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DIOCESAN HISTORIES. 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 ROBERT C. JENKINS, M.A. 
 
 RECTOR AND VICAR OF LYMINGE, HON. CANON OF CANTERBURY. 
 
 WITH MAP. 
 
 PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, CHARING CROSS ; 
 43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C. ; AND 48, PICCADILLY, W. 
 
 NEW YORK : POTT, YOUNG, & CO. 
 1880. 
 
WYMAN- AND SONS, PRINTERS, 
 GREAT QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS; 
 LONDON, W.C. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. The Roman Period i 
 
 II. The Formation of the Diocese and the 
 
 Saxon Period 20 
 
 III. Lanfranc and the Norman Period ... 78 
 
 IV. From Becket to Peckham 119 
 
 V. From Peckham to Warham 167 
 
 VI. The Dawn of the Reformation 220 
 
 VII. From Warham to Parker 238 
 
 VIII. From Parker to Laud 293 
 
 IX. From Laud to Bancroft 327 
 
 X. From the Revolution to the Present Day 371 
 
 B 2 
 
DEDICATED, BY PERMISSION, 
 
 TO 
 
 THE RIGHT HON. AND MOST REVEREND 
 ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL, 
 LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, 
 
 PRIMATE OF ALL ENGLAND AND METROPOLITAN. 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 In opening our retrospect of the history of the 
 Diocese of Canterbury, it is necessary to bear 
 in mind the fact that the diocesan system in its 
 later and local meaning can in no case be traced 
 up to an earlier period than that of the establish- 
 ment of Christianity in the Empire, begun by Con- 
 stantine in the fourth, but only fully completed by 
 Justinian in the sixth century. Before this adop- 
 tion of the Church by the civil power, that local 
 organization of its government represented by the 
 modern parish and diocese was absolutely imprac- 
 ticable. The divisions of the Church were then 
 rather personal and congregational, than local or 
 geographical. To this the titles of parish {irapoLKia) 
 and diocese (StoiKrjaLc) expressly point ; ^ and here 
 
 * The word dicecesis in the Eastern Church, and at the period 
 of the Councils, has an entirely different meaning from that 
 which our later usage has assigned it. The same may be said 
 of the paroecia. The latter is equivalent to our modern diocese ^ 
 the former is the largest division of this ecclesiastical world, 
 and includes not only the parcecice, but also the metropolitical 
 
2 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 they stand in marked contrast with those which 
 belonged to a later age, when, coactive jurisdiction 
 having been conferred upon the Church by the 
 State, the titles of " eparchia " and " exarchia " were 
 applied to the ecclesiastical districts of the Empire as 
 they had hitherto been to its civil divisions. In the 
 primitive Church, as a learned canonist observes, the 
 divisions were simply into the urban, suburban, or 
 rural districts, the bishop presiding over the former, 
 for which a single church was then sufficient, 
 while in the neighbouring villages and rural places 
 churches were built which the Greeks called Trapot- 
 /ceat, the Latins parochice,^^ over which presbyters 
 or chorepiscopi were appointed. When the cities had 
 so increased as to render it difficult for a single pre- 
 late to govern them, the people were divided into 
 " legions " and " centuriae," and the districts of the 
 city defined by certain limits, so that every one should 
 possess its own priest or governor.^ This organiza- 
 tion was derived from the ancient civil divisions of 
 Rome, for, as the same writer observes, " Antiquity 
 presented an early image of these ^Parishes/ For 
 when Rome was divided into nineteen urban ^tribes,' 
 and every tribe again into ten ^ curiae,' to every one 
 of these its proper temple and proper priest was 
 assigned. "2 
 
 sees which represented eparchies or provinces. It was equiva- 
 lent to the Exarchate of the civil divisions of the Empire, and 
 to the Patriarchate of the ecclesiastical system. 
 
 ^ Emanuel Tellez Gonzalez, ad c. 2. X. de Paroch. n. 9. 
 
 ^ St. Epiphanius (Hacres. 69, n. i) says of the churches of 
 Alexandria that **they are subject to one archbishop, and a priest 
 
THE ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 3 
 
 So persistently did the Romans adhere to their 
 original tribal forms, that notwithstanding the early 
 establishment of Christianity throughout Italy, a 
 learned writer has proved that no parochial boun- 
 daries existed even in Rome itself before the year 
 I GOO. 1 Thus the claim of Pope Evaristus (resting on 
 the spurious decretal which goes by his name) to 
 have first instituted local parochial divisions in Rome, 
 falls to the ground j while the improbability that this 
 delimitation of parishes took place at an earlier 
 period in the more distant parts of the Empire than 
 at its centre becomes apparent. If Rome in the 
 tenth century had no such local parishes, it is very 
 unlikely that Kent in the seventh (as some affirm) 
 had substituted" the local for the congregational 
 system. 
 
 Churches were undoubtedly designated by the 
 names of the places in which they were situated, as 
 the Church of Jerusalem, of Alexandria, of Rome ; 
 but no idea of a local division of dioceses or of 
 parishes could have been entertained, until the 
 Church entered upon a much more advanced stage of 
 her existence, and the principle of jurisdiction was 
 
 is appointed over every one of them to administer in spiritual 
 things to those who Hve around the church" — (did rag l/c/cXr/- 
 (jiaffTiKcig xpdaQ tCjv oiicrjTopuiv TrXjjcrtwr eKaarrjQ iKKXtjaiag 
 avrCjp). These were called by the citizens d/x^o^oi (districts 
 within roads), or Xavpai (squares), and were probably the 
 earliest approach we know of to a parochial subdivision in a 
 modem sense. 
 
 ^ Mario Lupi, Arciprete di Bergamo, ap. Tamagna, '^Ori- 
 gini e prerogative dei Cardinale della S. R. C." 
 
4 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 introduced into her system — a change which the 
 new relations between the Church and the State 
 necessitated, and which the confusions that had 
 already arisen from the intrusions of bishops and 
 clergy into other dioceses and parishes made as 
 important to themselves as to the state. The first 
 three General Councils exhibit to us the disorders 
 which had arisen from the want of this local separa- 
 tion. ^ Yet, strange as it may appear, the confusion 
 and even absence of local boundaries existed in many 
 places in the West at the time of the Council of 
 Trent. For in its chapters on reformation (Sess. xxiv. 
 c. 13) it is enjoined, "In those cities or places where 
 parochial churches have no settled bounds, nor their 
 rectors a distinct congregation under their care, but 
 where they administer the sacraments promiscuously 
 to all who come, the holy synod orders a separation 
 of the people into their regular and proper parishes, 
 and the assignment to every one of his own regular 
 and separate priest," &c. And this arrangement is 
 in every sense a necessary one ; for when " jurisdic- 
 tion ^' was added to order," and the general right 
 of officiating everywhere and for every one became at 
 once limited in its scope and made absolute and 
 exclusive within its new limits, it became essential 
 that these limits should be accurately and locally 
 defined. "Without limiting the jurisdiction of its 
 difierent magistrates, no government w^ould be pos- 
 sible. And to grant to bishops the unlimited and 
 
 ^ Concil. Nicaen. can. 15. [C. Ptan. can. 2. Ephesin. 
 can. 8, &c. 
 
THE ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 5 
 
 universal exercise of their authority would be the 
 same as to take away from the Church all order and 
 peace." Such is the conclusion of the late Cardinal 
 Nardi,^ forgetful that his argument has a fatal bearing 
 upon the ''^ jiirisdidio prceveniens et concurrens^^ 
 claimed by the See of Rome in every diocese alike. ^ 
 
 From the age of Constantine to that of Jus- 
 tinian the government of the Church was gradually 
 but most effectually brought into a perfect corre- 
 
 ^ '^Elementi di Diritto Eccles." Ven. 1846, p. i. pag. 241. 
 To take a clear view of the origin of jurisdiction^ we must 
 remember that the first great separation in the Christian body 
 was that of the or do and the plebs, described by Tertullian, and 
 corresponding to our cle7'gy and laity. The second is that 
 between order and jurisdiction^ represented by the clei'us and the 
 ordo, indicated very clearly by St. Ambrose (in Eph. c. iv. 
 V. 11). After describing the earliest period of the Church, in 
 which all her ministrations were in common, he adds, When 
 she embraced every place, congregations (conventicula) were 
 constituted, and rectors and other officers ordained in the 
 churches, in order that none of the clergy (clerus) who was not 
 ordained (ordinatus) should presume to take any office which 
 was not entrusted to him, and thus the Church began to be 
 governed in another order and providence." It maybe men- 
 tioned here that the ordination, or appointment to a special 
 charge, became, in consequence of this new system, identical 
 with the ordination to the ministry itself — no one being made 
 a priest, but on his appointment to, or incardination into " a 
 distinct cure — Dopo fatti i beneficij (writes Sarpi), V istessa 
 cosa era ordinarlo e assegnargli I'ufficio da exercitare." * Hence 
 the later practice of requiring a *' title " (properly a parish) 
 before ordination. 
 
 * Trattato delle M. Benefic. p. 54. Ed. Mirandola, 1676. 
 
6 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 spondence, and even coincidence with that of the 
 State. Even in the time of the Council of Chalce- 
 don, the union was so complete that every change in 
 the civil government produced a corresponding one 
 in that of the Church, the Council decreeing that 
 " Wherever a city was privileged by the Emperors, 
 the order of ecclesiastical dioceses {irapoLuai) 
 should follow the political and civil arrangements." 
 As the power of the Exarchs, and the civil Gover- 
 nors under them, died out — which in the West was 
 comparatively early — the bishops became the promul- 
 gators of the imperial laws, as the letters of Gregory 
 the Great indicate, and the patriarchal authority 
 growing (as Socrates complains) into a vast political 
 system, the Empire failed gradually before it, so that 
 the canons of the Church superseded at last the code 
 of Justinian itself It might be supposed that this 
 growth of the power of the Church was more rapid 
 in the more distant provinces of the Empire than in 
 its central points ; and that Gaul and Britain in the 
 extreme West would present a very marked instance 
 of this development of ecclesiastical power. The 
 very feeble hold which the Empire had retained 
 over its more remote dependencies after the removal 
 of the Emperors to Constantinople, rendered the 
 alliance of the Church with the State in the West a 
 very different thing from what it was in the East, 
 and the three provinces into which Britain was origin- 
 ally divided, viz., Britannia prima, containing all on 
 the south side of the Thames; Britannia secunda, 
 all on the farther side of the Severn ; and Maxima 
 Caesariensis, all the rest of the island to the northern 
 
THE ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 7 
 
 borders, do not appear to have had more than the 
 single metropolitan bishop by whom they were seve- 
 rally represented at Aries and Ariminum. London, 
 which was the metropolis of the southern province, 
 York, of the northern, and Caerleon, of the inter- 
 mediate one — appear, from all we know, to have been 
 the only episcopal sees in the island; two others 
 being added at a later period, — Valentia, which ex- 
 tended to the Frith of Forth, but was still under the 
 jurisdiction of York; and Flavia C^sariensis, in- 
 cluding the district between the Thames and the 
 Humber, of which the Colonia Londinensis (whether 
 it be identified with Maldon or Lincoln) mentioned 
 in the subscriptions to the Council of Ariminum (in 
 314), was probably the metropolis. The present 
 diocese of Canterbury must then have been a kind of 
 ecclesia suhurbicaria^'' to the metropolis of London. 
 The letter of Gregory the Great to Augustine 
 which enjoins the consecration of bishops for other 
 sees, exempts London from the jurisdiction of his 
 successors, and appears to regard London and York 
 as having the same metropolitical rank which they 
 enjoyed during the Roman occupation. There is no 
 reference in this letter to any previous diocese as 
 existing in Kent, which there could hardly fail to 
 have been if Augustine had been merely restoring, 
 instead of actually founding, an episcopal see.^ The 
 city of Canterbury itself had been scarcely recovered, 
 during the later Roman period, from the marsh 
 on the verge of which it stands, as Mr. Godfrey 
 
 * Greg. M. Reg. Epp. 1. xii. Ind. vii. ep. xv. 
 
8 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Faussett has shown in his masterly sketch of its earlier 
 history ; and was little more than a Roman station 
 founded on the site of a British fastness — a site 
 which, but for military purposes, would never have 
 been chosen, and which even in the Saxon period 
 w^as exposed to constant danger both from w^arfare 
 a.nd inundation. But what rank it may have held 
 in regard to our early Christianity must, in the 
 absence of all documentary evidence, be left to con- 
 jecture. 
 
 Previous to the arrival of Augustine (a.d. 597) " we 
 1^ have," as Kemble writes, ^'no trustworthy record of 
 any single event of English history. Whatever pre- 
 cedes this, by whomsoever, and at what period soever 
 related, is nothing more than tradition, and liable to 
 all the accidents by which tradition is affected. 
 This statement, though substantially true, is some- 
 what too general and broad. For there can be no 
 doubt that Bede, and even Goscelinus at a later 
 date, possessed documentary evidence of the events 
 which they record which preceded the advent of the 
 Saxons. And Gildas, whose writings have reached 
 our time, and w^ho lived more than a century before, 
 quotes " ecclesiastical histories " as his authorities for 
 the narrative of the Diocletian period and the martyr- 
 dom of St. Alban and the other victims of that great 
 persecution. The often-quoted words of Tertullian, 
 affirming the conquest by Christianity of places in 
 Britain which had been inaccessible to Roman arms, 
 are admitted by Bishop Kaye, in his admirable work 
 
 * Cod. Dipl. JEw'i Saxon. Intra, p. v. 
 
THE ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 9 
 
 on Tertullian, to be declamatory." '^Yet such a 
 representation'^ (he adds) would not have been 
 hazarded unless it had been realized to a consider- 
 able extent in the actual state of Christianity. 
 
 But when Britain is spoken of in connection with 
 *^ countries and islands scarce known to us by name, 
 and which it is impossible for us to enumerate," we 
 can hardly believe that Britain itself was known to 
 the writer by much more than its mere name, or 
 attach great weight to so vague a statement. What- 
 ever may have been the success of Christianity in 
 the earliest days of its plantation in Britain, which 
 Gildas carries back to the time of Tiberius, its pro- 
 gress seems to have been slow and arduous here, as 
 among all the Celtic nations. Gildas speaks of its 
 
 cold reception" by some, while by some ^4t was 
 received more, and by others less perfectly," and 
 mentions its continuance in this state until the time 
 of the Diocletian persecution. Bede seems to attri- 
 bute their preservation of the faith to the quiet 
 tranquillity " they enjoyed ; but, perhaps, this was 
 to be attributed rather to the indifference which 
 Gildas hints at, than to the depth and activity of the 
 faith which seems so completely to have died out 
 after the arrival of the Saxon conquerors. It would 
 appear, from the absence of any record of warfare or 
 of the triumphs of the Roman arms in Kent, that 
 this county enjoyed a large share of that quiet 
 tranquillity" whose reign until the Diocletian perse- 
 cution is asserted by our earliest historian. ^ The 
 
 ^ Eccl. Hist, from Tertullian, p. 94. 
 
 ^ This has been often observed and well illustrated by my 
 
lO 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 works of defence, of Roman or British construction, 
 are confined almost entirely to the coasts, show- 
 ing that their design was rather to protect than 
 to overawe the population, whose settlements and 
 villas are to be traced along the principal roads, 
 indicating a wide-spread prosperity and opulence, 
 though inferior in many of their features to the simi- 
 lar remains discovered in more distant parts of the 
 island. The civilization of Rome, which had reached 
 Kent immediately from its numerous continental 
 colonists, had tended to give its inhabitants a more 
 settled life and a more established form of govern- 
 ment. Fewer military inscriptions or records relating 
 to the garrisoning of the country are to be found 
 here than in any of the northern counties ; records 
 which ever indicate a disturbed and unsettled history. 
 On the other hand, the remains of villas and private 
 residences are very numerous, and the objects of 
 art which have been discovered in connection with 
 the Roman period in various parts of Kent show a 
 progress in refinement and civilization, which has not 
 always been found even in places where the remains 
 of public buildings are grander and more remarkable. 
 The advice given by Gregory the Great to Augustine, 
 in his letter to Mellitus, leads us to believe that 
 some, at least, of the temples and public buildings 
 were of good construction and of considerable size. 
 He charges him not to destroy these temples, but to 
 throw down the idols, and build altars to God in 
 
 friend Mr. Roacli Smith, the most eminent of our Roman 
 antiquaries. 
 
THE ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 II 
 
 their stead, For if," he adds, " these temples are 
 well built " (which Augustine had doubtless reported 
 them to be), ^'it is necessary that they should be 
 adapted to the worship of the true God instead of to 
 the service of devils."^ The remains of the ancient 
 basilical buildings at Dover, Lyminge, Reculver, and 
 other places, justify this wise advice ; that it was 
 acted upon afterwards is proved by the successive 
 surrender of all these buildings to the Church, re- 
 corded in the Anglo-Saxon Chartulary. 
 
 On the history of the parish churches in the rural 
 districts of Kent we have nothing to guide us before 
 the mention of their existence in the Domesday 
 Survey, except in those cases in which the Saxon 
 charters give proofs of their still earlier foundation. 
 At this point we may derive a reflected light from the 
 contemporary history of the Galilean Church, as it is 
 given us by St. Gregory of Tours. After giving us 
 a more detailed description of the larger and cost- 
 lier foundations which the great Galilean bishops 
 had built in their principal cities, he enumerates 
 the various village churches which were founded by 
 St. Martin of Tours, and his successors, Briccius, 
 Eustochius, Perpetuus, and Volusianus. ^ 
 
 It is not unreasonable to believe that our rural 
 churches were thus founded as suburbicary appendages 
 to the larger towns or monasteries in their immediate 
 vicinity, and that the accession of Constantine pro- 
 duced here, as in Gaul, a great revival of church- 
 
 ^ Reg. Epp. 1. ix. Ind. iv. ep. 71. 
 
 ^ Greg. Turon. Historia Franc. 1. x. c. 31. 
 
12 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 building, as well as of Christian art in general. We 
 see the same zeal illustrated in a later day by the 
 building of churches on their several manors and de- 
 pendencies by the archbishops and monastic bodies 
 of Kent, while the Roman materials frequently found 
 in rebuilding the parish churches of the county indi- 
 cate some primitive structures of a like kind as pre- 
 ceding them. One of the relics of this earlier stage 
 of Christianity was the little church in Canterbury, in 
 which Bertha is said to have worshipped before^the 
 arrival of Augustine in Kent. 
 
 The descriptions of Gildas and Bede of the 
 great reaction which followed the persecution of 
 Diocletian lead to the belief that a vast number of 
 churches and oratories had been founded or restored 
 at that period; though this sudden return of the 
 Christian worshippers from the caves and crypts, or 
 in some favoured cases the private houses of their 
 more powerful brethren, is less to be attributed to 
 the relaxation of the Diocletian persecution than to 
 the accession of Constantine a few years after. De 
 Caumont, a very competent authority on such a sub- 
 ject, affirms that ^'in Gaul up to the reign of Con- 
 stantine there were no churches properly so called, 
 and the mysteries were celebrated in the houses of 
 the new converts, in crypts and in secret places. 
 After the accession of this prince, Christianity pro- 
 digiously increased in the provinces as well as in 
 Italy, and churches were multiplied." ^ 
 
 The state of religion, and the causes of its revival, 
 could not have been very different in countries so 
 
 ^ Cours d'Antiquites Monumentales, p. iv. pag. 6i. 
 
THE ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 ^3 
 
 closely connected as France and England. The 
 Council of Aries had brought their Churches together 
 as early as a.d. 314; while the connection of Aries 
 with the Church of Kent in the injunctions of Gregory 
 the Great, points clearly to an earlier and, probably, 
 even closer bond. In the absence, however, of docu- 
 mentary proof, we are led to appeal to the monumental 
 remains we still possess, which, however scant and 
 fragmentary, are yet of the greatest interest and im- 
 portance as indicating the state of the Church in 
 Kent in its earliest age. 
 
 The Roman-Saxon church within the precincts of 
 the castle at Dover, so admirably restored by Sir 
 Gilbert Scott, and so graphically illustrated by him 
 in the Archaeologia Cantiana," is the most im- 
 portant and conspicuous of these ancient remains. 
 Roman churches existed also at Lyminge, Folkes- 
 stone, Reculver, and other places, while the cruci- 
 form foundation at Richborough may possibly have 
 had a Christian origin. 
 
 From the mention of the principal churches 
 during the Roman occupation, we shall now pass on 
 to the consideration of the kindred subject of their 
 endowment and sustentation at this early period. 
 Here the external aid derived from archaeological 
 facts necessarily fails us, and we have to fall back 
 upon the history of the general state of church en- 
 dowment before and after the period of Constantine. 
 This history, admirably shadowed forth in the 
 " golden treatise " of Fra Paoli Sarpi " delle Materie 
 Beneficiarie^^^ has been clearly illustrated both by 
 Roman Catholic and Protestant canonists, and by 
 
14 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 none with greater learning or sounder judgment than 
 by Bohmer in his ''-Jus Ecclesiasticum^^ and specially 
 in his history of the Parochial system, which forms a 
 separate portion of that great work. We have here 
 to bear in mind that the endowment of the Church 
 has three distinct stages, which are very clearly 
 marked out in the history of the first six centuries. 
 Before the time of Constantine it possessed only 
 movable or personal property (bofia moMlia), for 
 no corporation could then hold real property {bona 
 wimohilia) without the permission of the Emperors 
 and the licence of the Senate. During the confusion 
 occasioned in the Empire after the imprisonment of 
 Valerian, lands had been illegally left to the Church, 
 especially in Africa, France, and Italy ; but these 
 were all confiscated by Diocletian and Maximian 
 in 302, though it is said that this law was not carried 
 out in France, through the influence of Constantius 
 Chlorus, who was then governor. Probably the 
 same toleration was extended to Britain, and the 
 first traces of the second period of the history of 
 endowment may thus ascend upward to the close of 
 the third century. But it must be remembered that 
 this real estate, though legally secured to the Church 
 from the time of Constantine, was alienable like any 
 other property ; nor was it until the reign of Jus- 
 tinian that the prohibition to alienate church lands, 
 established at Constantinople as early as a.d. 470, 
 was extended to the whole Church. ^ This law was 
 
 ^ Bohmer, in tit. **de Rebus Eccl. alienandis vel non," 
 torn. ii. pp. 686-89. 
 
THE ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 based originally on the principle of the major Mtilitas 
 of the civil law, and not on any canonical or spi- 
 ritual ground. Promulgated and carried out by the 
 bishops, at least in the Western Church, it became 
 gradually transferred from a civil to an ecclesiastical 
 foundation.^ 
 
 The endowment of the Church of Britain with real 
 property was probably as early as that of any of the 
 Western churches. The " quiet a pax which the 
 Church is said to have enjoyed until the days of 
 Diocletian, must have greatly facilitated this kind of 
 dotation j and it is not unreasonable to believe that 
 the appropriation to Christianity of the temples and 
 even the basilicas of the older worship, carried with it 
 the possession of the lands connected with them, 
 which on the Saxon conquest were reoccupied by a 
 new form of idolatry, and became for the most part 
 the residences of the Kentish kings. The remarkable 
 surrender of all these residences one after another to 
 the Church, made from the time of v^thelbert, 
 would stand almost alone in history, were it not for 
 the supposition that it was rather a restitution of 
 what had originally belonged to the Church than an 
 actual endowment de novo. From the incidental 
 light which falls upon our Church history from th;^ 
 of France, with which it was so early and closely 
 connected, we gather that until the Saxon invasioh 
 (in 449 or 450), land as well as other property had 
 accrued to the Church, and that the power of making 
 testamentary gifts in its favour was exercised in 
 
 ^ Gregorii M. ad Episc. Panorm. Epp. 1. ii. ep. 49. 
 
 C 2 
 
i6 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Britain as in Gaul. We read of St. Perpetuus, Bishop 
 of Tours, in 450, as "a very rich man having pos- 
 sessions in many cities," and "leaving by will, to 
 the churches which he had founded, his property in 
 these several cities, the Church of Tours itself coming 
 in for a considerable inheritance. We are led to 
 conclude that the churches founded both by his 
 predecessors and successors were in like manner 
 endowed with houses and lands, and that the new 
 security which was thus given to the property of the 
 Church was enjoyed generally through the West at 
 this period. All this public property in Kent must 
 have fallen into the hands of the Saxon conquerors 
 of the country, who seem, from Pope Gregory's letter 
 to Mellitus, to have taken possession of many of the 
 churches and public buildings, as temples of their 
 idolatrous worship, the well-built structures he refers 
 to being doubtless of Roman origin. 
 
 Another consideration of great importance to us, 
 as we approach the history of the diocese, is the 
 great change, which was effected by the gradual 
 growth of the parochial system, in the form of the 
 endowment of the clergy. Up to the year 500 the 
 clergy appear to have lived in community, and the 
 endowments of the principal churches were divided 
 between them, the possessions of the Church being 
 held in common. The income from these possessions 
 was divided into three portions, that of the clergy, of 
 
 ^ Ingoberga, the mother of Queen Bertha, and widow of 
 Charibert, left her chief property in the same manner to the 
 churches of Tours and Le Mans. — (Gregor. Turon. Historia 
 Franc. 1. x. c. 31, and 1. ix. c. 26.) 
 
THE ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 17 
 
 the fabric, and of the poor ; but the proportions be- 
 tween them, equal in the beginning, became very un- 
 equal in the end, the first object almost absorbing 
 the two last.^ So undivided was the patrimony of 
 the churches originally, that their several properties 
 became designated as those of the saint to whom 
 they were dedicated ; that of Ravenna being called 
 from St. Apollinaris ; of Milan, from St. Ambrose ; of 
 Rome, from St. Peter. The local divisions of parishes 
 and the gradual growth of an independent jurisdic- 
 tion in them, led to a division of the endowment, 
 which, beginning in the country churches, was at last 
 carried on into the collegiate and capitular bodies 
 by the separation of their property, hitherto held in 
 common, into prcehendce ; a change which Lanfranc 
 introduced into England, and which had already 
 been matured in France. By this scheme separate 
 estates were attached not only to the several officers 
 of the monastery or capitular body, but to the dif- 
 ferent departments of conventual life — to the table 
 of the monks, their clothing, and other similar ob- 
 jects. The vast endowment of the Church of Can- 
 terbury was first divided between Lanfranc and the 
 monks of Christchurch, while the portion of the latter 
 was again divided according to the special needs of the 
 community, one manor being assigned to one object 
 of necessity and another to another, as we shall see 
 more fully when we approach the period of the great 
 Survey of Domesday. These preliminary considera- 
 tions, though the period to which they relate is, from 
 
 ^ Sarpi, ut supra. 
 
i8 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 tlie^ absence of documentary evidence, the obscurest 
 of our history, and only capable of illustration from 
 the incidental and reflected lights which fall upon it 
 from more distant lands, are yet necessary to the 
 clear apprehension of the facts which we meet with 
 during the Saxon period, v/hen Christianity w^as 
 re-established among us in a new form, and under 
 singularly altered conditions. The first chapter in 
 the actual history of the Diocese of Canterbury opens 
 upon us at this point, and to this we will now 
 proceed. 
 
PEDIGREE OF THE ROYAL FOUNDERS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 SAXON CHURCHES AND MONASTERIES OF KENT. 
 
 Hengist. 
 
 I. Ingunda. =11. Aregunda. 
 
 Oesc, or Clothaire = 
 
 Oisca. I 
 
 1 I — I 
 
 Eormenric. Charibert = Ingoherga, Chilperic 
 
 I King of I d. 
 
 1 Paris. I 
 
 ^thelberht = I. Berctha =11. Name 
 
 Audovera. 
 
 Theodebert 
 
 (Founder of 
 
 or ^thel- 
 
 unknown, 
 
 Christ 
 
 burga. 
 
 survived 
 
 Church and 
 
 ^thelberht. 
 
 St. Augus- 
 
 
 
 tine's M. 
 
 
 
 d. 6i6). 
 
 
 
 yEthelburga = St. -^Edwin, 
 
 (d. 647), 
 Foundress 
 of Mon. and 
 Nunnery of 
 Lyminge 
 (633). 
 
 Eanfled = 
 (Foundress 
 
 of N. of 
 Gilling, in 
 Yorkshire). 
 
 [^theldritha, 
 foundress of 
 Nunnery 
 of Ely, 
 was sister of 
 
 Sexburga 
 of Minster, 
 in Sheppy.] 
 
 King of 
 Northum- 
 berland. 
 
 Oswyni. 
 
 ^Eadbald 
 (Founder 
 of Mon. of 
 Dover.) 
 
 I. Widow 
 of^thel- 
 berht. 
 
 = II. Em.ma.; 
 
 Mildred Eormenred = Oslava. 
 (niece of 
 ^thelburga, 
 
 for whom 
 she founded 
 N. of Lyminge). 
 
 Eanswitha 
 (Foundress 
 of N. of 
 Folke- 
 stone). 
 
 Merewald, 
 King of 
 Mercia. 
 
 Eormen- 
 
 burga (or 
 Domneva), 
 (Foundress 
 
 of N. of 
 Minster, in 
 
 Thanet). 
 
 Earcon- 
 berht. 
 
 = Sexburga, 
 foundress of 
 N. of Min- 
 ster, in 
 Sheppy. 
 
 Mildred of 
 Minster, in 
 Thanet. 
 
 Ecgberht. 
 Founder of M. 
 of Reculver. 
 
 Clothaire, 
 or Holthaire. 
 
20 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE AND THE SAXON 
 PERIOD. 
 
