William the Conqueror attempted to create one unified centralised kingdom in the British Isles on a scale which had never been realised before. The king employed both his military power and his influence on the Church to achieve this ambitious end. William had a congenial archbishop of Canterbury at his side who, in turn, attempted to raise his metropolitan see to the position of the spiritual capital of the whole island. Yet what looked like success during Lanfranc's lifetime began to crumble already under Anselm; the third post-conquest archbishop of Canterbury, Ralph d'Escures (1114–22), had to witness the collapse of Lanfranc's system. The idea of Canterbury's primacy was still alive, but it clashed more and more with actual events.

It is a surprising fact that, despite all the energy that has been devoted by medievalists to the relations between the king and the Church, no one has attempted to answer the question: what was the extent of the king's authority in his own parish churches? Naturally the English crown, like the lay lords and like the monasteries and like the bishops, possessed the patronage of churches. How did the triangular relationship of king/bishop/pope operate in practice in the royal churches? Others have addressed themselves to the sacred nature of kingship, to the spiritual capacity of the priest-king. Some have been concerned, for example, with the changing concept of kingship, as was E. H. Kantorowicz, or with the claims that the king possessed the power of healing and could cure scrofula, as was Marc Bloch. These issues and their like pose the problem of bridging the gap between the concept or the claim and the exercise of authority or power. An examination of the history of royal churches provides abundant evidence of claims and counter-claims, but our concern in the end must be with the actual extent and nature of the king's control and jurisdiction.

Justin Martyr closes his First Apology by quoting at length the rescript which the emperor Hadrian addressed to Minucius Fundanus, proconsul of Asia, concerning the treatment of Christians and their accusers. The rescript is properly an appendix to the Apology, attached as a pièce justificative in support of Justin's final plea for toleration, which rounds off his description of the rites of Baptism and the Eucharist. The description itself is the true ending of the treatise; it is the logical termination and dramatic summary of the doctrinal exposition of which the bulk of the Apology consists.

After Nero, significantly, instituted the persecution of the Christians and after Domitian's rule, during which some notable cases of anti-Christian persecutions occurred in Rome as well as in proconsular Asia, Trajan's rule produced some scattered persecutions in the Greek East of the empire, of which the best known are the case of Ignatius of Antioch and the one in which Pliny the Younger was regretfully involved in Bithynia. The persecutions quite obviously got out of hand in Asia at about the time when Hadrian's administration replaced Trajan's, as is well illustrated by the correspondence of Serenius Granianus (Q. Licinius Silvanus Granianus), a governor of Asia, the emperor Hadrian, and Minucius (Minicius) Fundanus, Granianus's successor.

Princes and popes had often fought among themselves for power over peoples. So it should not seem odd that to reduce the competition they combined in mutual support, when overmighty magnates rose to wreck the ancient peace between the princes and peoples of the English realm. Thus it was that the kings of England, when confronted by baronial force, called upon the popes to use their influence and to support the royal cause.

In modern Christological thinking, the tendency is to start with an affirmation of the real humanity of Christ. We recognise with everincreasing realism that the man, Jesus, lived a life open to historical investigation, a life which was circumscribed within the limitations of a normal human psychology and its contemporary environment. This being our pre-supposition, we tend to approve the Antiochene school for its realistic exegesis of New Testament texts referring to the human weakness, progress, experience, finite knowledge, temptation and conflict of the Christ. Correspondingly, we criticise the Alexandrian Fathers for their unnatural exegesis, based, we instinctively feel, upon a form of docetism, however sophisticated. How justifiable is this attitude? It is not the purpose of this paper to minimise the difficulties involved in the Alexandrian position, but the following suggestions may lead to a more sympathetic view of Alexandrian thinking.

Dislike of foreigners is an important feature of thirteenth-century English history, and nowhere more so than in the delicate question of ecclesiastical appointments. Feelings frequently ran high and hostile demonstrations, in which both clergy and laity took part, were not uncommon. Among the more violent of these demonstrations were those led by Robert Tweng against foreign clergy in Yorkshire in 1231 and by Roger Clifford against the then bishop of Hereford and his so-called hangers-on in 1263. It is about the object of the latter demonstration that this article is concerned, in an attempt to re-evaluate this bishop's contribution to the English Church and to defend him against the onslaught of some previous critics.

The mills of the papacy grind slowly. It is close on a hundred years since, in 1874, the Cause of the English Martyrs was officially opened. From those who suffered between 1535 and 1681, 360 names were submitted to the Holy See. Twelve years later, in 1886, 316 of these names were approved; the remaining 44 were postponed for further consideration (dilati). Of the 316 approved, 54 were beatified; the remaining 262 were declared worthy of veneration. In 1895, nine more martyrs were beatified, making a total of 63; 253 remained Venerable. All those beatified on these two occasions suffered during the first third (1535–83) of the period of persecution. In 1923, a Commission was appointed to sit at Westminster; and, in 1929, the process of beatification was renewed: 136 more martyrs were then beatified, making a total of 199; 117 remained Venerable. Of these 136, all but four suffered during the last two thirds (1584–1681) of the period of persecution. The proportion of the number of those beatified in the two groups (63:136) is close to the proportion of the number of years in the two periods (48:96). This may be coincidental, rather than fair or ‘wooden’.

