The petitioners sought a faculty to install an aumbry in the Grade II* listed church for the reservation of the sacrament. The application was supported by the Parochial Church Council and the Diocesan Advisory Committee and no objections were lodged. The chancellor handed down a formal judgment given the historical contention over the reservation of the sacrament and its prohibition in the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion and the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer. Case law established that the sacrament could be reserved with the bishop's permission, but a vacancy-in-see meant that there was no diocesan bishop to give specific or generic permission for the reservation of the sacrament. The chancellor considered whether a faculty for an aumbry – which implicitly approved the reservation of the sacrament – could be granted in the absence of express approval from the bishop. He reviewed the authorities in relation to the legality of reservation, noting that, in the most recent case concerning installation of an aumbry, Re All Saints, West Dulwich (2016) 18 Ecc LJ 127, there was no reference to the possibility of illegality.

In granting a faculty for the aumbry, the chancellor decided that where there was a potentially lawful practice to which no-one objected the chancellor was entitled to assume that the practice was lawful. On that basis, the reservation of the sacrament in this church was lawful and there could be no objection to an aumbry being installed. Further, it was held that, if the bishop has the power to license a practice, then the chancellor, as the bishop's official principal and vicar general, could exercise the like power. The chancellor also held that, in any event, as the practice of the reservation of the sacrament is no longer illegal, an express episcopal licence was no longer required. [Catherine Shelley]