 The period which elapsed between the Roman 
 occupation of Kent and the landing of St. Augustine 
 in Thanet belongs rather to the domain of tradition 
 and conjecture than to that of positive history. What- 
 ever occasional gleams of light fall upon the more 
 distant scenes of Roman conquest in Britain, here, at 
 least, there is almost total darkness. Insulated in a 
 manner from the rest of the country — for the great 
 Andred forest and the woods on the east of London 
 and Surrey, extending together from the sea to the 
 Thames, completed the line of separation, — it was shut 
 off from those great settlements which were so early 
 formed in the more central districts of England and 
 on the north of its river boundary. While the northern 
 kingdom had a resident historian in Bede, and the 
 western an illustrator (though hardly an historian) in 
 Gildas, Kent possessed no chronicler, and its earliest 
 history can only be vaguely conjectured from the 
 various relics which have from time to time been re- 
 covered from the ground, from its structural monu- 
 ments, which still take so conspicuous a place among 
 the antiquities of England, and, lastly, from its local 
 names, of which so many of purely British origin 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 21 
 
 ma}^ Still be recognised in its eastern districts. The 
 effects of those great events which influenced the 
 whole of the Roman Empire must have been here 
 first felt, and the description given by Gildas (and 
 transferred often in the very same words to the narra- 
 tive of Bede) of the persecution of Diocletian and the 
 revival of Christianity at its close ; of the introduction 
 of Arianism and the irruption of the Picts and Scots, 
 must have been (excepting in the last case, in which 
 the isolation of Kent gave it a partial relief) as true 
 of Kent as of the rest of Britain. It is difficult 
 perhaps to determine whether both the writers we* 
 have mentioned did not derive their narrative from 
 some common source, from which many passages, 
 which are word for word the same, may have been 
 taken, the rest being filled up independently. To 
 this source, possibly, the hisioria ecdesiastica men- 
 tioned by Gildas may refer.^ In any case, Kent must 
 be held to be included in their descriptions, and to 
 have shared in that great revival of Christianity 
 after the persecution of Diocletian to which the 
 building of the ancient church at Dover has been 
 attributed. The words of Gildas and Bede which 
 
 * There is a singular discrepancy in one place between the 
 two writers, as will be seen by this collation : — 
 
 Gildas. — '*Jussitconstruere Bede. — *'At insularimurum 
 inter maria murum .... quia quern jussi fuerant, non tarn 
 vulgo irrationabili absque rec- lapidibus quam cespitibus con- 
 tore factus non tarn lapidibus struentes .... ad nihil utilem 
 quam cespitibus non profuit." statuunt. " 
 
 Bede evidently misunderstood his predecessor, as the Roman 
 wall itself most clearly proves. 
 
22 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 are here identical run thus : They rebuild the 
 churches levelled to the ground, they found, build, 
 perfect, and unfold everywhere as banners of victory, 
 the Basilicas of martyrs, they celebrate the feast- 
 days, they perform the sacred rites with pure heart 
 and mouth. 
 
 Of the effects of the Arian controversy in Kent, 
 to which both Gildas and Bede pass on, we know 
 even less than of the revival of Christianity after the 
 death of Diocletian. Forming as it did a mere out- 
 lying portion of the bishopric of London, and hence 
 having no mention in the subscriptions to the councils 
 of Aries or Ariminum, the state of the present diocese 
 of Canterbury in this earliest period must be left to 
 conjecture. One remarkable fact must appear to the 
 reader of our Church historians, viz., that in the great 
 conflict between the Celtic and Saxon Christians in 
 regard to the keeping of Easter and the difference 
 between the Roman and Oriental ritual, the adherents 
 of Christianity in Kent, who must have been numerous 
 even then, appear to have taken no part. A change 
 which in the north and centre of England, and above 
 all in Wales, occasioned so violent a warfare, here 
 seems to have been regarded with comparative in- 
 difference. It cannot be supposed that Christianity 
 was altogether extinct in the scene of its earliest plan- 
 tation in Britain, or that it was in a state of persecution 
 wherever it had survived, for the perfect toleration 
 which ^thelberht gave to all his subjects in regard to 
 those who hesitated to receive the new religion must 
 have been granted to all who differed with him in the 
 retention of the older one. This ready acquiescence in 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 23 
 
 the Roman forms must, I think, rather be attributed: 
 to that devotion to Imperial Rome as the centre of 
 government which was so easily transferred to the 
 Bishops of Rome as its spiritual representatives. The 
 unfortunate Britons had appealed in vain to the failing 
 power of Rome as a civil power; they would be there- 
 fore led to regard the revival of that power in a 
 spiritual form as their best protection against their 
 Saxon conquerors, as it had been anciently against 
 their more distant invaders. But had any been even 
 disposed to take part with the adversaries of the 
 Roman rite, the influence of the Saxon converts, 
 whose absolute devotion to Rome is testified in all 
 the charters of their kings, and who received as a 
 part of the Gospel itself the popular interpretation 
 which had been assigned to the passage conveying 
 the so-called " Petrine Privilege," would have pre- 
 vented any effectual resistance.^ It was left for a 
 later and more enlightened age to remove the veil 
 which centuries of exegetical ignorance had drawn 
 over this assumption of an imperial authority in the 
 spiritual household, and the theses of Wyclif and the 
 protest of Bishop Hallam of Salisbury, at Constance, 
 were among the first utterances which broke the spell 
 of ages. Rome herself, as we shall see presently, 
 
 * Recent Roman Catholic writers have drawn unfavourable 
 contrasts between the simple devotion which the Anglo-Saxon 
 Church exhibited towards the Papacy and the vigorous inde- 
 pendence asserted by its Norman successor. The real contrast 
 is, however, between the Rome of Gregory the Great and the 
 Rome of Hildebrand — the Rome of Augustine's age and the 
 Rome of the day of Lanfranc. , ' 
 
24 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 brought about this great deliverance by the conflict 
 she created in the Church between the regular and 
 secular clergy, between the ordinary jurisdiction and 
 that which a Romana urbe direda est^ 
 
 But we pass on to the consideration of the circum- 
 stances under which the direct and exclusive influence 
 of the see of Rome was first introduced into Kent, a 
 subject which involves the narrative of the conversion 
 of England, a narrative so w^ell known in its results, 
 but perhaps too little regarded in the light of its 
 origin and causes. It must be remembered that when 
 Christianity was accepted by y^thelberht and his court, 
 the Kentish kingdom founded by his ancestors was 
 already in the first stage of its decadence. His 
 alHance with the daughter of Charibert, king of Paris, 
 and that of his son with another Gallic princess, wxre 
 successive attempts to strengthen the failing dynasty 
 by means of external ties. The same motive we may 
 discern in the subsequent marriage of ^thelburga 
 with the Northumbrian ^adwin. Indeed, when the 
 religious gloss of Bede's narrative of the conversion 
 of England is removed, we are led to the conclusion 
 that political necessities had as much influence in 
 bringing about this great change as religious convic- 
 tions, and that the material aid of France, though 
 the powerful Queen Brunichildis, the sister-in-law of 
 Charibert, was one at least of the motives which led 
 ^thelberht to choose a foreign bride, and afterwards 
 to accept her religion. To this extraordinary woman, 
 whose life is so beautiful in its beginning and so 
 
 * Chart. Anglos, c. xxx. an. 689. 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 25 
 
 repulsive in its close, St. Gregory the Great attributes 
 a large share in the conversion of England. ^ Bertha 
 (or ^thelburga, for this latter is her true name) had 
 been brought up in the greatest seclusion by her 
 saintly mother Ingoberga,^ whose name indicates so 
 clearly her Scandinavian origin.^ Deserted by Chari- 
 bert who, in defiance of his marriage vows, had formed 
 an alliance successively with two of her attendants, 
 Marcovefa and Merofleda, Ingoberga lived in re- 
 tirement at Le Mans, where in her devoted friend 
 and counsellor, St. Gregory of Tours, she found her 
 greatest comfort. It was from this scene of the 
 highest Christian life that her only daughter who had 
 shared her seclusion and inherited her faith was 
 called to reign over a heathen kingdom, encouraged, 
 doubtless, by her mother and aunt, as well as by St. 
 Gregory himself, to introduce Christianity among her 
 new subjects, in the observation of which she had the 
 fullest freedom. 
 
 The history of this great work, for which her 
 example and influence so well prepared the way, has 
 been too often and too well told to need any 
 repetition here. It belongs, indeed, rather to the 
 history of the country than to that of the mere diocese 
 which formed its scene. But there is some reason to 
 believe that the description of Bede from which every 
 subsequent picture of it is derived, received not a 
 
 ^ Greg. M. Epp. 1. ix. ; Indict, iv. Ep. 56. 
 ^ Greg. Turon. ''Hist. Franc.'* 1. iv. c. 26, and 1. ix. c. 26. 
 ^ It will be remembered as, in a slightly modified form, the 
 name of the heroine, Ingeborg, in the " Frithiof's Saga." 
 
26 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 little filling up and colouring, either from his own 
 hand or from that of his authority on all points of 
 Kentish history, the abbot Albinus, of St. Augustine's. 
 The ignorance of the king of the nature and doctrines 
 of Christianity could not possibly have been so pro- 
 found as it is described to be ; for the relations 
 between France and England were too close aad 
 intimate, and the residence of English females in 
 continental convents, which Bede himself describes, 
 too early and frequent, to make such ignorance 
 possible ; to say nothing of the knowledge which 
 must have been acquired through Bertha herself 
 and her chaplain, Luidhart. In any case, however, 
 the great and good work was crowned with complete 
 success, and the spirit of Christianity was no less 
 triumphant than the doctrine. For the gentle piety 
 of Bertha and the wise toleration of ^thelberht 
 presented such a picture of primitive Christianity as 
 has never perhaps been altogether reproduced in our 
 land. 
 
 The peculiarity of the position of the Kentish 
 kingdom, and its moderate extent, pointed it out as 
 fitted no less for an ecclesiastical than a political 
 organization, and thus the diocese of Canterbury 
 (then including also that of Rochester) was consti- 
 tuted. But we must not forget that but a very small 
 portion of this large tract of country was then really 
 settled. The great Andred forest covered the 
 larger portion of West Kent, and spurs from this 
 vast tract of woodland extended irregularly towards 
 the Roman road from Canterbury to Lymne,— not 
 only the " Weald of Kent," but the names of villages 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 27 
 
 much farther west giving evidence of their earlier 
 state. The great woods, now represented by the 
 Blean, spread beyond Canterbury to the north, and 
 dense woods appear to have fringed the borders of 
 Romney Marsh (then only partially redeemed from 
 the sea), extending to Lydd and the borders of 
 Sussex. These are clearly indicated in several of the 
 earliest of the Saxon charters, and lead us to see how 
 slow and gradual was the settlement of the country 
 in its ecclesiastical aspect, and that the process of 
 cultivating the land and opening up the forests 
 necessarily retarded the progress of the Church in its 
 new inheritance. The Domesday Survey of Kent 
 shows how little of the now most populous district of 
 the country, that of west, and especially south-west 
 Kent, had been even then occupied, either civilly or 
 ecclesiastically, and the recently-published History 
 of the Weald of Kent," by Mr. Furley, shows how 
 late was the colonization of this vast tract of woodland 
 in cornparison with the settlement of East Kent, that 
 open country" which gave name to the county when 
 first discovered by the Romans. ^ The reduction of 
 the vast forests which covered the western district, so 
 as to bring about their occupation for purposes of 
 husbandry, was very slow and gradual, and the 
 spiritual followed the temporal settlement. The 
 process by which this reclamation of land, both for 
 the Church and the State, was carried on was by 
 attaching " dennes," or wooded allotments, in the 
 
 ^ Caint " is still the word for an open country " in modern 
 Welsh. 
 
28 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Weald of Kent to the grants of land in East Kent, 
 which had been given to the Church by the Saxon 
 kings or nobles, and which are represented in the 
 aggregate by the great ecclesiastical manors described 
 in Domesday. To these were added also large tracts 
 of land in Romney Marsh, and other similar districts, 
 for the pasture of sheep, which led to the recovery 
 and protection of the marshes from the inroads of 
 the sea, and to the formation of parishes and the 
 foundation of churches in places hitherto unin- 
 habitable. The clearance of that portion of the 
 great forest which skirted the marsh and the sea was 
 effected by the grants of waggon-loads of wood in the 
 Andred," for the purpose of carrying on the prepa- 
 ration of salt, and in this manner both the habitable 
 part of the county became extended, and the diocese 
 assumed its present proportions, no longer being, as 
 it was at first, a mere geographical expression," but 
 a " diocese " in its truest meaning. But in order to 
 see how this great change was brought about, we 
 must fall back on that element in the history of the 
 conversion of England which is ever the least con- 
 sidered, though it was the more important and 
 influential than any other, the monastic system, 
 which Augustine, rather monk than archbishop, 
 adopted as the very ground-plan of all his work. 
 We should do well to bear in mind the fact that it 
 is not to Canterbury as the seat of the episcopate, 
 or even of the primacy, that the conversion of the 
 diocese is to be assigned,^ but to Canterbury as the 
 
 ^ In the case of Tours the village church appears to have 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 29 
 
 scene of the two most powerful and richly-endowed 
 monasteries in Kent; and to the great and then 
 almost co-ordinate foundations of Dover, Lyminge, 
 Folkestone, Minster in Sheppy, Minster in Thanet, 
 and Reculver, all founded within the first century of 
 the establishment of Christianity in England. The 
 Cathedral of Canterbury is one of the " new founda- 
 tion " — that is, was created out of the monastery 
 (afterwards more often termed the priory) of Christ 
 Church, one of the two grand institutions which 
 Augustine had established through the concessions of 
 ^thelberht in his principal city. Though the estates 
 of the archbishops and the monks appear in a sepa- 
 rate form in Domesday, the fee-simple of them was 
 held by both in common : nor could the archbishops 
 make any important change even in regard to the 
 manors specially assigned to them without the per- 
 mission and concurrence of the chapter, as appears in 
 the day of the successive surrenders of the principal 
 manors to the Crown by Cranmer, in which the con- 
 firmation of the chapter was uniformly given,i and, 
 still more remarkably, in the decree by which Arch- 
 been founded through the influence of the successive bishops 
 and the secular clergy — as Gregory of Tours indicates (I. x. 
 c. 31). In Kent it was the regular and not the secular clergy 
 who carried the preaching of Christianity into the rural districts 
 (see Bede, 1. iii. cc. 3, 5). 
 
 ^ In the surrender of the church of Lyminge by Cranmer to 
 Henry VIII., of which the original is in the possession of the 
 writer, the concurrence of the then newly-formed chapter is 
 •given in a formal manner with their seal attached. Yet this 
 was one of the " separate estates " of the archbishops from the 
 time of Lan franc. 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 bishop Courtenay sanctioned the demoHtion of several 
 of his manor-houses in order to build the grand baro- 
 nial residence of Saltwood.^ From these proofs of 
 the power of the monastery, even in its later history, 
 we fall back upon the influence exercised by the 
 system of which it formed a part, upon the conver- 
 sion of Kent, and the formation and settlement of 
 the diocese, which, until the creation of that ot 
 Rochester, included the entire county. 
 
 The founder of the monastic system in the West, as 
 is well known, was Benedict of Nursia, who by a rule 
 which Gregory the Great describes as discretione 
 prcEcipuain ser7none luculentam^^^ so mitigated the 
 severity of the monastic laws of St. Basil as to adapt 
 them to the different character of the climate, position, 
 and social circumstances of the people of the West. 
 He founded in 5 1 5 the monastery of Montecassino, 
 and in 527 that of Subiaco. " Literature, science, 
 agriculture, in a word, the entire civilization of Europe 
 owe to the Benedictine monks everlasting gratitude."^ 
 English Protestants will not fail to echo these words 
 of the recent ultramontane writer, for they represent 
 a great historical truth, and one which the history of 
 the diocese of Canterbury, perhaps, more than any 
 other has witnessed and recorded up to the days of 
 the Reformation.^' Up to the year 960, when the 
 
 ^ See the Register of Abp. Courtenay. 
 2 Dial. i. 2, c. 36. 
 
 ^ Nardi, *'EIementi di diritto Ecclesiastico," torn. ii. p. 3. 
 
 ^ While agriculture in all its branches received from the 
 monks of Europe its greatest impulse, the cultivation of the 
 vine, of which there are so many illustrations in Domesday, 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 3 1 
 
 deplorable ninth and tenth centuries had corrupted 
 every part of Christendom, and the ancient rule of 
 St. Benedict was found unequal to carry out the 
 objects of its first institution, no one had ventured to 
 introduce any change in so venerable a code. A 
 number of reformations of the order began after this 
 periodj which at first assumed the form of " congre- 
 gations " of the order, and at last became proper and 
 distinctive orders, though still retaining the Benedic- 
 tine rule as their foundation.^ Such were the Cluniac 
 monks, whose name so often appears in English and 
 Scottish nomenclature, the Camaldules (1023), the 
 Cistercians (1098), the Bernardines (1153), and the 
 Carthusians (1084). These were the later branches 
 of the great Benedictine family, which, it will be 
 observed, retained during the whole of the Saxon 
 period its original and simpler form.^ Gregory the 
 
 would seem to have been introduced into England by the foreign 
 monks who had settled in our early monasteries. The vast 
 collection of fragments of pottery and the refuse of its manu- 
 facture which covers the site of the monastery of Lyminge, 
 proves that the monks of that place were actively engaged in 
 making the ruder kinds of vessels then in popular use. 
 
 * **The new Orders," observes Wessenberg ( ' * Grossen 
 Kirchenversammlungen, " torn. i. p. 347), "were themselves 
 mere attempts to reform the Benedictine Order when it had 
 degenerated." But instead of reforming they simply divided 
 the original order, for he adds, *'they had the injurious effect of 
 j)roducing a jealous disunion among the monastic orders, when 
 even in the beginning of the 13th century the new orders had , 
 become infected with the corruption of the old." 
 
 '■^ Nardi, torn. ii. p. 4, who cites Marrier et Querectanus, ^, 
 *'Biblioth. Cluniac." Paris, 1614 ; Mittarelli et Costadoni^V 
 D 2 
 
32 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Great was himself a member of the order,i as was also 
 Augustine ; and the bishops in England, including 
 those of Canterbury, assumed the monastic habit and 
 professed the Benedictine rule before their consecra- 
 tion."'^ Lanfranc drew up a special form of that rule 
 for his own church, and it was at the altar of St. 
 Benedict that Becket received his mortal wound. In 
 the Saxon period the archbishops were less regarded 
 in the light of prelates or heads of a secular clergy, 
 than as the priors and superiors of that grand foun- 
 dation which even yet is called throughout East 
 Kent " the great Church,'' and in which in process of 
 time many of the earlier monasteries, almost coeval 
 and coequal with it, were merged. As the great 
 centres from which the work of building up and 
 forming the diocese of Canterbury was carried on, 
 our attention is therefore first directed to the seven 
 greater monasteries in East Kent, by means of which 
 the evangelization of the entire country was effected. 
 The singular unity and connection between these (in 
 some cases even their property being held in common) 
 gave to the monastic system in Kent a missionary 
 influence which it is not easy for us to overestimate 
 in our consideration of the formation of the diocese. 
 " Founded as they were by the members of the same 
 family, belonging to the same religious order, and 
 springing from the same impulse of zeal, they present 
 
 " Annales Camaldul. Venet. 1755"; Miraeus, " Origines 
 Carthusian. Monaster, per orbem, Col. 1610." 
 
 ^ Luc. Dacherii Not. in Lanfranci Epp. p. 569 (Migne, torn, 
 cl. 569). 
 
 ^ Ibid. p. 571. 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 33 
 
 a marked contrast to the foundations of a later age, 
 which discover no such features of early and intimate 
 union/' ^ 
 
 Let us briefly describe these foundations in their 
 chronological order. We begin with the great monas- 
 tery of Christ Church, the foundation of Augustine 
 himself When Augustine, the first Archbishop 
 of Canterbury," are the words of Bede, assumed 
 the episcopal throne in that royal city, he recovered 
 therein, by the king's assistance, a church which, 
 as he was told, had been constructed by the original 
 labour of Roman believers. This church he con- 
 secrated in the name of the Saviour, our God and 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and there he established an habi- 
 tation for himself and all his successors. This 
 was that very church," writes Eadmer (or rather 
 Gervase, adopting his narrative), which had been 
 built by Romans (as Bede bears witness in his history), 
 and which was duly arranged in some parts in im.i- 
 tation of the Church of the Blessed Prince of the 
 Apostles, Peter." The knowledge which we possess 
 of the plan of the original basilica of St. Peter in 
 Rome enabled Professor Willis to verify exactly the 
 description given of its imitation at Canterbury. Like 
 most of the ancient basilicas, there was in both 
 churches not only an eastern apse, but a western one 
 
 ^ See my remarks, *' On the Connection between the Monas- 
 teries of Kent in the Saxon Period," in the " Arch. Cantiana," 
 vol. iii. p. 19. 
 
 2 Bed. "Ecc. Hist." 1. i. c. 33. 
 
 3 Prof. Willis, ''Hist, of C.C." pp. 9, 10. 
 
34 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 of very large diameter. This feature is also visible in 
 the foundations of the basilical church at Lyminge, 
 founded (as it is supposed) at about the beginning of 
 the fifth century. There were no transepts either in 
 the Roman church or its British representative at 
 Canterbury, the ancient basilical type, which was a 
 simple parallelogram, having been adhered to in 
 both. This church, as Professor Willis conjectures, ^ 
 was rather restored than rebuilt by Augustine, who, 
 acting under the advice of Pope Gregory even in 
 regard to heathen temples, would have naturally beert 
 specially conservative in his preservation of Christian 
 buildings. Added to and altered by several of the 
 Saxon archbishops (Odo, 940; Egilnoth, 1023), this 
 first basilica was utterly destroyed by fire in 1067, 
 which led to its rebuilding from the foundations by 
 Lanfranc (1070). 
 
 As, however, that calamitous event belongs to a 
 later period of our history, we will pass on to enu- 
 merate the successive stages of the endowment of 
 the monastery with those ample lands which are 
 represented to us in an aggregate form in the Domes- 
 day Survey, and in the contemporary schedule of the 
 manors belonging to it which is given by Somner. 
 This is a necessary preliminary to our consideration 
 of the formation of the diocese, inasmuch as the 
 foundation of the churches in the large tract which 
 was then bestowed upon the Church, and which 
 spreads itself throughout the country, followed neces- 
 sarily the preaching of the monks, who were the first 
 cultivators of the soil and builders of churches. ^* For 
 the monks," as Bede writes, " were the principal of 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 35 
 
 those who came to the work of preaching."^ Of their 
 work as church builders we have many remarkable 
 instances in later as well as earlier periods. The 
 monachi ccementarii, as Ivo of Chartres (a con- 
 temporary of Lanfranc) terms them, seem to have 
 acquired even then almost the form of a distinct 
 guild. 2 
 
 To follow up the stages of the endowment of Christ 
 Church and the great rival foundation of St. Peter 
 and St. Paul (St. Augustine's), through the course of 
 the Saxon charters, would need a larger space and a 
 greater degree of the reader's patience than can be 
 expected for a narrative so limited in its object as the 
 present. It will suffice, therefore, to give the sum of 
 the possessions of Christ Church as we find it in the 
 Domesday Survey, premising that the separation of 
 the lands between the archbishop and the monks, 
 introduced by Lanfranc, after the praebendal system 
 of Normandy, did not affect the integrity of the title 
 to the whole property as originally granted to the 
 monastery : — 
 
 In the city of Canterbury there were 1 2 burgesses, 
 and 32 mansurae,'' or dw^ellings, held by the clergy 
 of the town, rendering 355-. yearly, and a mill 
 of 5^. 
 
 The town of Sandwich (appropriated to the 
 clothing and table of the monks) was worth ;^5o 
 a year — 
 
 > "Hist. Eccl." 1. iii. cc. 3, 5. 
 
 ^ Ivonis Carnot. Ep. 266, '^ascivit quosdam monachos 
 csementarios " ; Goffridus Vindoc. in Ep. ad Ildebert. Ceno. 
 Mann. Ep., ** Johannem csementarium Ecclesise Nostroe." 
 
36 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 
 
 ;f 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 
 
 s. 
 
 
 Darenth equal 
 
 to i8 
 
 
 
 
 
 Burnes equal to 
 
 30 
 
 
 
 
 
 Otford 
 
 
 6o 
 
 
 
 
 
 (Bishopsburn) 
 
 
 
 
 Sund ridge 
 
 
 23 
 
 
 
 
 
 Charing , , 
 
 60 
 
 
 
 
 
 Bexley 
 
 
 30 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 Pluckley , , 
 
 20 
 
 
 
 
 
 Erith 
 
 
 21 
 
 
 
 
 
 Wingham 
 
 77 
 
 
 
 
 
 Mailing 
 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 
 
 Merstham , , 
 
 20 
 
 
 
 
 
 Northfleet 
 
 
 37 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 Aldington 
 
 122 
 
 
 
 
 
 Wrotham 
 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 
 
 St. Martin's 
 
 
 
 
 Maidstone 
 
 
 20 
 
 
 
 
 
 (Canterbury),, 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 
 
 Gillingham 
 
 5) 
 
 26 
 
 
 
 
 
 Lyminge 
 
 78 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 Reculver 
 
 J J 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 
 
 Newenden 
 
 18 
 
 
 
 
 
 Norton 
 
 '» 
 
 14 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 Northwood 
 
 17 
 
 
 
 
 
 Petham 
 
 ? > 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 
 
 Seasalter 
 
 20 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 Estursete 
 
 >> 
 
 49 
 
 
 
 
 
 Preston , , 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 
 
 (Westgate) 
 
 
 
 
 
 Chartham , , 
 
 30 
 
 
 
 
 
 Bolton 
 
 J5 
 
 30 
 
 16 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Held 
 
 BY THE Monks. 
 
 
 
 
 Orpington 
 
 
 28 
 
 
 
 
 
 Great Chart 
 
 27 
 
 
 
 
 
 Beckham 
 
 > > 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 
 
 Little Chart 
 
 8 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 liollingbourne 
 
 30 
 
 
 
 
 
 Welle 
 
 40 
 
 
 
 
 
 Meopham 
 
 
 18 
 
 
 
 
 
 Eastry , , 
 
 36 
 
 10 
 
 a 
 
 Farleigh 
 
 J 7 
 
 41 
 
 
 
 
 
 Adisham , , 
 
 46 16 
 
 
 
 Cliffe at Hoo 
 
 > 5 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 
 
 Wareborne , , 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 Monkton 
 
 >> 
 
 40 
 
 
 
 
 
 Appledon , , 
 
 16 
 
 17 
 
 
 
 Ickham 
 
 ? 
 
 32 
 
 
 
 
 
 Wye 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 
 
 Godmersham 
 
 J J 
 
 30 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The great abbey, dedicated to St. Peter and St.. 
 Paul, without the ancient walls of Canterbury, and 
 founded by St. Augustine so shortly after his first 
 work was accomplished, was hardly inferior in the ex- 
 tent of its endowment to its ancient and inveterate 
 rival. Its rent-roll fills nearly four columns of the 
 contracted pages of Domesday, and its growth from 
 age to age corresponded with that of the foundation 
 with which it had been placed in such dangerous 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 37 
 
 contiguity. Founded almost together (for Augus- 
 tine apparently had in view the separation of the 
 purely monastic part of his plan and the secular work 
 of the episcopate) the contention began even on the 
 point of their relative antiquity as well as on the 
 exemptions from ordinary jurisdiction to which the 
 Augustinians laid claim. One of the foundations of 
 this claim was laid in a charter of King Oswyn, in 
 689, granting certain lands ^ adjoining the ancient 
 park, or chace, in Lyminge, to the Abbot Adrian, of 
 St. Augustine's, *^ qui a Romana iirbe diredus est^^^ 
 But, as even Nardi affirms, monastic exemptions from 
 ordinary jurisdiction are of a comparatively recent 
 date, a fact which it will be necessary to bear in 
 mind in approaching that conflict between the regular 
 and secular clergy which developed itself so early in 
 this diocese. All monks remained at first subject to 
 the bishops, like the rest of the faithful. Eccle- 
 siastical laws (Cone. Chalced.) ordered and confirmed 
 by the civil power (Justinian, Nov. 67), enforced this 
 entire subjection, which, approved of by the Greeks 
 and Latins (Cone. Aurel. et Epaon.), was maintained 
 for a long period. In the Middle Ages, as the 
 monastic life gradually rose to a higher importance, 
 the Church and the State began to protect it by 
 granting it special privileges. Towards the year 1000 
 monks became free from the contributions due to the 
 parochial clergy and the bishops, but still continued 
 
 ^ The endowment amounted to 11,680 acres of land (see 
 Preface to Thomas de Elmham's '* Hist. Monast. St. Augustini," 
 p. iv.). 
 
 ^ *'Ch. Anglo.," XXX., Kemble, vol. i. p. 33. 
 
38 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 subject to the bishops." ..." Finally, new privileges 
 removed them effectually from their obedience to the 
 bishops, and placed them entirely under the Holy 
 See.'' This was called the exemptio plena, or totalis 
 emancipatio. The long struggle of the monks of St. 
 Augustine with those of Christ Church, and even with 
 the archbishops, arose out of this claim of exemption, 
 and the bitter controversies it awakened lasted in some 
 of their many phases until the very day of the Refor- 
 mation.^ But other monasteries had sprung up in the 
 meantime, scarcely less venerable in their antiquity, 
 and almost rivalling the two first foundations in the 
 rapidity of their earlier endowment. The melancholy 
 relapse of-^adbald into idolatry, after the death of 
 ^thelberht (6i6), and his marriage with his father's 
 widow, produced in its violent reaction, through 
 the remonstrances of Archbishop Laurence, the 
 successor of Augustine, a new harvest of endow- 
 ment for the Church, and the foundation of 
 the monastery of Dover, whose venerable church 
 was among the firstfruits of this profound repent- 
 ance. The endowment of the monastery does not 
 seem to have been considerable, though it shared 
 with Canterbury, Lyminge, and Folkestone, in the 
 
 * The earliest Papal grant exempting a monastery from all 
 episcopal control is believed to be that granted to the monks of 
 Fulda at the instance of St. Boniface in 751. On the lofty 
 pretensions of the monks of St. Augustine's and the spurious 
 documents by which they were supported, the reader is referred 
 to the Preface to the " Historia Monast. St. Augustini," sup- 
 posed to be by Thomas of Elmham, published in the Rolls " 
 series (Lond. 1858, Introd. pp. 7 and 28). 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 39 
 
 estate of the Duke Oswulf and his wife, Beornthrytha 
 — a gift which was confirmed in the Synod of Aclea 
 (Oakley?), in 844,^ whose acts are recited in one of 
 the most interesting of the charters of the x\nglo-Saxon 
 series. 
 
