ABSTRACT
The sense that Bishop King's trial stands at a turning point is perhaps reinforced by an important legal change that followed it in the form of the Clergy Discipline Act 1892. One of the standing complaints of both the alleged heretics like Head and Wilson, and the early Ritualists before 1874, had been that they were tried under the same legislation as drunks and adulterers, the Church Discipline Act 1840. The draft Canon LII.2 of 1947 proposed reasserting the tradition that clergy could not relinquish their calling but this of course conflicted with both the Clerical Disabilities Act 1870 and the Clergy Discipline Act 1892. One important outcome of the Church Crisis was the convening of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline, which heard at enormous length from across England of the reality of liturgical variety before reporting in 1906.
