IT IS often said that the Church of England is a “Church by law established”, by which we understand that our Church is founded on laws made by the Crown in Parliament. But behind that lies the detail of the hundreds of statutes, the cases that have interpreted them, and the personnel, both lawyers and politicians, who made and developed that law through periods of ecclesiastical and social change.
It is into that detail that this collection of essays takes us, developing matters chronologically with each of ten chapters covering roughly 50 years. Every aspect of our Church’s life is governed by law, and so we are taken into a rich variety of realms: governance, mission, liturgy, occasional offices, and daily life, often in areas of controversy.
The first chapter sets the scene, describing the construction of the legal structures that were in existence at the time of the Reformation, the law, the courts, and the personnel that together provided order both to spiritual and secular life. In all that followed, not a lot was to change in relation to those matters, apart from the pope’s giving way to the king as the ultimate authority. That apart, the courts, the law, and those who practised that law continued much as before.
The next two chapters describe that transfer of authority from the Pope to the King, and then back, and back again. We see how significant the part played by Parliament became, initially as the King’s lever, but gradually asserting its own authority and playing its part in the shaping of the Church of England. The chapter on the Elizabethan Settlement, with the uniformity that it produced, shows the courts thriving and extending their jurisdiction, but also introduces us to the other ways in which law was established apart from statute and canon — namely, articles, rubrics, advertisements, and injunctions.
Chapters dealing with the Commonwealth and the Restoration touch, among much else, on the 1603 Canons, the Bill of Rights, and the Act of Settlement, with increasing toleration of dissent in different directions, but the courts beginning to decline in influence. That bring us up to the Hanoverian period and the chapter that describes how the Anglican monopoly of Parliament was in decline as society became increasingly secular, the population grew, and the Industrial Revolution brought about great changes in the landscape.
All of this prepares us for the Victorian period, in which, amid the ritual litigation that we may be familiar with, the focus is on the changes made to the ecclesiastical court system, alongside changes made to the secular courts, amid argument about whether they were spiritual or legal institutions. Much work was removed to the secular courts, with the consequent decline of the corpus of specialist ecclesiastical lawyers, and the closing of Doctors’ Commons.
The 20th century brings us to the aftermath of the world wars; struggles between the Church and Parliament over Prayer Book revision and marriage after divorce; and the Church’s beginning to legislate for itself. So, to the present day with Mark Hill’s chapter outlining the ongoing march of globalism and secularism, the development of soft law, and asking whether the established status of the Church will be able to be sustained in the future.
It is not only an instructive read, but it lifts lids and reveals much of interest which was new to me.
His Honour Peter Collier KC is a retired circuit judge and a Lay Canon of York Minster, who until recently was the Vicar-General of the Province of York.
The Legal History of the Church of England: From the Reformation to the present
Norman Doe and Stephen Coleman, editors
Bloomsbury £100
(978-1-5099-7319-4)
Church Times Bookshop £90
