reference to the records we find that the allegation is radically erroneous. The facts were as follows.* On the 25th of February, 1559, the Prolocutor, on the part of the Lower House, did make known to the bishops certain articles which that House had framed "for the exoneration of its conscience and the declaration of its faith." One of these articles declares that the supreme power of governing the Church belonged to the successors of Peter, without however attacking in terms the supremacy of the Crown. Another claims for the clergy the right to discuss and define in matters of faith and discipline. The articles were incorporated in an address to the bishops; and, according to the narrative portion of the official record, they asked for some kind of cooperation in the original words, ut ipsi episcopi sibi sint duces in hac re. But the document itself is more explicit; and only asks that, as they have not of themselves access to the Peers, the prelates would make known the articles for them. On a later day they inquired whether this had been done (an articuli sui propositi præsentati essent superioribus ordinibus). Bonner, the acting president, replied that he had placed them before the Keeper of the Great Seal, as Speaker of the House of Lords; who appeared to receive them kindly (gratanter), but made no reply whatever (nullum omnino responsum dedit). The prolocutor and clergy renewed their request, but the Convocation passed on to the business of subsidy; and nothing further happened but that the concurrence of the Universities with the five articles was made known on a subsequent day. Thus it is plain that, while the lower clergy framed a document *Wilkins's 'Concilia,' iv. 179. which, if a little ambiguous, was clearly more or less hostile, the bishops took no part. It is not, I think, too much to say that they carefully and steadily avoided taking a part. There were, indeed, but four of them present. In the Convocation of York no steps whatever bearing on religion were adopted. There never was in either province so much as a question of a synodical act to reverse, or even modify, the formal and valid proceedings taken, with general consent, in the time of Henry. V. Before any steps were commenced by the Queen, eleven out of the twenty-seven bishops of the two provinces were dead. To the other sixteen the oath was legally tendered, which asserted, on behalf of the Crown, less than was contained in the unrepealed and therefore still operative declarations of the Anglican Convocations. One only, Kitchin, Bishop of Llandaff (an indifferent subject), took it. The other fifteen were deprived. It is difficult to conceive a more regular proceeding they were put out of their sees for refusing to conform themselves to a law of the utmost practical importance, and one which had the sanction alike of the Anglican Church and of the State. : Out of these fifteen, five* died before steps were taken for the appointment of their successors. Of the remaining ten, Palmer † has shown that either eight or nine were liable canonically to expulsion as intruders under the auspices of Mary. If, he says, there was *Lingard, v. 630, note G. On the Church,' i. 372; and J. W. Lea on 'Spiritual Jurisdiction at the Epochs of the Reformation and Revolution' (London: Wells Gardner). irregularity in one or two remaining cases, this cannot impugn the proceedings generally. It appears, however, that, if the foregoing statement be correct, although the circumstances were exceptional there was no juridical irregularity whatever. The sees were legitimately cleared before the new appointments were made. The avoidance was effected in a majority of instances by death, in the remaining minority of cases by expulsion for legal cause, with all the authority which the action of the National Church could give for such a purpose. The episcopal succession through Parker is therefore unassailable up to this point, that it did not displace any legitimate possessors, or claimants, of any of the Sees. This is of course upon the assumption that, in recognising the supreme governorship of the Crown, and in denying the foreign jurisdiction of the Pope, the Church of England acted within her rights as a distinct national Church. It is not for me to enter upon the question, properly theological, whether the Pope had a jurisdiction which neither the nation nor the Church had power to touch; or whether the consecration of Parker is assailable on this or on any other ground. I think, however, that it is difficult or impossible to deny that the Anglican bishops and clergy under Henry the Eighth, and before the accession of Cranmer, the divorce, and the re-marriage with Anne Boleyn, believed themselves entitled to deal with what Palmer has well called the ordinary jurisdiction of the Pope. It may be that, under Mary, the conservative party in the Church had narrowed its ground, renounced in a measure the older English tradition, and made a rally round the papal standard. It remains, however, a curious question why they did not, before Elizabeth had re-purged the Convocations by means of the oath of supremacy, avail themselves of their legal standing by some attempt at synodical action in the Roman sense and it is a question of still greater interest for what reasons no such action was taken during the Marian period, when the episcopate and priesthood had been effectually purged, and the nation at large had been acquiescent in the restoration of the Roman form of worship. Such is the subject which I have endeavoured to present under an aspect free from colour, and with the dryness which properly belongs to an argument upon law. I ought perhaps to make two small additions. First, that my account of the proceedings in the first Elizabethan Convocation, although brief, contains all that is material. Secondly, that I have carefully perused an able article in the Dublin Review for May, 1840, which is believed to have been written by Dr. Lingard, and bears the title "Did the Anglican Church reform herself?" It covers the ground of the argument advanced in these pages; but supplies no reason, I believe, for altering anything that I have written. VI. QUEEN ELIZABETH AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.* 1888. CONSIDERATIONS of religion were the chief determining elements, at least for England, in the public affairs of the sixteenth century. Parallel or counter to these ran the motives of private rapine, European influence, and other forces, variously distributed in various countries; but religion was the principal factor. And yet not religion conceived as an affair of the private conscience : not the yearning and the search for the "pearl of great price:" not an increased predominance of "otherworldliness:" but the instinct of national freedom, and the determination to have nothing in religion that should impair it. The penetrating insight of Shakespeare taught him, in delineating King John's defiance to the Pope, to base it, not on the monarch's own very indifferent individuality, but on the national sentiment. "Tell him this tale: and from the mouth of England Shall tithe or toll in our dominions."† * Reprinted from the Nineteenth Century. |