Italian Abbot Augustine arrives in Kent with a party of nearly 40 (to establish papal Christianity), is allowed to settle at Canterbury by its King Aethelbert, and is subsequently consecrated bishop by the bishops of Gaul.
(Later, Augustine's demand that the British churches conform, to the Roman rite of the mass and of the dating of Easter, is met with scorn by them).

22 June: Pope Gregory authorises Augustine to use the pallium for the celebration of mass, to ordain twelve bishops, to exercise authority over omnes Brittaniae sacerdotes, and to ultimately create London and York as Metropolitan Sees.

Italian Paulinus is consecrated bishop (July 21) and moves with Bertha and Aethelbert's (Christian) daughter Aethelberg to Northumbria on her marriage to its King Edwin.

Chad establishes an episcopal organization in the kingdom of Mercia.

Archbishop Theodore organizes the Church in England into dioceses with settled boundaries, and parishes.

'Peter's Pence' paid to the papacy for the upkeep of St Mary's in Rome now becomes an obligatory tax on the people.

November 13: King Aethelred authorizes the massacre of all Danish settlers on St. Bride's Day in an attempt to exterminate them from his kingdom.

The Church in England is brought under Papal jurisdiction.
King William I (The Conqueror) allows Church courts to be established for the first time in England.

Lanfranc as archbishop of Canterbury establishes the priority of his see over that of York.

'Peter's Pence' tax to the Pope is now set at 299 silver marks per year.

Norwich monk, Thomas of Monmouth, accuses Jews of the ritual murder of a child (William of Norwich), encouraged by monks of monasteries heavily indebted to Jewish money-lenders. This causes anti-Jewish riots and murders. Thomas' book on the subject launches the 'blood libel' against Jews across Europe.

A group of twenty non-conformist evangelists arrive in England from the Continent. They are publicly branded by the Church, chained and left to die, for denying infant baptism and the Mass.

The Leper Proscription ritual is instituted, in which the leper stands at an open grave with a black cloth upon the head to the words of –

September: The Archbishop of Canterbury calls a three day fast throughout Britain to prepare, as the 'Toledo Letter' prophecy spreads through Europe setting the year 1186 as the apocalyptic coming of the Millennium.

The church's taxing of the poor by death-duties ('mortuaries') is increasingly resented. Nevertheless, the practice continues, as in the Vicar of Morstow's claim to –

"the best day-garment of each parishioner that dieth in the said parish"

and the Rector of Silverton's requirement of – "the second-best possession or best" of the deceased: effectively, it is a church tax of the bereaved.

The papal legate flees for his life from Oxford as its student-clerks shout –

"Where is that usurer, that simoniac, robber of revenues and insatiate of money who, perverting our king and subverting our kingdom, plunders us to fill strangers' coffers?"

January 13: The Bishop of Hereford preaches against the imprisoned King Edward II.
January 14: The Bishop of Winchester preaches against the imprisoned King Edward II.
January 15: The Archbishop of Canterbury preaches against the imprisoned King Edward II and announces that the king is now deposed, on the basis that 'the voice of the people is the voice of God'.
September 21: ('homosexual') Edward II is executed.
Hereafter, Gloucester abbey accepts revenue from devotees in veneration of King Edward II as an unofficial saint.

The Church forbids anyone listening to the preaching of revolutionary priest John Ball, who dares to preach at Blackheath –

March: A special parliamentary sanction is granted to Archbishop Arundel for the execution of William Sawtrey, a priest from Lynn in Norfolk, for preaching Wycliffe's doctrines, as legislation allowing it had not yet been passed. Sawtrey is burnt alive in public, at Smithfield in London.
Archbishop Arundel of Canterbury pressures the king and parliament to pass an act forbidding the owning or producing of a translation of the Bible and punishing heretics with burning at the stake, entitled – De Haeretico Comburendo. Hereby all English bishops are now empowered to arrest and try people for heresy, but this must be done in open court within three months of arrest. Those found guilty may be imprisoned indefinitely at the discretion of the church or 'relaxed' (released from protection of the church) and so handed to the secular authority for execution which would –

Archbishop Arundel of Canterbury creates the Constitutions of Oxford to condemn and prevent any translations of the Bible into English or any other language and to prevent reading or use of the same, upon pain of greater excommunication. Those guilty are

Relapsed persons are to be publicly burnt alive.
Arundel writes to the Pope describing Wycliffe's worst sin as being to devise –

'the expedient of a new translation of Scripture into the mother tongue'

– and that Wycliffe is therefore the 'son of the Serpent, herald and child of Antichrist'. (See 1382).

