The Very Revd Robert Willis, who has died at the age of 77, was perhaps the last of the old-fashioned Church of England deans whose preferment to senior roles was based on the content of their character and a track record of competence, rather than on a series of training courses deemed essential by the archiepiscopal apparatchiks at Lambeth Palace. Well-spoken, scholarly and urbane, Willis was Dean of Canterbury from 2001 to 2022. George Carey was Archbishop at the time of his installation, but he was soon succeeded by Rowan Williams – who shared many of Willis’s own outward qualities.
As custodian of the senior cathedral in England and the de facto mother church of the Anglican Communion, Willis first came to worldwide attention at Dr Williams’s enthronement in 2003. As primus inter pares of the chapter, the body of senior clergy responsibly for the day-to-day running of the cathedral, Willis gave the canons considerable space and encouragement to pursue their own briefs. He expected them to observe the discipline of attending Matins and Evensong each day, however, which he saw as a means of honouring and perpetuating the Benedictine tradition in which the community had originally been founded.
Willis was loyal to his colleagues, but also to the CofE; he would frown, literally, at public muttering if he thought it smacked of sedition. He was elected to the General Synod in 1995, and chaired its Deans’ Conference. As Dean of Canterbury, and also as Chairman of Govern.
