During the earlier part of 1993 a paper of mine was published in the Ecclesiastical Law Journal. Entitled ‘What of the Church in Wales?’, it endeavoured to suggest why the disestablished Church in Wales still maintained the characteristics of an established Church. The paper seems to have aroused much interest within certain circles of the Church of England, especially among synod members, at a time when the question of disestablishment was once more being publicly aired. The point was made to me repeatedly that disestablishment would need to be accompanied by dis-endowment, although the only reason for this assertion appears to have been the historical precedents of the Irish and Welsh disestablishments. I am not competent to write about the former, but with regard to the latter I feel that a historical examination of the events which led to the disestablishment of the Church in Wales might raise some question marks against this assertion.

The trial of Bishop Edward King (1829–1910) and the judgment which issued from it proved a landmark in the history of the Victorian Church of England. The judgment was also a turning point in the history of the Catholic Revival, and the bitter series of ritual disputes to which it gave rise. Edward Norman categorised the trial as ‘One of the most important, as well as one of the most extraordinary episodes in the religious history of the nineteenth century.’ R. W. Church, Dean of St Paul's, hailed the judgment as ‘The most courageous thing that has come out of Lambeth for the last 200 years.’ Others, inevitably, given the passions roused by the ritualist controversy, took a more jaundiced view; but few serious Church people were indifferent to the result.

As in other countries on the Continent, there have been a considerable number of Anglican chaplaincies and churches in Germany. They were established—loosely speaking, not in the sense of churches as ‘by law established’—either by merchants or by people of means who toured the Continent, and settled occasionally in fashionable spas or other similar places. These chaplaincies may be grouped—from a legal point of view—according to their status under German law which may be different with regard to the German system of law governing the relationships between the state and the churches.

On 30 April and 1 May 1999, the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas in Rome (the Angelicum) hosted a Colloquium on the subject of the Comparative Law of Church Property, organised in collaboration with the Centre for Law and Religion at Cardiff Law School. It was attended by Anglican and Roman Catholic canonists and a representative of the Eastern Catholic Church. It is believed that this was the first meeting of its type since the Reformation and was a unique opportunity for canon lawyers to engage in ecumenical dialogue. It represented a response by canonists to the welcome given by the Anglican Communion at the Lambeth Conference in 1998 to the encyclical letter of Pope John Paul II Ut Unum Sint. Such a meeting would have been unimaginable ten years ago but the substantial common interest which the subject raises coupled with strong friendships forged during the Colloquium has revealed a great potential for events such as these. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who is to chair (jointly with Cardinal Cassidy) a major consultation in Canada in May 2000 reviewing Anglican/Roman Catholic relationships, had expressed his support for the Colloquium and the further initiatives which it might herald. The President of Ireland also sent a personal message of support for the event.

The organisation now known as the Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland was founded in 1957, and its Newsletter was first published in 1969. The activities, publications and achievements of the Society within the Roman Catholic Church are manifold, and were acknowledged by Pope John Paul II when he granted an audience to participants of the 1992 annual conference held in Rome. This papal address is printed at the beginning of The Canon Law: Letter & Spirit (London 1995), the full commentary on the 1983 Code of Canon Law prepared by the Society.