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related a miracle wrought by means of a relic of King Charles I’s blood,
which healed someone who was blind, and King James passed round a
gold cruci?x containing a relic of the True Cross, which had been found
in the co?n of St Edward the Confessor. The fact that a Roman Catho-
lic King and an Anglican bishop could discuss such a subject on sympa-
thetic terms shows I would suggest that the Church of England at this
time was far from being a continental style reformed church.

In the 19th Century the Tractarian movement sought to re-
emphasise the Church of England’s continuity with the pre-reformation
church, and renewed a consciousness of holy England, with its many
saints and shrines. To contribute to this reawakening, in the 1840s John
Henry Newman edited a series of Lives of the English Saints. The
anonymous author of the ‘Legend of St Bettelin’ was able to console
himself that even though much had been destroyed the relics of the
saints were still present, even if their locations were unknown. “It has
before now happened that profane or fanatical violence has broken in
upon the relics of the Saints, and scattered them over land and water, or
mixed them with the dust of the earth… Yet could it not destroy the
virtue of the relics; it did but disperse and conceal them. They did more,
they were seen less.”28

In the 19th Century movements such as the pre-Raphaelites, the
gothic revival, and the vogue for antiquarianism, looked back to Eng-
land’s ancient past as an age with a sacred and mystical aura. Relics and
shrines increasingly came to be seen as part of British heritage, rather
than something alien. At St Pancras Old Church, where I was a curate,
an altar stone of the seventh Century, possibly associated with St
Augustine’s mission, was discovered buried beneath the tower during
restoration work in the 1840s, and was placed back in the altar where it
belonged.

As the Oxford Movement progressed the later and bolder Anglo-
Catholics wanted to imitate Rome, and make their churches look as

28 John Henry Newman, Ed., The Lives of the English Saints, ST Freemantle, 1901, Vol II, p 65

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