 The foundation of the monastery of Dover was 
 succeeded, in about 630, by the foundation of the 
 monastery and nunnery of Folkestone, of the remains 
 of which (destroyed as it was by the inroads of the 
 sea within the Saxon period) not a vestige has sur- 
 vived to our day. The foundations of an ancient 
 church in a field nearly adjoining the present railway 
 (junction) station, now unfortunately destroyed, might 
 possibly form a portion of the original building, while 
 the discovery of a Roman hypocaust, within a few 
 yards of it, indicated the remote antiquity of the site.^ 
 The dotation of this monastery, which appears to 
 have been annexed to Canterbury in 927,*^ occupies 
 seven of the earliest of the Saxon Charters. Its 
 founder was ^adbald, who estabhshed and endowed 
 it in behalf of his daughter, ^answitha, who became 
 its first abbess. Very little is known of its history, 
 though undoubtedly it became, with the neighbouring 
 monastery of Dover, the principal means of the 
 evangelization of that south-eastern portion of Kent 
 over which its lands extended. This and Lyminge 
 constituted the two. earliest nunneries ever founded in 
 England, whose object, according to Bede's account, 
 was to supply those educational advantages to females 
 
 ' **Ch. Anglo Sax." n. 256. 
 
 ^ See the " Arch. Cantiana," vol. x. p. 173. 
 
 ^ Cart. Anglo-Sax. n. iioo. 
 
40 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 in England which before could only be enjoyed by a 
 residence at one of the great convents which had been 
 so early established in France. The foundation of 
 the nunnery and monastery of Lyminge, the second 
 of those double foundations which, though now so 
 strictly forbidden, were in the earliest period so 
 characteristic a feature of the Benedictine system, 
 followed within three years. It carries up its origin to 
 the memorable year 633, in which v^thelburga, the 
 only daughter of ^thelberht and Berctha, returning 
 into Kent with Paulinus and a few faithful followers, 
 after the fatal battle of Heathfield, in which her hus- 
 band, ^adwin, the sainted Northumbrian king, had 
 perished, obtained from her brother ^adbald the gift 
 of the lands of Lyminge, formerly a royal residence, 
 and described by monastic writers as the villa," or 
 the " villa maxima de Lyminge." The relics of this 
 extensive building, which yet remain, were considered 
 by the members of the Archaeological Institute to re- 
 present a Roman residence, including a Christian 
 church, and to belong to the close of the fourth or 
 the beginning of the fifth century.^ The interest of this 
 site in its connection with the early Church history of 
 England, could scarcely be surpassed. The residence 
 of yEthelberht and Bertha — the scene of the early life 
 and widowhood of ^thelburga — the place in which 
 her daughter Eanfled was brought up — the starting- 
 point of the two great missions by which the conver- 
 sion of the whole of northern England was brought 
 about ; from which, first Paulinus, and then the Pres- 
 
 ' See the **Arch. Cant." vol. ix. p. 205. 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 4 1 
 
 byter Romanus went forth, as chaplains of ^thel- 
 burga and Eanfled, as Luithard had been of Berctha 
 in a still earlier day — few ecclesiastical sites could 
 possess memories of such singular interest as I>y- 
 minge — which, as the burial-place of ^thelburga (or 
 as she was afterwards called ^adburg),^ and, as the 
 locus beatissimt^ Vu^ginis Marice^^ of the Saxon 
 Charters, retained, during the whole of this period, the 
 reputation of -a peculiar sanctity. But it is chiefly to 
 the influence of this double foundation on the forma- 
 tion of the diocese that our attention is now directed. 
 The endowment of the monastery, which is recorded 
 in no less than fourteen charters of the earliest period, 
 ranging from 689 to 965, conveyed a large district of 
 southern and south-western Kent to the monks, and 
 to them, doubtless, the foundation of the principal of 
 its churches is to be attributed. The Presbyter 
 Romanus, to whom a large tract of land in Romney 
 Marsh,^ covering the site of the present town and 
 extending to the borders of Sussex, had been granted 
 in the middle of the seventh century, accompanied 
 Eanfled to the Synod of Whitby (or Stroneshalch), 
 where the Roman period for keeping Easter was 
 finally settled, and where he became a strenuous advo- 
 cate for the Roman observance. The lands granted 
 him were bestowed by a subsequent charter (no. 86, 
 an. 740) on the Monastery of Lyminge ; but his name 
 remains in that of the ancient Cinque-Port, still the 
 
 ' V. Goscelin, " Contra inanes B. Mildrethae usurpatores." 
 ^ This district is described in the Charter of Wihtraed in 700 
 as Rumcning-seta (the settlement of Romanus). 
 
42 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 principal settlement in "the Marsh." i To these first 
 foundations were added, towards the close of the 
 same century, the monastery, or rather nunnery, of 
 Minster, in Sheppy, the foundation of Sexburga, the 
 wife of Earconberht, and niece by marriage of ^thel- 
 burga ; and somewhat later the famous nunnery of 
 Minster, in Thanet, founded by Eormenburga, the 
 grand-niece of ^thelburga, though chiefly celebrated 
 as the scene of the wonder-working life of her 
 daughter, St. Mildred. The identity of her name, 
 with that of an. earlier Mildred, the niece of /Ethel- 
 burga, ^ and inmate of the Nunnery of Lyminge, led 
 to the long controversy between the monks of St. Au- 
 gustine and those of St. Gregory, which lasted from 
 the death of Lanfranc until the dawn of the Re- 
 formation.^ 
 
 The surrender to tKe Church of almost the last of 
 the residences of the Kentish kings, the Palace of 
 
 * Previously it had no distinctive title, being merely termed 
 '* the Marsh," and its inhabitants * * merscwara " men (see the 
 Saxon Charters and Chronicle, passim). 
 
 ^ Lyminge is said by the monkish historians to have been 
 
 founded by ^thelburga, in favour of her niece Mildred.'* 
 There can be little question that as no niece is to be found in 
 the legitimate pedigree, Mildred was the daughter of that first 
 and fatal marriage of ^adbald which the Church had set aside, 
 and that the king in the gift of Lyminge made provision not 
 only for his sister but for this even more unfortunate daughter 
 
 Arch. Cant." vol. iii. p. 27). 
 
 ^ See Goscelinus (1095) "Contra inanes B. Mildrethoe Usur- 
 patores " (in MSS. Cotton, et Harleian, in Mus. Brit.; see 
 also the paper " On St. Mary's Minster and St. Mildred" in 
 the "Arch. Cant." vol. xii. p. 177). 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 43 
 
 Reculver, a Roman foundation of the highest anti- 
 quity and interest, and its transformation into a mo- 
 nastery, in 669, completed the unexampled sacrifices 
 which the descendants of the first convert had made 
 to the new faith. This also received from time to 
 time a considerable endowment, and is mentioned in 
 several of the Saxon charters. For somewhat more 
 than a century the progress of the establishment of 
 Christianity in Kent met with little or very slight 
 obstruction. The building of churches and temples 
 for Christian worship succeeded the missionary work 
 and the temporary stations of the monks ; and al- 
 though the evidence of the foundation of secular 
 churches (for they could be hardly yet called paro- 
 chial) during the earliest period is necessarily very 
 limited and imperfect, we know that such churches 
 were even then existing in Thanet, through the in- 
 fluence of the great nunnery of Minster, in South 
 Kent, through the agency of the monastery of Lym- 
 inge, and on the estates of the other religious houses, 
 every one of which formed the centre of those church- 
 building operations which necessarily followed the 
 evangelization of the county.^ It is of course dif- 
 ficult, from the absence of topographical informa- 
 tion, which fails so completely at this period, and is 
 only preserved (as in the Saxon charters) in con- 
 nection with secular and territorial boundaries, to 
 
 * In the coiu'se of the ravages of the Danes, we find that 
 they spared these secular churches ; and the ancient chapelries 
 attached to the churches of Minster and Lyminge, as well as to 
 other principal churches of the district, indicate the gradual 
 formation of the parochial system round its first centres. 
 
44 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 determine how many of the churches which are indi- 
 cated in Domesday to have existed in the days of 
 the Confessor (for very few could have been added 
 by Lanfranc, however diHgently he may have assisted 
 in their restoration), belong to the seventh or eighth 
 centuries. The law of King Edmund, in 944, which 
 required the bishop and the king to restore the 
 houses of God on their respective domains,^ a law 
 which evidently had respect to the ruin occasioned 
 by the Danish invasions, which had led to the sup- 
 pression of some of the earliest monasteries, and 
 their transfer to the archbishops or to the Crown, 
 leads to the belief that many churches had been 
 built at the earliest period in Kent, though the por- 
 tion of it now known as the weald, and a consi- 
 derable part of the marsh, must have been yet 
 unoccupied. The Danish ravages, which began in 
 787, have destroyed almost every direct evidence in 
 regard to the previous state of the diocese and its 
 earliest churches ; but the fragments of Roman and 
 Saxon building which are found from time to time in 
 churches where they might be least expected, lead 
 at least to the supposition that the first great impulse 
 in diocesan church-building was more fruitful in its 
 results than it is generally believed to have been.^ 
 
 " It is probable," observes Mr. Roach Smith, ^^that 
 many of our old churches are of Saxon origin, al- 
 though in consequence of enlargements and repara- 
 
 * Spelman, Concilia," torn. i. pp. 421, 424. 
 
 2 Even in the walls of the church of Frittenden, within the 
 limits of the weald of Kent, lumps of Roman concrete were 
 found during its recent restoration. 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 45 
 
 tions, only a very few can be referred to with masonry 
 positively assignable to so early a period. That many 
 occupy the sites of Roman buildings is demonstrated 
 from the intermixture, among other materials, of 
 stone and mortar that had previously been used in 
 Roman structures. A long list of such churches 
 could easily be enumerated." ^ Passing away from 
 the consideration of this early period, which rather 
 presents to us problems than facts — problems which 
 can only be solved by the careful scrutiny of the 
 structural remains still existing, assisted by a more 
 perfect knowledge of the criteria of Saxon building 
 than we even now possess, we arrive at one of the 
 most important epochs in the first part of our history 
 — that of the Danish invasions, or rather raids — for 
 they seldom assumed the proportions of a carefully- 
 projected invasion. The first landing of these pira- 
 tical adventurers in England is assigned by Florence 
 of Worcester to the year 787. The chronological 
 system (adopted by Kemble), of Simeon of Durham, 
 however, would place it two years later. From this 
 year till the accession of Knut, in 10 17, a period of 
 nearly a hundred and thirty years, they continued at 
 intervals to make descents upon the coasts of Kent, 
 carrying their ravages from sea to sea, and directing 
 their principal attacks upon the religious houses, the 
 members of which seem ever to have offered them 
 the most organized though unsuccessful resistance, 
 and to have been regarded by them with the most 
 special and determined hostility. On this subject I 
 
 ' " Lyminge in Kent," Collectan. vol, v. p. 185. 
 E 
 
46 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 have observed elsewhere,^ that the "exclusive attention 
 we have given to our English chroniclers, almost 
 always monks, or at least identified in interest with 
 monastic foundations, has led us to form a very 
 inaccurate and one-sided opinion on the nature and 
 tendency of these piratical raids. It is always as- 
 sumed by these chroniclers, and too readily admitted 
 by their copyists of a later day, that the Danes were 
 heathens as well as barbarians, and the most virulent 
 haters and persecutors of Christianity in all its forms. 
 On the other hand, the Danish writers maintain that 
 they were the converters of East Anglia, and the in- 
 troducers of a purer form of Christianity than had 
 hitherto been propagated in England. Those who 
 imagine the Danes, at least of the later Anglo-Saxon 
 period, to have been idolaters, should remember that 
 the conversion of the whole of Denmark to Chris- 
 tianity took place in 858, and that in 880 the Danes 
 are asserted by their ancient chroniclers to have in- 
 troduced Christianity into East Anglia on the occa- 
 sion of their re-conquest of that kingdom. Anscha- 
 rius, bishop of Hamburg, had spread Christianity in 
 Denmark in the beginning of the ninth century, and 
 we are told by the Saxon historian, Albert Krantz, 
 that it was handed down from father to son among 
 the common people, even in the days when it suffered 
 persecution from the rulers. The conduct of the 
 Danes at Minster in Thanet, seems to me to esta- 
 blish the fact that it was not against the religion but 
 the religious orders, on account of their implacable 
 
 ^ ''Arch. Cant." vol. xii. p. 188. 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 
 
 47 
 
 enmity to the Danish settlers, that their hostiUty was 
 directed ; for when they utterly destroyed the con- 
 ventual buildings at Minster, they spared the chapels 
 of St. Mary, and St. Peter and St. Paul" — which were 
 the places of parochial worship ^ — "and in the battle 
 which is recorded as having occurred at Lyminge, where 
 the monks gave them a most vigorous and partially 
 successful resistance, the only one of their number 
 who is said to have escaped was the secular priest of 
 the place — an incredible statement, unless his life 
 had been actually spared by the enemy." The whole 
 of these invasions look like an anticipation of the 
 Bohemian warfare in the Hussite period, which was a 
 crusade against the monastic orders by those who 
 professed a simpler form of Christianity, and regarded 
 them as carrying on an organized conspiracy against 
 
 their rights and even existence as a nation 
 
 " The mythical statements of the monks, in regard 
 to the first piratical invasion of the Northmen, might 
 well lead us to receive with caution their descriptions 
 of the events of this period. The story of Hyngwar 
 and Hubba, and their descent from a bear, must pre- 
 pare us for narratives scarcely less mythical." But 
 whatever character we may assign to these piratical 
 
 * The tower of the church of Ospringe in North Kent was 
 by some supposed to be actually a Danish building, by which 
 it was probably meant a building of the time of Knut. It was 
 of flints and of a circular form, a kind of building very common 
 in Norfolk, but almost without another example in Kent. It 
 fell down in 1695, having been fatally shaken by the bell-ringing 
 to celebrate the return of William III. from the campaign in 
 Flanders — (Ducarel's Repertory of the Endowments of Vicar- 
 ages in the Diocese of Canterbury," p. 135). 
 
 E 2 
 
48 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 attacks or to their leaders, their immediate results to 
 the ecclesiastical interests of the diocese were most 
 fatal and irreparable. Everyone of those great cen- 
 tres from which religious instruction had gone forth 
 to the yet unsettled districts of the county was de- 
 stroyed in sad succession. The suppression of the 
 nunneries of Folkestone and Lyminge, and the in- 
 corporation of the monasteries connected with them^ 
 with the great foundation of Christ Church, and 
 the total destruction of the abbey and nunnery of 
 St. Mildred in Thanet, and St. Sexburga in Sheppy — 
 these were among the firstfruits of the Danish inroads ; 
 and though in the end the Church was strengthened by 
 the process of centralization which was thus effected, 
 and which afterwards gave so vast an endowment to 
 the archbishops, it was long, indeed, and not until 
 the accession of Knut, that it in any degree recovered 
 from the shock of the Danish invasions. While the 
 endowments of Lyminge, Folkestone, Dover, and 
 Reculver thus passed to the " Great Church,^' those 
 of Minster in Thanet devolved, by the gift of Knut 
 himself, to the rival foundation of St. Augustine's. 
 This centralization of the monastic system is gene- 
 rally believed to have been brought about by Dun- 
 stan, whose zeal in the cause of monachism, and in 
 the building and restoration of churches is celebrated 
 by all the chroniclers of this period.^ Immense 
 power was given to the archbishopric by this incor- 
 
 * " Tu mihi Pater Dunstane, tumihi de construendis Monas- 
 teriis, de Ecclesiis aedificandis consilium salubre dedisti 
 (Oratio Regis Edgari, ap. Spelman, torn. 1. p. 478). 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 49 
 
 poration of the lesser into the greater houses, while 
 greater force and virulence were given to the rivalry 
 between the monasteries of Christ Church and St. 
 Augustine's, the latter of which received so rich an 
 income in the possession of the ruined nunnery of 
 Minster, in Thanet.^ The results of the Danish in- 
 vasions to the actual fabrics of the churches of Kent 
 cannot but appear to the careful inquirer to have 
 been much less serious than they are described to 
 have been by the monkish historians. Except where 
 they were built of wood, or any perishable material, 
 the stay of the piratical hordes, in every one of the 
 scenes of their attack, was too brief to enable them 
 to do more than pillage and set fire to the churches ; 
 and where the latter were built of stone, which must 
 have been the case wherever that material abounded, 
 they could not have been so completely destroyed a? 
 the popular histories and legends describe them to 
 have been. It is not therefore improbable that many 
 relics of actual Saxon work remain in the churches of 
 Kent, according to the suggestion of Roach Smith, 
 hidden in many cases by later work, and probably 
 refaced, as is the case in the work of Lanfranc at 
 Caen. 
 
 But the history of the introduction of Christianity 
 into Kent and its earlier fortunes would be but im- 
 perfectly seen were we not to inquire into those local 
 and social conditions which rendered its reception so 
 
 * The Monastery of Lyminge '*cum omnibus terris et con- 
 suetudinibus ejus" was incorporated with Christ Church in 965, 
 Folkestone in 927, Reculver in 949 ; while Minster, in Thanet, 
 was bestowed on St. Augustine's by Knut in 1025. 
 
so 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 much easier and its establishment so much less inter- 
 rupted than they were in other parts of the Hept- 
 archy. To one feature of the Roman period we 
 have already adverted, viz., the comparative freedom 
 from warfare and political disturbance which the 
 Kentish kingdom is proved, by the very absence of 
 those military inscriptions so often found in other 
 parts of England, to have enjoyed. Its population^ 
 recruited not only from the Roman settlers but from 
 the colonists of the neighbouring coasts of France 
 and Belgium, seem to have adapted themselves to the 
 settled forms of Roman law and order, and this must 
 have led to a degree of religious toleration most fa- 
 vourable to the cause of the Christian missionaries. 
 The faith of the conquered Britons and its sanguinary 
 rites were little likely to present an obstacle to the 
 new faith; while the hold of the Saxon idolatry had- 
 been seriously weakened by the very loss of those 
 special objects which had awakened it, the sacred 
 groves, trees, and streams of their native country. 
 Dollinger has well observed that " the religion of 
 the ancient German peoples had a local character^ 
 and was identified with special sacred towns, springs, 
 groves, and streams. By their wanderings from their 
 former " gauen ^ and their settlement in foreign 
 lands their mode of religion lost its hold, and its 
 foundation, and their dependence upon it was already 
 greatly weakened, so that those German tribes were 
 much more accessible to the Christian faith than they 
 would have been had they remained in their original 
 
 * The was properly the **land held m common 
 
 under the tribal system of the Teutonic races. 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 5 1 
 
 settlements. This, in some measure, accounts for the 
 perseverance with which the Saxons, who remained 
 fixed in their older home, adhered to their ancient 
 idolatry and opposed Christianity.'' ^ 
 
 But the institutions and traditions of Roman law 
 and order, which the introduction of the Teutonic 
 " tribal'' or family system appears but little to have 
 disturbed, contributed no less towards this great 
 result. Kemble has justly remarked that " through- 
 out Europe the documentary dispositions of the Latins 
 prevailed. The conquerors readily adopted such por- 
 tions of the law of the conquered as applied to those 
 new relations of life which the conquest itself had 
 created, and those social wants which had not been 
 provided for in their own unwritten customary law. 
 The formal study of the Roman law still survived in 
 the seventh century." He proceeds to show that the 
 clergy everywhere introduced and fostered the in- 
 fluence of the Roman law, which was moreover the 
 code of the orthodox, the German invaders being for 
 the most part tainted with semi-Arian, if not Arian 
 heresy." ^ 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon charters, even of the seventh 
 century, bear testimony to the ease and rapidity with 
 which the habits of the people of Kent became sub- 
 ject to all the civilizing influences of the Roman law, 
 and probably the singular success and almost unex- 
 ampled endowment of the monasteries, arose greatly 
 from their resemblance to the tribal system of the 
 
 * Dollinger, Geschichte der Christl. Kirche," b. i. abth. ii. 
 pp. 139-140. 
 
 2 Kemble, "Cod. Dipl. ^vi. Sax." Intrcd. p. 7. 
 
52 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Saxons, and the idea they presented of land held in 
 community. Yet with all these facilities for the re- 
 ception of Christianity, we must not too hastily con- 
 clude that its success was either complete or immediate 
 during the earlier period of its history in Kent. 
 Though exempted from those fatal reverses which it 
 experienced in the west and north of England, its 
 progress was gradual, and sometimes interrupted by 
 the relapses of some of its highest converts into 
 idolatry. There is reason to believe that the worship 
 of Thor and Woden survived in parts of the county 
 — the Thunor legend in Thanet, and the names of 
 Woodesborough and Cold Friday, near Sandwich, 
 still preserving the memories of Thor, Woden, and 
 Freia, as is the case in the remoter parts of England, 
 which Christianity less early penetrated. 
 
 It cannot but be further observed, that the form in 
 which Christianity was first exhibited to the people of 
 Kent, and the singular beauty and simplicity in which 
 it was placed before them, contributed more than any 
 other circumstance to its success. Without entering 
 upon any subject of controversy, or raising any need- 
 less questions on the relative claims of the Celtic or 
 Roman phases of the same faith and ritual, we cannot 
 pass over an element of such vast importance in the 
 history of the diocese and of its religious and social 
 development. 
 
 We have already noted the singular absence in the 
 Kentish kingdom of the controversies on the keeping 
 of Easter, and on the other subjects of unreasonable 
 division by which the Northumbrian Church was so 
 early distracted. The Church in Kent had no con- 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 
 
 53 
 
 flicting traditions of this kind, inasmuch as it regarded 
 Rome as its sole model, and the reference of every 
 subject of difficulty to Gregory and his successors was 
 so easy and so immediate. It is hence that the 
 church of Canterbury, unlike many other churches 
 in England, had no particular use " or distinctive 
 ritual order. The Roman office, as improved and 
 reformed by Gregory the Great, and the method of 
 chanting which he had brought to what was then 
 supposed to be a perfect musical state, were religiously 
 followed in Kent, and the doctrinal writings of its 
 first great teacher were studied with equal devotion. 
 The religious ideal of the Anglo-Saxon Church, as it 
 presents itself to us in the simple but most authentic 
 forms of its earliest charters, centres in the quatuor 
 novissima. Death, the judgment, the penalty, and the 
 reward, appear everywhere as the incentives to virtue 
 and holiness, and as giving the most awakening and 
 impressive motives to good works and a life of devoted 
 piety. Scarcely a single charter of the earlier periods 
 fails to urge the truth that earthly goods are tran- 
 sitory, but things eternal are abiding ; hence, that 
 things transitory ought to be freely given to purchase 
 things eternal " — that ^' we brought nothing into the 
 world, and can take nothing with us from the world 
 — and the duty of charity as enforced by the com- 
 mand, ' Date, et dabitur vobis.' But the spirit of 
 the offering and the necessity of faith to make it an 
 acceptable one are no less clearly intimated.^ The 
 
 ^ "Pius Deus non qiiantitatem muneris, sed devotionem 
 offerentium semper inquirit " (^thelbald of Mercia, 748). 
 
54 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 proem which describes the motive of the giver is 
 very variously conceived : ^' for the remedy of my 
 soul," — for the absolution of my sins — " for the 
 love of my heavenly country " — " for my own soul and 
 the souls of my predecessors " — " for the love of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ " — " for the remedy and salvation 
 of my soul and for the hope and love of a future and 
 eternal recompense in heaven" — *'for the love of 
 Almighty God, and the veneration of the blessed 
 Mary, the mother of God, and the authority of all the 
 saints." ^ These are among the many introductory 
 sentences of the charters, the last being also the 
 latest in time, and coming down to the tenth century. 
 In the earliest period these donations do not seem to 
 imply the condition of any masses or services for the 
 souls of the donors; but in the very remarkable 
 charter of the Duke Oswulf to the church of Lyminge 
 in 798 he enjoins his anniversary to be kept by the 
 monks there " with fastings and prayers, singing of 
 psalms and celebrations of masses " — and " with the 
 refection of the brethren in food and drink." ^ In 
 the charter of Wulfred a few years later, the condition 
 is that the brethren should chant in behalf of his 
 soul the Lord's prayer, or else that short form of 
 prayer which Dodda the monk used in his monastery." 
 These directions by no means indicate the existence 
 at this early period of any doctrine in regard to 
 masses for the dead such as that which now prevails 
 in the Roman Church, but the institution of services 
 in which the names of these benefactors should be 
 
 1^ ' Kemble, Introd. pp. 10-18. 
 2 Cart. 175, torn. i. p. 212. 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 55 
 
 read in the diptychs and prayers offered up for their 
 souls. The simplicity of the early faith of the Anglo- 
 Saxon population is indicated even in the laws of 
 Knut which belong to its latest period, in which the 
 Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed are made the 
 sum of necessary Christian doctrine and practice ^ a 
 sufficient qualification for the reception of the 
 Eucharist and the admission to Christian burial.- 
 But perhaps the most precious of the traditions which 
 the Anglo-Saxon Church derived from her great 
 apostle was that intense and exclusive devotion to 
 the authority and sufficiency of the Scriptures, which 
 all who are acquainted with the writings of Gregory 
 the Great must admit to be his distinctive doctrine. 
 Nowhere it may be affirmed has this tradition been 
 more unbroken than in England, and the very century 
 which preceded the Reformation witnessed one of 
 its strongest assertions in the petition presented by 
 Bishop Hallam, of Salisbury, on the part of the clergy, 
 to the Council of Constance demanding that the whole 
 teaching of the Scriptures should not be made sub- 
 servient to the forced interpretation of the single text 
 which involves the so-called Petrine privilege, but 
 
 ' Spelman, Cone." torn. i. p. 549. 
 
 2 The distinction between necessary doctrines and those which 
 are either derivative or subordinate appears to be here clearly 
 recognised. Even in the important Assembly of the Tuscan 
 Bishops at Florence in 1787 this distinction was asserted by 
 the Teologo Regio, Bianucci, and accepted by all the bishops, 
 in the words, "Che bastando per esser Cattolici il trovarsi 
 concordi negli articoli fondamentali era sufficiente il tener fermo 
 e convenire nel solo Credo.'^ (Istoria dell' Assemblea tenuta in 
 Firenze, 1787 ; Sess. v. p. 81, Fir. 1788.) 
 
56 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 that the whole law of God should be duly honoured 
 and observed by all alike. ^ From this brief glance 
 at the features of doctrinal simplicity which the 
 teaching of the Anglo-Saxon Church exhibits in all 
 its documentary forms, we proceed to take an 
 equally rapid view of its outward state, which was as 
 primitive, both in principle and structure. The Priest- 
 hood was held to be the highest order (properly so 
 called) in the Church, the Episcopate being rather the 
 highest grade of the priesthood than itself a separate 
 order. 2 Kemble has observed that the Anglo-Saxon 
 clergymen appear to have been more thoroughly 
 national than any similar body of men in any part of 
 Europe. Hence, those among them who were most 
 imbued with the doctrines and feelings of the Tra- 
 montanes always indulge in a great deal of gratuitous 
 declamation on the state of slavery in which the 
 English Church was held — meaning only that by 
 becoming clergymen, the Anglo-Saxons had not 
 lost their nationality or their position under the 
 national law."^ It may be reasonably conjectured 
 that the higher view which was entertained of the 
 equality of order as between the priesthood and the 
 episcopate, contributed to this feeling of indepen- 
 dence and consciousness of a common citizenship. 
 It is not a little singular that while Lanfranc, an 
 
 ^ VonderHardt, ''Concil. Constant," torn. i.p. iv. pp. 1138- 
 41. 
 
 2 " Ambo siqiiidem (Presbyter et Episcopus) unum tenent 
 eundemque ordinem, quamvis dignior sit ilia pars Episcopi." — 
 " Canones .^Ifrici," (Spelman, torn. i. p. 576). 
 
