There are a number of ethical issues connecting with the beginning of life, most obviously abortion and most recently research on embryos. These issues have a number of aspects, particularly in relation to fertility treatment and genetic manipulation but they all assume answers to prior questions about what it is to be a human being and when it is that an entity, to use a neutral term, is accorded the full protection due to a human person. So it is that in this first lecture I will be concentrating on souls, persons and embryos.

In 1953 a number of parishes throughout England wished to commemorate the accession and coronation of Her Majesty the Queen by placing representations of the royal arms in their churches. As the introduction of such devices into churches may only be made with the authority of a faculty from the diocesan consistory court, a number of these petitions came to be considered judicially. Two judgments were reported.

The Church of England and the Church of Sweden have been in communion with one another since the early 1920s and have much in common. Both maintain the historic episcopate, both place great emphasis on liturgy, and since the Reformation both have long been ‘by law established’—a process which began in Sweden when Gustavus Vasa took the throne in 1523 after the successful war of liberation against Denmark, was confirmed by the Riksdag of Västerås in 1544 and, after some vicissitudes, was finally settled by the Pact of Succession of 1604.

Though the first nation state of the Council of Europe to ratify the European Convention on Human Rights on 18th March 1951, and though permitting individual petition to the European Court in Strasbourg since 1966, the United Kingdom declined to give effect to the Convention in its domestic law until the government recently passed the Human Rights Act 1998. The Act received the Royal Assent in November 1998 and will come into force on 2nd October 2000.

It has become almost a commonplace of textbooks that English public ecclesiastical law has no application to the colonies. Halsbury states this baldly and without qualification, relying chiefly on the judgment of the Privy Council in Re Lord Bishop of Natal, a case of unquestioned significance for the development of the family of churches in the English Prayer Book tradition. But both from historical interest and with an eye to those colonies still in being, the issue is one which deserves a second glance. This article will argue that whether or not the Natal decision was right on its facts, the Judicial Committee in that case made an important distinction which later textbook generalisations—and indeed the Crown's advisers at the time—appear to have overlooked; and that other decisions, relied upon in support of such generalisations, can be supported neither from principle nor from earlier practice.

‘The Ecclesiastical Courts date from 1076, but it is certain that at no time in their long history have they been as busy as they are today. Most of their work arises out of applications for faculties to make alterations in churches, their contents or churchyards. The majority of cases are dealt with without a hearing and in Chambers, but an increasing number have to be decided after a full hearing in Open Court. Most Ecclesiastical Court Judgments are not reported; yet many of them are of considerable interest and together they create a body of Ecclesiastical Law. To meet an undoubted need, the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple has been glad to receive from the Ecclesiastical Judges’ Association transcripts of Judgments, to copy, bind and index them and to make them available for reading and, if desired, copying within the Inn's Library. If provided with copies of future Judgments, the Library will treat them in the same way.’

‘As from the date of disestablishment ecclesiastical courts and persons in Wales and Monmouthshire shall cease to exercise any jurisdiction, and the ecclesiastical law of the Church in Wales shall cease to exist as law.’