Saturday, December 2: Bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, imprisons Richard Hunne for continued defiance of canon law in refusing surrender to the church the sheet in which his now deceased son (aged five weeks), Stephen, had been christened.
Sunday December 3: Richard Hunne is strangled to death by two church employees (church jailer C.Joseph and church bell-ringer J.Spalding) on instruction of William Horsey, chancellor to Bishop Fritzjames, making it appear as a suicide.
December 16: Bishop Tunstall convenes a trial of the deceased on charges of heresy for assumed 'Lollard' sympathies. Hunne is condemned and his estate confiscated to the church leaving his family penniless.
December 20: Hunne's corpse is publicly burnt at the stake at Smithfield.

Cardinal Wolsey presides over the public burning of Lutheran books at St Paul's Cross, London.
Bishop of Rochester, John Fisher, issues a violently anti-Lutheran polemic Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio.

February 11: Another penitential procession of recanting 'heretics' (for reading Luther) rides backward on donkeys to St Paul's with faggots tied to their backs for a mass by Cardinal Wolsey and polemic by the Bishop of Rochester, after which a public burning of 'heretical' books is held.
August: A conclave of bishops recommends punishment to the king of those who possess or read the New Testament in English (translated by Tyndale) –

October 23: Bishop Tunstall issues a proclamation warning against the 'craftily' translated New Testament into English by 'maintainers of Luther's sect'.
October 28: Many copies of the New Testament in English by William Tyndale are publicly burnt at St Paul's Cross after Bishop of London, Tunstall, declares Tyndale's Testament as doctrinam peregrinam (strange doctrine).

February: Bishop of London (Tunstall) begins a six-month campaign to arrest 'Lollards', Lutherans, and readers of Tyndale's Bible.
March: Church prisons are now full and suspects are being kept in criminal prisons.
John Hig of Cheshunt is found guilty and sentenced to public penance (which he completes) and to wear an embroidered faggot on his sleeve for the rest of his life. He pleads that no one will employ him and he would be reduced to beggary –

Anne Boleyn (later married to King Henry VIII) writes to Cardinal Wolsey to plead for mercy for an Oxford priest imprisoned for buying English New Testaments –

February 23: Reverend Thomas Hitton is publicly burnt alive at Maidstone after condemnation as a heretic by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
May 24: Archbishop Warham issues a denunciation, at a meeting of 'divines', of Tyndale's 'corrupted' translation of the Old Testament 'as in the New', and a Public Instrument for the 

'abolishing of the Scripture and other Books to be read in English'.

The Bishop of London demonstrates this ban by a great public burning of New Testaments and other books in St Paul's churchyard.
July: The bishops and abbots of the House of Lords petition the pope to agree to Henry VIII's divorce.

January 21: The Convocation of clergy is threatened by the king for support of Wolsey and asks his pardon and the restoration of their judicial authority.
February 7: King Henry VIII addresses parliament with the demand that he be recognised as the –

Bishop John Fisher of Rochester argues that royal supremacy of the Church is

'a tearing of the seamless coat of Christ in sunder ...
We renounce the unity of the Christian world and so leap out of Peter's ship,
to be drowned in the waves of all heresies, sects, schisms and divisions.'

February 11: The bishops insist on the addition of a clause to the king's supremacy over the Church – 'quantum per legem Dei licet' (as far as God's law allows).
By order of the bishop of Worcester's chancellor (Thomas Parker), the corpse of William Tracey, squire of Toddington (Gloucestershire), is dug up and publicly burnt as a heretic, for instructing in his Will that no money should be paid to the church to pray for his soul after death.
March: Thomas Bilney is condemned for heresy by Bishop Nix of Norwich and 'relaxed' to the secular power for burning.
James Bainham is locked in irons and stocks in the Bishop Stokesley's coal cellar at Fulham Palace. After several weeks of  whippings in the Tower he is handed to the sheriff for burning.
April 30: James Bainham testifies of his evangelical faith to a supportive London crowd as he stands chained to a stake upon a barrel of pitch. He prays God's forgiveness upon his judge, Thomas More, before the fire 'took his bowels and his head'.
The following week his executioner attempts suicide.
August 19: Reverend Thomas Bilney is publicly burnt alive at Norwich.
December 4: Thomas More writes of Richard Bayfield's martyrdom at Smithfield –

'the monk and apostata' was 'well and worthely burned in Smythfelde'

