Church of England The Corporation

The Corporation of The Church House was founded in 1888 as the Church of England's permanent tribute to Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. Its principal instigator, Dr Harvey Goodwin (Bishop of Carlisle), saw it as the national administrative headquarters and likened it to a "chapter-house for the Church of England". Land was quickly acquired in Dean's Yard, close to the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey, but the existing tenancies meant that only a fraction of the original design could be built in the early 1890's.
In the 1930's, when vacant possession of the whole site was obtained, a new design was commissioned from the distinguished architect Sir Herbert Baker. The foundation stone was laid in 1937 by Queen Mary and on 10th June 1940 King George VI, accompanied by Queen Elizabeth, formally opened the new House and attended the first Session of the Church Assembly in the great circular hall.

For much of the War and the years immediately following it, Church House was used by the Government and was a regular meeting-place of both Houses of Parliament. The Church Assembly was able to return for its autumn session in 1950.

Today, the building is the headquarters of the Archbishops' Council, the Church Commissioners and all its Boards and Councils as well as of the Church of England Pensions Board and the National Society. It is the meeting-place, twice each year, of the General Synod of the Church of England. It also houses the very successful Conference Centre at Church House, the trading subsidiary of the Royal Chartered Corporation which owns and operates the building.

The business of the Corporation is vested in a Council which includes the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, representatives of national church institutions, and members elected annually by the Corporation.

Church House
Church House Conference Centre is part of Church House, the building in Westminster that houses the administrative headquarters of the Church Commissioners, the Archbishops’ Council and other parts of the Church of England. The Conference Centre is a wholly owned subsidiary company of the Church House Corporation, whose president is the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Church of England rules out investments in companies that make more than ten percent of their money from arms. It hosts arms dealers’ conferences in Church House, the Church of England’s administrative headquarters. The conference’s sponsors include some of the world’s largest multinational arms companies, such as BAE Systems, Raytheon and Finmeccanica, all of whom arm some of the world’s most vicious and repressive regimes, including several that have turned weapons on their own people. Many people now recognise that the arms trade is not a legitimate business.

2014 The Land Warfare Conference is organised by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a military thinktank. https://www.rusi.org/landwarfare It is sponsored by SAAB, an arms company. The speakers include top generals from the UK, US and elsewhere as well as NATO.
http://www.caat.org.uk/resources/mapping/farnborough

Church welcomes arms dealers – but tries to ban pacifists from singing hymns.

Westminster Abbey is basically a secular institution rather than a church of Christ. She said, "It’s a royal peculiar". This is a legal term regarding the Abbey’s official status and its relationship to the monarchy.

The Church of England, is the considered the mother church of the worldwide Anglican Communion, counts among it 80 million members in more than 160 countries. The church traces its history to Henry VIII, under whom the church split from Roman Catholics. All Anglicans share the same basic tenets of faith but views on gender, sexuality, worship style and other issues vary widely by region. For example, the communion includes the two-million member Episcopal Church in the United States, one of the most liberal denominations in the country and as well as in the Anglican communion. Its current top leader, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, is a woman.

Episcopalians also ordain gay priests, bless same-sex marriages and voted in 2012 to ordain transgender priests. In 2003, the church voted to elect its first gay bishop.

2014 The General Synod of the Church of England voted today that women can be consecrated as bishops.

The City of London has been granted various special privileges since the Norman Conquest, partly due to its power as Britain's financial capital. These are also mentioned by the Statute of William and Mary in 1690. Author and journalist Nicholas Shaxson argues that, in return for raising loans and finance for the British government, the City "has extracted privileges and freedoms from rules and laws to which the rest of Britain must submit" that have left the corporation "different from any other local authority". He argues that the assistance provided to the institutions based in its jurisdiction, many of which help their rich clients with offshore tax arrangements, mean that the corporation is "a tax haven in its own right". Writing in The Guardian, George Monbiot argued that the corporation's power "helps to explain why regulation of the banks is scarcely better than it was before the crash, why there are no effective curbs on executive pay and bonuses and why successive governments fail to act against the UK's dependent tax havens" and suggested that its privileges could not withstand proper "public scrutiny". In December 2012, following criticism that it was insufficiently transparent about its finances, the City of London Corporation revealed that its "City’s Cash" account – an endowment fund built up over the past 800 years that it says is used "for the benefit of London as a whole" – holds more than £1.3bn. The fund collects money made from the corporation’s property and investment earnings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation

The Freedom of the City

The medieval term ‘freeman’ meant someone who was not the property of a feudal lord but enjoyed privileges such as the right to earn money and own land.

Freedom of the City since 1294 done today - which gives you the right to trade!

The Princess of Wales on July 22, 1987 was given the freedom of the City of London at a ceremony at the Guildhall. The award gives her the historic right to shepherd sheep across London Bridge and receive a smooth hanging if she is ever executed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6m4uMUuiKs
video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkQNQhm_geM

The First Muslims of England

The reason for the Muslim presence in England stemmed from Queen Elizabeth's isolation from Catholic Europe. Her official excommunication by Pope Pius V in 1570 allowed her to act outside the papal edicts forbidding Christian trade with Muslims and create commercial and political alliances with various Islamic states, including the Moroccan Sa'adian dynasty, the Ottoman Empire and the Shi'a Persian Empire. She sent her diplomats and merchants into the Muslim world to exploit this theological loophole, and in return Muslims began arriving in London, variously described as "Moors", "Indians", "Negroes" and "Turks".

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