 ^ Introd. p. 52 (note). 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 
 
 57 
 
 Italian, was the greatest and earliest vindicator of 
 the liberties of the English Church, Theodore, a 
 Greek, was the most zealous and successful agent in 
 merging its national character and individuality in 
 rite and law. The latter was accordingly the greatest 
 promoter of English monachism, while the influence 
 of the former was directed towards strengthening the 
 position of the secular clergy. At this point a most 
 important element of the diocesan system forces itself 
 upon our attention, viz., the parochial division of the 
 diocese, whose origin and earliest history are lost in the 
 obscurity of the mediaeval period. We have observed 
 that the Roman divisions of the county were rather 
 personal than local — rather regarded population and 
 its centres, than mere local or topographical lines of 
 division. The larger divisions of lathes, hundreds, 
 wapentakes, and sokes bear witness even in their 
 names rather to divisions of number and popu- 
 lation than geographical delimitations.^ It will 
 be observed that while the hundreds and larger 
 divisions of the county preserve with very few 
 exceptions their natural form and compactness, the 
 parishes, on the other hand, are of the most varied 
 and irregular form, in many places having large 
 detached portions belonging to them, and for the 
 most part so inconveniently situated in regard to the 
 
 * A hundred came afterwards to designate a local division, 
 as a ceiitiiria did in the Empire. * * Quis non contemnat unam 
 centuriam," asks St. Augustine, *'si illi promittatur quia 
 possessurus est centum ?" Sermo 45, de verbis Isaiae," c. 57.) 
 Here we have a clear proof that the hundred has a Roman, not 
 a Saxon origin. 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 churches as to make it ahnost impossible to suppose 
 that their local boundaries were arranged in accord- 
 ance with their ecclesiastical necessities. It is difficult 
 to avoid the conclusion that the local boundaries of 
 parishes were simply a civil division suggested by the 
 ancient boundaries of estates granted by the successive 
 kings and nobles — estates which in the Norman 
 period became manors. For these boundaries are so 
 carefully recorded in the Saxon charters as to make 
 them almost the only permanent lines of local separa- 
 tion. The lines already marked out would supply 
 also the boundary marks of the intermediate lands, 
 and thus by a gradual and natural process those 
 ancient and most capricious of all local divisions, the 
 parishes of England would be constituted in the 
 form in which we now find them. In the laws 
 of Knut this connection between the parochial 
 churches and the estates of the thanes is clearly 
 shown. " If a thane has a church on his bocland 
 {i.e. his private estate) "to which a cemetery is 
 attached, he shall give to it a third part of his tithe. ^ 
 We see here in the early part of the eleventh century 
 the approach to that manorial system developed in 
 Domesday where there is no mention of parishes, but 
 the church appears as an appendage to the manor, 
 and the root of the parochial institution is traced 
 rather to the feudal estate than to any ecclesiastical 
 origin. As the manor (or secular estate) created the 
 parish, so the subdivisions of the estate created in 
 their turn subordinate manors and dependent parishes. 
 
 ' Spelman, torn. i. p. 545. 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE, 59 
 
 This is clearly seen by an examination of the outlying 
 manors in Domesday in connection with their parishes 
 as now constituted, and of the various forms in which 
 subordinate manors have been created within larger 
 manors through the separation of the original feudal 
 estate.^ This view is sustained by the authority of 
 the learned canonist Zypaeus, who in answering the 
 inquiry how the boundaries of parishes are to be 
 ascertained, repUes that ^' the boundaries of villages 
 and of secular jurisdictions are a strong presumptive 
 evidence of the bounds of parishes. For patriarch- 
 ates, primacies, archbishoprics, bishoprics, dioceses, 
 and parishes were arranged according to the places 
 and limits of provinces, towns, and villages, wherefore 
 it was rigidly forbidden to confound or change these 
 already-constituted boundaries in any degree." ^ The 
 Church divisions followed those of the State, and these 
 latter were in the rural districts constituted for the 
 most part out of the ancient estates of the kings and 
 nobles which were granted to the Church or to the 
 greater thanes in the early period of the Saxon occu- 
 pation, and represented that subordinate kind of 
 jurisdiction which was afterwards developed in the 
 manorial system of Domesday.^ According to the view 
 here suggested, the estate of the thane or principal lord 
 formed the original unit of the parochial system. This 
 was made chargeable with a tithe to the church, 
 which the thane was required by law to provide 
 
 * See for the whole of this subject Bohmer's exhaustive trea- 
 tise, "Jus Parochiale," c. iii. 
 
 ^ Responsa de Jure Canon." Antv. 1645, P- ^^2. 
 ^ Kemble, *'Cod. Dipl." Introd. p. 43-50. 
 
6o 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 for it. This tithing became the foundation of the 
 new parochial division, while the church was built 
 by the lord near his own residence instead of 
 placed in that part of the parish or manorial property 
 which was most central or convenient for the tenants 
 on the estate. This is the only view upon which the 
 extraordinary irregularities of boundary in parishes 
 can be accounted for, and the location of their 
 churches often at the very extremity of their districts 
 be explained. An observation of Prebendary Jones 
 on the Wiltshire Domesday" tends to corroborate 
 this theory. He says that having gone in several in- 
 stances over the boundaries of manors with an ancient 
 charter, and the Ordnance map divided into parishes 
 or rather tithe districts as his guides, most striking 
 has been the way in which boundaries described now 
 some thousand years ago may still be accurately 
 traced."^ The history of the Tithe institution is 
 closely connected with that of the Parochial system. 
 Before the time of Constantine, as is admitted by all 
 who have given to the subject a legal and critical 
 examination, this kind of payment was unknown.- 
 The support of the clergy rested previously on landed 
 and personal property held by the permission or con- 
 nivance of the State, and on the offerings of the 
 faithful, which were of a personal and voluntary 
 character. In the towns these voluntary offerings, 
 after the establishment of Christianity, became com- 
 pulsory, and laid the foundation of what are called 
 
 ' ''Wiltshire Domesday," Introd. p. 27. 
 ^ Bohmer, "Jus. Paroch." p. 394. 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 6 1 
 
 personal tithes^ charged on the bona mohilia of the 
 parishioners ; while in the rural districts, where the 
 land was cultivated by a servile class (the villeins and 
 sej^vi of the Domesday book), the charge fell like the 
 charges of the trinoda necessitas^ the reparation of 
 bridges, fortresses, and military service, upon the 
 feudal owner. In the Western Church in the close of 
 the fifth century 1 the income of the churches was 
 divided into four portions ; the first for the bishop, 
 the second for the ministers, the third for the fabric 
 of the church and the clergy, and the fourth for the 
 poor — not, however, in an equal proportion, but by a 
 fair apportionment." The idea so early propagated 
 by the clergy that their portion represented the tithe 
 paid to the priesthood in the Jewish Church, led to the 
 assertion for the clergy of the actual tithe as of Divine 
 right, and the recognition of it as such by the early 
 Anglo-Saxon laws gave it that civil sanction upon 
 which it now so securely rests. It would lead us far 
 beyond our present limits were we to trace the progress 
 of these laws, or the gradual stages by which the 
 property of the English Church attained the vast 
 proportions which it exhibited in the day when the 
 great confiscations of the Augmentation Office reduced 
 it to such comparatively modest dimensions. It will 
 be enough for the reader to glance at the possessions 
 of the Church in Kent as they are presented in the 
 Domesday-book, which we shall have occasion at a 
 
 * ' 'Circa il 470, " Sarpi, ' ' Trattato delle Materie Beneficiarie. 
 2 *' Non in 4 parti arithmetici e uguali ma con proporzione.'* 
 Id. ibid. 
 
 F 
 
62 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 later period to describe more fully. We pass on to 
 consider the influence of the lives and characters of 
 the archbishops upon the history of the diocese ; and 
 here we must make the preliminary observation, that 
 we are apt to take no account of the immense 
 accessions of power which each successive arch- 
 bishop acquired from the increasing endowment of 
 the Church. It is less from the personal qualifications, 
 or influence even of the greater prelates, than from 
 the almost irresistible power which their property and 
 position gave them in the history of their age that 
 the see acquired that supremacy which excited the 
 envy even of the popes, and led to the somewhat 
 bitter controversy between Archbishop Chicheley and 
 Pope Eugenius IV. on the legatine powers he had 
 conferred upon Cardinal Beaufort, This is an element 
 too much neglected in estimating the progress even 
 of the Papacy itself to its almost world-wide supremacy. 
 The immense accretions of the wealth of the Roman 
 Church, so well described in the great work of Sarpi, 
 constituted a far more solid foundation of its authority 
 than the comparatively recent production of the 
 forged decretals, or the doctrine of the Petrine 
 Privilege. The growth of the power of the English 
 primates resembled on a smaller scale that of the 
 Papacy itself. A vast patrimony which under the 
 solemn adjurations of its royal founders could ever be 
 increased but never alienated, gave to the church of 
 Canterbury, augmented as it was so largely by the 
 incorporation into it of nearly all the earliest founda- 
 tions of Kent, an influence which can hardly be 
 too highly estimated. Characters of signal power 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 63 
 
 and marked talent, such as were many of the Saxon 
 archbishops, might give to the primacy a temporary 
 accession of authority which weaker men could not 
 confer upon it, but the vast resources of the primacy, 
 even before the prebendal division of Lanfranc, ought 
 never to be put out of view, especially in contem- 
 plating the history of the diocese itself, out of which 
 the revenues of the archbishops chiefly arose, and in 
 which up to the time of the Reformation so much of 
 those revenues was spent. In regarding the lives of 
 the Anglo-Saxon bishops and archbishops, for the 
 latter name did not extend to those of the earliest 
 period, our point of view is necessarily confined to 
 their influence upon the Church with which they were 
 more immediately connected. The bearing of their 
 lives upon the history of the Church generally belongs 
 to a much larger plan, which has been recently most 
 successfully carried out. It may be observed, as a 
 prehminary consideration, that the connection of the 
 archbishops with the diocese was much closer and 
 more immediate at the period when Kent constituted 
 a kingdom as well as a diocese than at any other ; 
 that when the kingdom was merged into that of 
 Mercia, the connection though still most intimate was 
 very much weakened ; and that the development of 
 the primacy, and the acquisition of Lambeth as its 
 principal centre in 1197 (through an exchange with 
 the Bishop of Rochester), rendered the tie gradually 
 weaker and weaker, until the surrender of the Palace 
 at Canterbury, and the great residences of Saltwood, 
 Aldington, Knowle, and other manorial houses in East 
 and West Kent, to King Henry VIII. by Cranmer 
 
 F 2 
 
64 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 almost entirely severed the local bond which con- 
 nected the archbishop with the diocese. In this 
 point the Church of Rome had a great advantage 
 over the filial church of Canterbury, inasmuch as the 
 centre of the diocese in her case was identical with 
 the centre of the primacy. In the Anglo-Saxon period, 
 the cathedral city was the residence of the arch- 
 bishop, the centre of his personal and local influence, 
 the place of his constant preaching, especially on the 
 greater festivals and during the Lent and Advent 
 seasons. In a word, the " residence of the bishops 
 as of Divine right was assumed as a necessary con- 
 dition of the episcopate, without whose fulfilment 
 the office itself would cease to have a real and 
 practical existence. This rule, so severely inculcated 
 by Pius IV. in the celebrated bull, In siiprenia 
 militantis ecclesice specula^' needed then no assertion, 
 far less any penalties to enforce it. The seat of the 
 Episcopate was fixed by Augustine and ^thelberht at 
 Canterbury, and the functions of the archbishops as 
 Abbots of the great monastery of Christ Church 
 rendered non-residence a virtual impossibility. The 
 law of the Church referred to in the letter of St. 
 Boniface of Mentz to Archbishop Cuthberht, that 
 every year the bishop should make a visitation of his 
 diocese was then very easily, and doubtless very 
 punctually fulfilled. The lives of the earlier arch- 
 bishops, mostly chosen as they were from the heads 
 of the more important monasteries, belong therefore 
 in a peculiar manner to the history of the diocese. 
 Though Archbishop Theodore (668-93) is said in a 
 certain sense to have built up the diocesan system in 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 65 
 
 England, acting under the strong impulse of the see 
 of Rome, the close connection of the primate with 
 the diocese was very little disturbed by the new 
 arrangement, for the ties of the cathedral city and 
 the headship of the monastery were still unbroken. 
 Nor was this firm bond loosened until the time of 
 Lanfranc, when the foundation of residence-houses 
 on all his principal manors led that great primate 
 to divide his time between the cathedral city 
 and a number of subordinate places ; a plan which 
 led his successors gradually farther and farther 
 towards London as the real metropolis, and in- 
 duced them by exchanging their manor of Darenth 
 for Lambeth to make the latter place their prin- 
 cipal residence. This broke up the union be- 
 tween the monastic and secular life of the arch- 
 bishops, and led to the transfer to an elected 
 prior of that authority which they had originally 
 combined with the episcopal one in their own 
 persons. Up to the period when Lanfranc intro- 
 duced the prebendal system at Canterbury, and 
 the estates till then held in common were divided 
 between himself and the monks, the archbishops 
 retained that mixed character which they had 
 in their first institution by Augustine, and the 
 Benedictine rule was as far as possible carried 
 out in their ordinary life. In modifying this 
 rule so as to adapt it to the altered circum- 
 stances of the church of Canterbury, Lanfranc 
 implies that he still retains the position of 
 abbot, and doubtless carried out when in 
 
66 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 his cathedral the order and ritual he here lays 
 down.^ 
 
 The first five Bishops of Canterbury were im- 
 mediately connected with Gregory the Great and 
 his work of the conversion of England, and their 
 lives in connection with the diocese had necessarily 
 a somewhat missionary character. Laurentius was 
 nominated by Augustine as his successor, and ex- 
 tended his missionary labours far beyond the limits 
 of the diocese. Mellitus, another of the companions 
 of the Apostle of England, having been appointed 
 to the bishopric of London, and exiled from his 
 diocese, succeeded Laurentius in the Kentish see, 
 and was followed by Justus, the first occupant of the 
 see of Rochester, which had been formed out of the 
 north-western portion of Kent, having as its centre 
 the important Roman station called by Bede 
 "Rhof," or "Rhofescestre" — probably a corruption of 
 the common Latin name of Rufus. Honorius was 
 also a Roman, a disciple of the great pope whose 
 death in 604 broke the earliest of those links of 
 connection with Rome, which in the Anglo-Saxon 
 Church had been so greatly strengthened by the 
 immediate and personal relations of the first Bishops of 
 Canterbury with the Roman see. The twenty-six years 
 of Honorius's bishopric enabled him to extend and 
 establish the influence of the primacy more than any 
 of his predecessors; while his successor, Deusdedit, is 
 
 ^ * ' Inde nemo turbetur quod in tractatu earum consuetudinum 
 nomen abbatis tantum non episcopi vel archiepiscopi ponitur — 
 ordo quippe monachorum describitur," &c. (Decreta pro Ordine 
 S. Benedicti. Lanfranci 0pp. Migne, p. 445). 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 67 
 
 chiefly celebrated as having been the first native of Eng- 
 land who filled the see. But the real history of the 
 Primacy itself may be said to begin with Theodore, 
 who was consecrated in 668, and was the first to 
 obtain the recognition of his authority over the whole 
 of the Bishops of England, and to exercise that 
 legatine power over the whole country which the 
 popes had attached to his office. In proportion, how- 
 ever, as his labours became extended over the province 
 his connection with the diocese itself became less 
 intimate, though the foundation of schools and the 
 introduction both of Eastern and Western learning 
 (for he was a Greek by birth and education) gave his 
 episcopate a more general and influential character 
 than that of any who preceded him. As a man of 
 singular learning and great powers of organization he 
 may well be regarded as the chief founder of the 
 primatial power of Canterbury and the introducer of 
 the synodical system into the English Church. Nor 
 is his name less celebrated in connection with the 
 penitential discipline of the Church which he may be 
 said to have first reduced to a regular system — a task 
 for Avhich his Eastern education peculiarly fitted him. 
 The assertion that he introduced and established that 
 division of parishes which we now see, has already 
 been shown to be without solid foundation. After 
 him came almost an unbroken succession of monastic 
 primates ; Brihtwald, who had been Abbot of Reculver, 
 Tatwyn, who had been a priest in a monastery of 
 Mercia, Nothelm, Cuthberht, who had been Abbot of 
 Lyminge, Bregwyn, Lambert or Janberht, previously 
 abbot of St. Augustine, Athelard, abbot of Mai- 
 
68 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 mesbury, Wilfrid, a monk of Canterbury, Ceolnoth, 
 ^thelred, a monk of Christ Church, — bishops of 
 whom Httle but their name survives, but whose 
 influence was from their origin and position far more 
 felt in the diocese than in the primacy. The Danish 
 invasions had seriously crippled the power of the see 
 at this period ; and the long incumbency of Plegmund, 
 the first to break the monastic succession, though 
 favourable to learning (for he had been King Alfred's 
 instructor) appears to have been fatally influenced by 
 the unsettled state of the country and the destruction 
 of its inhabitants and ruin of their property which 
 these sudden descents upon so unprotected a coast 
 brought with them. From this time we find bishops 
 of other sees elevated to the primacy, bringing with 
 them more extended views, and less of the mere 
 diocesan character than the monks of the great 
 monasteries of England would naturally exhibit. 
 Athelm, and Wlfelm — both bishops of Wells ; Odo, 
 bishop of Sherborne ] Elsin, bishop of Winchester, 
 were successively elevated to the primatial see — and 
 well prepared it for the reign of the much greater 
 Dunstan, who passed on to it from the bishopric of 
 London. The life of this eminent man forms an 
 epoch, not only in the history of the Church and 
 State of England, but in that of the diocese itself, 
 in which it well prepared the way for the work of the 
 still greater Lanfranc. Dunstan, like Becket and Laud, 
 has suffered as much from indiscriminate praise as he 
 has from unqualified detraction. That he was the 
 most devoted friend and patron of the monachism of 
 his day, is simply equivalent to the statement that he 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 69 
 
 was an admirer of learning, as well as himself in 
 advance of the learning of the age, and that as an 
 ecclesiastic he naturally supported the only institution 
 which enabled the Church to extend and to organize 
 itself — for we must remember that the monastic 
 system was the sole society " for the propagation of 
 the Gospel" and for ^'national education/' which 
 existed in this early period. But he was eminently a 
 great church builder and friend of the secular as well 
 as the regular clergy, as we have observed already ; 
 while by incorporating the smaller monasteries of 
 Kent with the great foundation of which he was the 
 head, he gave to the archbishopric the most sub- 
 stantial part of its power and influence. His twenty- 
 eight years' primacy had therefore as important results 
 in the diocese as it had upon the Church at large. 
 The examination of the numerous charters of Eadgar 
 and other Saxon kings, confirmed and sometimes 
 originated by the great archbishop, prove the extent 
 of his influence, exercised not only in behalf of his 
 own diocese but in every part of England. The 
 immense accession of power which this steady flow 
 of monastic endowment gave to the Church, disturbed 
 from time to time by the ruinous inroads of the 
 Danes, was perpetuated and increased on the establish- 
 ment of a settled kingdom by Knut, to whom more 
 than to any of his predecessors the English Church is 
 indebted for its development and stability. He 
 carried on the policy of Dunstan in regard to the 
 incorporation of the property of the lesser monasteries 
 with the greater foundations at Canterbury, and to 
 him the Monastery of St. Augustine was indebted 
 
70 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 for its rich inheritance in the Isle of Thanet, the 
 spoils of the venerable Nunnery of Minster. The 
 constitution of the diocese in its present form, and 
 the organization of its parochial system as we see it 
 in Domesday, which we must ever remember repre- 
 sents the earlier survey under Edward the Confessor 
 in an enlarged and amended form — ever referring to 
 that survey and to the previous state of the churches 
 and their revenues, and describing the change they had 
 undergone in the intermediate period — could not 
 have been completed earlier than the reign of Knut,. 
 when the peace and order of the kingdom were finally 
 settled, and there is no evidence of any material change 
 occurring between this and the Domesday record. 
 This leads us to the conclusion that those parochial 
 churches which are mentioned in Domesday existed 
 in the days of the Confessor, and to the reasonable 
 conjecture that many of them were restored, if not 
 actually founded, by Knut ; who was the first to reduce 
 into a systematic order the ancient laws of the Anglo- 
 Saxon Church,^ and by securing the temporal rights 
 of the clergy, and defining the duties of the thanes 
 and nobles in regard to the churches on their estates, 
 to promote the building and endowment of the 
 churches in Kent, and to prepare the diocese for the 
 munificent operations of Lanfranc. But it is time that 
 we should present to the reader a general view of the 
 state of the diocese and the character of its population, 
 as it must have appeared in the latter part of its 
 Anglo-Saxon history. The absorption of the kingdom 
 
 ^ These laws in Anglo-Saxon and Latin are given at length 
 by Spelman, torn. i. p. 538. 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 7 1 
 
 of Kent, first into that of Mercia in the time of 
 Coenulf, and later into that of Ecgberht (a.d. 823), 
 and its complete incorporation into the empire of 
 Knut (a.d. 1017), in the final settlement of the 
 country, while they extended the power of the primacy, 
 naturally reduced in the same proportion that of the 
 diocese itself The archbishopric gravitated more 
 and more towards the centre of civil government, 
 and had it not been for the Becket murder in a later 
 century, Canterbury itself would have lost its place 
 among the more important cities of England, and 
 the city and diocese would have been almost swallowed 
 up in the primacy. As we fall back upon the earliest 
 period when the Kentish kingdom still existed, we 
 observe that the diocese consisted mainly of three 
 great districts ; ist, the settled country of East Kent, 
 the scene of its great monasteries and secular and 
 ecclesiastical estates, and also of its ancient churches ; 
 2nd, the wild district of the weald of Kent, forming a 
 kind of missionary region, gradually occupied by the 
 Church as the woods were felled and cultivated places 
 obtained j and lastly the district of the Marsh, large 
 tracts of which, as well as woodland in the Weald of 
 Kent, had been attached to the estates of the clergy 
 and nobles in East Kent, by successive grants of the 
 Kentish kings. In the Domesday period, and con- 
 sequently in that immediately preceding it, the 360 
 manors in Kent had only 183 churches.^ Benenden, 
 Hadlow, Palster and Tudely were the only four places 
 in the Weald returned in the Survey as possessing 
 
 ' Furley, ''History of the Weald/' vol. i. p. 397. 
 
72 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 churches." ^ Tonbridge, Tenterden, Cranbrook, and 
 other of the now principal parishes in West Kent, 
 were in the Saxon period occupied only by colonists 
 from the more settled districts, and not till the twelfth 
 or thirteenth centuries did the great " Andred forest " 
 in its Kentish portion become in the proper sense an 
 ecclesiastical possession. The absence of mention of 
 most of the churches in Romney Marsh in the same 
 great Survey leads to the same conclusion in regard 
 to them, and we can only conceive the district as 
 sparsely inhabited by tenants or servants of the 
 greater manors of East Kent to which they were 
 attached, one of these (Aldington) covering a vast 
 district, both of the Weald and of the Marsh, while 
 another (Lyminge) extended anciently through several 
 of the parishes, both of the Marsh and of the Weald — 
 the monks of Lyminge having been probably the first 
 missionaries in the district, while those of Christ 
 Church, in whom both these estates were ultimately 
 vested, completed the work of evangelization. Towards 
 the close of the thirteenth century, Mr. Furley con- 
 ceives that a complete parochial division had come 
 to be established, with churches and appendant 
 chapels.'' The boundaries of these parishes were 
 probably conterminous with those of the outlying 
 districts attached to the several manors, called in the 
 Weald, dennes^ and in the Marsh, culets? It is most 
 probable that long before churches were built in these 
 
 ^ Furley, *' History of the Weald," vol. i. p. 397. 
 
 ^ From ctilata (from which the French queue and culotte), 
 indicating an irregular stretch of land lying apart from the main 
 parish or district. 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 73 
 
 districts, missionary stations existed, built of less solid 
 materials. In one of the earliest charters relating to 
 the Marsh, the oratory of St. Martin's with the 
 houses of the fishermen " are mentioned, clearly 
 pointing to a mission-house and a missionary work 
 which was being carried on in the district. But while 
 this was naturally the work of the monks of the 
 period, there is clear evidence that the establishment 
 of a secular clergy was very early and general. A 
 secular priest, called the presbyter loci, is described 
 as having escaped during the Danish attack of a 
 monastery in the ninth century. The Church of St. 
 Mary which the same invaders spared at Minster was 
 evidently served by seculars — and in all the monastic 
 records and legends we have ample proofs that the 
 settlement of a secular clergy invariably succeeded 
 the missionary work of the regular orders. In Domes- 
 day (which reflects the earlier period of Edward the 
 Confessor and his predecessors), " the usual title given 
 to ministers is presbyte7\ In other parts of the record 
 we meet with capellamis and diaconus'^^ A clericoliis 
 is mentioned in the Wiltshire Domesday who might 
 have belonged to one of the lesser orders. The 
 position of the clergy during the earlier Saxon period, 
 as we have observed already, was one of comparative 
 dignity and independence, their spiritual office never 
 absorbing their temporal rights, or leading them to 
 renounce their civil status in order to obtain a higher 
 degree of ecclesiastical power. But this independence 
 
 ' Domesday for Wiltshire," edited by W. H. Jones, pre- 
 bendary of Sarum, 1865 (Introd. p. 68). 
 
74 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 was much disturbed in the later history of the Anglo- 
 Saxon Church, from the destructive inroads of the 
 Danes, which involved the property of the Church in 
 confusion and ruin, and led to the transfer to the 
 laity of much of its patrimony, not excepting tithes, 
 which even in the closing days of the Saxon rule in 
 England had been in many cases alienated from the 
 Church and held by laymen,^ while a principal portion 
 of them was still held by the monasteries and other 
 religious foundations. This led to the establishment 
 of vicarages, and to the office of vicar ; a title mul- 
 tiplied greatly in later centuries through the evil of 
 non-residence, which compelled the bishops to form 
 vicarages in churches which were properly rectories, 
 resulting in the still greater evil of sinecure rectories. 
 But a still more important change was effected in the 
 ecclesiastical framework of a diocese by the establish- 
 ment of the order of canons^ a title descriptive of a 
 body of clergy permanently attached to a particular 
 church, but devoted (like the monks of whose system 
 they were a kind of secular adaptation) to a common 
 life — matriculated " as it were to that church — that 
 is, entered into the register {matricula^ album, tabula 
 clericorum, mrwr, concil. Nic. c.i,). In like manner the 
 office and name of Cardinal has its derivation from 
 those who were incardinati into the canonical system 
 of the Churches of Rome, Milan, Ravenna and other 
 principal cities of the West. Without tracing the 
 origin of this institution into its earliest history and 
 
 ^ Domesday for Wiltshire," edited by W. H.Jones, pre- 
 bendary of Sarum, 1865 (Introd. p. 68). 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 75 
 
 first type, it will suffice to say that originating with 
 the great St. Augustine of Hippo, and Eusebius of 
 Vercelli, it passed into France, and became organised 
 and established by Chrodegangus, bishop of Metz, in 
 760. He first drew up the rule and formed the order 
 of canons regular, whose time was divided between 
 the instruction of the young, the celebration of divine 
 offices at different periods of the day (whence come 
 the canonical hours) ^ and the exercise of the higher 
 acts of charity. The method of their life was like 
 that of the Benedictines, but differed chiefly in this, 
 that instead of dividing the goods of the Church 
 between the clergy and the bishop, it left to each 
 member of the body his separate estate. Out of this 
 plan arose the division of the property of cathedral 
 chapters into prcebendce^ portions or allotments as- 
 signed to particular individuals.^ This is the origin 
 of our cathedral chapters ; and Lanfranc by intro- 
 ducing the pr^ebendal system into the chapter of 
 Canterbury revolutionized in a manner its ancient 
 monastic constitution, and placed it in more direct 
 hostility than ever with the rival foundation of St. 
 Augustine's. There are various references to this 
 change in Domesday. Thus, of the canons of St. 
 Martin's in Dover it is said, In the time of King 
 Edward the praebends of these (lands) were held in 
 common. . . . Now they are divided by the Bishop 
 of Bayeux into separate estates.'^ 
 
 Such was the state of the clerical order during the 
 
 ^ Nardi, ''Elementi di Diritto Ecclesiastico," p. i. c. x. 
 sees. 194-7. 
 
76 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Saxon period, but at the time of the Conquest the 
 whole of the clergy had reached a state of corruption 
 and degeneration which Sir F. Palgrave has thus 
 described. " The tenth century may be emphatically 
 denoted the ' scecuhi?n obscurtwi.' The attempts of 
 Alfred failed, and the clergy were settled on their 
 lees. . . . Learning altogether decayed, and he who 
 could read Latin was accounted a prodigy. Morals 
 declined fearfully. The English clergy were viciously 
 corrupted. Very many of the bishops and abbots 
 had obtained their dignities by. simony. The bishop 
 was a judge, bound to attend to the reformation of 
 manners, but he had bought his office, and so would 
 sell immunity to the opulent transgressor. There 
 were some holy men among the (clergy), but they 
 were not sufficient to avert the destiny of the people, 
 and all were involved in one common ruin. The 
 empire seemed to exist under Edward the Confessor, 
 but it was really on the verge of dissolution." ^ 
 
 In Kent the great influence of Dunstan had the 
 effect of at least checking, if not altogether moderating, 
 the worst features of this description. So great a 
 degeneracy might excite greater wonder were we to 
 forget the state of the Roman Church itself during 
 the ninth and tenth centuries. Baronius tells us that 
 he " only enumerates " the popes of these darker 
 ages, admitting that '^during them the only head 
 remaining to the Church was Christ " — a very s\ifificient 
 Head, if the popes had been content to be His 
 members instead of claiming the headship themselves ; 
 
 History of Normandy and England," III. 334, 637. 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE DIOCESE. 77 
 
 and an equally sufficient proof that a human supre- 
 macy is no security against the grievous errors of 
 doctrine and failures of practice which prevailed most 
 during those very periods in which the Papal supre- 
 macy was most complete. We pass on, however, 
 with a sense of relief to the Second great Epoch of 
 the Diocese of Canterbury, the reign (if we may so 
 term it) of the illustrious Lanfranc, and to the revival 
 under the Norman rule of the life and influence of 
 the Church in Kent, aided as it was by the increasing 
 power of the primatial see. 
 
 G 
 
78 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 CHAPTER. III. 
 
 LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. 
 
 History, like architecture, has its periods of ^'tran- 
 sition," periods, not unfrequentl}^, of long duration, 
 and always of the greatest importance. We are toO' 
 apt to neglect these, and the popular habit of 
 drawing ''hard and fast lines" between the chapters 
 of our national and ecclesiastical history has led us 
 to break up our annals into abrupt and disjointed 
 portions, instead of regarding them as presenting 
 throughout a course of continuous development, 
 often accelerated by events, which, however sudden 
 in their fulfilment, may themselves have been as; 
 slowly developed. 
 
