I was asked by the Society to provide an introduction to current historical thinking about the English Reformation in the first talk to the 1995 Conference. The ensuing lecture was deliberately intended to provide guidance through the minefield of controversy about the success of Reformation for those with only limited knowledge of sixteenth-century history. Debates about the Reformation have always been of obvious importance to both theologians and historians: they have usually in the past been profoundly influenced by confessional ideologies. In the last thirty years the nature of the questions asked about Reformation has undergone marked change: specifically the issue of popular religious belief and practice has assumed a centrality it never before possessed. But new questions have not brought closer agreement on the nature of religious change, and in recent years fierce debate has continued to rage on such issues as the vitality of late medieval Catholicism, the popularity of the early reformers and the motives of Henry VIII and his successors. Some, at least, of these controversies are still bound up with Protestant, Catholic and Anglican identities in the late twentieth century. Since the continuities between past and present were the theme of last year's Conference, I have touched on these identities, but have left it to others, especially Dr Rowell and Dr Rex to make these connections more explicit.

In the first of the Tracts for the Times John Henry Newman famously posed the question of Anglican Identity, ‘On what ground do you stand, O presbyter of the Church of England?’ He answered his own question in terms of the apostolic commission and succession of the episcopate, and concluded—possibly drawing on what he had learnt from the Evangelical Joseph Milner's Church History, with its high praise of the martyr bishop St. Cyprian as an exemplar for all Christian bishops—that he could wish the episcopate of the Church of England no more ‘blessed termination of their course than the spoliation of their goods and martyrdom’.

The historic new LLM degree in Canon Law from the University of Wales College of Cardiff means that there now exists a body of Canon Law graduates, the first ‘home-grown’ canonists in this country since the King's Vicar-General. Thomas Cromwell, suppressed the faculties of Canon Law at Cambridge and Oxford in 1535. It was for a gathering of the first such graduates that the original version of this paper was prepared.

Computers are in use throughout society—collecting, storing, processing and distributing information. Much of that information is about people… ‘personal data’—and is subject to the Data Protection Act 1984.

The history of the ancient concept of sanctuary has been discussed in the pages of this Journal in earlier volumes. In response to Professor Baker's article, Fr Robert Ombres, O.P. wrote to the Journal to inform readers that sanctuary had recently been used in America and Britain. The use of this ‘modern sanctuary’ has been the subject of some lively discussion at a recent London meeting and in Cardiff amongst the Canon Law LLM students. This article seeks to address some of the contemporary issues regarding the modern use of sanctuary in Britain and continental Europe today.

‘In Scotland the Church is fortunately in a position of practical independence of the State. Whatever difficulties and hindrances affect the Church in Scotland, and they are many, are more than balanced by the non-interference of the temporal power.’ So wrote Canon Lempriére in 1903, and so it remains. As a result it has adapted to changing circumstances more easily than a body established by law.