The Council of Hertford was a synod

Synod

A synod historically is a council of a church, usually convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application. In modern usage, the word often refers to the governing body of a particular church, whether its members are meeting or not...

 of the Christian Church in England held in 673

673

Year 673 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 673 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.- Europe :* Hlothhere becomes king of Kent.* The city...

. It was convened at Hertford

Hertford

Hertford is the county town of Hertfordshire, England, and is also a civil parish in the East Hertfordshire district of the county. Forming a civil parish, the 2001 census put the population of Hertford at about 24,180. Recent estimates are that it is now around 28,000...

 by Theodore of Tarsus

Theodore of Tarsus

Theodore was the eighth Archbishop of Canterbury, best known for his reform of the English Church and establishment of a school in Canterbury....

, archbishop of Canterbury

Archbishop of Canterbury

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group...

. It is considered to mark the point at which the province of Canterbury

Province of Canterbury

The Province of Canterbury, also called the Southern Province, is one of two ecclesiastical provinces making up the Church of England...

 became a unit of Church organization, for the English bishops.

Besides Theodore, there were four other bishops present: Leuthere of Wessex

Leuthere

Leuthere was an Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Winchester.He was consecrated in 670. He died in 676. Bede records that he attended the Council of Hertford in 672.-References:...

, Putta of Rochester, Bifus of East Anglia

Bifus

Bifus or Bisi was a medieval Bishop of the East Angles.He was consecrated in 669 or 670. He resigned the see in 672. He was the last bishop of the East Angles....

 and Winfrith of Mercia. A fifth bishop, Wilfrid of Northumbria

Wilfrid

Wilfrid was an English bishop and saint. Born a Northumbrian noble, he entered religious life as a teenager and studied at Lindisfarne, at Canterbury, in Gaul, and at Rome; he returned to Northumbria in about 660, and became the abbot of a newly founded monastery at Ripon...

, sent proctors to represent him. Some organizational changes were agreed to, including the subdivision of Mercia

Mercia

Mercia was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands...

.

The Council confirmed the adoption of the Roman Catholic practices (see synod of Whitby

Synod of Whitby

The Synod of Whitby was a seventh century Northumbriansynod where King Oswiu of Northumbria ruled that his kingdom would calculate Easter and observe the monastic tonsure according to the customs of Rome, rather than the customs practised by Iona and its satellite institutions...

), and ruled against divorce in most cases.