This step is rightly seen as a historic landmark for the Church and for women. From the legal perspective, it is one which Sheila helped to bring about, by successfully defending a judicial review, R v Ecclesiastical Committee of the Houses of Parliament, ex p The Church Society (1994) Admin LR 670, which challenged the validity of the legislation permitting the ordination of women – see more below.

Archbishop Sarah has spoken of her determination to call out misogyny, recognizing that this is harder to do for many women who do not have ‘the status of the role’ which she has now assumed. Sheila was another groundbreaking woman, as the first female Church judge, earning universal respect in the Church and becoming its senior permanent judge, Dean of the Arches and Auditor. Sheila became our first woman member of chambers as long ago as 1959 and we continue to honour her memory and varied and outstanding achievements, following her death, aged 91, last year.       

But what is a Confirmation of Election? The Church, from earliest times, chose bishops to exercise oversight jurisdiction in geographical districts known as dioceses and archbishops to exercise ‘metropolitical’ jurisdiction over wider areas. By tradition, the monarch, inferior clergy and laity would participate, along with bishops, in selection. Over time, this function fell to Cathedral chapters and that remains the case, although now the Crown Nominations Commission conducts a thorough appointment process and makes a recommendation to the Prime Minister who, in turn, advises the King. The King sends a writ of ‘congé d’éslire’ to Chapter, who formally elect. That election is then confirmed in the Vicar General’s Court presided over by a senior Church judge and the other Archbishop. As anyone who witnessed last week’s ceremony or saw it online will know, the Court process is intricate.

The (all male) professions of the pre-19th century Church courts are revived for the occasion. So the new Archbishop signified her consent in the presence of an Ecclesiastical Notary, who then read the King’s Letters Patent. A Proctor and an Advocate presented formal documents to the Vicar-General for approval. Last week, two women, one a barrister and one a solicitor, took the roles of Advocate and Proctor. The hearing is publicized in advance and a date set for receipt of objections, which are considered by the Vicar General, usually on paper. One objector attempted to disrupt last week’s proceedings, but the Archbishop of York publicly announced that the due time for objection had passed. The Archbishop – elect swore the oath of Allegiance to the King and subscribed to the doctrines of the Church, as required by law. The Vicar General having duly considered all the petitions and proofs, decreed the Confirmation, to general applause and celebration in the Cathedral. The practical effect is that the Archbishop has now entered into the responsibilities and dignities of her office. At the end of March, she will be installed in Canterbury Cathedral, with great ceremony and, again, in the presence of several Church judges, including Morag Ellis KC, the present Dean of the Arches and Auditor, and Gregory Jones KC, Vicar-General of York.    

The Church Society’s judicial review turned on interpretation of the Church of England Assembly Powers Act 1919. The challenger argued that this Act did not permit the Church’s legislative body to change a fundamental doctrine of the Church of England, i.e. that only a man could be ordained priest. A three man Divisional Court held that the wide and sweeping language of the 1919 Act meant exactly what it said. The claimant had relied on the House of Lords’ decision in Viscountess Rhondda’s Claim (1922) 2 AC 339, in which that famous campaigner for women’s rights had been defeated in her challenge to the refusal by the Committee of Privileges of the House of Lords to admit her, even though she was a hereditary peeress.  Lord Riddell, construing the Sex Disqualification Removal Act, also of 1919, had held that it was “inconceivable that Parliament should have made such a wide and far reaching constitutional change by general words of vague and doubtful import.” Incidentally, it was this Act which at last enabled women to be called to the Bar. In 1993, Sheila persuaded the Divisional Court that similar wording in the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act of the same date could not have been clearer. So it came to pass that women were ordained to the priesthood. Sheila subsequently chaired the Archbishops’ Group on Women and the Episcopate whose work, eventually, paved the way for legislation permitting the consecration of women as bishops in 2005.