King Oswald's Heirs

Now available to pre-order

Pre-order on Kindle $9.99/£7.99

Our story starts with the severed arm of a vanquished king.

Blessed by a holy man, borne by a raven, its blood fed a tree and fired the faith of a nation. And though the king died, for centuries after, wherever the English tongue was spoken, that fire spread.

For the last two years, I have been writing a book rooted in Scripture, but channelled by the stories of the saints and martyrs of the British Isles which shaped the English spiritual tradition. King Oswald’s Heirs: Meditations on the Catechism of the English Church is now available to pre-order on Kindle, with the hardback and paperback following on 3 May.

Rather than a primer of dry doctrine, King Oswald’s Heirs is a retelling of the Catechism of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer through the lives of the saints: Alban, Oswald, Cuthbert, Bede, Margaret and many more. It draws on patristic theology, the formularies of the English Church, and post-Reformation divines from Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes to E.B. Pusey. The result, I hope, is a book that reveals an inheritance richer and stranger than most Anglicans suspect they possess.

Many of you reading this are North American. Many are not Anglican. But this is not a book written only for the Church of England. All English-speaking Christians number among King Oswald’s heirs. It is my conviction that the tradition of the Book of Common Prayer, extending from the 1549 original through to the ACNA iteration of 2019, is a worthy repository of this shared inheritance, which deserves to be more widely known.

To give you a taste of what awaits, download 40 sample pages — the Introduction (Hunting Dragons), Sons of God, and I am Alban. May it inspire you to get the book and to share it widely. If you are an ebook reader, please do pre-order and help me to boost the stats on launch day!

The fire of faith in England itself may be dim now, reduced to embers, and St Oswald’s name largely forgotten. But the wind is blowing. Let us take our inheritance.

Fr Thomas Plant SSC