The proceedings of the Canterbury convocation have been published since 1858 and those of York since 1861, and they are vastly more extensive and informative than anything which precedes them. What happened once the revival got under way may be of little direct interest to the historian of earlier times, but it is good to be aware that the convocations still exist and that their later development is in direct continuity with what took place earlier. To summarize what has transpired in the past 150 years, it is best to subdivide them into three distinct periods. The first of these stretches from 1865 to 1921, the second from 1921 to 1970 and the third from 1970 to the present day.

From 1865 to 1921

After the success in changing one of the canons in 1865, momentum for more radical change began to grow, and by 1873 there was a full-blown attempt to revise the church's canon law. This eventually failed, partly because of conservatism and inertia, but also because many people in the church feared that any change on that scale would be for the worse. Evangelicals believed that the protestant heritage of the Church of England would suffer, and Anglo-Catholics feared that they would be reined in more effectively than they had been up to that time. Many liberals were also uneasy, because in their eyes, a reassertion of the church's traditional doctrine and government was liable to stifle freedom of thought. There was also a widespread interest in theological controversy among the better-educated laity, who wanted a voice in ecclesiastical affairs, and this made it difficult for a purely clerical body to claim to legislate for the whole church. Parliament and the courts also retained a central role in the many ritualist trials which took place in the late nineteenth century, and for a variety of reasons, most people acquiesced in this state of affairs.

In 1897 the Canterbury convocation moved from Westminster Abbey to its current home in Church House (virtually next door) but although there were periodic attempts to reform its composition and structure, nothing of substance was achieved. A few standing orders were revised, but the system of diocesan representation, archaic as it was, resisted all change.