Archibald Tait was born in Edinburgh, became a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, subsequently became headmaster at Rugby school and, in 1868, became the highest Church of England cleric in the land, Archbishop of Canterbury - but for a few years he also tended to the spiritual needs of the Baldons.
The Baldons had no vicar at some point in 1836, and a few months after his ordination, in August 1836, Tait volunteered, to the amazement of his friends and colleagues, to undertake the vacant curacy. He obviously felt, as an adjunct to his life in the “ivory towers”, the need for some hands-on ministering.
This was something his friends and fellow academics thought was ill-advised. Furthermore, they saw The Baldons as being far from a rural idyll. The village was considered, according to his biography, to be “not an attractive or enviable charge. The straggling cottages were occupied by agricultural labourers and a few small farmers. The two churches were in extremely bad repair, and there was neither salary nor vicarage-house available”..
But Tait was determined and was duly licensed to the curacy. He soon found that with his increasing tutorial work the efficient charge of the two parishes was more than he could manage single-handed, despite enlisting support from other curates. They helped him over several years, especially during the long vacations, but he retained the sole responsibility for the parish, often riding or walking from Oxford several times a week. Tait would usually sleep, on Saturday nights, in the hired cottage which served as an “apology for a parsonage” (the cottage subsequently known as Arnold Cottage and now Porters House) and lunched at Court House with the Fruin family — tenants of The Queen's College for several generations - returning to Balliol in time for the College Service on Sunday afternoon.
Tait officiated at church ceremonies at various times between 1835 and 1839. For example, he conducted the marriage, at Toot Baldon in 1838, between Charles Napper, aged 21, a labourer from Toot Baldon (son of Edmund Napper, schoolmaster, and Elizabeth, from Marsh Baldon) and Esther Allmond of Toot Baldon (daughter of John Allmond, a sawyer, and Esther, from Marsh Baldon). In the extract, below, from the Parish Register, one can see Tait’s signature, bottom right.
Tait carried out this work in the Baldons for five years. Long after leaving the village, towards the end of his life he would recount, with a certain humorous pathos, the quiet obstruction offered by the farmers to his Sunday-school, and the difficulties of a rustic congregation on a hot summer’s day, and the petty quarrels and flirtations and ambitions of his village choir.
Tait became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1862 and, whilst in that role in 1867, he ordained the future vicar of Toot Baldon, James C Ross. Tait died in 1882 and his tomb lies in Canterbury Cathedral. Also, there is a bust of him in Westminster Abbey.