Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/357

CONVOCATION 327 frequently in the schedules of the most turbulent period of the history of Convocation, namely, during the reign of Queen Anne. It was probably inserted in those schedules, ex majori cautela, after an ancient precedent with which the registrar of the Convocation was familiar. This much, however, is certain, that the phrase does not occur in any schedule of prorogation, which is not also a schedule of continuation of the sittings of Convocation to a further day. The history of the Convocation of the province of Canterbury, as at present constituted, is full of stirring incidents, and it resolves itself readily into five periods. The first period, by which is meant the first period which dates from an epoch of authentic history, is the period of its greatest freedom, but not of its greatest activity. It ex tends from the reign of Edward I. (1283) to that of Henry VIII. The second period is the period of its greatest activity and of its greatest usefulness, and it extends from the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Henry VIII. to the reign of Charles II. The third period extends from the fifteenth year of the reign of Charles II. (1664) to the reign of George I. This was a period of turbulent activity and little usefulness, and the anarchy of the Lower House of Convocation during this period has created a strong prejudice against the revival of Convocation in the mind of the laity. The fourth period extends from the third year of the reign of George I. (1716) to the fifteenth year of the reign of Queen Victoria. This was a period of torpid inactivity, during which it was custom ary for Convocation to be summoned and to meet pro forma, and to be continued and prorogued indefinitely. The fifth period may be considered to have commenced in the fifteenth year of the reign of Queen Victoria (1852), and it would be premature to pronounce an opinion upon its character. It has not hitherto had to pass through any severe ordeal of political strife. During the first of the five periods above mentioned, it would appear from the records preserved ai Lambeth and at York that the metropolitans frequently convened con gregations (so-called) of their clergy without the authority of a royal writ, which were constituted precisely as the Convocations were constituted, when the metropolitans were commanded to call their clergy together pursuant to a writ from the Crown. As soon, however, as King Henry VIII. had obtained from the clergy their acknowledgment of the supremacy of the Crown in all ecclesiastical causes, he constrained the spirituality to declare, by what has been termed the Act of Submission on bohalf of the clergy, that the Convocation "is, always has been, and ought to be summoned by authority of a royal writ;" and this declara tion was embodied in a statute of the realm (25 Henry VIII. c. 19), which further enacted that the Convocation "should thenceforth make no provincial canons, constitu tions, or ordinances without the royal assent and licence." The spirituality was thus more closely incorporated than heretofore in the body politic of the realm, seeing that no deliberations on its part can take place unless the Crown has previously granted its licence for such deliberations. It had been already provided during this period by 8 Henry VI. c. 1, that the prelates and other clergy, with their Bsrvanta and attendants, when called to the Convocation pursuant to the king s writ, should enjoy the same liberty and defence in coming, tarrying, and returning as the magnates and the commons of the realm enjoy when summoned to the king s Parliament. The second period, which dates from 1533 to 1664, has been distinguished by four important assemblies of the spirituality of the realm in pursuance of a royal writ the two first of which occurred in the reign of Edward VI., the third in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and the fourth in the reign of Charles II. The two earliest of these Convocations were summoned to complete the work of the reformation of the Church of England, which had been commenced by Henry VIII. ; the third was called together to reconstruct that work, which had been marred on the accession of Mary, the consort of Philip II. of Spain ; whilst the fourth was summoned to re-establish the Church of England, the framework of which had been demolished during the great rebellion. On all of these occasions the Convocations worked hand in hand with the Parliament of the realm under a licence and with the assent of the Crown. Meanwhile the Convocation of 1603 had framed a body of canons for the governance of the clergy. Another Convocation requires a passing notice, in which certain canons were drawn up in 1640, but by reason of an irregularity in the proceedings of this Convocation (chiefly, on the ground that its sessions were continued for some time after the Parliament of the realm, had been dissolved), its canons are not held to have any binding obligation on the clergy. The Convocations had up to this time maintained their liberty of voting the subsidies of the clergy in the form of " benevolences," separate and apart from the " aids " granted by the laity in. Parliament, and one of the objections taken to the pro ceedings of the Convocation of 1640 was that it had con tinued to sit and to vote its subsidies to the Crown after the Parliament itself had been dissolved. It is not, there fore, surprising on the restoration cf the monarchy in 1661 that the spirituality was not anxious to retain the liberty of taxing itself apart from the laity, seeing that its ancient liberty was likely to prove of questionable advantage to it. It voted, however, a benevolence to the Crown on the occasion of its first assembling in 1661 after the restoration of King Charles II., and it continued so to do until 1664, when an arrangement was madebetween Archbishop Sheldon Slieldonian and Lord Chancellor Hyde, under which the spirituality compact. silently waived its long asserted right of voting its own subsidies to the Crown, and submitted itself thenceforth to be assessed to the "aids " directly granted to the Crown by Parliament. An Act was accordingly passed by the Parliament in the following year (16 and 17 Car. II. c. 1), entitled An Act to grant a Royal Aid unto the King s Majesty, to which aid the clergy were assessed by the commissioners named in the statute without any objec- being raised on their part or behalf, * there being a proviso that in so contributing the clergy should be relieved of the liability to pay two subsidies out of four, which had been voted by them in the Convocation of a previous year. There was also a further proviso inserted in the same Act, that " nothing therein contained shall be drawn into ex ample to the prejudice of the ancient rights belonging to the lords spiritual and temporal, or clergy of this realm, &c., " which Mr Hallam considers to be a saving of the rights of the clergy to tax themselves, if they think fit (Constitutional History, ed. 1842, ii. p. 395). But the spirituality has never reasserted its ancient liberty of self- taxation. In consequence of this practical renunciation of their separate status, as regards their liability to taxation, the clergy have assumed and enjoyed in common with the laity the right of voting at the election of members of the House of Commons, in virtue of their ecclesiastical freeholds, and this right has been recognized by subsequent statutes, such for instance as 10 Anne c. 23, and 18 George II. c. 18. According to a note of Speaker Onslow s, appended to Burnet s History of his Otvn Times (Oxford ed. vol. iv. p. 308), the matter was first settled by a private agreement between Sheldon and Clarendon, and tacitly assented to by 1 It had always been tlie practice, when the clergy voted their sub sidies in their Convocation, for Parliament to authorize the collec tion of each subsidy by the same commissioners who collected the

Parliamentary aid.