During the reign of Elizabeth I the ecclesial and legal ‘revolution’ under Henry VIII, to establish in England a national church under the royal supremacy, was converted into a ‘settlement’. It steered a course between radical puritans and recusant Catholics. Clothed in legal propriety, this settlement was articulated both juristically and theologically by the great Richard Hooker (d. 1600). After the return to Rome under Mary, the Elizabethan Acts of Parliament re-established the English Church, revived legislation made under Henry VIII and Edward VI, and imposed uniformity in worship. The period also sees the use of ‘soft-law’, like Articles, Admonitions, and Advertisements. Parliament rejects the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum in 1571, but Canons were passed piecemeal in 1571, 1575, 1585, and 1598. The turn of the Welsh Tudors to rule ended in 1603. The Scottish Stuarts came next. The reign of James I (1603–1625) saw bitter dispute between the King and the common lawyers over the royal supremacy in matters ecclesiastical. But there was one lasting legal landmark: the Canons Ecclesiastical 1603/4. This new code was studied theologically by a contemporary cleric, Francis Mason. Whilst several notable civilians from that time have become well-known – such as John Cowell (d. 1611), Daniel Dun (d. 1617), Clement Colmore (d. 1619), and Thomas Ridley (d. 1629), Francis Mason is largely unknown. However, he is very worthy of inclusion in the canon of Anglican priest-jurists. What follows sketches the life and career of Mason, outlines his treatise on the Canons, and discusses that treatise in a wider context, including comparing it with a similar work by Bishop Edward Stillngfleet (d. 1699).

The Enabling Act 1919 provided for a new National Church Assembly able to make Measures with the same force and effect as an Act of Parliament. The 1919 Act was without question a constitutional moment with far-reaching effects; and it was about law, not morals: legalists triumphed over moralists. However, it was just one stage in a much longer trajectory of thinking about the constitution of the Church of England. This article, which started life as a lecture to the Ecclesiastical Law Society's day conference on 2 April 2022, takes the story further back – and widens it. It presents the key elements of thinking about the constitution – accidents, continuity, change – in the works of English ecclesiastical lawyers – civilians, common lawyers and clerical jurists – from the Reformation to the Act of 1919. To what extent, if at all, in their understandings of the church constitution, were our historic ecclesiastical lawyers legalists, or moralists, or both? Was the ecclesiastical constitution itself simply a legal category, or did it, and its basics, also have a moral quality? This article explores these questions in relation to: (1) the nature, sources, and purposes of the constitution of the Church of England; (2) legislative, administrative and judicial power; and (3) the rights of the individual enforceable against the decisions of ecclesiastical government. This article is based on a paper delivered to the Ecclesiastical Law Society's 2022 day conference.

2023 marks the 800th anniversary of the death of Gerald of Wales. Scholarship to-date has focused on Gerald's extensive non-legal literature. His contribution to canon law has hitherto been neglected. However, Gerald was a canon lawyer of considerable stature. He was a student and teacher of canon law, he administered canon law and defended it against the encroachment of the royal law, and he litigated in canon law to the highest level – the papal court in Rome.

Roman canon law did not cease to have an effect within the Church of England after the Reformation. English ecclesiastical lawyers continued to use pre-Reformation foreign papal law and domestic provincial and legatine law. These lawyers used several ideas to explain its status in pre-Reformation England. They usually held that it continued in force after the Reformation on the basis of section 7 of the Submission of the Clergy Act 1533 (if not repugnant to laws of the realm) – and a commission would reform it. However, it is submitted here that this statute enabled the continuance of only domestic provincial law and perhaps legatine law but not foreign papal law. Yet a 1543 statute continued the provincial law and ‘other ecclesiastical laws’ used in England, which may or may not have included legatine and papal law. Another of 1549 has no continuance provision, but the commission was to review ‘ecclesiastical laws used here’ – which, too, may or may not include legatine and papal law. A statute of 1553 repealed these earlier statutes. A statute of 1558 repealed that of 1553 but revived only the 1533 statute, not those of 1543 or 1549. This suggests that only domestic provincial law, and perhaps legatine law, continued on the basis of statute, and not foreign papal laws. The latter might have applied from 1543 to 1553 but not after 1558, as only the 1533 statute perpetuating solely domestic law was revived. Nevertheless, English lawyers continued to invoke foreign Roman canon law. By the nineteenth century they did so on basis of custom not statute – and the 1533 Act section 7 was repealed in 1969.

