In 2010 the vicar and churchwardens sought and were granted a faculty for the disposal by sale of a seventeenth-century armet which had been on indefinite loan by the parochial church council (PCC) to the Royal Armouries since 1974. Prior to the loan, the armet had been hung in the church from a bracket above the wall monument to Sir Thomas Hooke, baronet, together with other items of armour, which had been stolen in 1969. At the time of the grant of the faculty for disposal the Church Buildings Council (CBC) had not been consulted under rule 15 of the Faculty Jurisdiction Rules 2000 and no consideration had been given to the possibility that the armet might be part of a funerary monument and therefore the property of the heirs-at-law of Sir Thomas Hooke. The armet was sold at public auction for £45,000, whereupon the CBC raised concerns about the disposal, given the lack of consent from the heirs of Sir Thomas Hooke and arguing that the disposal was, in any event, inappropriate. The chancellor set aside the faculty and re-determined the petition with the CBC as a party opponent. The chancellor found that on the balance of probabilities the armet did form part of the funerary monument to Thomas Hooke. The petitioners had traced his heirs, one of whom transferred his interest in the armet to the PCC and the other of whom agreed to the sale.

In granting the faculty for disposal, the chancellor took account of the fact that the armet had probably never been worn by Thomas Hooke and had probably been acquired after his death, being an obsolete piece of armour at that date. Further, the connection between the Hooke family and the parish had ended more than 300 years ago. The absence of the armet from the church for 40 years and the fact that there was no prospect of it ever returning to the church had created a substantial degree of alienation between it and the church, although the chancellor doubted whether that could properly be referred to as ‘redundancy’ as the armet had never had a function within the church. He further accepted that the petitioners had shown a financial need amounting to a good financial reason for the sale.

The chancellor was concerned that the submissions of the CBC suggested that the risk of a foreign sale meant that a faculty should always be refused for the disposal of an article of historic or artistic value which had been or should be deposited in a museum or treasury for its security. He stated that the risk of loss to the nation was a matter for the concern of the Export Licensing Committee rather than the consistory court and that the availability or otherwise of state funding to retain any such item in the country was irrelevant to his consideration. He nevertheless took account of the historic significance of the armet, weighing it as one of several factors rather than granting it paramountcy. [RA]