 This is eminently true of the transition period, which 
 extends between the two closing centuries of tlie Saxon 
 rule and the Norman Conquest, periods of history 
 which we are singularly prone to separate, and on no 
 ground more absolutely and abruptly than on that of 
 the Feudal system, by which the Conqueror is so 
 erroneously supposed to have set aside the ancient 
 Roman and Saxon laws, and to have framed at once 
 a new legal system and a new society adapted to this- 
 complete and even revolutionary change. A single 
 glance at the Domesday Survey, and especially at 
 that of Kent, must convince the most sceptical that 
 the principles of the feudal system, which extended 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. 7gr 
 
 throughout Europe, and was first developed in 
 Lombardy, to whose forms of law and of government 
 the later Saxon kings were indebted so largely, were 
 early sown in England, and very well developed in 
 the days of Edward the Confessor. For the Norman 
 survey, as we see throughout, is founded upon the 
 earlier survey of Edward, and is, as it were, a second 
 rent-roll of the kingdom, differing from the first, 
 rather in the increased value of the manorial lands it 
 describes, and in their transfer to other tenants in 
 chief, than in any other feature. To see this truth in 
 its clearest form, we have only to trace the gradual 
 manner in which the Teutonic law, based, as we have 
 seen it to be, upon the family bond, and represented 
 by the gau^ or land held in common, is neutralized 
 and superseded by the Roman law, which regarded 
 land as a personal and individual possession, a law 
 which is the real parent of the whole of the feudal 
 system, and which, by centering in the king the whole 
 land of the country, enabled him to grant it absolutely 
 or exclusively (in regard to its usufruct), to his nobles 
 or retainers. 1 Some of the greatest legists have 
 traced up the feudal system into the imperial laws of 
 Rome, but it is enough for us to begin the pedigree 
 with the Lombardic Kingdom, where the learned 
 Marquis Scipio Mafiei, in his historical work on the 
 city of Verona, has fixed its earliest development. 
 The idea of holding land on the condition of military 
 
 ^ Kemble has marked some of the earliest stages of this transi- 
 tion, Tntrod. pp. 43 and 53, in which latter place he shows how^ 
 the rights conferred by the gait were first invaded. 
 
 G 2 
 
8o 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 service was developed in that kingdom by the dukes, 
 who held as vassals under the king at Capua, Spoleto, 
 and Trent, as early as 591. The same kind of tenure 
 passed into Germany on the formation of the new 
 Roman Empire there, and was represented in its 
 grandest form in the Germanic Empire of the 
 Mediaeval period. Senckenberg, in his learned intro- 
 duction to the Feudal Law, defines a "feud" as "a 
 contract, in virtue of which a vassal hires his military 
 services to a lord for a certain reward ^' (or stipend).^ 
 The first element of feudalism is therefore clearly 
 seen in that condition upon which land is universally 
 granted in the Saxon charters, the " trmoda necessitas^^ 
 i.e., the obligation of repairing bridges and fortifica- 
 tions, and performing military service.^ Even the 
 grants to the clergy did not exempt them from these 
 duties, though, as Kemble observes, it does not 
 distinctly appear whether they involved the personal 
 service (the corvee of the French feudists), or were 
 capable of composition or commutation. From the 
 period of Augustine, which brought in the Roman 
 law and civilisation, or perhaps it might be more 
 strictly said from the reign of Wihtraed, in 690, these 
 obligations rest upon every grant of land, and though 
 they are not identical with the more perfect feudal 
 forms of knight-service, and infeudation in its later 
 sense, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that 
 they contain in them the germ of the feudal system. 
 Spelman, accordingly, and Bishop Nicholson after 
 
 * Senckenberg, "Juris Feudalis Primce Lineae." Getting., 
 1736, c. vii. sec. 153. 
 ^ Kemble, Introd., p. 51. 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. 8 1 
 
 him,^ attributes the introduction of the feudal system 
 to the Saxons, while Senckenberg gives it also a 
 Teutonic origin. Bohmer, in his learned observa- 
 tions upon it, in connection with the Canon Law 
 and the praebendal system, holds that it was origi- 
 nally simply a payment in land instead of money for 
 military service, the only means by which Germany, 
 a country destitute of money, and only able to pay in 
 land, could provide for the support of an army, whose 
 officers, under the Roman Empire, were paid by a 
 salary out of the public chest. ^ Feuds were therefore 
 called heneficia^'' and the ecclesiastical law adopted 
 this name as a special description of its own feudal 
 estate, which thus became a benefice, held under the 
 bishops for life under conditions of spiritual service, 
 and requiring, like a military feud^ a formal institu- 
 tion and investiture. Thomassinus and Van Espen 
 here agree with the great Protestant jurist, the words 
 of the latter being suggestive and significant : — " As 
 princes were wont to give their property by a benefi- 
 ciary right to those who yielded them military service 
 or other offices of obedience, in like manner the 
 bishops gave the goods of the Church to be held or 
 used, or rather gave the right of receiving their 
 usufruct to the clergy, in order that they might war for 
 the Church, or give service to it, each according to his 
 proper vocation."^ Like the ancient military feud^ 
 
 ^ Spelman, Leges Anglo-Sax., Dissert, de Jure Feud. Vet. 
 Sax., G. Nicolson, Episc. Derrensis," &c., Lond. 1721. 
 
 ^ Bohmer, torn. ii. p. 298, ed. Halae, 1732 ("de Praebendis 
 et Dign."). 
 
 ^ Van Espen, ''J. E." p. 2, tit. 18, c. i. sec. 2. 
 
82 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 the ecclesiastical benefice was originally dependent 
 on the will of the lord, and might be resumed by him 
 at pleasure. Like its first type it then became per- 
 manent, and held for life, a perpetual service being 
 annexed to it. Hence the common definition of a 
 benefice is ''a, perpetual right of receiving fruits out 
 of the goods of the Church on account of an eccle- 
 siastical office or ministry constituted by the autho- 
 rity of the Church itself.'' ^ 
 
 A clear view of the beneficiary system in this 
 earlier stage is essentially necessary to the full under- 
 standing of the state of the diocese of Canterbury 
 when its government passed into the hands of the 
 great Norman primate. The Domesday Survey, as 
 we are often told by its commentators, was not strictly 
 or necessarily an ecclesiastical survey, nor did it ex- 
 hibit the state of the diocese in the same manner in 
 which the surveys of the popes at a later period re- 
 l^resent it. But whether through the influence of 
 Lanfranc, or from the greater accuracy of the Kentish 
 commissioners, to which causes might perhaps be 
 added the special importance of the county and its 
 rank as the residence of the primacy, the mention of 
 the churches is here more frequently and carefully made 
 than in many other portions of the same great survey. 
 We turn therefore to the Domesday of Kent, which 
 opens this great compilation, as conveying to us the 
 clearest view we are able to obtain of the state of the 
 diocese in the reign of the Confessor, and its deve- 
 lopment between this and the year 1085. It is difii- 
 
 ' Bohmer, ut supr. p. 299. 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. 83 
 
 cult to realize the vast extent of the property and the 
 influence of the church of Canterbury at this period, 
 without filling up an outline map of the county as 
 Mr. Furley has done,^ with the ecclesiastical manors, 
 and thus presenting at a single glance the relations 
 of the church with the county generally. The great 
 feudal holders under the Crown are only twelve in 
 number — the archbishop (for his separate estates), 
 the monks of Christ Church and their tenants, the 
 Bishop of Rochester, the Bishop of Bayeux, the 
 Abbey of Battel, the Abbey of St. Augustine, the 
 Abbey of Ghent, Hugo de Montfort, the Count Eus- 
 tace, Richard de Tonbridge, Haimo the Viscount, 
 and Albert the chaplain. There are thus only six 
 private holders, for the Bishop of Bayeux held as a 
 private person, and his estates very shortly fell into 
 other hands by forfeiture, but the five remaining lay- 
 holders represent but a small district of the county 
 compared with the property of the Church ; and the 
 manors held by the Bishop of Bayeux, though very 
 numerous, are none of them so valuable as the eccle- 
 siastical holdings. In the descriptions of several of 
 the manors we find four distinct classes of tenants or 
 occupiers : first, the immediate tenants holding under 
 the Church, who only occur as the ^^milites archi- 
 episcopi" (the military tenants holding land by a sub- 
 infeudation). Under these are the villani (villeins), 
 the bordarii (borderers), and the servi^ (servants in 
 the higher meaning, according to some ; according to 
 others, slaves in the proper sense of that term). 
 
 ^ "Weald of Kent," vol. i. p. 275. 
 
84 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Priests and ecclesiastics are sometimes mentioned 
 as tenants, as in the case of the seven priests, hold- 
 ing land in Limne of the archbishop's manor in 
 Aldington. In all the chief manors in which churches 
 are mentioned there is also mention of servants or 
 ministers. There can be little question that these 
 represent the lesser orders of clergy who took part in 
 the services of the Church, and were doubtless per- 
 mitted to carry on some occupation of an agricultural 
 or mechanical kind. For the ^' priests," who are 
 mentioned under Limne," were evidently farmers 
 and cultivators, and no church, or at least no prin- 
 cipal church, appears to have existed in that subordi- 
 nate manor. The servants of the manors appear also 
 to have been Lanfranc's workmen and assistants in 
 his building of churches and manors, resembling the 
 " Monachi ccementarii^^^ who are described by his 
 contemporary, Ivo of Chartres. For in the '* Dies 
 Obitualis," which was read on the anniversary of the 
 archbishop, it is said that " he built many and fair 
 houses in his manors, which were not only for his 
 own pleasure and honour, but also might be a bene- 
 fit to the poor men who used to work in the building 
 of his houses. "1 The position of \}i\^villani has been 
 subject of a great variety of opinion, and even of 
 controversy. They were certainly (as the learned 
 editor of the " Wiltshire Domesday" observes), "no 
 bondsmen." He concludes, after a careful examina- 
 tion of authentic documents, that the villam re- 
 presented the principal of the subordinate tenants or 
 
 ' *'Anglia Sacra," p. i. p. 55, apud 0pp. Lanfranci, ed. 
 Migne, p. loi. 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. 85 
 
 cultivators of the land."^ The hordarhis he shows to 
 be the same kind of servant of the manor who is 
 elsewhere in Domesday called a cottar^ the name 
 arising out of the duty of supplying the table (or 
 bo7'd) of the lord. The meaning of the word servi 
 has led to much more serious differences of opinion ; 
 in many places we can hardly translate it but by the 
 term serfs or slaves. But wherever it immediately 
 follows a church, as " ibi ecclesia et vi, servi^'' I think 
 it must be taken to mean (as several learned com- 
 mentators have held), those ministers of the Church, 
 or persons in the lesser order who, though of servile 
 origin, and fulfilling many of the duties of labourers, 
 possessed, from their very connection with the prin- 
 cipal churches, a higher position than an ordinary 
 servus. Having thus briefly sketched the different 
 classes of residents in the several parishes of the dio- 
 cese at the Domesday period, we proceed to a ques- 
 tion yet more directly affecting its ecclesiastical state, 
 viz., the nature and number of the churches recorded 
 in the Survey, and the difficult problem how far we 
 have in it the entire list of the churches existing in 
 the age of the Confessor. 
 
 We may fairly admit that the absence of the men- 
 tion of a church in any manor described in Domesday 
 does not necessarily imply that no church whatever 
 existed. But it is a strong presumptive evidence that 
 no church of the highest order, the cedes prijuai'ice of 
 the laws of Knut, existed at the time of the survey. 
 Four kinds of churches are described in this law : — 
 The "head church" (peapoj cypicum), the secondary 
 
 ^ Wiltshire Domesday," by Jones, Introd. pp. 57, 58. 
 
86 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 church, the lesser church, and the rural church 
 {Ecdesia campesti'is). The third kind of church is 
 described as having less frequent services, but as 
 having a burial-ground, while the fourth is destitute 
 even of a burial-place. Probably only the first and 
 second kind of church, to which a competent number 
 of ministers was attached, is described in the Survey, 
 and the subordinate manors had attached to them 
 some one of the lesser rank. It is certainly unlikely 
 that at Limne (for instance) no church should have 
 existed of any kind, though seven priests are men- 
 tioned as holding land there. I am inclined to think 
 that we must here take a middle ground, and hold 
 that only those churches which were founded in the 
 greater manors, and represent what were termed later 
 " advowsons appendant," are mentioned in Domesday; 
 the churches in towns which rather represent " advow- 
 sons in gross," being either unmentioned or only al- 
 luded to where they paid some rent or due to the manor. 
 In one or two rare instances " lesser churches " and 
 ^* chapels " are mentioned ; as the ecdestolcE " of Post- 
 ling, and the "three chapels" of Dartford. These 
 were the " secondary churches of the laws of Knut, 
 some of which, or at least some of the two last forms 
 of church, must have existed in every place in which 
 a settled population is described to have been resi- 
 dent. A hundred and seventy-seven churches are 
 actually mentioned in the Domesday Survey of Kent. 
 In the following cases more than one church existed. 
 Hoo, near Rochester, had as many as six; Folkestone 
 (the entire town and hundred), as many as eight ; 
 Dover and Lyminge, three each ; Dartford, a church 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. 87 
 
 and three chapels ; Aylesford, Orpington, Monkton, 
 Eastchurch (in Sheppey), SelHnge, Orlestone, and 
 Hailing, two each ; Postling, two " ecclesiolce " ; Poul- 
 ton, only a chapel ; while Oare is described as having 
 ^'half a church," by which we can only understand 
 that the manor had only half of the dues which arose 
 out of the church — unless an alternate right of patron- 
 age, such as we so often see in later periods, is here 
 indicated. 
 
 How many of the churches mentioned in Domes- 
 day and still represented in our own age, retain any 
 features of architecture or masonry of a pre-Norman 
 character, is a question as difficult as it is interesting. 
 The subject, at least in regard to the masonry and 
 mortars which form the truest criteria of the pre- 
 Norman period, has been hitherto treated too super- 
 ficially and imperfectly to enable us to determine 
 whether any portions of the Domesday churches (re- 
 presenting, we must remember, rather those of the 
 .age of the Confessor than of Lanfranc), are still to be 
 •detected in the ancient fabrics of the diocese ; recent 
 rebuildings and so-called " restorations have greatly 
 limited the field of this inquiry, and it is difficult to 
 estimate the losses which we have experienced in 
 what must have formed the richest materials for it. 
 
 A still more important question presents itself at 
 this point — the state at this period of the parochial 
 or secular clergy, those who were permanently at- 
 tached (incardinati) to the principal churches. The 
 •creation of jurisdiction^^'' and the limit which was 
 thus given to the exercise of the powers of " order,^' 
 .until then general and uncircumscribed, necessarily 
 
88 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 involved the establishment of the parochial system 
 and a parochial priesthood ; and this was followed up 
 in the ninth century in France, and subsequently in 
 England by the institution of Rural Deans, whose 
 origin is thus briefly described by the learned 
 canonist Rauttenstrauch : — " As the custom pre- 
 vailed about the ninth century for the rural clergy to 
 hold monthly chapters in their several districts, in 
 which the parish priests assembled on the first day 
 of every month, in order to consult in common in 
 regard to their duties and scruples of conscience, it 
 was necessary to elect some of their nu*mber as presi- 
 dents of these chapters, and these were termed rural 
 deans. These officers were elected by the clergy 
 themselves, not from any qualification of locality or 
 standing, but from their knowledge, skill, and pru- 
 dence, and were confirmed by the bishop, being 
 irremovable afterwards except on the ground of mis- 
 conduct. 
 
 Hincmar of Rheims endeavoured to reform this 
 institution, which in his day had become too con- 
 vivial in its character. It was utterly unknown in 
 Italy ; and the rural deans were succeeded generally 
 in later times by the vicarii foranei^ the deaneries 
 becoming, as they even now are legally, a mere 
 geographical expression. The original diocese ot 
 Canterbury had eleven of these subdivisions, viz., the 
 deaneries of Bridge, Canterbury, Charing, Dover, 
 Elham, Limne, Ospringe, Sandwich, Sittingbourne, 
 Sutton, and Westbere. In regard to the office and 
 
 ^ " Instit. Juris Eccl." sec. II. c. xv. sec. DCVI. 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. 89 
 
 S'iatus of the parochial clergy, so much obscured by 
 Hammond^ and other writers, whose absorption of 
 all the powers of the second order into the episcopate 
 is perhaps as injurious in its results as the absorption 
 •of the episcopate itself into the papacy, Rautten- 
 rstrauch observes : Since the parochial clergy hold 
 their jurisdiction by divine right, they are not to be 
 considered mere vicars of the bishops, having powers 
 only vicarious and delegated. Rather they enjoy an 
 ^ordinary jurisdiction, and carry on their care of their 
 ilock, together with the bishop, in their own right " ^ 
 injure gerunt proprid). We have already seen that the 
 English parochial clergy from even the Saxon period 
 maintained an ecclesiastical and social independence 
 which was outwardly blamed, but doubtless secretly 
 envied by those of other lands. It was this which 
 made the struggle between the secular and regular 
 clergy, represented in some sense by the perpetual 
 warfare between the rival foundations of Christ Church 
 and St. Augustine's, so violent and protracted. No- 
 thing tended so much to intensify this hostility as the 
 introduction by Lanfranc and Odo, bishop of Bayeux 
 of the praebendal system both at Canterbury and 
 Dover ; by means of which that plan so essential to 
 the first idea of monachism, of a tenure in common, 
 was entirely abandoned, and a separate estate was 
 attached to the members of the conventual body, or 
 assigned to some special purpose of its support. 
 
 ^ The theological faculty of Paris condemned Jean Sarazin in 
 1429, and Jacques de Vernant in 1654, for denying the divine 
 right and ordinary and proper jurisdiction of the parochial clergy. 
 
 ^ Instit. Juris. Eccl. 
 
90 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 The institution of regular canons " was perhaps 
 the severest blow which the monastic system proper 
 has ever received. For out of the separate estate 
 thus created, an individual power was conferred upon 
 the several members holding it, and they had a direct 
 interest in increasing it, and thus passed from the 
 mere religious community in which their personality 
 was merged and lost, into a new and secular life, 
 which connected them in all its relations rather with 
 the people with whom they mixed, than with the 
 regular clergy, who, except through the farmers and 
 managers of their common estates, knew but little of 
 the outer world. 
 
 Nor was the clergy of the second order alone 
 emancipated from the monastic rule by this great and 
 momentous change. The episcopate, which during 
 the Saxon period had been so closely identified with 
 the monastic system, was now made entirely indepen- 
 dent of it ; and Lanfranc had no sooner vindicated 
 the rights of his see against the insatiable Bishop of 
 Bayeux, and recovered twenty-five manors of which 
 the church of Canterbury had been unjustly de- 
 prived,^ than he carried out the plan which had long 
 been adopted at Caen, and in other parts of Nor- 
 mandy, and divided the manors and lands of Christ 
 Church between himself, the monks, and their re- 
 spective feudal tenants, a division which the Domes- 
 day Survey at once recorded and ratified. 
 
 * It is extremely difficult to identify the manors thus recovered 
 out of those (nearly fifty in number) which are described as 
 belonging to Christ Church (or as it is there termed, the Church 
 of the Holy Trinity) in Canterbury. 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. 9 1 
 
 At this point we cannot but fall back upon the life 
 of this great prelate, as it is given us by his contem- 
 porary biographer, Milo Crispinus. After describing 
 the great Council of Windsor, at which the Primate 
 Stigand was deposed, held in the year 1070, he writes : 
 While the king was considering the matter, and 
 consulting with the nobles of the kingdom, by a most 
 happy result he rested at last in Lanfranc .... and 
 sent legates accordingly into Normandy to carry out 
 this design .... The Abbot of Caen being over- 
 come as much by the will of God as by the apostolic 
 authority .... passed over into England, and under- 
 took the government of the church of Canterbury, 
 
 which enjoys the primacy of the islands After 
 
 his translation into England, Lanfranc, not forgetful 
 of the object for which he had come, directed all his 
 endeavours to the correction of the manners of his 
 people, and settling the state of the Church. And 
 first he laboured to renew the church of Canterbury, 
 the mother church of the kingdom. And because 
 some years before it had been burnt, he strove to re- 
 build it from the foundations, — a great and extensive 
 work. He built also necessary offices for the use of 
 the monks ; and (which is very remarkable) he caused 
 to be brought over the sea in swift-sailing vessels 
 squared stones from Caen, where he had been abbot, 
 in order to build with. He built also a house for his 
 own dwelling near the church, and surrounded all 
 these buildings with a vast and lofty wall. Having 
 duly arranged all that was necessary for the table and 
 clothing of the monks, he enriched the church Avith 
 many precious ornaments. The dignities of the 
 
92 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 church of Canterbury, which had fallen into abeyance 
 through age or neglect, or had been lessened in im- 
 portance, he re-formed and renewed. Many lands 
 which had been taken away he brought back into the 
 property of the Church, and restored to it twenty-five 
 manors. He built two hospitals for strangers and for 
 the poor without the city — one on the north, the other 
 on the west, with all necessary buildings, to which he 
 assigned such annual payments as seemed good to 
 him out of his own income. He founded praebends 
 in his manors to be given to the poor yearly. On 
 many of his manors he built houses of stone for his 
 dwelling." ^ 
 
 The hospitals are those of St. John without North- 
 gate, and of St. Nicholas, Harbledown ; while the 
 manors in which he built houses are indicated to us 
 by those described in Domesday as held by the arch- 
 bishop himself in demesne. ^ The principal of these 
 are — Otford (said to have been in a later day the 
 favourite residence of Becket), Charing, Aldington, 
 and Lyminge, with Darenth (exchanged in the sub- 
 sequent century for Lambeth), Mailing, Northfleet, 
 Bolton, Pluckley, and Mersham.^ Whether the five 
 
 ^ 0pp. Lanfranci, ed. Migne, pp. 40-46. 
 
 * In a letter addressed to a friend, whose name is not men- 
 tioned, the archbishop writes : *' You know that in those counties 
 the charge of inquiring into which has been entrusted to you, I 
 have nothing in demesne, but that all the lands in those parts of 
 your church belong to the support of the monks altogether " 
 (Ep. liv. p. 516). 
 
 ^ Besides these, the archbishops held in demesne at the time 
 of the survey, Pagham in Sussex, Harrow in Middlesex, and 
 Croydon and Mortlake in Surrey. These with Canterbury 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. 93 
 
 last places were actual residences of the archbishop 
 cannot be easily determined. Otford, Charing, 
 Aldington, and Lyminge continued to be archiepis- 
 copal abodes till a much later period. The two last- 
 named places had extensive parks, that of Lyminge 
 being probably the most ancient enclosure of this 
 kind in England, as it is mentioned in a charter of 
 Oswini in 689. The secular life upon which the 
 archbishops thus entered, carried on as it was by 
 a constant alternation of residence between their 
 manors in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Middlesex, 
 detached them effectually from the old monastic life 
 which they had led at Canterbury. Although the 
 palace there was still their more central and official 
 residence, and they continued to fulfil their duties in 
 their cathedral, the ties which connected them with 
 the diocese gave w^ay before the stronger influence of 
 the primacy. It may be safely affirmed that the 
 forged Donation of Constantine scarcely gave the 
 Papacy a greater comparative power than the sepa- 
 rate endowment which Lanfranc secured to the 
 primatial see, conferred upon himself and his suc- 
 cessors. Hitherto the see of Canterbury had been 
 rather the shadow of a great name than the reality. 
 The inheritor of great titles and venerable traditions, 
 it had never till now secured that great secular and 
 political influence which the union of temporal and 
 spiritual powxr in Lanfranc conveyed to it in later 
 ages. For the first time in its history the arch- 
 would give at least eight residential houses at this early period. 
 I^ambeth, Knole, Ford, Wrotham, and other places were ot 
 later occupation. 
 
 H 
 
94 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 bishopric was detached from the monastic bond in 
 which it had sprung up, and entered into the great 
 feudal system. The Monastery of Christ Church 
 assumed at the same time a new and more secular 
 form. A prior now took the place of the archbishop 
 as abbot, and the new and relaxed rule which Lan- 
 franc drew up for the house tended greatly to promote 
 the secular tendencies it had shown from the first ;^ 
 w^hile the foundation of the Abbey of St. Gregory for 
 regular canons weakened still more the influence of 
 the regular clergy, which was so early and powerfully 
 maintained by the Monastery of St. Augustine. That 
 house founded all its claims upon the exemptions 
 which had been granted, or at least were asserted to 
 have been granted, by the popes at different times, 
 the germ of which is to be seen in the Saxon 
 charters. But its truest claim of authority rested on 
 the immense extent of its endowment, which rivalled, 
 as we have seen, that of the metropolitical church. 
 Its church was until the time of Archbishop Cuth- 
 berht (a.d. 741-58) the burial-place of the archbishops, 
 and the licence he procured for the transfer of this 
 right to his own church was among the earliest causes 
 of that virulent animosity which grew up in later ages 
 between the rival foundations. This was greatly 
 increased by the controversy which sprang up imme- 
 diately after the death of Lanfranc between the 
 Monastery of St. Gregory, so closely allied to Christ 
 Church in its origin and government, and that of 
 
 * In the Decreta pro ordine S. Benedicti " he describes 
 these as gathered" by himself *'outof the customs of the 
 greater monasteries of his age." 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. 95 
 
 St. Augustine, on the possession of the reUcs of St. 
 Mildred. The archbishop on founding St. Gregory's 
 had endowed it with the reHcs of St. Ethelburga and 
 her niece, St. Mildred, which till then had rested 
 undisturbed at Lyminge. By an anachronism very 
 unaccountable at a period in which Saxon hagiology 
 must have been best known, this early Mildred had 
 been confounded with her relative and namesake who 
 two generations later had founded the great nunnery 
 of Minster in Thanet, and as the latter had been 
 gifted with extraordinary and miraculous powers, the 
 Gregorians at once claimed her as their own, while 
 the Augustinians with equal energy repudiated a 
 claim which would have deprived them of their most 
 sacred and wonderworking shrine. It is strange to 
 reflect that up to the period of the Reformation, when 
 both the rival houses fell in the common ruin of the 
 monastic system in England, this controversy still 
 survived in all its bitterness.^ 
 
 Of the architectural works of Lanfranc it is believed 
 by the most competent judges that scarcely a fragment 
 remains. A careful and scientific comparison of his 
 work at Caen with the earliest portions of Canterbury 
 Cathedral led Mr. Parker to the conclusion that no por- 
 tion of that great fabric can be attributed to Lanfranc. ^ 
 
 ^ See the tract of Goscelinus, the Aiigustinian monk (a. d. 
 1090), ^'Contra ina7ies B. Mildrethce tisitrpatores^'' (in MSS. 
 Cotton.). 
 
 ^ ** It must be borne in mind," he writes, ^*that every one of 
 our cathedrals was rebuilt in the twelfth century ; there is not a 
 vestige of Saxon work in any one of them. Lanfranc's 
 cathedral at Canterbury was entirely pulled down and rebuilt 
 H 2 
 
96 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 The destruction of the previous building is described 
 to have been complete ; and even the lengthening of 
 the choir, attributed by Milo Crispinus to St. Anselm, 
 could not have extended the building to that portion 
 of the crypt which is sometimes erroneously assigned 
 to his great predecessor. The chancel of the church 
 at Lyminge, which was certainly built between 965 
 and 1086,^ and finished when Lanfranc removed the 
 body of Ethelburga, is built in the rudest imitation of 
 the Roman work which preceded it, and represents 
 the masonry of the Saxon servants of the manor 
 rather than the squared stones which Milo describes 
 Lanfranc to have obtained for his building from Caen.^ 
 The work of Lanfranc still remaining in the two 
 magnificent abbeys at Caen, either of which might 
 vie with the Cathedral of Canterbury, is marked by 
 that peculiarity which has since become the criterion 
 of buildings anterior to iioo, an extremely wide joint 
 between every stone, indicating a reliance on mortars 
 derived from the Roman period, and continued even 
 when the Roman skill in their manufacture had long 
 ceased to exist. Mr. Parker was the first to discover 
 this important clue to the study of mediaeval building, 
 suggested by the undoubted work of Lanfranc, almost 
 entirely hidden from view in the great churches of 
 
 by Ernulf and Conrad in the time of Henry I." (" Gentleman's 
 Mag." Jan. 1863, p. 85.) 
 
 ' See Goscelinusut siipr. and Leland's " Collect." torn. ii. p. 
 54, ed. Hearne, 1770. 
 
