Introduction

In order to know where you are going, you need to know where you have come from. This chapter reflects this truism, providing an overview of the ways in which law and religion have interacted throughout English history. It is illustrative rather than exhaustive, seeking to place the significant legal changes that have occurred in the twenty-first century into their historical context. The question is whether these new laws are best seen as providing historical continuity to what went before or a substantial shift in the way in which law and religion interact.

The following provides a brief summary of a complex historical process, focusing upon the general direction of the law. It contends that the relationship between law and religion in England has developed through four broad overlapping but conceptually distinct phases: firstly, the temporal–spiritual partnership which followed the Norman Conquest; secondly, the era of discrimination and intolerance which resulted from the Reformation of the sixteenth century; thirdly, the epoch of toleration which followed from the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89; and fourthly, the current age of positive religious freedom which may be dated back to the Human Rights Act 1998.

The temporal–spiritual partnership

There are a few dates in English history that are as ingrained upon the national consciousness as 1066. The Norman Conquest provided a watershed moment which had long-term implications upon the nation's laws and the regulation of religion.