In a particularly active, if sadly undocumented, period in the history of the English Church, Alexander, third bishop of Lincoln (1123–1148), stands out as a prelate of unusual energy and achievement. Beyond his intermittent involvement in national affairs, he was responsible in the twenty-five years of his episcopate for the establishment of at least nine prebends in the Lincoln chapter; the acquisition of substantial assets for his see—including the right of market and fair in two towns; the setting up of an additional and final, archdeaconry; extensive structural and decorative innovations at his cathedral; the founding of at least one leper hospital; the erection of two, and very probably three, castles; and the establishment of four religious houses. The last of the activities in this impressive curriculum, the founding of the Cistercian houses of Thame and Louth, the Arrouaisian house of Dorchester and the Gilbertine house of Haverholm, all in the brief period 1139–41, represents an achievement approached at that time only by the three foundations of bishop Warelwast of Exeter (1107–37) at Plympton, Launceston and Bodmin. If, moreover, Alexander was not the formal founder of the Gilbertine house of Sempringham some years earlier, it is at least clear that he played a decisive role there, as, indeed, there is good reason for supposing that he made a more positive and critical contribution to the early development of this, the only indigenous English monastic order, than has previously been allowed.

Ever since Henry VIII, the law of marriage has occupied a special place in the relationship between the Church of England and the state. Changes made to the law since 1857 have raised far-reaching and difficult questions about the nature of this relationship, involving the status of canon law. Marriage in church has remained, perhaps even more than the other rites of passage, an essential point at which the Church of England still touches the lives of great numbers of the otherwise unchurched, and these questions have thus impinged on the practical reality of the Church's work.

Among the papers of Patrick Young preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford is a copy of a translation into Greek of a licence granted by Elizabeth I in 1597 for the collection of alms towards the ransom of the sons of the murdered metropolitan of Thessaloniki.

The document is remarkable for several reasons: it is an early example of English sympathy for Greeks suffering under Turkish oppression: it includes the only account, so far as one can tell, of the execution of the metropolitan, and it is also of interest as an example of an Elizabethan licence to collect alms for charitable purposes.

For English Catholics the eighteenth century has justifiably been termed ‘the age of Challoner’, because Richard Challoner, vicar apostolic of the London District between 1758 and 1781, left a distinctive mark on the character of the English Catholic Church through his long period in office at a formative period and through his many popular spiritual books and pamphlets. Challoner's pre-eminence has tended to diminish the stature of all other bishops appointed as vicars apostolic to the four districts in England and Wales during the course of the century. The only other vicar apostolic who came close to Challoner was the Benedictine monk, Charles Walmesley, a near-contemporary and coadjutor in the Western District from 1756 to 1764, when he became vicar apostolic of that district until his death in 1797. Although Walmesley's published works were far fewer than Challoner's, they demonstrated a wider range of interests and a more original mind. For, while Challoner has often been taken as the representative eighteenth-century English Catholic clergyman, the main feature of his mind, a dread of innovation, prevented him from tuning his theology to the new world of eighteenthcentury scientific and philosophical enquiry.

The relations of England with the Curia in the thirteenth century is hardly a subject neglected by historians. From A. L. Smith to C. H. Lawrence stretches a long line of scholars who have been concerned during the last sixty years or so with the impact of papal authority on this country in that century. Meanwhile, on the continent, the vast output of studies on papal doctrine and curial machinery elucidate the particular question of England's links with Rome. When so much has been written, and where so many experts are in the room, it is temerarious to say more. I do not intend to present a startling new view of Anglo-papal relations in the time of Innocent III. My object is much more modest. For the last few years Mrs. Cheney and I have been tracing as much as possible of the correspondence between the Roman Curia and England during that pontificate, 1198–1216. All I want to do is to offer a few facts and figures and reflexions which come from our search.

Throughout its history the institutionalised Church has sought in different ways to define its position with respect to the ‘world’, in order to give meaning to the injunction to be ‘in’ this world but not ‘of’ it. During the Middle Ages, the tension was acute because the Church, in its narrow definition of the clergy, claimed to be a separate, spiritual order, set apart from the temporal world. The tangible results of this dichotomy are particularly evident with respect to the real property held by ecclesiastical institutions. Property gave the Church the security to be independent from the lay power and the aristocracy; hence the Church claimed varying degrees of immunity for its property from secular jurisdictions.

It has long been recognised that one of the most valuable documents about pluralism is the lengthy return of pluralists made in 1366 in accordance with a constitution of pope Urban V. In this return detailed information was sent in to archbishop Simon Langham by the various diocesans, containing the names of pluralists residing at the time in their dioceses, the value of their emoluments, their benefices and academic titles. It has an obvious value as a clergy-list, containing the names not only of several distinguished clerks who held office in the government service, but also of humbler men, as well as of that interesting class of university graduates to whom the acquisition of ecclesiastical benefices became a financial necessity.