 " It is not a little remarkable that not a single piece of Caen 
 stone is found in the church of Lyminge. In the dependent 
 chapel of Paddlesworth (pre- Norman in its general features) 
 Caen stone is largely employed. 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. 97 
 
 his foundation at Caen. Fragments belonging to 
 the period of Lanfranc may be found in the lower 
 portion of Mailing Abbey, in the chancel and south 
 wall of Lyminge, and in a portion of the little church 
 of Paddlesworth ; probably also in a small chamber 
 attached to the church at Aldington, and in the 
 singular turret into which a corner of the tower of 
 Minster in Thanet is in a manner inserted. The 
 tower of Limne belongs more probably to the time 
 of Anselm, and exhibits an instance of the Transition 
 period, marked by a rude massiveness which was pro- 
 bably its chief characteristic. But far higher and more 
 fruitful in its results was the doctrinal work of the 
 great Norman primate, which has come down to our 
 day in his exegetical and controversial writings. A 
 history of the diocese would be indeed imperfect if it 
 failed to mark at least the primary features and 
 character of the teaching which was thus fixed and 
 developed in every one of those churches over which 
 he ruled. Unlike his architectural labours, these 
 works of the great master-builder are permanent and 
 imperishable. The writings of Lanfranc, though not 
 numerous, are clear and comprehensive. His contro- 
 versy with Berengarius on the Eucharist, though 
 probably the best known, is the least valuable, and 
 does not exhibit him as in any degree equal to his 
 adversary, whose arguments he passes by with the 
 levity and impatience which betray his great inferiority 
 as a controversialist to the remarkable man whom he 
 endeavours to refute. The treatise is from beginning 
 to the end a continuous petitio principii in its most 
 
98 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 undisguised form.^ When, however, we take up his 
 commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, in which he has 
 founded upon a paraphrastic text a kind of tesselated 
 gloss formed from the writings of St. Ambrose and 
 St. Augustine, supplemented and connected by his 
 own observations, we see at once that his exegetical 
 powers greatly exceeded his controversial ones, and 
 that his qualifications as a pastoral divine were of a 
 high order. It is not too much to say — and the fact 
 is an interesting one to the Church of England, which 
 he may be said to have moulded into its present form 
 as a national Church, giving it thus its distinctive and 
 individual character — that there is no part of this 
 commentary which could not be used to this day in 
 the sermons of our English divines and in the metro- 
 political cathedral itself The entire work is a signal 
 proof of the continuity of the teaching of our Church, 
 and of its independence of those Italian influences 
 which were grafted upon it at a later period, but which 
 never assimilated themselves to the mind of the nation. 
 The most interesting features of this commentary 
 
 ^ The views of Lanfranc on the Eucharist, when they are not 
 expressed controversially or in connection with the Berengarian 
 doctrine which represented the opposite extreme, were singularly 
 clear and spiritual. In his commentary on the ist of Corinthians 
 (c. xi.), and in his letter to Donaldus, an Irish bishop (Ep. 33), 
 this is very remarkably shown. Of the Sacrifice of the Mass 
 he observes in his commentary on the Hebrews, * ' Melchisedech 
 panem et vinum sacrificare Deo constituit quem ritum Dominus 
 Jesus Christus observavit et in ecclesia sua observari prsecepit 
 (c. v. ver. 4). This rather represents the doctrine of the High 
 Churchmen of the days of Laud, than that of the modern 
 Church of Rome. 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. 99 
 
 in connection with our diocesan history are those 
 in which the constitution of the Church is referred 
 to, which give an insight into Lanfranc's government 
 of the diocese and his views of the pastoral office. 
 On Eph. iv. ii, he writes : "Christ hath given diffe- 
 rent gifts to different persons, that every one might 
 be perfectly exercised in that work of ministry which 
 he has received. For if one had received all these 
 offices he could not attend to them separately." In 
 his rebuke to Berengarius for speaking slightingly of 
 the Roman Church, he suggestively remarks on the 
 passage of Matthew xvi. i6, that the words to Peter, 
 '^though they are believed to have heeii addressed to all 
 the pastors of the holy Churchy and are so expounded by 
 certain Catholics^ are declared by the holy ca?ions and 
 the decrees of the popes to be specially understood of 
 the Roman Church." ^ In his commentary on the 
 Galatians (c. ii. 12) he indicates the equality in rank 
 and power of Peter, John, and James ; while in his 
 speech asserting the claims of his see against those 
 of York he makes use of the popular interpretation of 
 the so-called Petrine Privilege in a somewhat curious 
 manner. Arguing against the advocates of the York 
 primacy, who had very justly alleged that Gregory 
 the Great had not extended the privilege of Augustine 
 to his successors, Lanfranc retorts that the same might 
 be said of the Church of Rome, in which Christ did 
 not extend the gift bestowed on the great Apostle to 
 his successors. His doctrine on the perfect individu- 
 ality and integrity of every separate Church, notwith- 
 
 ^ *'De Corpore et Sanguine Domini," c. xvi. 
 
ICO 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Standing its union with Rome, is, however, here as 
 ever most jealously guarded.^ As," he affirms in 
 every human individual there is every property of 
 the perfect man, so in every Church of the whole 
 Christian faith there is the same integrity and com- 
 pleteness." ^ It is easy to see that these principles, 
 carried out in his own diocese, must have largely 
 contributed to that independence of character which 
 exhibited itself from the Norman times in the English 
 clergy, and conspicuously in those of Kent. Not- 
 withstanding the Roman tendencies of the Monastery 
 of St. Augustine, and the increase of those exemptions 
 of persons and places from ordinary jurisdiction, by 
 which, under the specious pretext of conferring upon 
 them " the liberties of the Roman Church," the 
 Papacy so largely extended its power at this period, 
 the great Norman archbishop left an inheritance of 
 freedom to his diocese and to the whole Church of 
 England of which it was never but during a few 
 stormy intervals of its history deprived. It must 
 be remembered that his primacy extended over the 
 whole of the tempestuous reign of Pope Gregory VIL, 
 preceding it by three years, and exceeding it by 
 
 ^ With St. Augustine Lanfranc holds that the future Anti- 
 christ would sit in the temple of God, tanqiiam ipse sit teiuphtvi 
 Dei quod est Eeclesia'''' (in 2 Thess. ii.) ; that is, that he 
 would destroy the liberties and even the individuality of the 
 separate Churches by absorbing their rights and powers in him- 
 self. It would appear from this that he did not regard with 
 favour the new theory of the Papacy then just put forth by 
 Gregory VII. in his famous Dictaius.''' 
 
 •-^ Opp. p. 623. 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. lOT 
 
 four.^ His independent spirit led him to resist the 
 frequent importunities of Gregory to do homage to him 
 in Rome, the king with true Norman chivalry supporting 
 the archbishop in his refusal. In one of his letters the 
 pope expresses his wonder that Lanfranc from the 
 time he was elected has never journeyed to Rome, 
 alleging that he ought not through fear of the king," 
 or any " superstitious affection " to him, to withdraw 
 himself from the papal presence.- In another he 
 adds threats to persuasions, and menaces him with 
 suspension unless within four months he fulfils his 
 journey.'^ But perhaps the most interesting to us 
 of the writings of Lanfranc in regard to his diocese is 
 his adaptation of the Benedictine rule addressed to 
 the Prior of Christchurch, which gives us a perfect 
 picture of the ritual of the cathedral during the whole 
 year, and of the modus vivendi of the inmates of the 
 monastery, both lay and cleric. The laxity of disci- 
 pline and general morality which the archbishop found 
 in England on his arrival rendered the compilation 
 of a practicable rule of monastic observance a neces- 
 sary work. He complains in a letter to St. Anselm 
 
 ' Gregory VII. held the Papacy from 1073 till 1085. Lanfranc 
 the Primacy from 1070 to 1089. 
 2 Greg. VII. " Epp." 1. vi. ep. 30. 
 
 ^ See the letters of Gregory VII. 1. ix. ep. 20. It appears 
 from the 43rd letter of Lanfranc that this journey was at last 
 fulfilled, " In Anglorum enim terram veniens, sive Roniainpi ofi- 
 cisccns, omnia sanctitati vestroe reseravi," &c. Possibly, as 
 Lucas Dacher affirms, this passage may allude to his journey 
 to Rome in 107 1, which would be in the time of Gregory's 
 predecessor. 
 
I02 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 that the land in which he is, is daily shaken with so^ 
 many and so great tribulations, is stained with so 
 many adulteries and other impurities, that no order 
 of men consults for the benefit of his soul, or even 
 desires to hear the salutary doctrine of God for his 
 increase in holiness."^ In his adaptation of the 
 Benedictine rule, he says that " he has added a few 
 things, and changed others, specially in regard to 
 certain festivals, which he considers " ought to be 
 observed in our Church with a greater degree of im- 
 portance on account of the primatial see." Among 
 the most interesting of these directions is that relating 
 to the library of the monastery and the studies of the 
 monks. In the first week in Lent the librarian has 
 to place in the chapter-house all those books which 
 had not been delivered to the monks for study during 
 the preceding year. These latter are brought in by 
 those to whom they were entrusted, and the librarian 
 reads the list of them. Then they are returned in 
 regular order, and those who have not fulfilled their 
 year's task by reading them through, prostrate them- 
 selves to confess their fault, and to obtain pardon. 
 The librarian then delivers another book a-piece to 
 all the brethren, and takes a list of those lent and 
 those returned. It does not appear that any inquiry 
 or examination was made to see whether the reading 
 of the past year had been profitable, it being appa- 
 rently assumed that the character of each of the 
 brethren was a sufficient guarantee of his honour and 
 truthfulness. Mention is made in another place of 
 
 1 Ep. 43, p. 539. 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. IO3 
 
 the altare viatutinale and the altare majus, the former 
 bemg probably used for lesser celebrations. The 
 five greatest festivals of the Church are defined to be 
 these : Christmas-day, Easter-day, Whit-Sunday, the 
 Assumption-day, and the Feast-day of the place (i.e.^ 
 that of the patron saint). Those of the second class 
 are the Epiphany, the Purification, the Feast of St. 
 Gregory, the Annunciation, the Sunday after Easter, 
 the Feast of St. Alphage the Martyr, Ascension-day, 
 the Feast of St. Augustine, archbishop of the English, 
 Trinity Sunday (octava Pentecostes), the Nativity of 
 St. John the Baptist, the Martyrdom of St. Peter and 
 St. Paul, the Translation of St. Benedict, the Nativity 
 of the Virgin Mary, the Feast of St. Michael, All 
 Saints'-day, the Feast of St. Andrew, and that of the 
 dedication of the Church. Those of the third class 
 are the Feast of St. Vincent, the Conversion of St. 
 Paul, St. PhiHp, and St. James, the " Invention of 
 the Cross," St. James, St. Peter's Chains, St. Laurence, 
 the octave of the Assumption, St. Bartholomew, St. 
 Augustine (of Hippo), the Beheading of St. John the 
 Baptist, the " Exaltation of the Cross," St. Matthew, 
 St. Simon, and St. Jude, St. Martin, St. Thomas the 
 Apostle, and any others which may thereafter be 
 appointed. It will be observed here, with not a little 
 surprise, that the ^'Assumption" is placed above the 
 Ascension, not only being in the first class, while the 
 latter is in the second, but also having its octave 
 observed by a distinct celebration. That this order 
 of feasts was adopted also throughout the diocese 
 there can be little doubt, and the elevated rank 
 assigned to the Assumption-day in the cathedral may 
 
I04 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 have arisen from the commemoration of benefactors, 
 who mention that day specially in their bequests to 
 the monastery.^ The place, however, assigned to 
 the Ascension-day is singular in any case, and not a 
 little significant. 
 
 The letters of Lanfranc are of peculiar interest, 
 especially those addressed to St. Anselm, his dearest 
 friend and most illustrious successor. The influence 
 of this great prelate and divine on both those who 
 preceded and who succeeded him, is one of the most 
 remarkable features of this period of our diocesan 
 history. Far beyond him as Lanfranc undoubtedly 
 was in every kind of practical ability, though greatly 
 inferior as a divine and theoretical writer, this in- 
 fluence seems to have prevailed during all his episco- 
 pate, and continually reveals itself in his writings. 
 Though Anselm had been a pupil of Lanfranc, the 
 great archbishop yielded to his advice and direction 
 in all his spiritual conduct. Coming to England to 
 consult his predecessor in the Abbey of Bee, he 
 rather gave, than received counsel. An instance of 
 this occurred in the case of the festivals observed by 
 the Church of Canterbury. Lanfranc complained to 
 him that certain saints were commemorated in Eng- 
 land who were not properly in the calendar, and 
 especially Archbishop Elphege, who perished in the 
 Danish attack on Canterbury, and who was regarded 
 as a martyr, though his death was less a martyrdom 
 than a murder. But Anselm pleaded the cause of 
 
 * See the charter of Lufa (a.d. 832) in which the Assump- 
 tion-day is expressly mentioned (Kemble, torn. i. p. 299). 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORiMAN PERIOD. I05 
 
 Elphege so eloquently that his name continued to 
 hold the high place which we have already seen as- 
 signed to it by Lanfranc's own appointment. During 
 his visit at Canterbury Anselm is said to "have found 
 a gold ring in his bed, which led Lanfranc to pro- 
 phesy that he would be his successor in the arch- 
 bishopric. " As he predicted," writes his biographer, 
 "so it came to j3ass." 
 
 Anselm, though he took up the church-building 
 work of his predecessor with great zeal, extend- 
 ing the choir of the cathedral and carrying on 
 the work of Lanfranc with becoming energy,^ was 
 far less equal to the political requirements of the 
 see, and through his long monastic life had failed 
 to secure that independence of character which 
 Lanfranc had not only 2)ossessed in himself, but 
 had impressed upon the whole diocese. He had 
 succeeded to the see under the most unfavourable 
 circumstances. For four years it had been vacant, 
 while the miserable successor of the Conqueror had 
 turned its revenues to his own account, and but for a 
 sudden compunction on the supposed approach of 
 death, would have sold it to the highest bidder. At 
 this moment he was led to bestow it upon Anselm, 
 then in England, but exacted from him so large a 
 tribute out of the already wasted patrimony of the 
 see, that the new archbishop, unable to satisfy the 
 extortions of the king, suffered from poverty and pri- 
 
 * The tower of the church of Limne (among others) is held 
 by competent judges to be the work of Ansehii. It exhibits a 
 peculiar Transition character, and is perhaps one of the earliest 
 instances of the pointed arch to be found in the diocese. 
 
io6 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 vation, as well as continual persecutions, which com- 
 pelled him to live for three years in banishment. 
 Soon after his recall, in 1099, began the great war- 
 fare on the right of investiture, in which he took the 
 side of the Papacy with so much warmth and energy 
 that his subsequent life was one of repeated exile and 
 almost incessant conflict. The condition of the diocese, 
 of which we have few notices at this troubled period, 
 may easily be imagined from the various synods over 
 which Anselm presided, and whose invariable object 
 was to check the abuses and corruption of manners 
 which this long state of comparative anarchy had 
 brought with it. But notwithstanding the fatal effects 
 of the enforced absence of the archbishop, and the 
 breaking-up of the order and discipline which Lan- 
 franc, supported by the vigorous arm of the Con- 
 queror, had established in the diocese, the work of 
 the restoration and enlargement of the cathedral pro- 
 ceeded, and the two priors, Ernulf and Conrad, 
 whom Anselm had appointed, with the aid of the arch- 
 bishop rebuilt the choir, to which the name of the 
 latter prior gave so great a celebrity, known as it was 
 thereafter as the glorious choir of Conrad/' The 
 course, however, of Anselm, in regard to his government 
 of the see, involved unhappily, both for his diocese 
 and the country itself, the complete reversal of the wise 
 ;and enlarged policy of Lanfranc, and the fatal break-up 
 of that perfect unity between Church and State which 
 his co-operation with the Conqueror had effected. ^ 
 
 * Lest this estimate of Anselm's policy should seem severe, I 
 may refer to that given by the Commission ** for the reform of 
 public teaching " appointed by the Republic of Venice about 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. 10 7 
 
 Up to this time the clergy of the diocese had not 
 been forced to celibacy, and (as the learned Juretus 
 observes^) like the French clergy, had been allowed 
 the privilege of marriage. Anselm, carrying out the 
 rigid Hildebrandine policy which Lanfranc had re- 
 sisted, enforced under the severest ban the surrender 
 of those rights which had been hitherto allowed 
 throughout all England. His letter to the Prior 
 Ernulf denounces privation of their benefices against 
 all who fail in their obedience to this law, and ex- 
 communication if they persist in their resistance to it. 
 In France, the prohibition was so difficult to carry 
 out that a canon of Paris, in spite of it, was regularly 
 married {'^ matrimoniales tabulas sibi composuit'^)? 
 
 the year 1770, which is embodied in these words, *^ Fu inserito 
 ancora nel catalogo dei Santi Anselmo, Arcivescovo di Can- 
 torberi, perche sosteneva una superiorita assoluta dei Papi sopra 
 i vescovi, e I'independenza di questi dei loro sovrani, ai quali 
 non voleva che prestassero giuramento di fedelta." (Collezione 
 di scritture di regia giiirisdizione. Firenze, 1770, n. 116, torn. 
 30.) The greatest of our archbishops as a divine and pastoral 
 teacher, in his political character he was among the least. 
 
 ^ * ' Licet Rex Anglios proecepisset ut presby teri ecclesias et 
 foeminas haberent sicut tempore patris sui et Lanfranci Archiep. 
 Anselmus contra per totam Angliam jussit omnes sacerdotes qui 
 foeminas tenerent privari ecclesiis et omni ecclesiastico bene- 
 ficio " (Not. in Ivon. Carnot. " Epp." p. 734). It must not be 
 assumed that the clergy of this period lived in mere concubinage. 
 This was the calumny of those who enforced the new prohibi- 
 bition. For the Chronicles of Auxerre (at the year 11 19) in 
 describing the Council of Rome of that date affirms " iixorum 
 qtLoqiie et concubinarum contubernia presby teris, &c., ibi sunt 
 penitus interdicta " (Id. ibid, ). 
 
 - Ivon. Carnot. " Ep." 218. 
 
io8 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 The bishop consults Ivo in regard to what is to be 
 done in the case, who recommends, contrary to mo- 
 dern authorities, that the marriage tie should remain 
 valid, but that the offender should lose his stipend." 
 We can readily imagine the confusion which the 
 course thus pursued by Anselm must have occasioned 
 in the diocese, though so little record of its results 
 has remained. But far more serious and immediate 
 in its issue was the great contest on the right of in- 
 vestiture, which proved him, however illustrious as 
 philosopher and divine, to be wholly wanting in that 
 l^atriotic and practical spirit which was so distinctive 
 a characteristic of his great predecessor. This contro- 
 versy w^as the inevitable result of the entrance of the 
 episcopal and clerical body into the feudal system, in 
 which investiture '' into the feud was the inalienable 
 right of the supreme lord. AVe have only to look at 
 the Domesday Survey to enable us to see at a glance 
 that the claim of the Papacy involved the surrender 
 by the Crown of the supreme temporal power over 
 the greater portion of the lands of England. An- 
 selm, from the first, had cast in his lot with the pope 
 against the Crown, which Ivo of Chartres had in some 
 degree done in the sister kingdom. 
 
 ^'Anselm,'' observes Juretus, going forth as an 
 exile from England, and for the most part taking up 
 his abode at Rome, at length, through his pertina- 
 cious zeal, induced the king, from whom he had re- 
 ceived the archbishopric, to depart from the inveterate 
 custom of investing the bishops of his kingdom. 
 
 ^ Not. in I von., p. 561. 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. I09 
 
 It was fitting and necessary," writes Waltram, 
 bishop of Naumburg, in 1109, ^* after the churches 
 were endowed by kings and emperors with feuds, 
 and their rights were thus transferred to the power of 
 the bishops, that homages, oaths, and pledges should 
 be required of them, that in the event of the irruption 
 of an enemy, they might know to whom the custody 
 of their cities was entrusted/'^ Anselm, who had 
 delivered himself over in soul and body to Paschalis, 
 the then pope, thought little of the example of his 
 predecessor, or the claims of the sovereign whose 
 investiture of him into his own archbishopric he had 
 so readily accepted. To the famous Gundulf he 
 writes, *^Let no threats, no promise, no cunning 
 extort from you either homage, or oath, or bond of 
 fealty. If any should ask from you any of these, let 
 this be your answer, ^ I am a Christian, I am a monk, 
 I am a bishop, and therefore I wish to keep with 
 everyone the faith I owe to everyone.'"^ A very 
 unworthy subterfuge for so great a man, reminding 
 us of the excellent remark of the Senator Ruccellai in 
 one of his memoirs, addressed to the Grand Duke 
 Leopold of Tuscany, In the days of religious purity 
 there were always to be found good subjects — in the 
 dark days of error wretched slaves."^ The episcopate 
 of Anselm, bright as it was in his doctrinal teach- 
 ing, marks one of the earliest stages of the decadence 
 of the clergy of the diocese, and the approaching sub- 
 jugation to a foreign power of the spiritual liberties 
 
 ' Not. in Ivon., p. 710. ^ Ibid. 
 
 ^ **Vie de Scipion de' Ricci," par de Potter, torn. iv. p. 116. 
 I 
 
no 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 of England. The question of investiture was at last 
 settled by means of a compromise, which gave but 
 scant satisfaction to Anselm himself The delivery 
 of possession by the staff and ring was surrendered 
 to the pope, while the king retained the power 
 of exacting the accustomed homage and oath of 
 fideHtyi. 
 
 Of Anselm, in his connection with the diocese, 
 we know little indeed. The contrast which his whole 
 character presented to that of Lanfranc was here 
 most conspicuous. It is as a primate contending 
 against the Crown for temporal supremacy that his 
 memory lives in the history of the Church, while the 
 fame of his theological works has given him the 
 highest place in the long list of the archbishops as a 
 divine. His celebrated treatise, Cur Deus homo," 
 is a contribution to the study of the doctrine of the 
 Atonement which would do honour to the brightest 
 periods of the history of the Church. As a church- 
 builder and restorer we must attribute to his influence 
 and counsel, if not direction, that enlargement of the 
 choir by the Prior Conrad, so celebrated in the his- 
 tory of the cathedral, yet destined to be so short- 
 lived. Gervase, in his history of the rebuilding of 
 the cathedral after the fire of 1174, gives us a full 
 view of the "glorious choir of Conrad," and describes 
 so minutely, not only the architectural features, but 
 the ornamentation of the church, which was then so 
 utterly destroyed, that we cannot but transcribe, from 
 the work of Professor Willis, a portion of his careful 
 
 * See William of Miilmesbuiy, de Gestis Pontif. Angl." I. ii.. 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. Ill 
 
 description of Anselm's magnificent work. Proceed- 
 ing to the east of the great tower of Lanfranc, which 
 was placed in the centre of the whole church, he 
 writes : — " The eastern pillars of the great tower pro- 
 jected as a solid wall, and were formed each into a 
 round semi-pillar. Hence in line and order were nine 
 pillars on each side of the choir, nearly equidistant 
 from each other; after these, six in a circuit were 
 arranged circularly, that is, from the ninth on the 
 south side to the ninth on the north, of which the 
 two extreme ones were united by the same one arch. 
 Upon these pillars, as well those in the straight line 
 as those in the circuit, arches were turned from pillar 
 to pillar; above these the solid wall was set with 
 small blank windows. This wall (on either side), 
 bounding the choir, met the corresponding one at 
 the head of the church in that circuit of pillars. 
 Above the wall was the passage which is called tri- 
 forium and the upper windows. This was the termi- 
 nation upward of the interior wall. Upon it rested 
 the roof, and a ceiling decorated with excellent paint- 
 ings. At the bases of the pillars there was a wall 
 built with marble slabs, which, surrounding the choir 
 and the presbytery, divided the body of the church 
 from its sides, which are called aisles (alse)."^ This im- 
 portant addition to the church of Lanfranc was carried 
 on by Priors Ernulf and Conrad between 1096 and 
 1 1 16, and was dedicated in 1130. 
 
 The death of Anselm took place in 1109, almost 
 contemporarily with the close of the great work 
 which he had inaugurated in the Cathedral, in the 
 
 ^ " Archit. Hist, of C.C." p. 42. 
 
 I 2 
 
112 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 nave of which he was interred near his predecessor 
 Lanfranc.i A vacancy of five years in the primacy 
 must have fatally increased the disorganization of the 
 diocese which the repeated exiles of the archbishop 
 and his ill-concealed conflict with the Crown, even 
 during the period of his apparent reconciliation, occa- 
 sioned. In 1 1 14, Radulfus (de Turbine), bishop of 
 Rochester, succeeded to the primacy, of whose in- 
 cumbency in regard to the diocese itself we know 
 but little. He bestowed upon the hospital which 
 Lanfranc had founded at Harbledown a penny a day 
 out of his manor of Lyminge, for the purpose of 
 finding milk for the lepers of that house, and died in 
 1 122. He was succeeded in the same year by 
 William Corboil, prior of St. Osyth, in Essex, on 
 whose elevation to the see the ancient controversy 
 for precedence between Canterbury and York was 
 revived at Rome, but without any very practical 
 result. Foreseeing, probably, the contest for the 
 throne, which so soon broke out on the accession of 
 Stephen, he obtained of Henry I. the custody of the 
 Castle of Rochester, which gave him a feudal position 
 of supreme importance, and enabled him to take far 
 too active a part in the conflict which so soon broke 
 out. Though he had taken an oath of allegiance to 
 the Empress Maude, he took the chief part in the 
 coronation of King Stephen, and joined that prince 
 
 ^ Eadmer says, ma/ori ecclesid, which Hasted believes to refer 
 to the lesser church, which would be that of St. John the 
 Baptist, in the infirmary. It would seem more natural to con- 
 clude that the words refer to the nave of the building, as con- 
 trasted with the choir which Anselm had so largely extended. 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. II3 
 
 when the nobiHty of the kingdom acknowledged him. 
 The anonymous, but contemporary and impartial 
 writer of the Gesta Stephaiii} writes : " Among 
 others there was present WiUiam the Primate of Can- 
 terbury, a man of dove-like countenance, and truly 
 religious bearing, but more greedy for the acquisition 
 of money than liberal in dispensing it. For when at 
 length he departed this life, the commissioners of the 
 king found an infinite amount of money secretly 
 stowed away in his treasuries." The evil results of 
 the feudal system upon the episcopate were never 
 more remarkably seen than during the reign of^ 
 Stephen. In the long conflict for the crown the 
 bishops ever came to the front as military leaders, 
 and their spiritual character passes entirely out of 
 view. They affected a royal pomp, built castles, 
 towers, and fortified structures;" .... ^'furnished 
 their castles with provisions and weapons, soldiers 
 and bowmen, and while they were supposed to be 
 restraining malefactors and church-robbers, were 
 even more cruel and merciless than they in op- 
 pressing their neighbours and spoiling their goods." - 
 It may be readily imagined that the diocese of Can- 
 terbury at this turbulent period, though less inju- 
 riously affected than the midland and western parts 
 
 ' "Gesta Stephani Regis Anglorum" (English Historical 
 Society's Publ., 1846, p. 6). The learned editor considers that 
 this narrative should be read together with that of William of 
 Malmesbury " page by page. " The latter is the advocate of 
 the Empress Matilda, and wrote under the patronage of the 
 Earl of Gloucester, her most devoted adherent. 
 
 ^ "Gesta Stephani Regis Anglorum," pp. 47, 98. 
 
114 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 of England, which were the more immediate scenes 
 of warfare, was in a state of decadence rather than 
 progress, and that the grand development of it by 
 Lanfranc was now seriously retarded. The king 
 having overcome the bishops by force of arms, pro- 
 ceeded at once to the confiscation of their castles 
 and military stores, but afterwards was compelled to do 
 penance for his severe treatment of them in a council 
 held under Theobald, the successor of Corboil, at 
 Winchester. The primacy of Corboil, was succeeded 
 by that of Theobald, abbot of Bee, that ancient and 
 remarkable house, the influence of whose traditions 
 and discipline in the diocese was so marked during 
 the incumbencies of Lanfranc and Anselm. He was 
 elected in 1138, after a two years' vacancy of the see, 
 and consecrated in the same year. His primacy was 
 marked with all the vicissitudes which had attended 
 those of his predecessors. Alternate quarrels and 
 reconciliations with King Stephen, which led him 
 sometimes into banishment, and at others into a 
 retirement into another part of the kingdom, now 
 almost in a state of chronic civil war, rendered his 
 primacy of twenty-two years a period of nearly con- 
 stant warfare, during which he once interdicted the 
 whole realm, but he was in the end the means of recon- 
 ciling the King with the Empress Maud. Surviv- 
 ing the former, he had the fortune to crown Henry II., 
 and to spend the last years of his life in a dignified 
 repose which contrasted strangely with its earlier 
 history. He is said by Gervase to have been a great 
 enemy to his own convent of Christ Church, which 
 can hardly be accounted for but on the supposition 
 that during the anarchy into which the diocese was 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. II5 
 
 thrown by his absence or exile, the convent had 
 become unusually powerful, occasioning conflicts of 
 jurisdiction which even in more peaceful times were 
 not unfrequent. Our knowledge of the actual state 
 of the diocese during these years of almost con- 
 tinuous conflict is necessarily very slender, and the 
 absence of facts leaves us only such methods of 
 inference as may be derived from the incidental 
 notices of the chroniclers, or the side-lights of con- 
 temporary history. As we approach the period of 
 Becket, these become clearer and more definite, 
 though the great events of his history rather illustrate 
 that of the kingdom and of the Church generally than 
 of the diocese. It is not until the primacy of Arch- 
 bishop Peckham, which began in 1279, that clear 
 and authentic materials for diocesan history present 
 themselves in the registers of the archbishops, whose 
 earlier volumes are still supposed to be at Rome, 
 though repeated and diligent searches have at various 
 times been vainly made for them at the Vatican, 
 We proceed to mention a few of the more prominent 
 •examples of the architecture of the diocese in the period 
 intervening between Anselm and Becket. At Boughton 
 Aluph, Barfreston, Brabourne, Brook, St. Margaret at 
 Cliffe, St. Clement Sandwich, and Minster in Thanet^ 
 examples of entire churches, more or less perfect, 
 are still remaining. Of towers of this age, we have 
 the stately one of New Romney, that of St. Mary in 
 Dover, the lower portion of that of Ruckinge, with 
 others of inferior note. Fragments of this period are 
 still more numerous in the aisles of churches, as at 
 Hythe, and St. Lawrence and Monkton in Thanet ; 
 
ii6 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 but these it will not be necessary further to indicate. 
 A curious incident which occurred during the early 
 part of the eleventh century shows us at once the 
 plans by which church-building or restoration were 
 assisted in this early day, and the influences which 
 were brought to bear upon the popular mind in order 
 to carry them out. In 1 114-15, a pilgrimage of 
 canons and burghers of Laon, in France, visited Kent 
 for the purpose of collecting subscriptions for the 
 rebuilding of the Cathedral there, which had been 
 reduced to a state almost of demolition. In order 
 to raise sufficient collections for this purpose they 
 crossed the Channel from Wissant to Dover, bearing 
 with them the most precious of the relics of the Church 
 of Laon, w^hich included the reliquary (feretrinn) 
 of the Blessed Virgin, the sponge, napkin, and other 
 relics of the Crucifixion, together wdth some of the 
 hair of the Virgin, and other inestimable treasures. 
 By the exhibition of these, which (according to the 
 account of Helinandus, preserved for us by Vincent 
 of Beauvais) was attended with the most astonishing 
 miracles, they obtained a vast sum for their purpose 
 from the clergy and people of Kent. Visiting Can- 
 terbury first, they were honourably entertained by 
 the Archbishop (Ralph, and not William Corboil, as 
 the narrative describes him), who had himself been 
 a hearer of Anselm of Laon, and a guest of a former 
 bishop of that city. We are told that the miracles 
 wrought by the feretrutn were specially limited to the 
 inhabitants of the dioceses through which the pilgrims 
 passed. Canterbury, which had then no relics to 
 compete with those of the Canons of Laon, was a 
 mine of wealth to the exhibitors, and the drinking of 
 
LANFRANC AND THE NORMAN PERIOD. II7 
 
 water in which the relics had been washed was a 
 specific for every imaginable disease. From Canter- 
 bury the precious charge was carried to Winchester, 
 thus traversing the whole of the county, and indi- 
 cating by the singular success of the expedition the 
 decadence into which the public teaching of the 
 diocese must have fallen, after it had lost the manly 
 teachings of Lanfranc.i In a letter to Bishop Gun- 
 dulf, the great Norman archbishop prescribes to his 
 friend then seriously ill, not the recourse to relics, but 
 prayer to God and the application of a simple medicine 
 which he recommends ; a confection " ^ prescribed 
 by the physicians as useful in such a case. (Ep. 46.) 
 Turning, in conclusion, to the monastic foundations 
 in the diocese, we find that they received an important 
 increase during the twelfth century. In 1137, the 
 Hospital of St. Laurence, in Canterbury, was founded 
 by the Abbot Hugh, of St. Augustine's ; in 11 40, 
 the Cluniac Priory of Monks Horton, by Robert de 
 Vere. Anselm himself is said to have founded the 
 nunnery of St. Sepulchre, near Canterbury, about the 
 year iioo; while King Stephen, whether as an act 
 of penance or propitiation, founded the important 
 Monastery of Faversham. 
 