Recent studies of English Catholicism from the accession of Elizabeth i onwards demonstrate quite clearly the value and necessity of intensive studies of Catholicism at the local level. H. Aveling's detailed studies of Catholicism in the Yorkshire Ridings are excellent examples of the way in which local studies have contributed to a fuller understanding of how and why Catholicism survived in England after the Reformation. The present study of the Catholic laity under Charles i is based upon an investigation of Catholicism in London and eight counties, drawing mainly upon central sources. The counties have been chosen with the object of including as much variety as possible, both in geographical region and in the state of Catholicism in the country as a whole. Not only have counties with a large and, in some cases, flourishing Catholic survival been selected, but counties where Catholics formed a tiny, and even dwindling minority have also been included. If these local studies are a reasonable sample of the country as a whole, in both extent and variety, then they could be regarded as anindication of the national picture.

The archimandrite Photius of Russia, one of the most unusual figures to appear in a national history hardly lacking in the bizarre, played a unique role in the development of the modern Russian State. Possibly no other Russian churchman in modern times enjoyed so much power, however briefly, and used it for such unfortunate purposes as Photius. Through his influence upon the emperor Alexander i he determined the history of the Russian empire in such a manner that beneficial trends of growth were terminated and salutary movements aborted, to the great disadvantage of later generations. Had he lived during the reign of Nicholas ii, not a century earlier, Photius would undoubtedly have garnered something of the immortality accorded to those who brought Russia to its final dissolution; yet his role in the decline and fall of the Romanovs was no less than that of those who followed later.

It would be absurd to complain that the church courts have been neglected by historians of twelfth- and thirteenth-century England. Their conflicts with the royal power over the extent of their jurisdiction lay at the heart of the Becket drama, and help to explain the uneasy relations between church and crown which subsisted throughout a considerable part of the thirteenth century. Although this aspect of the topic is prominent in general histories of the period, however, surprisingly little work has been done on the bishops’ courts themselves; on their mode of operation and the way in which they were organised. On investigation, it must be admitted that one can understand the neglect of historians. The questions of disputed jurisdiction, which are of primary interest for political history, have been thoroughly discussed in a number of able studies. Moreover, the amount of surviving evidence from the bishops’ courts before 1250 is very restricted. Influential litigants preferred to have their cases heard by the pope, either in the Roman curia itself or (more commonly) before papal judges delegate in England; and the uninfluential leave no records. This does not mean that the bishops and archdeacons had lost virtually all their jurisdiction to Rome, but it does mean that the reconstruction of the way in which they operated is a detective problem of considerable delicacy. A complete picture would be very difficult to achieve, but a progress report, however imperfect (for this is all that this article can claim to be) reveals some features of considerable interest.

Universalism, the belief that all men will eventually be saved, is a suspect doctrine in the history of Christian theology. Although there are undoubtedly a number of passages in the New Testament which seem to present this as the final goal of the Divine intention in creation, and as having been brought about at great cost through the redemption effected by Christ, the Church as a whole has always been suspicious of a belief which seems subversive of morality and appears to undercut all evangelistic motives. Nevertheless, the vision of all things returning into unity with God, the ⋯ποκατ⋯στασις τ⋯ν παντ⋯ν, has contnually haunted Christian theologians, and has been espoused by some of the greatest names in the history of Christianity. The Greek Fathers, in particular Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, were, despite some discordant voices, advocates of it, and they have numerous successors. In the West the concern with the boundaries and limits of the Church, which marked the theologies of Cyprian and Augustine, meant that the universalist vision was regarded with greater suspicion, and in the Middle Ages it became the preserve of sectarian groups, opposed to the official Church, and hoping for a new and juster social order, initiated by God, in which all men would share.

The Barebones Parliament occupies a unique place in the parliamentary history of England. It is probably the only parliament in English history whose members were not chosen by the electorate. Unlike other English parliaments, its members were selected by Cromwell and his Council of Officers and selected, in the main, from the Congregational communities in the nation. According to the principle professed at the time, they were chosen not because of their estates, their family connexions or their political patrons, but rather because of their reputation as ‘men of integrity, fearing God and hating covetousness’.Although the Barebones Parliament turned out to be a failure, with little or almost nothing accomplished after a short but tempestuous session, it was none the less important as a political experiment in Puritan utopianism.

The link between religion, politics and education forms one of the major themes of Victorian history. Until the end of the 1820s only Churchmen had full political rights in England, and long after that time Dissenters were stern opponents of such Anglican privileges as the claim to levy church rates. Church of England feeling contributed greatly to Tory strength. Dissenters were prominent among Liberals and Radicals. As the State came to take a greater share in the control of education, sectarian bitterness was one of the main obstacles to official measures, because almost any plan for State intervention was bound to cut across some religious interest. In elementary education men like G. A. Denison resisted State policy in the name of the traditional teaching authority of the Church. In higher education there were forty years of debate and controversy before the universities of Oxford and Cambridge were finally freed from religious tests in 1871.

In one passage of his A Chapter of Autobiography (1868), Gladstone looked back thirty years to the time when he had published The State in its Relations with the Church. Then he had ‘believed that the Church of England, through the medium of a regenerated clergy and an intelligent and attached laity, would not only hold her ground, but would even in great part probably revive the love and allegiance both of the masses who were wholly falling away from religious observances, and of those large and powerful nonconforming bodies’. Yet, within a dozen years of 1838 ‘at least a moiety of the most gifted sons, whom Oxford had reared for the service of the Church of England, would be hurling at her head the hottest bolts of the Vatican; that, with their deviation on the one side, there would arise a not less convulsive rationalistic movement on the other. Since that time, the Church of England may be said to have bled in every pore; and at this hour it seems occasionally to quiver to its very base’.