January: Parliament passes an act restraining the payment of 'first fruits' (annata) to the pope (the first year's revenues from an ecclesiastical benefice), to the benefit of the crown.
March: A petition (Supplication of the Commons Against the Ordinaries) delivered to the king complains of the 'cruel demeanoure' of the clergy toward the 'bodyes and goodes' of his subjects and appealing for an end to clerical (judicial) privilege.
May 8: A deputation of bishops implores the king to defend their powers.
May 11: The king addresses parliament and among other makes it clear that he wishes bishops not to have the power to arrest persons accused of heresy.
May 15: The Convocation of Bishops commits to the 'Submission of the Clergy' by which no new canon law may be made without royal agreement and a bishop is no longer the final judge of heresy in his diocese.
Thomas More resigns in protest.
August 22: Archbishop Warham dies and the king arranges, at Anne Boleyn's request, for Thomas Cranmer to be elected as successor.

Thomas Cranmer becomes archbishop of Canterbury and declares Henry VIII's marriage to his brother's widow invalid, thus clearing the way for his remarriage.
June 1: Anne Boleyn is crowned queen of England by Archbishop Cranmer.
June 17: Archbishop Cranmer hands John Frith to notorious Bishop Stokesley in whose diocese he had been arrested for evangelical views.
June 23: Bishop Stokesley 'relaxes' Frith to the secular power for public burning, and he is held at Newgate prison with his neck bound to a post by an iron collar.
July 4: John Frith and Andrew Hewitt are bound to the stake at Smithfield for burning. The Rector forbids the crowd present to pray for the 'heretics', no more than for a dog, as they burn.

April 17: Thomas More is imprisoned by the abbot of Westminster, after refusing to swear allegiance to the king over the pope before Archbishop Cranmer.
April 20: The nun, Elizabeth Barton, after interrogation by Archbishop Cranmer (probably involving torture), together with five priests is hanged at Tyburn for condemning the king's defiance of the pope. The priests, when half dead, have their penises cut off and thrust in their mouths, before their stomachs are opened and they are eviscerated and decapitated. Their heads are parboiled and set on poles on London bridge.
November: Parliament passes the Act of Supremacy, confirming the king to be –

'the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England, called Anglicana Ecclesia'.

William Tyndale, translator of the New Testament into English, is burnt alive at the stake for heresy.
King Henry VIII issues the 'Ten Articles', which show a measure of toleration toward Protestantism. (See 1539).

The Church of England accepts the monarch as its supreme governor and the Pope's jurisdiction is repudiated.
November 24: Four 'Anabaptists' are forced to carry faggots in penance to St Paul's Cross, London, on the same day as Bishop Hinsley preaches an exposé of 'feigned relics' by the Catholic Church.
December 17: Pope Paul III excommunicates King Henry VIII for declaring himself head of the English Church.

King Henry VIII issues the 'Six Articles' (proposed by the Duke of Norfolk, May 16) reaffirming Catholic doctrine (penalties under this church-approved act range from imprisonment and fine to death), which forces the resignation of Bishop Hugh Latimer. (See 1555).

Bishop Latimer remarks to Bishop Nicholas Ridley (of London) as they burn for heresy at Oxford:

April: The 'Act of Uniformity of Common Prayer, and Service in the Church, and Administration of the Sacraments' is passed in Parliament by a majority of three votes, for enforcement from 24 June.
December 17: Bishop William Barlow leads the ordination of Matthew Parker, supported by bishops John Scory, Miles Coverdale (all three deprived of this status by Queen Mary), and John Hodgkins, thus beginning the Anglican 'apostolic succession' at Lambeth, London, according to the Edwardine rite.

The Elizabethan Church settlement is defined under Archbishop Matthew Parker by the 'Thirty-nine Articles'.

Bishop John Jewel's book, 'The Apology of the Church of England', is published in Latin and English as a defence of episcopacy.

January 17: Bishop William Laud (of Bath and Wells) presses the 'divine right' of episcopacy on king Charles I for its enforcement over foreign religious refugees. (See 1637)

Archbishop William Laud becomes the most powerful figure in England's Privy Council and continues his vicious satisfaction in the cruel public punishments and executions of Puritans which he sponsors over trivial issues. For instance:
June: Archbishop Laud presides as judge in sentencing Presbyterian Dr John Bastwick, Puritan divine Dr Henry Burton, and William Prynne to have their ears cut off, their faces branded with a hot iron, fined the massive sum of £5,000 and then thrown into prison for the rest of their lives, for criticism of himself (Burton), his bishops (Bastwick), and the theatre (Prynne). (Robertson 2006, p.47).