 We cannot pass away from this period of our dio- 
 cesan history without observing how greatly the life 
 and genius of Lanfranc contributed to the formation 
 of the national character of the Church of England, 
 which at a later period became so fatally deteriorated, 
 
 ' The story is told in the Speculum Historiale " of Vincent 
 of Beauvais, 1. xxvii. cc. 12-15. 
 
 ^ Diaprasiuni magnum, which must, I think, be thus trans- 
 lated. 
 
ii8 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 and sometimes even partially lost. It is memorable 
 that while to Theodore, a Greek, the formation and 
 consolidation of the primacy may be chiefly attributed, 
 to Lanfranc, an Italian, and to his vigorous, indepen- 
 dent policy, we owe the preservation of that national 
 character, which up to the very dawn of the Reforma- 
 tion distinguished our Church. We have only to 
 compare the treatise of Cardinal Pole, de Concilio," 
 with the England and Christendom" of Cardinal 
 Manning, to discover the extent of the contrast be- 
 tween the ancient doctrine of the Church of England 
 and the Mediaeval Roman theory in regard to the 
 relations of the ecclesiastical and the civil powers. We 
 have already noted the views of Lanfranc on this 
 subject.^ Pole advances even farther than his great 
 predecessor when he affirms that the king represents 
 the " Royal Headship of Christ," while the pope has 
 only the Sacerdotal Headship." The pope (he 
 alleges) is not in such sense the Vicar of Christ 
 as to leave no oflice for others, for all Christians 
 hold a portion of this vicariate, inasmuch as they 
 fulfil their work in the power of Christ. Hence 
 he asserts that the vicarious office of Christ as 
 King in a General Council pertains to the supreme 
 Civil Power. "^ The frequent and almost mortal con- 
 flicts between the Church and the State during the 
 Primacies of Anselm, Becket, and other archbishops 
 can only be accounted for by the strong vitality of 
 the principle of the nationality of Churches as held 
 from the days of Lanfranc. 
 
 ^ 0pp. p. 625 and p. 298. 
 
 ^ Ad Csesarem pertinere dicimus." Poli Lib. de Concil. 
 Resp. 74. 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 119 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 
 
 It is a singular and significant fact that the grandest 
 of the figures of the past which stands out in the 
 history of the Primacy and of the country casts so 
 faint a shadow on that of the diocese, and that 
 Canterbury itself should have witnessed so far less of 
 the life of the great St. Thomas who revived for so 
 many centuries its fading glories, than the distant 
 Abbey of Pontigny, which gave him refuge during his 
 long exiles. But this will seem less strange when we 
 consider that barely two years and a half of his 
 primacy was spent in the diocese, and that every 
 record which would have thrown light on his con- 
 nection with it has either perished entirely or has yet 
 to be discovered under the vaults of the Vatican 
 Library. The history of this remarkable man in its 
 fullest and largest bearing has been recovered with 
 extraordinary penetration, and its disjointed features 
 put together with the most elaborate care, by Canon 
 Robertson in his biography of Becket, in which he 
 has placed before us the life of the archbishop as it 
 really 7vas, relieved at once from the glowing colours 
 and heavenly tints of the monastic artists, and from 
 the disfigurements of that age of detraction which 
 from the day of the Reformation until our own com- 
 
I 20 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 ])elled the perplexed student of history to apply to it 
 the words of the famous Dr. Owen in regard to the 
 pope himself : — " This is he of whom nothing not 
 great, nothing common, nothing not exceeding the 
 ordinary state of mankind, on the one hand or on 
 the other, is thought or spoken." We cannot however 
 admit his conclusion, after recapitulating the extreme 
 adulation of the flatterers and the unqualified abuse 
 of the detractors of the pope, that ''there is no mean 
 between these — he is undoubtedly either the one or 
 the other." For Canon Robertson has drawn the 
 true historical mean between these excesses, and 
 shown that the history of the times fairly studied 
 leaves the illustrious " martyr " to the so-called 
 liberties of the Church, a position in the annals of his 
 country somewhat analogous to that which Gregory 
 VII. is now universally admitted to have held in that 
 of the Papacy, and which that pontiff, had he died a 
 violent death, like Becket, would have maintained in 
 the world-wide orbit in which his turbulent life 
 revolved. But the resemblance between the two 
 ecclesiastics is rather derived from the manifest effort 
 of the later one to imitate an example whose real 
 points of greatness he could not apprehend, than 
 from any similitude of mind or character which existed 
 between them. And this brings us to the influence 
 of the life of Becket upon the diocese, which, when- 
 ever and in whatever manner it was capable of 
 exercise, either during his residence or in the i^eriods 
 of his exile, must have tended to increase in the 
 greatest degree the simony, the non-residence, the 
 i:>luralities and the almost undisguised immorality 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 
 
 121 
 
 which reigned at the time in ahiiost every diocese in 
 England, and more signally perhaps than any, in the 
 diocese of Canterbury. The pictures which are given 
 us of the state of the clergy in the twelfth century 
 throughout Europe, are so extremely drawn and so 
 deeply coloured that we might almost deem them to 
 be exaggerated, if it were not that they are the work 
 of devoted churchmen who, however, discordant at 
 other points are here in the most marked agreement. 
 None has more vigorously drawn them than Cardinal 
 Jacobus a Vitriaco (Vitry) in his description of the 
 state of the Eastern and Western Churches in his 
 day.i Born in the close of the century which wit- 
 nessed the death of Becket, he describes the clergy 
 of his age as non pastores, sed dissipatores, non 
 Praelati, sed . Pilati — non solum viso lupo veniente 
 fugiebant, sed cum ipsis lupis plerumque in detrimento 
 ovium pacem habebant ; nocte in lupanari, mane in 
 altari, Filium Dei conculcabant et sanguinem tes- 
 tament! pollutum ducebant." We cannot but con- 
 clude from such a picture as this, given by one who as 
 papal legate had studied both Eastern and Western 
 Christianity, that had Becket been less of a primate 
 and more of a diocesan, the conflict with the king 
 which ended so fatally for the interests both of the 
 ^' Pontificale and the " Regale " would have been 
 avoided, and the state into which the diocese had 
 fallen at the period in which we have the first distinct 
 view of it — that, namely, of Archbishop Peckham, 
 just a century after the death of Becket — would not 
 
 ^ Jac a Vitr. '*Histor. Occident.'' c. v., ed. Duaci, 1597, p. 271, 
 
122 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 have been so miserable and almost hopeless. Of 
 Becket, as a diocesan, we know much less than of his 
 life as chancellor, or his posthumous claims as a martyr 
 and worker of miracles. Of the last of these claims 
 indeed we never lose sight, for the only picture which 
 we have of him in his diocesan work represents him 
 as working miracles of the highest order, and even 
 raising the dead to life. On his last progress from 
 London to Canterbury, " he confirmed great numbers 
 of children, dismounting for that purpose wherever 
 they were brought to him : and we are told that he 
 performed many miraculous cures on the blind, the 
 deaf, the dumb, and the lepers, nay, that he even 
 recalled the dead to life."^ 
 
 But the most important feature in the life of Becket, 
 in its bearing on our diocesan history is undoubtedly 
 the part he took in regard to the privileges and im- 
 munities of the clergy and the withdrawal of them 
 even in criminal cases from the civil tribunals. The 
 reader will see at a single glance the vast influence 
 for evil which this claim, unhappily successfully urged, 
 exercised upon the lives of the clergy and their moral 
 and religious influence over the people. The martyr 
 for religious liberty " might have been more properly 
 termed the " martyr for irreligious license," for by 
 withdrawing the clergy in its most corrupt period from 
 all the secular courts, while he encouraged their 
 absolute secularization in life and conduct, he con- 
 tributed in the most fatal degree to bring about the 
 deplorable state of the Church, when it entered into 
 
 ' Robertson, *^ Becket, a Biography, " p. 261. 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 1 23, 
 
 the anarchy of the great schism of the fourteenth 
 century. " The defences which have been lately set 
 up for the archbishop's conduct in this matter," 
 observes Canon Robertson, ^Wary according to the 
 views and position of their ingenious authors, who 
 might perhaps be safely left to refute each other." i 
 Archbishop Richard, Becket's successor, recognised 
 that the result of this kind of ecclesiastical liberty 
 was to withdraw clerical robbers and murderers, and 
 also the robbers and murderers of the clergy, from all 
 secular penalties — an effect signally instanced in 
 Becket's own case — the murderer of an ecclesiastic 
 being only subject to ecclesiastical penalties. He 
 wrote a vigorous letter on the subject, in which he 
 shows the utter inadequacy of Church censures and 
 penalties for such offences. " The king," he writes, 
 claims the right of punishing them, but we of the 
 clergy damnably reserve it to ourselves, and we deserve 
 the consequences of our ambition in usurping a 
 jurisdiction with which we have no rightful concern." ^ 
 Yet it was this usurpation for which Becket died, 
 and we can hardly wonder that even in his own day, 
 when the terrible incidents of his death were most 
 vividly impressed on the mind of the age, his .claim 
 to the crown of martyrdom was actually disputed. 
 One of his biographers reports "that some persons 
 regarded his pretence for justice as merely a covering 
 for pride and vain-glory ; that they held him to be 
 lacking in that charity without which suffering was of 
 no avail — to have been fond of pomp, haughty,, 
 
 ^ Becket," p. 85. 
 
 - lb., p. 82. 
 
124 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 rapacious, violent and cruel; that they argued that 
 as it is not the pain of death which makes a martyr, 
 so neither is it his cause alone, but that a good cause 
 must be accompanied by graces of character and 
 conduct in which Thomas of Canterbury was mainly 
 deficient. There were even in his own monastery of 
 Christ Church those who held that his obstinacy had 
 deserved his fate. " ^ Murders of prelates were not 
 uncommon in those days and the French chronicler 
 Robert de Thorigny (or de Monte) mentions the 
 death of Becket in as brief and ihcidental a form as 
 that in which Vincent of Beauvais records the similar 
 murder of Waldric, bishop of Laon, some sixty years 
 before. When we turn from the life of Becket as 
 Primate to that of Becket as a Diocesan, we find that 
 the same course of violence and wrong which marked 
 his course in the one office signalized it as fatally in 
 the other. Lanfranc in the endeavour to recover the 
 manors of his see, of which it had been dispossessed 
 by the Bishop of Bayeux and others, appealed to the 
 assembly of the secular powers at Penenden Heath, 
 and by his able and honest advocacy of his claim 
 procured their entire restitution. But Becket, with 
 his usual arbitrary and lawless spirit, proceeded to the 
 violent seizure of the lands which he held to belong 
 to his see, and dispossessed the tenants with a high 
 hand. We can readily imagine th'e results to the 
 diocese of this conduct on the part of a virtually 
 non-resident prelate — who, unlike his predecessors or 
 successors, neither came into the diocese to occupy 
 
 ' " Becket," p. 311. 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 1 25 
 
 his manors from time to time, nor spent any of his 
 income among his tenants. Except on the roads from 
 London to Canterbury, and from the latter place to 
 Sandwich, which were the scenes of his triumphant 
 progresses on his return from exile, the diocese could 
 have seen scarcely anything of him. Otford is said 
 to have been his favourite residence when he was in 
 Kent, but how rarely could it have been occupied. 
 He chose his town of Romney, round which in right 
 of his manors of Aldington and Lyminge he had a 
 vast estate, for his place of transit on one of the 
 occasions of his departure to France, where, it is said, 
 he was delayed by a severe tempest. Perhaps the 
 diocese suffered less from his absence than it must 
 have done from the residence in it of one who used 
 the terrible weapon of excommunication with such 
 reckless haste and almost indiscriminate aim, that not 
 only almost all the highest persons of the realm, but 
 all who were in communion with them, fell under 
 the inevitable ban. But the effects of the conflict 
 between the Church and the Crown were bitterly felt 
 in the diocese on the fatal morrow of the Christmas 
 of 1 1 64; on which the king issued orders for the 
 confiscation of the revenues of the see of Canterbury, 
 and for the banishment of all Becket's kindred, clerks 
 and servants, with all who had harboured him in his 
 flight. While Becket's previous excommunication of 
 the king's tenants had been comparatively a brutum 
 fulmen, we can easily imagine how terrible a reality 
 the counter -blow of the king must have given to 
 the diocese from which the greatest part of the 
 revenues of the primacy was derived, and in which 
 
 K 
 
126 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 SO many of the friends of the primate were resi- 
 dent. 
 
 During the whole of the nine years in which he 
 filled the see, he appears to have had that degree of 
 popularity among all classes which usually attaches to 
 the energetic opponent of a government of an arbitrary 
 and despotic character, especially when he combines 
 with that the rank of a powerful landlord and the 
 office of a primate. The picture of the triumphant 
 progress from Sandwich, and every other public 
 appearance of Becket in his diocese, shows that he 
 was regarded as the representative of the people as 
 against the feudal nobility ; while it is to be feared 
 that his defence of the immunities of the clergy made 
 him no less popular among too many of the eccle- 
 siastics of an age in which simony, peculation, and 
 non-residence had begun to bear their pernicious 
 fruits. But whatever may have been the results of 
 Becket's primacy to the diocese, and however un- 
 edifying the example of his tumultuous life, it is 
 certain that his death had an influence upon the city 
 and county which no other event either before or 
 after it has ever produced. Canterbury had fallen at 
 this time into the position of a mere provincial city 
 lying on one of the great approaches to the metropolis ; 
 and the county itself was a mere place of transit, 
 which, but for its containing the highway from the 
 Continent to England, would have been almost as 
 much a terra incognita as the marches of Wales or 
 the border districts of the north. When the emissaries 
 from Laon visited it with their unique collection of 
 relics, the monks of Canterbury had little of this kind 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 12 J 
 
 to show ; and the golden harvest which they reaped at 
 what was afterwards the shrine of Becket was gathered 
 and carried away to a distant scene by the enterpris- 
 ing canons. But the death of Becket and the posses- 
 sion of his inestimable relics made Canterbury a 
 centre of the religious life of the day, second to no 
 other place of pilgrimage and devotion j and gifts and 
 offerings of whose value the splendour of the shrine 
 itself, as Erasmus has described it, was a very sig- 
 nificant symbol, gave proof of the hold which the 
 Becket aiUus had upon every class, from Royalty 
 downwards. Every route from the coast or the in- 
 terior to the City became a pilgrim's way — specially 
 the Watling-street along which Becket had so often 
 passed from London to Canterbury, and the Stone- 
 street which his murderers traversed on the terrible 
 night of the " martyrdom " on their way to Saltwood. 
 The picture drawn of the city by the French Jew in 
 Richard of Devizes' chronicle is certainly not flatter- 
 ing, but his general invectives against England must 
 render it more of a caricature than a portrait : — If 
 you should land near Canterbury you will waste your 
 trouble even if you do but pass through it. It is 
 nothing but a collection of wretches under their — I 
 know not whom — whom they have lately defied, who 
 had been Archbishop of Canterbury ; wretches who 
 die every where throughout the streets at midday from 
 want of bread and work."^ It doubtless presented at 
 this time all the vicissitudes which are described as 
 having developed themselves in the rural districts 
 
 * Ric. Div. Chr., c. 79. 
 K 2 
 
128 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 where periodical famines were the frequent result of 
 failing means and absent proprietors. The wealth of 
 the country was running in channels from which it 
 was little likely to reach the poorest class, still in a 
 state of serfdom ; and the rich offerings of Becket's 
 shrine stood in melancholy contrast to the sordid 
 misery which must have been witnessed daily at the 
 gates of the monastery. During the civil war in the 
 days of Stephen the property of the archbishopric 
 had suffered such irreparable losses, that the prede- 
 cessors of Becket had to fall back upon that of the 
 monks already heavily charged with the claims of the 
 poor and mendicants. " The miserable monks were 
 reduced to the extremity of need, for nearly every 
 guest was expelled from their court, and the poor were 
 driven out."^ The destitution of the city may be 
 regarded as the faithful index of that of the diocese, 
 covered as it was in every direction with the immense 
 estates of the Church and of the greater nobles. The 
 Becket pilgrimages may be therefore regarded as the 
 grandest endowment the diocese ever possessed, and 
 as supplying the means of rebuilding the magnificent 
 cathedral, which, by a strange kind of coincidence, 
 perished by fire less than four years after the murder 
 of the great primate. The fate of a building so 
 intimately connected with the history of the whole of 
 the diocese cannot but be given in the words of its 
 most authentic narrator Gervase, who thus records it : — 
 ^'In the aforesaid year (i 174). . . during an extraor- 
 dinarily violent south wind, a fire broke out before the 
 
 * Gervase, Life of Abp. Theobald." 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 1 29 
 
 gate of the church and outside the walls of the 
 monastery, by which three cottages were half-destroyed. 
 From thence, while the citizens were assembling and 
 subduing the fire, cinders and sparks carried aloft by 
 the high wind were deposited upon the church, and 
 being driven by the fury of the wind between the 
 joints of the lead, remained there amongst the half- 
 rotten planks, and shortly glowing with increasing 
 heat set fire to the rotten rafters ; from these the fire 
 was communicated to the larger beams and their 
 braces, no one yet perceiving or helping. . . .Meantime 
 the three cottages, whence the mischief had arisen, 
 being destroyed, and the popular excitement having 
 subsided, everybody went home again, while the 
 neglected church was consuming with internal fire 
 unknown to all. But beams and braces burning, the 
 flames rose to the slopes of the roof, and the sheets of 
 lead yielded to the increasing heat and began to melt. 
 Thus the raging wind finding a freer entrance in- 
 creased the fury of the fire ; and the flames beginning 
 to show themselves, a cry arose in the churchyard, 
 ' See, see, the church is on fire ! ' Then the people 
 and the monks assembled in haste — they draw water, 
 they brandish their hatchets, they run up the stairs 
 full of eagerness to save the church, already, alas ! 
 beyond their help. But when they reach the roof 
 and perceive the black smoke and scorching flames 
 that pervade it throughout, they abandon the attempt 
 in despair, and thinking only of their own safety, 
 make all haste to descend. And now that the fire 
 had loosened the beams from the pegs that bound 
 them together, the half-burnt timbers fell into the 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 choir below upon the seats of the monks ; the seats, 
 consisting of a great mass of wood-work, caught fire, 
 and thus the mischief grew worse and worse. And it 
 was marvellous, though sad, to behold how that 
 glorious choir itself fed and assisted the fire that was 
 destroying it. For the flames, multiplied by this 
 mass of timber, and extending upwards full fifteen 
 cubits (about 25 ft.), scorched aad burnt the walls, 
 and more specially injured the columns of the 
 church."! For a long time the monks cherished the 
 hope that this glorious choir of Conrad, which had 
 been to them what the Church of St. Sophia was to 
 Eastern Christendom, and had received almost all 
 the exaggerated epithets which Phranza bestows upon 
 that temple " of the great wisdom of God,"^ might 
 be saved to form the nucleus of the restored church. 
 But the wise master-builder whom they had engaged 
 for this important work of rebuilding, William of Sens, 
 gradually prepared them to recognise the impossibility 
 of preserving anything whatever from this disastrous 
 wreck, and under his judicious counsels the work of 
 restoration began. After one year devoted to the 
 task of preparation, four pillars, two on each side the 
 choir, were re-erected, and thus gradually the work 
 went on ; its progress being so carefully chronicled 
 by Gervase, that we may fix the date of almost every 
 column of the choir, and are thus provided with a 
 typical building enabling us to fix within a few years 
 the date of every similar erection in the kingdom. 
 
 ' Gervase, ap. Wilkins, *^Archit. History," p. 32. 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. I31 
 
 Unhappily, an accident which befell the great architect 
 during his work disabled him from superintending it 
 in person, but for a time he was ably assisted by a 
 monk, who acted as his overseer under his directions. 
 At length William of Sens, crippled by the fall, whose 
 effects baffled all the skill of his physicians, returned 
 home, and was succeeded by a namesake, who is 
 called for distinction the English William — or, as 
 Gervase has it, " William by name, English by nation ; 
 small in body, but in workmanship of many kinds 
 acute and honest." He proceeded successfully with 
 the work, and " laid the foundation for the enlarge- 
 ment of the church at the eastern part, because a 
 chapel of St. Thomas was to be built there." " For 
 this," continues Gervase, " was the place assigned to 
 him, namely, the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, where 
 he celebrated his first mass, under whose crypt for so 
 many years he was buried." 
 
 The reader will recognise this as representing the 
 addition made by Anselm, when he extended the 
 church of Lanfranc so far eastward, and as the scene of 
 that magnificent shrine in which the relics of Becket 
 received for so many centuries the adoration of his 
 devotees and the worship of pilgrims from all parts 
 of Western Christendom. The close of the fifth year 
 of the restoration witnessed only the progress of the 
 columns of the choir and the foundation and walls of 
 the crypt under the Trinity Chapel up to the bases of 
 the windows. The sixth year was signalized by a 
 violent longing of the monks to prepare the choir for 
 the celebration of the Easter solemnities, which was 
 seconded by a corresponding zeal on the part of the 
 
132 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 architect ; and after the careful translation of the relics 
 of the saints and bodies of the archbishops and royal 
 personages, from their temporary resting place to 
 their new depositories, the restored choir was joyfully 
 occupied on Easter Eve, 1180. 
 
 The translation of Becket's relics was alone re- 
 served until the completion of his chapel. Gervase 
 carefully enumerates the successive works of the 
 seventh, eighth, and tenth years, in the last of which 
 Archbishop Baldwin's primacy began. At this point 
 his narrative abruptly terminates. The vast expenses 
 which were incurred in the rebuilding appear (as 
 Professor Willis observes) to have been chiefly 
 defrayed by the oblations at the tomb of Becket, which 
 had now become a golden harvest to the monastery. 
 The translation of the body of the great archbishop 
 did not take place until the year 1220, when, with 
 great pomp and solemnity, this crowning act of the 
 restoration was fulfilled in the presence of the king 
 and a magnificent assemblage of the clergy and laity 
 of the kingdom. 
 
 Between the primacy of Becket and that of Bald- 
 win, the peaceful and uneventful reign of Archbishop 
 Richard formed a kind of transition period. His 
 zeal for the interests of his church and for the monks 
 calls forth the most unqualified praise of Gervase, 
 and deservedly, for he restored to them all the 
 churches which belonged to their villes — and appears 
 to have been their advocate against the claims of the 
 secular clergy, or, as Gervase terms them, the 
 slanders of the clerks," — among which were the 
 churches of Monkton (in Thanet), Eastry, Meopham 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 1 33 
 
 and Eynesford ; remitting also to the convent the 
 offerings of the villes, which had been hitherto (but 
 
 unjustly") made to the archbishops. We shall find 
 presently that this concession opened a serious con- 
 troversy between the monks and the archbishops in 
 the days of his successor. Richard, who had been 
 Prior of Dover, was rather the advocate of the 
 regular, than of the secular clergy ; and having been 
 a monk of Canterbury, leaned naturally to the in- 
 terests of his earlier conventual abode. 
 
 Baldwin, his successor, on the other hand, though 
 brought up in a monastery, had held also the 
 episcopal office, and had learned the danger of 
 allowing that to be subordinated to the growing 
 power of the regular clergy, then daily more and 
 more insidiously withdrawn from the ordinary juris- 
 diction, and placed under the immediate protection 
 of the Papacy. The immense endowment of the 
 monastic orders during this and the following century 
 had so crippled the condition of the secular clergy 
 that, as the provincial synod of Mayence declared 
 in 1 261, " Most of the monks not putting any bounds 
 to their avarice, nor content with the stream of riches 
 which they are known to absorb, by accumulating to 
 themselves the largest farms and other copious means 
 of income, so that all Jordan flows into their mouth, 
 have contrived to unite with their foundations so 
 many parishes by their lust of wealth, and those for 
 the most part the best, that there are few churches to 
 be found in Germany which are able to give susten- 
 ance to the clergy. . . . These same (regular parish 
 priests) are so much more given to gain inasmuch as 
 
134 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 they deem themselves exempt from ordinary jurisdic- 
 tion by the claim of their religious order. This 
 description of the state of the Church in Germany^ 
 not a century after the death of Becket had turned 
 towards Canterbury one of the most copious springs 
 of this golden "Jordan," is doubtless as" faithful a 
 representation of the Church in the diocese as it is 
 of the kindred Churches of continental Europe. It 
 supplies the reason of the hostility awakened against 
 the regular clergy from the day of Lanfranc until that 
 of the Reformation, and explains the readiness with 
 which the people acquiesced in the first great work 
 of the latter epoch, the dissolution of the monas- 
 teries. To the bishops whose ordinary and ancient 
 jurisdiction was set at nought by the claim of exemp- 
 tion and the immediate dependence of the religious 
 orders on the pope, and who saw the destitution into 
 which the parochial clergy had fallen from the appro- 
 priation of the tithes to the monastic houses, the 
 only remedy seemed to be the establishment of an 
 intermediate order, which, while giving its undivided 
 allegiance to themselves, should rather aid than 
 obstruct the work and influence of the parochial 
 clergy. The foundation of the houses of " regular 
 
 ^ Of the immense wealth of the monastic bodies and their 
 affected poverty St. Bernard exclaimed in the Council of 
 Rheims, — " Hi sunt qui pauperes esse volunt, eo tamen facto 
 ut nihil iis desit.'* Of their exemption from local jurisdiction, 
 he says with equal force in his 42nd Letter, " O ! libertas 
 omni (ut ita loquar) servitute servilior. Patienter ab hujus- 
 modi libertate abstineam, quDe me pessimse addicat superbioe 
 servituti." 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 
 
 canons " both at Dover and Canterbury by the Bisho}) 
 of Bayeux and Lanfranc was the first step in this 
 direction in the diocese. But a second and a far 
 bolder and more important step was that taken 
 by Archbishop Baldwin, in his controversy with the 
 monks of Christ Church, so bitterly and pathetically 
 recounted by Gervase. After describing his expres- 
 sions of devotion to the "brethren" of his monas- 
 tery on his election, the chronicler proceeds : — " But 
 amidst all these bright promises of so much religion 
 and grace, as though it were he who was to have 
 redeemed Israel, he was seduced by the clerks (/.^., 
 the secular clergy) ; " and beginning his works of 
 sacrilege even at the very sanctuary of the Lord, he 
 plundered Christ Church of those offerings which for 
 long had been usually offered from the villes of the 
 monks. After an enumeration of his various appro- 
 priations of the property of the monastery and their 
 partial restitution, the chronicler describes his nego- 
 tiations with Pope Urban, in order to obtain the 
 papal authority for building a new cathedral, which 
 was said to have been commenced by St. Thomas. 
 This application succeeded both at the papal and 
 royal court. For " when the king heard of the 
 plan " we are told that he ^' was easily induced to 
 agree to it. The bishops, too, gave their sanc- 
 tion." Then comes the solution of this mysterious 
 
 ^ These would appear to be the offerings made at the tomb 
 of Becket, which for the eleven preceding years the monks 
 had received during the incumbency of Archbishop Richard. 
 Had they been of more ancient date it is hardly possible that 
 Baklwin could have claimed them. 
 
