ENGLAND, CHURCH OF

a term meaning not simply Eng. Christianity but the Anglican Church. Its story cannot be separated from Eng. history. The beginnings of Eng. Christianity are Obscure, but it is probable that Roman mi ionaries came in with the Roman soldiery in the 2nd cent. A native Celtic Church arose which was swept away by the Anglo-Saxon invaders in the 5th cent., except in Celtic parts of Britain. (For Celtic Christianity, see Patrick, was reintroduced into South Britain by St. Augustine in 597, but the progre of the faith was gradual, and by degrees Celtic tradition gave in to the Roman in the observances of Easter and some other matters although the Church of England retained many distinctive customs and characteristics of her own. At the Norman Conquest the Eng. Church entered more into the main. stream of Western Christianity, and was very similar to the rest of the Churches under the sway of the Roman see, although the supremacy of the Pope in all matters was never completely acknowledged, except for a short period under John. Continual strife between Church and State took place over the Church courts. A climax was reached in the he ht between Henry II. and Thomas ecket. The 14th cent. saw the beginning of Lollardy, led by John Wyclif —a religious movement which mingled with schemes of social reform. A strong anti-clerical feeling had grown up as a result of the ecclesiastical abuses of the day, and anti-papal legislation was pa ed. Lollardy was suppre ed, but it smouldered, and with the advent of the New Learning and the outbreak of the continental Reformation a new era dawned. The changes which took place in England under Henry VIII., the formal repudiation of the papal supremacy and the restatement of the freedom of the Anglican Church, the thoroughgoing protestant ism of Edward VI., the reaction under Mary, and the Elizabeth an via media, show the intimate relation of Church and State in England. In the 17th cent. came the Puritan movement, which entered the political sphere in the Civil War and Commonwealth. The Restoration, followed by the permanent separation of WNonconformists, began the modern condition of religious life and parties in England, The 18th cent. was a tine of comparative though not of absolute stagnation, until the Methodist revival at its close; though this started within the bounds of the Church it eventually pa ed outside it. In the 19th cent. came the Oxford Movement, which, carrying the revival of religious life into other channels than Evangelicalism, revived some points of Catholic tradition, reintroducing some practices that had been obsolete since the Reformation. This has produced the modern Anglo-Catholicism, in which sometimes the doctrinal side, sometimes the ritual is stre ed. The doctrinal standard of the Church of England is the Book of Common Prayer, as last revised in 1662. The Church is represented in the House of Lords by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and most of the bishops of England. The Church of Ireland was disestablished in 1871, the Church of Wales in 1920. It is important to remember that the Church of England is the mother-church of a large Anglican communion existing throughout the Brit, Empire, and in many other parts of the world. For recent legislation establishing a National A embly of the Church of England.