lane at a salary of £90 a year. He said later, "The job taught me a great deal, not just about administration – how to write letters and so on – but how to deal with people from all walks of life."

Stuart Yarworth Blanch, Baron Blanch, PC (2 February 1918 – 3 June 1994) was an Anglican priest, bishop and archbishop. Little interested in religion in his youth, he became a committed Christian at the age of 21, while serving in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.