Having studied for the Anglican ministry at
Westcott House, a theological college in Cambridge, Stockwood was ordained
deacon in 1936 and
priest in 1937. He was a curate, then the vicar, of
St Matthew's Church, Moorfields,
Bristol, for nineteen years. In 1955 he was appointed vicar of
Great St Mary's, Cambridge, where his preaching drew large congregations of undergraduates, gaining him a national reputation.
Bishop of Southwark In 1959, at the suggestion of the
Archbishop of Canterbury,
Geoffrey Fisher, the British prime minister,
Harold Macmillan, appointed Stockwood to the Diocese of Southwark. Under him, Southwark became one of the best known dioceses in the Church of England. Stockwood encouraged both the radical and conservative wings of the church. On the one hand he encouraged priests wearing jeans in public, marches against racism and the training of
worker priests in the Southwark Ordination Course, yet he was also the first Church of England diocesan bishop to preach at the
National Pilgrimage to the
Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, of which he later became an honorary guardian. Stockwood however did not hesitate to send the police to close an Anglo-Catholic church in
Carshalton. Under his diocesan chancellor,
Garth Moore, a number of trials of clergy followed, usually followed by a service of deposition from their
holy orders in the cathedral. During the 1960s the term "South Bank religion" was connected with Stockwood's diocese and those in his circle espousing a more liberal theology. He was liberal in his view of the morality of homosexual relationships, favoured
homosexual law reform and included homosexual couples among the guests at his dinner parties. On at least one occasion he
blessed a homosexual relationship, but Stockwood himself said he was celibate. preached in Cambridge, did not hesitate to cast a slur on the characters of kings
James I and
Richard II whom he associated with this tendency. Stockwood was adept at making unusual and radical, but usually highly successful, appointments.
John Robinson was appointed as his
suffragan at Woolwich in 1959. Stockwood appeared on the BBC chat show
Friday Night, Saturday Morning on 9 November 1979, with Christian writer and broadcaster
Malcolm Muggeridge, arguing that the film ''
Monty Python's Life of Brian'' was blasphemous. He told
John Cleese and
Michael Palin at the end of the discussion that they would "get [their]
thirty pieces of silver". ==Later life and legacy==