John Randolph (bishop of Guildford)

John Hugh Granville Randolph (20 January 1866^[1] – 21 March 1936)^[2] was the Bishop of Guildford (a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Winchester)^[3] and then Dean of Salisbury^[4] in the Church of England in the first decades of the 20th century.^[5]

Randolph was born into an ecclesiastical family: his father was a priest, Leveson Randolph. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge,^[6][7] he was ordained into the priesthood in 1890.^[8] His first post was a curacy in Margate,^[9] after which he was Vicar of All Saints’, Westbrook,^[10] then St Mark's, North End,^[11] before his appointment to the episcopate.^[12]

In late 1908/early 1909, Cecil Boutflower, Bishop of Dorking, a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Winchester, departed for Japan;^[13] Boutflower had taken the See of Dorking only because George Sumner (Bishop of Guildford) did not resign his See; on Boutflower's resignation, Sumner was persuaded to resign the See of Guildford (by the time of Randolph's consecration). Therefore, Randolph was appointed as successor to both suffragans: to Boutflower in duties and Sumner in the see.^[14] He was consecrated on 21 February 1909, by Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Lambeth Palace Chapel.^[15] Between the erection of the Diocese of Guildford on 1 May 1927 and his installation as Dean of Salisbury, he had no official post, but gave assistance to the bishops of Winchester, of Guildford and of Portsmouth.^[16] He became a Doctor of Divinity (DD).