I am delighted to have been invited by the present Editor of the Ecclesiastical Law Journal, Chancellor Mark Hill QC, to mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Society and, with it, the emergence of the Journal. In so doing, in an attempt to shore up my fading memory, I have sought out the recollections of others intimately involved with events at the time, and I am pleased to record their comments in this reflection. There was certainly a good deal of talk about having a journal devoted to ecclesiastical law at the exploratory meetings held in Chancellor Graham Routledge's house at 3 Amen Court in the mid-1960s. This led to the statement made at the founding conference at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge in March 1987 that: ‘The Society hopes to make considerable use of the Journal, and to include articles, reports of cases, book reviews, correspondence and so on.’Footnote ¹

At a meeting of the newly fledged Committee held immediately following the conference, when Chancellor Routledge was elected as first Chairman of the Society, somebody said that we needed an editor for the new Journal and they all looked at me. I had never edited anything before, not even the school magazine, and certainly not a learned and academic tome such as those present hoped to see, but I thought it would be interesting and good fun and so agreed to take on the task (albeit very much as an amateur, unlike my distinguished successor).

I was fortunate indeed to have with me on the first Editorial Committee Professor John Baker (until he joined the Editorial Advisory Board when this was set up in 1991); Timothy Briden, who agreed to produce brief reports on Consistory Court cases; David Harte, who was willing to take on the book reviews (a task that he continues loyally to discharge); and Raymond Hemingray, who valiantly agreed to be production manager and dealt with the matter of getting issues of the Journal printed. Timothy Briden (now a Chancellor as well as Vicar-General of the Province of Canterbury) fondly recalls the first meeting of the Editorial Committee, which took place after a General Committee meeting in Graham Routledge's elegant residence near St Paul's Cathedral: ‘he was a great enthusiast, and it is sad to think that he died when the ELS was still in its infancy’. In an obituary in the Journal, Chancellor Garth Moore commented that it was ‘largely due to Routledge's energy that the Ecclesiastical Law Society was so successfully launched’.Footnote ²

Our first printers were the Additional Curates Society, who produced a somewhat smaller volume than we are used to now, with white covers. The first issue appeared in July 1987 and the second in February 1998. We then moved to MG Hillson of Peterborough, who were used by Raymond in his capacity as Registrar of Peterborough Diocese. They produced a larger Journal in handsome red covers, referred to by Ray as ‘claret’ and by me as ‘somewhat episcopal’, and this has remained the position ever since. The two issues produced by the Additional Curates Society were reprinted in the first hard-backed bound volume, containing five issues of the Journal and covering the period 1987 to 1989. At the start there were two issues a year but when Cambridge University Press took over publication this was increased to three. David Harte, who was a Lecturer in Law at Newcastle University, arranged the binding and was always available at conferences to sell bound volumes and any back issues that members did not have. He also ran a bookstall on which were arrayed a wide selection of books concerned with ecclesiastical and canon law.

The first issue of the Journal consisted almost entirely of material resulting from the Cambridge conference. There was a message from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Robert Runcie, which made it clear that he regarded the establishment of the Society as particularly appropriate and long overdue. In it he wrote:

In addition to the paper by our first President, Bishop Eric Kemp of Chichester, on ‘The spirit of the canon law and its application in England’,Footnote ⁴ there were a number of ‘bons mots’, including Eric's remark that:

Then there was Lord Justice Lloyd's remark that ‘An organisation the size of the Church of England with 11,248 Clergy needs a set of rules. If not it would degenerate into anarchy.’Footnote ⁶ Finally there was the delightfully mischievous comment by the late Dean of Arches, Sir John Owen: ‘I knew an Archdeacon who was 15 years into his ministry before he knew what a faculty was!’Footnote ⁷

All those who were at the inaugural Conference at Cambridge will have their own special memories of the occasion, whether it be Bishop Kemp's paper to which I have already referred, the spirited disputation on ‘Ecclesiastical law – who needs it?’ between Lord Justice Lloyd and Lord Justice Gibson (both members of the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved) or the reflection by Bishop David Say on relations between Church and state during the previous 20 years. There was also a memorable Eucharist on the Sunday morning in chapel, where the sermon was by Bishop Graham Leonard (then Bishop of London). Many of course recall the rather primitive arrangements for washing and so on, which necessitated a brisk windy walk from the court where one's room was to the ablutions. David Harte has ‘an abiding memory of Quentin Edwards resplendent in his dressing gown emerging from his staircase to cross the courtyard for a bath’. Archdeacon Hughie Jones well remembers Chancellor George Newsom QC complaining at breakfast the next morning about the remoteness of the lavatories, to which Chancellor Garth Moore (a resident Fellow at Corpus) retorted: ‘They've served me alright for fifty years – don't grumble’. David Cheetham puts it rather differently:

Perhaps the experience referred to above explains why our conferences are nowadays often held in hotels.

