The petitioners – the vicar and churchwardens – sought to erect a memorial, in the form of a tablet placed above the choir stalls, to commemorate ‘those who died for their faith, both Catholic and Protestant from the University and Oxfordshire, in the Reformation centuries’. The DAC had no objection to the proposal save an amendment to part of the design, which was accepted by the petitioners. The PCC had unanimously approved the proposal and there was considerable local and high-profile support for the scheme. The chancellor drew attention in his judgment to the fact that several of those commemorated had been executed for heresy and others for treason. He reviewed the law outlawing the burial of those who had died as heretics or excommunicate and of those who were executed for treason. He referred to his own judgment in Re St Edmund's Churchyard, Gateshead,Footnote ⁴ noting the presumption against the commemoration of someone executed for high treason who had not been granted a posthumous pardon. In the Gateshead case, he had refused to permit the commemoration as a martyr of a catholic priest executed for treason. He considered his previous judgment ‘too restrictive and less than charitable’, particularly given recent improvements in ecumenical relations. He had not taken into account that the calendar of festivals in the Church of England commemorates such figures as Thomas More and John Fisher alongside the protestant martyrs of the age. The faculty was granted. [WA]