Conference
in diplomacy, a meeting of the representatives of different powers for the purpose of adjusting differences; also, an annual gathering of the ministers, now with a certain number of lay representatives of the several Methodist congregations, to deliberate upon the affairs of the religious denomination to which they belong; also a meeting not held at stated intervals, but arranged to adjust some difference which may exist betwen Churches or sections of Churches.
Many conferences have taken place abroad between Churches or parties in Churches. Thus there were conferences between Lutherans and Roman Catholics at Ratisbon in A. D. 1601; one in 1685 between John Claude, of the French Reformed Church, and James Bénigne Bos- Thorn in 1645, with the view of reconcil- suet, a Roman Catholic; and one at ing the Lutherans and the Reformed Churches, but the conference to which the name is most frequently applied in England was that at Hampton Court.
The Hampton Court conference was a conference between King James I. of England, immediately after his accession to the English throne, and the representatives of the Anglican and the Puritan parties in the Church, Church, which first met Jan. 14, 1604, and lasted three days.