In my editorial in the second issue of the Journal, I was able to report that ‘Following the successful launching of the Society in Cambridge last March, it is pleasing to note that membership now stands at 240.’Footnote ⁸ Numbers have continued to increase ever since and there are currently no fewer than 688 members. That issue saw the regular establishment of learned articles on ecclesiastical and canon law (sometimes the texts of addresses given at conferences), reports from working parties, book reviews, case reports and so on. It also contained a review of the second edition of Moore's Introduction to English Canon Law by Chancellor Garth Moore (who had hosted the Society at its inaugural conference at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge) and Timothy Briden.

It was at the Society's second residential conference at Nottingham University in 1989 that two young Welsh lawyers rose from their seats at the back of the auditorium to announce that they were working on the same lines as us at Cardiff University. They were Dr (now Professor) Norman Doe and Thomas Watkin, who was Legal Adviser to the Church in Wales. They both played roles in broadening the scope of the Journal and extending its catchment area to Wales and beyond, and Norman duly set up the LLM course in Canon Law at Cardiff University, which has been completed successfully by many members of the Society. By now Brian Hanson (Registrar and Legal Advisor to the General Synod) was writing on recent legislative developments, a task taken on by Stephen Slack, who succeeded him. This came to be supplemented by correspondents from the respective bodies in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and occasionally from elsewhere in the Anglican Communion.

In my editorial in the summer edition of the Journal of 1991,Footnote ⁹ I referred to the Editorial Advisory Board, which had been set up to assist the Editorial Committee, its first members being Bishop Kemp, Professor David McClean and Professor Baker, whom I have already mentioned. They were soon joined by Fr Robert Ombres OP, a Roman Catholic priest who had delivered a learned and illuminating address on Roman Catholic canon law at the first one-day conference in London and who became a great supporter of the Society. I also expressed the Society's thanks for the services rendered by its first Executive Officer, the late Archdeacon David Scott, in particular for the way he co-ordinated the production of the Journal. He was succeeded by Archdeacon Hughie Jones, who was equally effective in that role. I also thanked the ‘volunteer’ proofreaders who, in our rather ‘amateur’ days, gave up so much of their time checking the often long and complicated texts of each item produced for the Journal. I well remember my wife deciding to give up trying to confirm the accuracy of footnotes in Latin at about 1 am, saying that her brain could not cope any longer. Examples of such footnotes (commendable in themselves) are to be found in ‘Points of law and practice concerning ecclesiastical visitations’ by Peter Smith of Exeter University,Footnote ¹⁰ and in Professor Baker's pen portrait of William Lyndwood in his splendid series ‘Famous English canon lawyers’.Footnote ¹¹ In the latter article there is a delightful print of Lyndwood's coat of arms.

Allow me to share two light-hearted anecdotes concerning events that occurred at residential conferences where members had a lot of fun as well as taking part in learned and serious study. I well recall the delightful conference we had at the University College of Ripon and York St John in April 1993 on ‘Law, grace and liberty’, when, after working hard until lunchtime on Saturday, I sneaked off with the then Chairman, Chancellor Quentin Edwards QC, to Ripon Races, where I have to confess that his form book was more reliable than mine. My other recollection is of the conference at Magdalen College, Oxford, at the end of March 1995, when the Society was honoured to listen to a lecture by Professor Richard Helmholz, then Dean of Chicago Law School, who spoke on ‘Ecclesiastical lawyers and the English Reformation’.Footnote ¹² A distinguished lawyer and a delightful person, he has ever since been a strong supporter of the Society and the Journal in particular. I was in fact late in arriving at the conference on the Friday and it was dark by the time I eventually got to my room facing the deer park. The following morning I pulled back the curtains to see the Magdalen deer grazing outside my window. I then went off to the conference, which was followed by a splendid dinner in Hall when the main course was roast venison. On Sunday morning I got up and looked out of the window when, to my great concern, there was not a deer in sight. Had we eaten them for dinner the night before? I then glanced to my left and, to my immense relief, saw the deer up at the far end of the park happily munching the grass there. It was certainly a conference to remember.

I conclude with a wise comment made to me by David Cheetham when I was seeking recollections from members:

I can echo that.