A Royal Peculiar (or Royal Peculier) is a place of worship that falls directly under the jurisdiction of the British monarch, rather than under a bishop. The concept dates from Anglo-Saxon times, when a church could ally itself with the monarch and therefore not be subject to the bishop of the area. Later it reflected the relationship between the Norman and Plantagenet kings and the English church. Unlike many of the ecclesiastical foundations of the medieval period the royal peculiars were not abolished in the English Reformation effected under the Tudors.
Read more about Royal Peculiar: Royal Peculiars of The Present Day, Non-royal Peculiars, Former Royal Peculiars
Famous quotes containing the words royal and/or peculiar:
“High from the summit of a craggy cliff,
Hung o’er the deep, such as amazing frowns
On utmost Kilda’s shore, whose lonely race
Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds,
The royal eagle draws his vigorous young”
—James Thomson (1700–1748)
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)