Composition of House of Lords

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Members of the House of Lords who sit by virtue of their ecclesiastical offices are known as Lords Spiritual.[33] Formerly, the Lords Spiritual were the majority in the English House of Lords,[34] including the Church of England's archbishops, diocesan bishops, abbots, and those priors who were entitled to wear a mitre. After 1539, however, only the archbishops and bishops continued to attend, for the Dissolution of the Monasteries suppressed the positions of abbot and prior. In 1642, during the English Civil War, the Lords Spiritual were excluded altogether, but they returned under the Clergy Act 1661. The number of Lords Spiritual was further restricted by the Bishopric of Manchester Act 1847, and by later acts. The Lords Spiritual can now number no more than 26; these are the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of London, the Bishop of Durham, the Bishop of Winchester and the 21 longest-serving bishops from other dioceses in the Church of England[35] (excluding the dioceses of Sodor and Man and Gibraltar in Europe, as these lie entirely outside the United Kingdom).[36] The current Lords Spiritual represent only the Church of England. Bishops of the Church of Scotland traditionally sat in the Parliament of Scotland but were excluded in 1638 following the Scottish Reformation. There are no longer bishops in the Church of Scotland in the traditional sense of the word, and that Church has never sent members to sit in the Westminster House of Lords. The Church of Ireland did obtain representation in the House of Lords after the union of Ireland and Great Britain in 1801. Of the Church of Ireland's ecclesiastics, four (one archbishop and three bishops) were to sit at any one time, with the members rotating at the end of every parliamentary session (which normally lasted approximately one year). The Church of Ireland, however, was
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