“What has persuaded me to vote in favour this time is the House of Bishops’ statement of five principles,” he said. “The risk is that that is a statement of intent and there isn’t really a legislative provision backing it up; so I will be stepping out in faith, as it were.”

The pivotal votes of a small number of members of the General Synod who helped to defeat the women-bishops Measure in November 2012 have swung to the Yes camp.

The earlier Measure was lost by six votes in the House of Laity. Instrumental to the defeat were a handful of members who, despite being in favour of the consecration of women as bishops, voted against the Measure, prompted by a concern that it did not offer enough provision for those who were opposed on principle.

Five of these members told the Church Times this week that they now planned to vote in favour.

“The Measure that is before us this month . . . is a totally different animal,” Tom Sutcliffe (diocese of Southwark) said on Tuesday. “It makes suitable provision for most of those who don’t believe women can or should be bishops and priests. . . If the Measure now before us were to fail, I think it would be a total disaster.”

Keith Malcouronne (diocese of Guildford) concurred: “The focus of the new package has shifted. The dog’s breakfast of 43 diocesan schemes and an as-yet-unwritten Code of Practice that emerged from the legislative wringer in 2012 would not, in my judgement, have kept the whole Church of England together in healthy mutual respect and flourishing, which the current package now does.”

Mary Judkin (West Yorkshire & the Dales) said on Wednesday that the new Measure had secured “a much more of an honoured place” for those who could not accept women bishops. “I  am quietly confident that it will go through.”

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