Definition of "metropolitan"

I knovv God by Miracle can inſtruct Kings, as he rained Mannah, and raiſed the Apoſtles from letterless Fiſher-men, to learned Metropolitans, and profound Doctours.

1663, Edward Waterhous [i.e., Edward Waterhouse], chapter I, in Fortescutus Illustratus; or A Commentary on that Nervous Treatise De Laudibus Legum Angliæ, Written by Sir John Fortescue Knight, […], London: […] Tho[mas] Roycroft for Thomas Dicas […], page 38

Yet from the late thirteenth century the metropolitan based himself either in Moscow or Vladimir-on-the-Kliazma, which was also in Muscovite territory, and it became the ambition of the Muscovites to make this arrangement permanent.

2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 514

Policies relating to the elimination of racial discrimination which obtain in metropolitan New Zealand are applicable in the Tokelau Islands.

1974, New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Report on the Tokelau Islands, page 8

the new political status of these islands marks a definite break with the traditional Dutch colonial practice to keep its Caribbean colonies at a distance; and, after 2010, Dutch metropolitan laws and dministrative practices started being implemented on the islands.

2015, Wouter Veenendaal, The Dutch Caribbean municipalities in comparative perspective. Island Studies Journal 10(1): 15–30