ABSTRACT
In his 2003 publication Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration, Philip Heselton briefl y mentions Gardner’s links and involvement with a body called the Ancient British Church,1 admitting that it has yet to be studied in depth.2 The short-lived Ancient British Church to which Heselton refers is in fact the second of that name to be revived but, as is clear from the previous chapter, the ideas that underlie it constituted part of both the myth of the Church of England and that of the nation. The earlier revival of the Ancient British Church is addressed later in this chapter. First, its intriguing connections to the backwaters of the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century ecclesiastical underworld of England, Wales and France need elucidating. This was an underworld populated by, and in part constructed by, the ‘wandering bishops’, or episcopi vagantes, and the various heterodox churches they sought to establish attracted such key fi gures in the history of modern Paganism and magic as Ross Nichols, Gerald Gardner, W. B. Crow and Theodor Reuss.
