Charlotte Murdoch Tait (1800-1888) was born in Scotland, and "in 1822 ... became the wife of Charles Wake, son of Sir William Wake of Courteenhall, Northamptonshire, whom he succeeded in 1847 ... it was at Pitsford, Northamptonshire, where she resided after her husband's death in 1864 ... that Lady Wake wrote these 'Reminiscences, ' with which she ... incorporated some of her brother, Archibald [Campbell Tait, 1811-1882], afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury."

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Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England

In this, the first biography of Archibald Campbell Tait since his son-in-law, Randall Davidson’s in 1891, John Witheridge tells the story of how a Scottish outsider became Queen Victoria’s favourite Archbishop of Canterbury, and the most powerful since Laud in the seventeenth century. Following his childhood in Edinburgh and education at Glasgow University and Balliol College, Oxford, Witheridge describes how Tait’s life was shaped by faith, duty and diligence, as well as by harrowing experiences of illness and death. Tait was never content to be an ecclesiastical dignitary, but was ready to intervene and give a lead in the many conflicts, theological and political, that defined his fourteen years at Lambeth. While not always successful, Tait’s leadership of the Church during a period of controversy at home and challenge overseas, bravely accomplished against a background of personal tragedy, makes him a landmark figure in the history of the Church of England.