¶Here beginneth the story.
The ancient Church of the British Isles, reformed by the Word of God, and carried to the ends of the earth.
People sometimes say that the Anglican Church began when Henry VIII quarrelled with the Pope. It did not. The Church in these islands is as old as British Christianity itself: Tertullian could write of Britons “subject to Christ” around AD 200, and British bishops sat at the Council of Arles in 314.
What happened in the sixteenth century was not the founding of a new church but the reformation of an ancient one. The English Church rejected the claims of the Bishop of Rome, tested its teaching and worship by Holy Scripture, and put the Bible and the liturgy into the language of the people. It kept everything the early Church had kept: the Scriptures, the Creeds, the two Sacraments of the Gospel and the ministry of bishops, priests and deacons.
That is why Anglicans call their Church both catholic and reformed. As Bishop John Jewel argued in 1562, it had not left the ancient Church; it had returned to it.
c. 200 – 731
Christianity reached these islands within two centuries of the Resurrection. Long before Augustine landed in Kent, Britain had its martyrs, its bishops and its missionaries.
Tertullian writes that places of the Britons beyond the reach of Rome have become “subject to Christ”.
At Verulamium, Alban shelters a fleeing Christian priest, confesses the faith himself and is put to death: Britain’s first recorded martyr.
Bishops from Britain, among them the bishops of York and London, sit at the Council of Arles. The Church in these islands already has its own episcopate.
Columba founds the monastery of Iona, from which the gospel is carried through Scotland and into northern England.
Augustine arrives from Rome and finds a Christian queen already worshipping in Kent. A second mission joins the faith that is already present in the land.
Aidan comes from Iona to found Lindisfarne and evangelise Northumbria on foot.
Bede completes his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the first history of the English Church.
1215 – 1380s
Through the Middle Ages the Church of the land was known as the Ecclesia Anglicana, the English Church. It prayed in Latin, but Englishmen were already reaching for the Bible in their own tongue.
Magna Carta opens by declaring “that the English Church shall be free”: Ecclesia Anglicana, the Church from which Anglicans take their name.
The Wycliffite translations put the whole Bible into English for the first time.
1526 – 1662
In the sixteenth century the English Church threw off the jurisdiction of Rome and was reformed by the Word of God. It kept the Creeds, the sacraments and the ministry of bishops, and gave the people the Bible and common prayer in English.
William Tyndale’s New Testament, translated from the Greek, is printed and smuggled into England.
The English Church rejects the jurisdiction of the Pope. It is the same Church, now to be reformed by the Word of God.
Thomas Cranmer gives the Church one book of worship, wholly in English and steeped in Scripture.
Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley and Thomas Cranmer are burned at Oxford for the reformed faith.
John Jewel’s Apology of the Church of England defends the Church as truly catholic because it is truly scriptural.
The Articles of Religion reach their final form: the doctrinal standard of classic Anglicanism.
Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity sets out Scripture, reason and the Church’s ordered life.
The classic Book of Common Prayer, with its Ordinal and the Articles, becomes the standard of Anglican worship worldwide.
1799 – today
Missionaries carried the Prayer Book faith across the world, and African, Asian and American believers made it their own. Today most Anglicans live in the Global South.
Evangelical Anglicans found the CMS. Its missionaries carry the Prayer Book to West Africa, East Africa and beyond.
Samuel Ajayi Crowther, once enslaved, is consecrated the first African Anglican bishop.
Young converts are burned at Namugongo rather than deny Christ. Their witness sets Ugandan Christianity alight.
The Archbishop of Uganda is murdered after confronting Idi Amin’s terror. He is remembered as a martyr across the Communion.
Most Anglicans now live in the Global South, and the largest Anglican churches are in Africa.
A cloud of witnesses
Martyrs, bishops, scholars and missionaries who shaped classic Anglicanism.
Thomas Cranmer
1489–1556
Archbishop, compiler of the Book of Common Prayer
Samuel Ajayi Crowther
c. 1809–1891
First African Anglican bishop
Richard Hooker
1554–1600
Author of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
Janani Luwum
1922–1977
Archbishop of Uganda, martyr
Hugh Latimer
c. 1487–1555
Bishop and martyr
Lancelot Andrewes
1555–1626
Bishop, preacher, translator of the King James Bible
Nicholas Ridley
c. 1500–1555
Bishop and martyr
John Jewel
1522–1571
Bishop, author of the Apology of the Church of England
Matthew Parker
1504–1575
Archbishop under Elizabeth I
J. C. Ryle
1816–1900
Bishop and evangelical writer
Remember · People, places and texts
Discover the people, places, texts and moments that shaped Anglicanism.
Places · Worship
Augustine founded his see here in 597, joining a Christianity already centuries old in Britain. A hand-coloured photochrom from the last years of Victoria’s reign.
Plate III Canterbury, the choir looking east. Photochrom print, c. 1890–1900
People · Reformation
Chief architect of the Book of Common Prayer, burned at the stake in Oxford in 1556 for the reformed faith.
Plate IV Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1545
Places · Global Anglicanism
Australia’s oldest cathedral, consecrated on St Andrew’s Day 1868 and photographed eleven years later.
Plate V St Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney, 1879
People · Missions
Enslaved as a boy in 1821 and freed by a Royal Navy patrol the next year, he became a linguist, a translator of the Yoruba Bible and, in 1864, first African Anglican bishop.
Plate VI Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the first African Anglican bishop
What the Reformation kept, and what it restored.