John Witte Jr is a law and religion scholar of the first order. For decades, as the director of the Emory Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Atlanta, he has played a leading part in the development of the field of law and religion globally. He has written prolifically across a wide range of law and religion subjects. He has nurtured and guided a generation of vibrant scholars who will shape the field for decades to come. He has brought important new insights to law and religion that have animated critical and original law and religion thinking. This article introduces aspects of his work. It examines the personal interest of Witte in law and religion, and the influences on his approach to the field, particularly his Christian upbringing and convictions. It explores his rich and robust understanding of law and religion, around notions of the dialectical interaction between the two, the religiosity of secular law, and the juridical character of religion. It also studies Witte as a historian of law and religion – his quest to retrieve, reconstruct and re-engage historical aspects of law and religion so as to address challenges of today, interdisciplinary, international and inter-religious. In all this, Witte provides a work ethic for Christian scholars in this field in terms of stewardship, accessibility and engagement.

Over the course of the reigns of the last two Tudors and first three Stuarts – just in excess of a century – the national established Church of England was disestablished twice and re-established twice. Following the return to Rome under Mary, Elizabeth's settlement re-established the English Church under the royal supremacy, set down church doctrine and liturgy, embarked on a reform of canon law and so consolidated an ecclesial polity which many today see as an Anglican via media between papal Rome and Calvinist Geneva. However, as a compromise, the settlement contained in itself seeds of discord: it outlawed Roman reconciliation and recusancy; it extended lay and clerical discipline by the use of ecclesiastical commissioners; and it drove Puritans to agitate for reform on Presbyterian lines. While James I continued Elizabeth's policy, disappointing both Puritans and Papists, Charles I married a Roman Catholic, sought to impose a prayer book on Calvinist Scotland, asserted divine-right monarchy, engaged in an 11-year personal rule without Parliament and favoured Arminian clergy. With these and other disputes between Crown and Parliament, civil war ensued, a directory of worship replaced the prayer book, episcopacy and monarchy were abolished and a Puritan-style republic was instituted. The republic failed, and in 1660 monarchy was restored, the Church of England was re-established and a limited form of religious toleration was introduced under the Clarendon Code. In all these upheavals, understandings of the nature, source and authority of human law, civil and ecclesiastical, were the subject of claim and counter-claim. Enter Robert Sanderson: a life begun under Elizabeth and ended under Charles II, a protagonist who felt the burdens and benefits of the age, Professor of Divinity at Oxford and later Bishop of Lincoln, and a clerical-jurist who thought deeply on the nature of human law and its place in a cosmic legal order – so much so, he may be compared with three of his great contemporaries: the lawyer Matthew Hale (1609–1676), the cleric Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1678).

The Arches Court, the court of appeal of the Province of Canterbury in the Church of England, has existed for more than 700 years. Its evolution – driven by principle, politics and pragmatism – is a fascinating reflection of a key tribunal in the court system of the English Church, and the site of major historical and often contentious developments within the Church. Its appellate status has not changed; it still has jurisdiction over faculties and clergy discipline; its judge is still appointed by the archbishop; and its jurisprudence has contributed much to the development of English ecclesiastical law. However, over the centuries its jurisdiction has contracted; the courts to which appeals against its decisions lie have changed; its historical lawyers of civilian advocates and proctors have been replaced by common law barristers and solicitors; the title for its judge, Dean of Arches, has survived by accident; its procedure has been simplified; and its decisions have throughout its history been respected but today have the authority of binding precedents. The article takes the story up to 2018, when the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Care of Churches Measure provided that a decision of the Arches and of the provincial Chancery Court of York is today to be followed as if it were a decision of the other court.