History of the Church of England

Eventually, the raids turned into wars of conquest and the kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia, and parts of Mercia became the Danelaw, whose rulers were Scandinavian pagans.

[13] By 1000, there were eighteen dioceses in England: Canterbury, Rochester, London, Winchester, Dorchester, Ramsbury, Sherborne, Selsey, Lichfield, Hereford, Worcester, Crediton, Cornwall, Elmham, Lindsey, Wells, York and Durham.

[citation needed] The Norman Conquest led to the replacement of the old Anglo-Saxon elite by a new ruling class of Anglo-Normans in both the secular nobility as well as the episcopate.

Monastic governance of cathedrals continued in England, Scotland and Wales throughout the medieval period; whereas elsewhere in western Europe it was found only at Monreale in Sicily and Downpatrick in Ireland.

[23][page needed] As in other parts of medieval Europe, tension existed between the local monarch and the Pope about civil judicial authority over clerics, taxes and the wealth of the Church, and appointments of bishops, notably during the reigns of Henry II and John (see Investiture Controversy).

The possession of the relics of a popular saint was a source of funds to the individual church as the faithful made donations and benefactions in the hope that they might receive spiritual aid, a blessing or a healing from the presence of the physical remains of the holy person.

All these saints brought pilgrims to their churches, but among them the most renowned was Thomas Becket, the late archbishop of Canterbury, who was assassinated by henchmen of King Henry II in 1170.

The Church taught that, in the name of the congregation, the priest offered to God the same sacrifice of Christ on the cross that provided atonement for the sins of humanity.

The 9,000 parishes covering all of England were overseen by a hierarchy of deaneries, archdeaconries, dioceses led by bishops, and ultimately the pope who presided over the Catholic Church from Rome.

Desperate for a male heir, the king sought papal consent to annul his marriage to Catharine of Aragon, freeing him to marry Anne Boleyn.

It kept most of the traditional Catholic doctrines and practices (purgatory, veneration of saints, and the real presence), but it also contained Lutheran teachings (justification by faith and three instead of seven sacraments).

Nigel Heard summarises the persecution thus: "It is now estimated that the 274 religious executions carried out during the last three years of Mary's reign exceeded the number recorded in any Catholic country on the continent in the same period.

By the end of Elizabeth's reign, most people were Protestants, and Roman Catholicism was "the faith of a small sect", largely confined to gentry households.

The Queen vetoed Article 29, which stated that even though wicked and unworthy communicants consumed the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper, they were not "partakers of Christ".

This petition for church reform was referred to the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, which agreed to produce a new version of the Book of Common Prayer that incorporated a few changes requested by the Puritans.

[68] The Church of England's dominant theology was still Calvinism, but a group of theologians associated with Bishop Lancelot Andrewes disagreed with many aspects of the Reformed tradition, especially its teaching on predestination.

[70] For the next century, through the reigns of James I and Charles I, and culminating in the English Civil War and the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, there were significant swings back and forth between two factions: the Puritans (and other radicals) who sought more far-reaching reform, and the more conservative churchmen who aimed to keep closer to traditional beliefs and practices.

[71] The Caroline Divines, such as Andrewes, Laud, Herbert Thorndike, Jeremy Taylor, John Cosin, Thomas Ken and others rejected Roman claims and refused to adopt the ways and beliefs of the Continental Protestants.

When the new king Charles II reached the throne in 1660, he restored priests who had been expelled from their benefices and actively appointed his supporters who had resisted Cromwell to vacancies.

That is, those Protestants who dissented from the Church of England such as Baptists, Congregationalists and Quakers were allowed their own places of worship and their own teachers and preachers, subject to acceptance of certain oaths of allegiance.

[73][74] The Church of England was not only dominant in religious affairs, but it blocked outsiders from responsible positions in national and local government, business, professions and academe.

It led to the creation of the Church Army, an evangelical and social welfare association and informed piety and liturgy, most notably in the development of Methodism.

It influenced Anglican theology, through such Oxford Movement figures as John Henry Newman, Edward Pusey, as well as the Christian socialism of Charles Gore and Frederick Maurice.

Tory Prime Ministers appointed most of the bishops before 1830, selecting men who had served the party, or had been college tutors of sponsoring politicians, or were near relations of noblemen.

Evangelicals inside the Church, and Nonconformists outside, were outraged because they understood England's religious national identity to be emphatically Protestant and anti-Catholic.

[96][97][98] During the Second World War the head of chaplaincy in the British Army was an Anglican chaplain-general, Charles Symons (with the military rank of major-general), who was formally under the control of the permanent under-secretary of state.

The Archbishop of York replied, "it is a lesser evil to bomb the war-loving Germans than to sacrifice the lives of our fellow countrymen..., or to delay the delivery of many now held in slavery".

Randolph Churchill later expressed concern about rumours about a specific conversation between the archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, and the Princess while she was still planning to marry Townsend.

In Churchill's view, "the rumour that Fisher had intervened to prevent the Princess from marrying Townsend has done incalculable harm to the Church of England", according to research completed by historian Ann Sumner Holmes.

In 2006 the Church of England at its General Synod made a public apology for the institutional role it played as a historic owner of slave plantations in Barbados and Barbuda.