Holy See–United Kingdom relations are foreign relations between the Holy See and the United Kingdom.
The Holy See maintains an Apostolic nunciature in London, and the United Kingdom has an Embassy in the Vatican City. The current Nuncio in London is Miguel Maury Buendía, and the British Ambassador is Chris Trott.
In circa 595, Pope Gregory I sent a mission now known as the Gregorian Mission to the Kingdom of Kent. Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in circa 597. During the Middle Ages and until the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland were Catholic kingdoms with diplomatic relations with the Papal States.
In 1154 the English bishop Nicholas Breakspear was elected Pope Adrian IV, the only person from the British Isles to have been the Pope.
In 1209, Pope Innocent III put the Kingdom of England under interdict amidst rising disputes with John, King of England, after he refused to accept Stephen Langton, the papal candidate for Archbishop of Canterbury. The dispute was resolved in 1213 when John conceded power to the Pope by becoming his vassal and agreed to pay feudal taxes to the Catholic Church.
In 1479, Edward IV of England appointed John Sherwood as the first Resident Ambassador in the Papal States.
1536: diplomatic rift and church schism
Diplomatic relations were broken in 1536, following the establishment of the Anglican Church by Henry VIII. Diplomatic relations were re-established in 1553 under Mary I of England, who appointed Sir Edward Carne as her Ambassador. During the reign of Elizabeth I diplomatic relations were broken again due to the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis in 1570. Official relations with the Papal States were then prohibited by law. The two countries nevertheless had occasional contacts.
In 1621, the English court despatched George Gage to the Papal court in order to obtain permission for Charles I of England to marry the Spanish infanta, a marriage that in the event did not take place. But when Charles I married a French Catholic princess named Henrietta Maria, he obtained the blessing of Pope Gregory XV, who used the opportunity to despatch Gregorio Panzani to England as his envoy. Panzani was followed as papal envoy by the Scottish Franciscan George Conn.
In 1686, King James VII of Scotland and II of England despatched as envoy to the Papal States the Earl of Castlemaine and received as papal envoy Count Fernando D'Adda. Relations were broken again following the Glorious Revolution in 1688. The Papal States recognised James Francis Edward Stuart as James VIII and III until his death in 1766, but not his son Charles, which gave subtle recognition to the reigning House of Hanover. This helped start the reform of the anti-Catholic penal laws, achieved in part by the Quebec Act 1774 and the Papists Act 1778. Sir John Coxe Hippisley's brief mission to Rome to explore the possibility of restoring relations failed in 1779–1780.
Unofficial relations were formed again during the French Revolution, as both the British and the Papal courts were interested in coordinating policies against the spread of the revolution across Europe. In 1792, the British court despatched Sir John Coxe Hippisley to Rome as envoy, a position he held until 1795. The papal court despatched Monsignor Charles Erskine to London as envoy, a position he held until 1801. Both countries found themselves at various times enemies of France during this period and therefore had a degree of commonality of interests, not least because of the dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution and the French establishment of the Roman Republic of 1798–99.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland came into existence in 1801 with the union of the Kingdom of Ireland to Great Britain, which had been formed by the union of the Kingdoms of Scotland and England in 1707. With the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, all of Ireland became an independent dominion. Northern Ireland exercised its right under that treaty to separate from the remainder of Ireland and maintain the union with Great Britain, which created the current state of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The Holy See is the pre-eminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church and recognised in international law as a sovereign entity with which diplomatic relations can be maintained. Pastor Bonus, an apostolic constitution, defines the Vatican's diplomatic relations with states as the Holy See.
Due to the continuity of the Holy See from early times, it is possible to see that the various parts of the United Kingdom had relations with the Holy See prior to their incorporation within the Union (and in Ireland's case, following it - see Holy See – Ireland relations).
Following the Catholic Emancipation Act 1829, legal obstacles to relations with the Papal States were removed, but the British government still refrained from accrediting an envoy to Rome, though British envoys to some Italian city states were also charged with conducting negotiations with the Papal Court. During the Irish tenants'-rights Plan of Campaign in the 1880s, the Papacy condemned the activities in the encyclical "Saepe Nos" (1888), even though most of the tenants were Catholics.
The United Kingdom did not re-establish relations with the Holy See until December 1914, following the outbreak of the First World War, as the British government was apprehensive about possible growing German and Austrian influence over Vatican policies. The first envoy selected was Henry Howard, a British Catholic, who was followed by the 7th Count de Salis. In order to maintain that this diplomatic mission was temporary in nature, it was titled "Special Mission to the Vatican". Only in 1923 was the mission's title changed to "His Majesty's Legation to the Holy See".
During the Second World War when Italy was at war with Britain, the British mission and those other allied countries were located in a pilgrim hostel attached to the Convent of Santa Marta within the Vatican City. Until the liberation of Rome in 1944, the British Envoy Sir D'Arcy Osborne could not leave the Vatican without special Italian permission.
In May 1949, Princess Margaret visited Pope Pius XII in the Vatican City. It was the first visit of a British Royal to the Holy See after hundreds of years.