The study of English legal history has been well supported for a great many years, not least by the Selden Society, founded by F W Maitland in 1887. Indeed the discipline is seeing something of an ongoing academic renaissance, evidenced in part by the foundation of the Cambridge Centre for English Legal History in 2012. Yet, while the ecclesiastical law of England was and is hugely influential on the English legal system, and indeed the history of ecclesiastical law has been the focus of much scholarship, there is to our knowledge no society which exists to promote scholarship focused specifically on the legal history of the Church of England.

It was with this in mind that the Cardiff University Centre for Law and Religion this year founded a new network, the Church Law History Consortium, which held its inaugural meeting at Magdalene College, Cambridge, from Thursday 31 March to Friday 1 April 2022. For the first meeting the Consortium received papers on the landmark ecclesiastical legal developments in the history of the Church of England between 1530 and 2022, with an opening paper on the mediaeval antecedents. Each paper broadly covered a fifty-year period and considered the landmark ecclesiastical legal developments in terms of leading statutes, canons (and other instruments), cases, commentaries and controversies. A wide-ranging discussion followed each paper and common themes began to emerge in terms of continuity and change in the law, the significance of law books and the legal profession, the relationship between Church and State, and the effect of that relationship on the development of the law. The Consortium was honoured to be joined at dinner in the parlour by Professor David Ibbetson, Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Cambridge, and Professor Sir John Baker, Downing Professor Emeritus of the Laws of England at the University of Cambridge. After dinner Sir John generously offered some reflections on the study of English legal history at Cambridge during his career.

Convened by the Rev'd Stephen Coleman and Professor Norman Doe, the Consortium consists of a small number of invited scholars, all of whom are either currently or have recently been engaged with the Cardiff University LLM in Canon Law. Papers were received from the Rev'd Dr William Adam, Paul Barber, Ian Blaney, the Rev'd Stephen Coleman, the Rev'd Russell Dewhurst, Professor Norman Doe, Professor Mark Hill QC, the Rev'd Neil Patterson, Professor Russell Sandberg, Dr Charlotte Smith and Dr Sarah White. Regrettably, due to COVID-19, some participants were unable to be present and the Consortium was grateful to Morag Ellis QC, Professor David Ibbetson and Peter Pursglove, who joined in order to enable the presentation of papers from those who could not be present and to further enliven the discussion. The meeting concluded with a discussion regarding the future of the Consortium, including the revision and publication of the papers, possible collaboration with other networks and plans for future meetings.