Charles II installed as king. Church persecution of Non-conformists begins.
Only nine elderly bishops remain to continue 'apostolic succession' ordination.

January 30: The decomposed bodies of Bradshawe, Cromwell and Ireton are dug up from their graves (on the anniversary of King CHARLES I rightful execution for treason) and hanged at Tyburn before a huge crowd which includes the ladies of CHARLES II's court, on a day marked by 'solemn fasting sermons and prayers at every parish church, singing newly composed psalms to the glory of the king and bishops:

"Angels look down, and joy to see
Like that above, a monarchy."

David Clarkson (ejected from Cambridge University under the Act of Uniformity 1662) publishes his vigorous –

'No Evidence of Diocesan Episcopacy in Primitive Times'.

The government passes the Church Pluralities Act.
W.E. Gladstone's 'The State in its Relation with the Church' presents the case for the continued Royal supremacy and establishment of the Church, including – to acknowledge all denominations equally would be confused and unsatisfactory to 'everyone'.

Archbishop Lang broadcasts to the nation condemning the abdicating king, Edward VIII, eliciting the lines from his critics:

'My Lord Archbishop, what a scold you are!
And when your man is down, how bold you are!
Of Christian charity how scant you are!
And, auld Lang swine, how full of Cantaur!'

Anglican decline in the United Kingdom since 1960 –

December: Revd Gareth Bennet, author of the anonymous Preface to Crockford's Clerical Directory 1987/88, commits suicide under pressure to publicly admit his authorship after his denial of the same. His Preface contains comments such as –

The internationally successful non-denominational evangelical Alpha Course, based at Holy Trinity Brompton, is called into question by senior Anglican clergy for esteeming the Bible too highly and uncritically.

Marian Catholic dogma begins its path of acceptance in the Anglican communion of churches.
The joint Anglican-Catholic statement regarding the so-called Immaculate Conception –
“In view of her vocation to be the mother of the Holy One (Luke 1:35), we can affirm together that Christ's redeeming work reached 'back in Mary to the depths of her being, and to her earliest beginnings. This is not contrary to the teaching of Scripture, and can only be understood in the light of Scripture. Roman Catholics can recognize in this what is affirmed by the dogma – namely 'preserved from all stain of original sin' and 'from the first moment of her conception.'”
(Yet Mary herself called God her Saviour! From what then? Luke 1:47).

And of the so-called Assumption of Mary -
“we can affirm together the teaching that God has taken the Blessed Virgin Mary in the fullness of her person into his glory as consonant with Scripture and that it can, indeed, only be understood in the light of Scripture. Roman Catholics can recognize that this teaching about Mary is contained in the dogma” (paragraph 58).

February 19: ARCIC issues Growing Together in Unity and Mission, which states –
“The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the ministry of the Bishop of Rome [the Pope] as universal primate is in accordance with Christ’s will for the Church and an essential element of maintaining it in unity and truth" and that
“We urge Anglicans and Roman Catholics to explore together how the ministry of the Bishop of Rome might be offered and received in order to assist our Communions to grow towards full, ecclesial communion.”

Saturday December 8: In Fresno, California – The entire San Joaquin Episcopal Diocese of of the U.S. Episcopal Church votes to secede over the church's expanding support for homosexual and women's rights. Clergy and lay representatives vote to leave the US Episcopal church, which has been in turmoil since 2003 when U.S. Episcopalians consecrated their first openly homosexual bishop. Delegates vote to align the 8,800-member US diocese with the conservative Anglican Church of the Southern Cone, based in South America.

September 24: Archbishop Rowan Williams praises the Catholic saint (Barnadette Sourbirous) as an inspiration for founding the Lourdes shrine, on a visit to it.

December 5: In Los Angeles, California – Practicing Lesbian, the Rev. Mary Glasspool of Baltimore is elected to be consecrated as assistant bishop in the Los Angeles diocese. Los Angeles Bishop Jon Bruno, who leads the diocese, urged Episcopal dioceses to approve Glasspool's election and not base their decision on fear of how other Anglicans will react.
December 16: Auckland, New Zealand – Anglican Christmas billboard depicting a downcast Joseph lying beside Mary in bed and the heading "Poor Joseph. God is a hard act to follow" is defended by the vicar Archdeacon Glynn Cardy as a challenge about the way Jesus was conceived –

Cardy describes his church as having very liberal ideas about Christianity.

 Catholic Church Behaviour

Punishment of Non-Conformists

Orthodox Church Behaviour

The Bible in English