Church of England churches and congregations were established in Continental European countries before the Reformation. In 1633, overseas churches of the Church of England were placed under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London. In 1824, the British
Foreign Secretary,
George Canning, appointed
Matthew Luscombe chaplain to the British embassy in Paris and to supervise all Church of England clergy on the continent. Unable to secure the support of the English bishops, Luscombe was consecrated a missionary bishop (i.e. without a See) by the
Scottish bishops in 1825, and functioned as a sort of proto-Bishop of Fulham. The Diocese of Gibraltar was created on 29 September 1842 and at that time covered all Anglican
chaplaincies from Portugal to the Caspian Sea. In 1842 (shortly after the See was established), its jurisdiction was described as "
Gibraltar, and the Congregations of the Church of England in the Islands and on the Coasts of the Mediterranean"; a map from the same year shows churches at
Lisbon,
Porto,
Gibraltar,
Málaga,
Marseille,
Nice,
Tunis,
Lucca,
Livorno,
Florence,
Rome,
Palermo,
Trieste,
Valletta,
Messina,
Naples,
Corfu,
Zante,
Athens,
Syra,
Smyrna, and
Constantinople. From 1926, Church of England parishes in northern Europe became part of the Jurisdiction of North and Central Europe, under the episcopal jurisdiction of the
Bishop of London, delegated to the Suffragan
Bishop of Fulham. It has since become commonly known as the Diocese in Europe. ==Archdeaconries==