136 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 unanimity. It was decided either by promise or 
 oath that all those bishops who had monks under 
 them should convert their cathedrals into con- 
 ventual churches for secular clerks, to whom they 
 should assign the churches and tithes belonging to 
 the monks." Here the great cause of warfare be- 
 tween the secular and regular clergy reveals itself in 
 all its force and magnitude, and we see the first pre- 
 Reformation effort to free the Church of the crushing 
 weight of the monastic orders, and of the absolute 
 subjection of the ordinary and national jurisdiction 
 to that of an illegitimate and foreign power. How- 
 ever injurious the rule of Baldwin must have seemed 
 to the monks, to the parochial clergy he must have 
 appeared a real deliverer ; while to the popes, whose 
 devoted clients the monastic orders had been from 
 the first, he was as dangerous a reformer as he was to 
 the monks. The foundations of a new cathedral had 
 been actually laid — a building 500 ft. in length, and 
 this in spite of the protestations and appeal of the 
 monks. They were suspended and deprived of their 
 rents, and finally even of their villes. Urban ordered 
 the restitution of all their property, and denounced as 
 accursed the work of the archbishop ; notwithstand- 
 ing which the building was continued, and the con- 
 troversy carried on with almost increased bitterness. 
 Meantime, Urban died, and Gregory, "who patron- 
 ised the archbishop," succeeded him. Baldwin 
 again triumphs; he denounces the sub-prior and 
 those who hold with him as excommunicate ; de- 
 prives the monks of all their possessions outside the 
 gates of the monastery ; and, according to Gervase, 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 
 
 proceeds to acts of violence and outrage, which in 
 that day must have been regarded as in the highest 
 degree sacrilegious. But now Pope Gregory dies, 
 and is succeeded by Clement, who undoes the work 
 of his predecessor, and returns to the policy of 
 Urban. He commands that the work which had 
 been commenced at Hackington, near Canterbury, 
 shall be destroyed : that the property of the monks 
 should be restored ; and that the archbishop should 
 cease from the persecution of the monks. Unfortu- 
 nately for the monastery, it lost at this moment not 
 only its prior, but its best advocates at Rome, and 
 was reduced again to the greatest straits in its con- 
 flict with the archbishop. But, at the same time, 
 most opportunely for its present state, the king, " by 
 whose instrumentality the Church of Canterbury had 
 endured so many troubles died, and was succeeded 
 by his son Richard, under whom, after much alterca- 
 tion and many abortive conferences, a composition 
 was at length arrived at by which it was stipulated 
 that the property of the monks should be restored, 
 that the new cathedral (or " chapel," as it is gene- 
 rally termed) should be left unserved or entirely 
 demolished ; and that there should be a mutual for- 
 giveness of mutual injuries. After a vain attempt to 
 carry out his favourite building plan in London, the 
 archbishop assumed in his own church at Canter- 
 bury the staff and scrip of a pilgrim to the Holy 
 Land, and bidding a last farewell to the monks, 
 crossed the sea, and reached Acre. There his health 
 rapidly declined, and he died after a reign of nearly six 
 years, and was buried in the place of his death. 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 After his decease the church of Canterbury was 
 vacant for two years and a-half, during which period 
 Pope Clement died, and was succeeded by Celestine 
 III., by whose orders the chapel" of Hackington 
 was entirely destroyed, and all Baldwin's proceedings 
 condemned. It is impossible for any Englishman 
 not altogether divested of national and patriotic 
 feeling to look upon this long controversy in the 
 light in which the monkish historian regards it, and 
 not rather to view it as an effort premature, indeed, 
 but not without its .after-fruits in the annals of his 
 country, to vindicate the claims of the secular clergy, 
 and to protect the Royal authority against the inroads 
 of the Papacy so insidiously and successfully carried 
 on through the exemptions of the monastic orders. 
 We may well conceive, that notwithstanding the final 
 issue of the conflict, the secular clergy of the dio- 
 cese must have recovered through it a considerable 
 measure of power and influence. And this is 
 rendered more probable from the fact that the suc- 
 cessor of Baldwin, Archbishop Hubert (Walter), who 
 had sympathized with the monks of Canterbury 
 during their conflict with his predecessor, began after 
 his accession to take the side of the clerks" (/.^., 
 the seculars), and actually entered upon the work of 
 completing the church at Lambeth, which Baldwin 
 had begun in the last days of his primacy. In vain 
 the monks, who foresaw in the creation of a new 
 church for the archbishopric, the almost extinction of 
 their exclusive possession of the primates, both in life 
 and death, entreated the new archbishop to desist from 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. I39 
 
 SO fatal a work. The death of King Richard and the 
 succession of John gave Archbishop Hubert an almost 
 absolute power in the kingdom, of which he was now 
 the chancellor, and led him to renew the dispute con- 
 cerning the chapel. After a protracted litigation, a 
 compromise was at last effected. This archbishop 
 regained for his church many of its lost estates, in- 
 cluding Saltwood, Hythe, Rochester Castle, the fee 
 of Geoffry de Ros, the homage of Tunbridge Castle 
 (due from the Clares, Earls of Gloucester), and other 
 estates. During his primacy the work of the rebuild- 
 ing of the cathedral made great progress. On the 
 29th of June, 1205, he came to Canterbury that he 
 might survey the buildings and the convent ; and 
 foreseeing his death, which happened in the following 
 month at Teynham, he took a touching and sorrowful 
 leave of the brethren of the convent, reminding them 
 that while he must die, they (in their corporate capa- 
 city) could not die, and therefore should devote all 
 their energies to the promotion of the honour and 
 usefulness of their church. Among his bequests to 
 the church of Canterbury, after the mention of many 
 and rare objects of ecclesiastical art, we find that he 
 left to it a Bible containing the Old and New Testa- 
 ments, and a Psalter, glossed ; a clear indication that 
 that devotion to the Word of God which had been 
 urged in so many forms by the great teacher of 
 England, Pope Gregory the Great, still reigned in the 
 English Church, however it may have been dimmed 
 from time to time by a too-superstitious reverence for 
 trivial and ceremonial observances. The author of 
 
140 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 the " Life of Stephen Langton," in the series of 
 " Lives of the Enghsh Saints/' writing in the interest 
 and in the spirit of the Vatican, has used the Hfe of 
 Hubert Walter as a kind of foil, to set off the devo- 
 tion of the subject of his panegyric to the Court of 
 Rome.^ Hubert Walter committed, in his view, the 
 signal crime of being first an Englishman, and then 
 a spiritual subject of the Papacy; but the picture 
 given of him by the impartial Gervase in no degree 
 justifies the Roman advocate in his depreciation of 
 the archbishop. As a diocesan bishop few of his 
 predecessors in the see can bear comparison with 
 Hubert Walter. His last words were worthy of 
 a Christian bishop, which cannot be said of the last 
 words or the last acts of either Becket or St. Edmund 
 himself 2 The death of Hubert Walter was the signal 
 for the opening of that bitter warfare between King 
 John and Pope Innocent III. which belongs rather 
 to the history of the kingdom than to that of the 
 diocese, although it suffered from it more than any 
 other, inasmuch as it was most nearly involved in 
 those almost inevitable hostilities between the king 
 and the archbishop to which the precedent ofBecket's 
 quarrel had given so fatal and chronic a tendency. 
 The immense income of the archbishopric presented 
 too ready a temptation to the successive kings to keep 
 it in their own hands as long as possible, and to ex- 
 
 ' London, Toovey, 1845, p. 15. 
 
 - See Robertson's Becket," and the Life of St. Edmund 
 of Canterbury" Lives of the English Saints," no. xiv. 
 pp. 81, 82). 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 141 
 
 tend more and more the delay of filling up the 
 vacancy. A conflict either with the Chapter, in whom 
 the right of election (at least nominally) resided, or 
 one with the Papacy, which almost always superseded 
 with a high hand the nominees of the king or of the 
 chapter, rendered the suspension of the primacy an 
 ever-impending danger, and left tjie diocese con- 
 -Stantly, for long periods, in a state of widowhood. 
 The injury which this inflicted upon the Church can 
 hardly now be fully measured, for the earlier records 
 of the diocese have either perished or are still latent. 
 But the picture we are able to derive from the earliest 
 glimpses we have of diocesan history, in the close of 
 the thirteenth century, enable us to see how fatally 
 the interests both of the clergy and laity had been 
 neglected, and how perfunctorily every oflice of the 
 Church had been performed. Of the three great 
 functions which an archbishop was held to combine 
 in his own person, that of " born legate " of the Holy 
 See, Primate of the English Church, and Diocesan in 
 .the see of Canterbury, the early archbishops appear to 
 have regarded the first as absorbing every other, and the 
 forced residence of Becket, Langton, and Edmund at 
 Pontigny,! where so many precious years of their 
 lives were spent, appear to have left in their minds no 
 
 * The extreme indiscretion of these successive retirements to 
 a French convent must be obvious to every one who remembers 
 the ever-doubtful relations between France and England, and 
 the suspicion of treason (often justified by the overt acts of the 
 exiles themselves), which the recourse to such an asylum must 
 -have awakened. 
 
142 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 anxiety and no regret in regard to the diocese itself. 
 In the case of many of their successors, the primate 
 may be said to have swallowed up the diocesan, but 
 in theirs the legate absorbed both the one and the 
 other. The churches were occupied by those " con- 
 ductitii sacerdotes^'^ or temporary vicars, whom the 
 convents and chapters employed to do the work of a 
 hireling ; nor is it until the period when the arch- 
 bishops were permanently resident that we trace the 
 foundation of the perpetual vicarages such as we now 
 see, or that indispensable residence of the rectors and 
 chaplains of churches by which alone the healthy 
 existence of the Church can be carried on. The 
 election of Stephen Langton to the archbishopric took 
 place in 1207, nearly two years after the death of 
 Archbishop Hubert. But between his election and 
 peaceable possession of the see a period of six year 
 was interposed, during which the mortal conflict be 
 Iween John and the see of Rome was carried on 
 without intermission. This culminated in the Inter- 
 dict, which fell so cruelly and heavily upon the whole 
 kingdom ; but most heavily upon the see of Canter- 
 bury, which drew upon itself, on account of the non- 
 submission of the chapter and the monks, the fullest 
 weight of the king's indignation. " The monks of 
 Canterbury were his first thought, and they were in 
 his power. They had committed treason, he said. 
 They had first made an election without his licence, 
 which prejudiced his prerogative, and now they . . . 
 had elected a known enemy of his own. Cardinal 
 Langton.'^ The monastery soon experienced the 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 143 
 
 terrible results of an anger which is described by the 
 chroniclers of the time to have been more like the 
 outburst of a homicidal insanity than any mere human 
 emotion. They were exiled without mercy, either for 
 age or sickness, and but for the tender care of the 
 Count of Gisnes must have perished from want and 
 exposure. The effect of the Interdict upon the 
 parishes and the clergy who might be resident in them 
 must have been disastrous, not only in regard to their 
 spiritual state, thus wantonly sacrificed in a conflict for 
 temporal power with which they had nothing to do, but 
 also to their outward condition, dependent as most of 
 them still were upon a great conventual body whose in- 
 come had been suddenly sequestrated to the king's use. 
 
 In the close of 1209 the fatal interdict fell on 
 the kingdom. Various efforts at negotiation had 
 been made without success, of one of which the 
 neighbourhood of Canterbury was the scene. This 
 may be introduced to the reader in the words 
 in which the writer described it on the spot to the 
 Archaeological Society of Kent :^ — "The terrors of 
 excommunication, in addition to the Interdict, were 
 impending over King John. The three months given 
 him by the pope for repentance had closed upon him, 
 and one reprieve after another had been granted in 
 the vain hope of a settlement, until the octave of St 
 Michael was fixed upon as the limit of the papal for- 
 bearance. Stephen Langton, the archbishop, who 
 was working the terrible instruments of spiritual tor- 
 
 ^ Lecture on Chilham Castle, *^ Arch. Cant.," vol. vii., page Iv. 
 L 2 
 
144 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 ture from the other side of the Channel, was invited to 
 meet the king at Dover, letters of safe conduct being 
 sent to him both by the king and the barons. With 
 the Bishops of London and Ely he crossed to Dover 
 on the 2nd of October. The king came to Chilham 
 Castle, and sent the Justiciary and the Bishop of 
 Winchester with certain articles which they were to 
 demand of the archbishop. They were such as he 
 could not agree to, and he recrossed the sea. If the 
 preceptory of Swingfield,^ in which John surrendered 
 his crown to the legate, must ever be the scene of 
 humiliating reflection to those who feel that the 
 honour of England is involved in that of her Crown, 
 the Castle of Chilham must ever be associated with 
 the better traditions of our unceasing, though then un- 
 successful, struggle against the only power which has 
 ever trampled on the liberties of England. We may 
 imagine the arrival of the king among his barons ; his 
 entertainment by the heiress of the great Fulbert de 
 Dover, to whom the very key of the kingdom had 
 been entrusted ; his bold resolution not to proceed to 
 Dover, lest he should seem to give way at such a 
 juncture as this ; the stern patience in which he 
 awaited the return of his commissioners ; the proud 
 thoughts which filled his mind, and which live in 
 the lines of one who alone could worthily retrace 
 them." 
 
 ^ Our learned local antiquary, Mr. Knocker, has brought 
 considerable evidence to prove that the scene of this humihating 
 surrender was the now-destroyed church of the Knights Tem- 
 plars on the west cliff at Dover, The popular belief points to 
 Swingfield. 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 
 
 Thou canst not, cardinal, devise a name. 
 
 So slight, unworthy, and ridiculous. 
 
 To charge me to an answer, as the Pope — 
 
 Tell him this tale, and from the mouth of England 
 
 Add thus much more — that no Italian priest 
 
 Shall tithe or toll in our dominions." 
 
 The failure of this attempt to negotiate hastened 
 the fatal act of the Papacy, one which, in spite of the 
 most specious representation of its defenders, is as 
 absolutely opposed to the genius of Christianity as 
 the most barbarous retaliations of heathenism, a kind 
 of murder of the innocents," in order to destroy 
 the single victim who could not be reached but by a 
 general act of destruction. The impartial reader of 
 the life of I.angton cannot but perceive that it repre- 
 sents a series of coalitions, the object of which was 
 the estabhshment of his personal power, rather than 
 the interests of his diocese and its unfortunate in- 
 habitants. First, we find him siding with the pope 
 against the king, then with the king against the 
 pope, then with the barons against both pope and 
 king. As the writer of his life admits, Innocent, 
 who so firmly carried through the struggle in behalf 
 of Langton against the king, is now found supporting 
 the king, and condemning the archbishop and barons;" 
 and naturally, for the king by his unkingly surrender 
 of his crown to the Papacy had made him one of the 
 lowest of his vassals, while Langton, who saw in the 
 first article of the great charter the surest defence of 
 his own authority, sided, as might be expected, with 
 those who were maintaining it. His refusal to publish 
 the Bull of excommunication against the barons was 
 
146 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 at once the worthiest and most patriotic of the acts 
 of his hfe, while his subsequent submission to the 
 pope in the matter of his suspension again exhibited 
 the weaker side of his nature. 
 
 The death of the pope and of the king introduced 
 a state of peace into the kingdom and the diocese it 
 had not known since the death of Hubert, and the 
 twelve peaceful years which followed, and which com- 
 pleted the primacy of Langton, we may well conclude 
 were years of recovery and progress in the Church of 
 Canterbury. " Two actions by which he illustrated 
 this period of peace and repose " were — 
 
 I. The translation of St. Thomas a Becket in 1220; 
 and 
 
 II. The celebration of the Synod of Osney in 1222. 
 Alexander III. having canonized the murdered 
 
 archbishop, called on his successor to provide a more 
 fitting place for his relics than the undercroft in which 
 they had so long mouldered. His successor, Hono- 
 rius III., exhorted accordingly " the English of every 
 condition " to prepare themselves by every kind of 
 religious exercise and act of charity to show due 
 honour to their saint in this crowning celebration. 
 The day fixed for it was Tuesday, the 7th of July, 
 and Langton, who had at the same period in the 
 previous year officiated at the coronation of Henry, 
 was now called upon to take the principal part in this 
 spiritual act of coronation. " Never before in England 
 had such a multitude been gathered into one spot ; 
 from every shire's end in England, from every corner 
 of Christendom, of all sexes, and of all ranks, abbots, 
 priors, barons, and clergy. There were twenty-four 
 
FROAI BECKET TO PECKIIAM. 
 
 bishops present. The Archbishop of Rheims said 
 mass, and the holy remains were transferred from the 
 unadorned stone coffin to a sumptuous chapel at the 
 back of the high altar. . . . For the entertainment of 
 this vast crowd of pilgrims all the resources at the 
 archbishop's command were put in action. His 
 manors and houses in Canterbury and the neighbour- 
 hood were opened for their reception ; wine flowed 
 in every part of the city, free entertainment and 
 forage were provided all the way from London, ' and 
 though all he could do could not provide for anything 
 like all who came, yet it showed his generous will.' 
 Langton's princely hospitality, indeed, was not only 
 to his power, but beyond his power, for the revenues 
 of the see did not recover this outlay under himself 
 and three of his successors." Thus far the able 
 advocate of the archbishop, written under the inspi- 
 ration of a recent conversion to Rome. He has not, 
 however, added the fact that on many of the arch- 
 bishop's manors, and notably upon those of Lyminge 
 and Wrotham, the tenants were in a starving condi- 
 tion not many years after, and that the inability of 
 Archbishop Boniface to repair his churches and 
 houses, which left his successor in a state of the 
 greatest embarrassment, arose out of this wicked and 
 wilful expenditure at a time when the country was 
 prostrate under the shock of the civil war, and the 
 cruel effects of the Interdict. 
 
 The Synod of Osney, at which Langton presided, 
 in 1222, occupies a very important place in the 
 history of the English councils. A number of laws 
 affecting the discipline and government of the Church 
 
148 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 were here drawn up, and they form some of the 
 earUest of the provincial canons upon which our 
 ancient and even our present ecclesiastical laws are 
 founded. But it was easier to make the most perfect 
 system of canon law than to carry into execution 
 the very lightest portion of it ; a truth which was 
 singularly illustrated in the fruitless labours of the 
 successors of Langton, and especially in those of 
 St. Edmund of Canterbury, next but one in suc- 
 cession to the primacy. His immediate successor 
 was Richard Wethershede,^ whose residence in the 
 see was even shorter than his brief tenure of it, 
 dying, as he did, on his way from Rome, after filling 
 the see for the brief period of three years. A suspicion 
 of poison, too common in the case of those who have 
 ventured Romewards in every age, hangs over his 
 death, as several of his suite died at the same time. 
 He was succeeded by one of the most illustrious of 
 the holders of the primatial dignity, the sainted 
 Edmund, elected (after several rival candidates of the 
 chapter had been set aside) in 1283, and consecrated 
 in. the following year. 
 
 If Langton had exhibited the political side of the 
 primacy in perhaps a higher aspect than any of his 
 predecessors, except Lanfranc, Edmund of Abingdon,, 
 whose surname of Rich or Le Rich indicated the 
 opulence, if not the nobility, of his ancestors, and 
 made his name a singular contrast to the extreme 
 
 ^ This appears to have been his true name, though by some 
 he is called Richard Grand, or the Great. It is probable that 
 this was merely an epithet, and that he is more properly called 
 from the name of his birthplace. 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 
 
 149 
 
 humility and simplicity of his life, presented in a 
 high degree the features of a diocesan bishop. 
 The multiplied abuses which had sprung up in 
 the diocese during the previous primacies, and 
 which developed all the evils which we have seen 
 so forcibly summed up by Cardinal de Vitry, called 
 for all the energies and all the zeal of the Church 
 reformer, of that age of degeneracy; an age which 
 at the same time by a strange and sad con- 
 trast bore such wonderful material fruits in art 
 and refinement, and which is now recognised as 
 the classic age of church architecture, with all its 
 adjuncts of painting, sculpture, and every artistic 
 triumph of skill and genius. It is sadly to be noted 
 that the highest periods of Christian art have been 
 frequently also the periods of the most fatal spiritual 
 decadence. Edmund of Canterbury was a Church- 
 builder in the highest sense, but not in that of the 
 builders of his great cathedral. In the long suc- 
 cession of primates it is not easy to find one who 
 surpasses him in the perfections of the Christian 
 character, or in the attributes of a Christian bishop. 
 What the diocese might have become had it preserved 
 the light of such an example and the influence of 
 such a ruler it is difficult now to determine. But 
 every effort made by the archbishop to reform the 
 corruptions of the clergy and the multiplied evils of 
 an age of spiritual degeneracy, both in Church and 
 State, was frustrated by the intrigues of the court 
 and the connivance of the pope. His biographer, 
 to whom we have already referred, is here at least an 
 impartial witness. The peculiar trial of St. Edmund 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 was, as he affirms, " the secular spirit which had 
 invaded the Church ; " but the resistance he met with, 
 not only in his diocese, but throughout the country, 
 not only at the court of Henry, but in the court of 
 Rome, was inveterate, and in the end irresistible. 
 " That the king, the barons, the lay people, some or 
 all of them should be in opposition to him might 
 neither surprise nor grieve him, but the bishops were 
 unfriendly, his own chapter disliked his asceticism, 
 the legate went against him in everything, and, worst 
 desolation of all, the very occupant of the Holy See 
 seemed little inclined to support him, if the king or 
 the Crown party were to be in anything offended or 
 resisted. At first the archbishop seemed to make 
 great progress in arranging matters which had long 
 been subjects of contention. For example, the long- 
 standing disputes with the Convent of St. Augustine 
 were set at rest by a composition, both parties abating 
 something from their claims for the love of peace. 
 . . . The archbishop's difficulties with his own con- 
 vent were of a graver nature."^ Here he had to con- 
 tend against the luxury and secularity which had made 
 the Benedictine rule a mere cloak to hide its daily 
 practical infraction. Unhappily the support which 
 the archbishop might have looked for from the court 
 had been withdrawn, partly through the influence of 
 the nobility, who regarded him with suspicion, if not 
 repugnance, and partly through the difference he had 
 with King Henry on the occasion of the marriage of 
 his sister with Simon de Montfort. This princess on 
 
 ' **Life of St. Edmund," pp. 48, 49. 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 151 
 
 the death of her first husband, the Earl of Pembroke, 
 had bound herself before the archbishop himself to a 
 life of continence, from which the pope had dispensed 
 her. The archbishop, who had in every way opposed 
 the alliance, which he held under the circumstances to 
 involve a sacrilege, fell naturally under the displeasure 
 of the king ; who, in order to frustrate his plans of 
 reform, invited the visitation of a legate from the 
 pope, without the consent either of the archbishop or 
 of the states of the kingdom. The legate appointed 
 to this ungrateful task was Cardinal Otho, whose 
 constitutions make so important a figure in the eccle- 
 siastical law of England. Edmund complained to 
 the king without effect of this inopportune and 
 unwelcome intrusion. The motive of the pope in 
 authorizing it soon became as apparent as the object 
 of the king in inviting it. Otho claimed to fill up all 
 the vacant preferments, and was not unfairly repre- 
 sented by a contemporary chronicler as " a poor Italian 
 who was sent to England to make his own fortune 
 and that of as many of his friends as possible, and to 
 extort money under divers pretexts." Edmund was 
 met at every point and in every stage of his duty by a 
 series of obstacles and affronts, which rendered his 
 episcopate almost insupportable. In every effort, 
 either of reformation or vindication of himself, he 
 found failure and disappointment. The legate, eager 
 to gain over the king and the nobles, brought over 
 the pope to his views. At last the tenure of the 
 archbishopric seemed no longer possible to a man so 
 exalted in mind and motive as Edmund, and he deter- 
 mined to retire from a position which he could no 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 longer occupy with dignity or usefulness. ^^The 
 archbishop was now thoroughly weary of his office. 
 He saw that he could do nothing as he wished and 
 as he knew he ought to do it. His reforms were 
 merely ridiculed, set aside without question or even 
 opposition. All men were agreed that they were 
 fanciful, impracticable schemes." He resolved to 
 retire to that scene which his predecessors had 
 chosen as their retreat under circumstances of greater 
 danger, but, perhaps, of less disappointment; Pontigny 
 again received within its venerable cloister the saintly 
 man, weary of the world, and worn out with its many 
 trials. His departure from London resembled a 
 secret flight. On a rising ground, from which was a 
 view of the city, he halted, and turning towards it he 
 gave his solemn blessing to his country, and his curse 
 on the sacrilegious marriage of the Countess de 
 Montfort and its offspring. This was in the year 
 1240. The two years that followed, while they were 
 a season of perfect rest and peace to the saintly exile, 
 were a season of loss, and even widowhood, to the 
 diocese. A greater martyr than Becket had been lost 
 to his people ; and the wonders which are said to have 
 been wrought at the tomb of the saint, and which 
 occasioned his canonization only four years after, may 
 have well led the monks of Canterbury to repent the 
 course they had taken in resisting and accusing a 
 prelate whose purity of life and doctrine should 
 rather have provoked them to imitation than stimu- 
 lated them to persecution. Pontigny soon rivalled 
 
 1 "Life of St. Edmund," p. 74. 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 153 
 
 Canterbury as a place of pilgrimage, and the relics of 
 the saint, more fortunate than those of Becket, are 
 said to have escaped the destroying hands of the 
 Huguenots, when the venerable Abbey of Pontigny 
 was sacked by the Prince of Conde. It will be seen 
 from this brief sketch of the primacy of St. Edmund 
 that his life had but too little bearing upon the history 
 of the diocese, and left no trace of its influence upon 
 a corrupt and degenerate age. His successor was 
 Boniface, provost of Beverley, whose exalted birth, 
 for he was the son of the Duke of Savoy and uncle 
 to Queen Eleanor, wife of King Henry III., pointed 
 him out as a suitable representative of the spirit of 
 the age, and one who would best conciliate the 
 affections both of the court and of a clergy which 
 had become utterly secularized. Of the history of 
 the diocese during the twenty-six years and a half of 
 Archbishop Boniface's government of it we know 
 little indeed. To the foreign ecclesiastics with whom 
 Otho the legate had filled the chief benefices of the 
 land, he contributed some of his own countrymen to 
 swell the ranks of those fortunate adventurers whose 
 presence and influence were at once the scorn and 
 disgrace of the Church, and whose memory was fresh 
 even in the days of Shakespeare. Some of these, 
 conscious of their unpopularity, resided abroad, and 
 left their place to be filled by the itinerant preachers 
 who have been already mentioned as employed by 
 the monasteries to officiate in their dependent 
 churches. Thus Petrus de Albi, a Savoyard, and 
 afterwards executor to the archbishop's will, held the 
 sinecure rectories of Lyminge and Wrotham, leaving 
 
154 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 the people, as Archbishop Peckham wrote, in both 
 "temporal and spiritual destitution." Archbishop 
 Boniface appears to have resided at his various manor- 
 houses, as his successors did,^ and to have been a 
 munificent benefactor to the see in his contributions to 
 its buildings, already inconveniently multiplied, for he 
 built a hospital (afterwards converted into a college) 
 at Maidstone. He perfected the stately hall of the 
 archbishop's palace at Canterbury, and what is better 
 than all, paid off the great debts which his prede- 
 cessors had charged on the see, affirming that "as 
 they had built their palaces with borrowed money, he 
 might be more justly regarded as the builder of them, 
 because he had paid their debts." ^ But notwith- 
 standing these works of princely munificence, which 
 probably belonged to the earlier years of his long 
 term of diocesan rule, the state of the manor-houses 
 and buildings of the see was so dilapidated and 
 almost ruinous on the accession of Archbishop 
 Peckham in 1279 that that primate had to remon- 
 strate with the executors of Boniface, especially with 
 Petrus de Albi, the Savoyard pluralist, who held the 
 sinecure rectories of Lyminge and Wrotham, on his 
 failure to pay the sums for the dilapidations which 
 had been left in the will of the archbishop. As the 
 most conspicuous of those foreigners who had preyed 
 for so long a time on the richest benefices of England, 
 Archbishop Boniface had incurred the bitterest 
 animosity, not only in his own diocese, but from the 
 
 * His collation of Constantine de Mildenhall to the living of 
 Hever is dated from Lyminge in 1264. 
 2 Hasted's Kent," tom. xii. p. 359. 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 1 55 
 
 citizens of London, by whom his very life is said to 
 have been endangered. All the chroniclers of the 
 age, however they may disagree in their views of 
 local events, are agreed in the intense animosity 
 towards the foreign pluralists, who, under the blight- 
 ing influence of the Papacy, had reduced the Church 
 in England to a state of poverty and dependence 
 which no other Church had ever endured, and which 
 few Churches could have survived. The case of 
 Petrus de Albi alone, which was by no means a 
 solitary one, — a foreigner spending in Italy the 
 fruits of his English sinecures, while the people of 
 his Kentish parishes were starving both in soul 
 and body — may well justify the resolute words of 
 King John, as Shakespeare has conceived them — 
 words so feebly carried out in the end — declaring 
 that 
 
 No Italian priest 
 Shall tithe or toll in our dominion." 
 
 Boniface closed his long primacy at his castle in 
 Savoy, whither he had retreated in his last days, to 
 avoid the indignation which had been awakened 
 against him in England, and was succeeded by Robert 
 Kilwardby, a nominee of the pope, in 1272. Little, 
 indeed, is recorded of his primacy, and even that little 
 has a very slight bearing upon the history of the dio- 
 cese ; though in his pastoral character and as visitor, 
 not only of his diocese but also of the province, he 
 appears to have fulfilled both his episcopal and pri- 
 matial duties with a greater zeal and success than 
 most of his predecessors. He is said to have been 
 a regular preacher in his church, and to have been a 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 divine of no common order. He contributed also 
 not a little to the peace of the diocese by healing the 
 breach between the city of Canterbury and the monks, 
 which threatened the most serious results, and which 
 arose out of the refusal of the latter to contribute 
 towards an imposition set upon the city by the king 
 in aid of his intended expedition into Wales. It is 
 probable that the foresight of a renewal of this hos- 
 tility led him to an act which must ever be regarded 
 as the most fatal blow which has ever been inflicted 
 upon its literary and historic possessions. He had 
 not presided over his church for more than five years 
 when Pope Nicholas HI., by the offer of a cardinal's 
 hat, allured him to Rome, upon which he resigned 
 his archbishopric and hastened to Italy, bearing with 
 him a large sum of money, and also the whole of 
 the registers of the see of Canterbury, and several 
 of its most precious treasures of ecclesiastical plate 
 and ornament. In vain did his successor. Archbishop 
 Peckham, send a special commissioner to Rome in 
 order to recover these inestimable records — in vain 
 has every effort been made in a later day for the dis- 
 covery of them. Among many others the writer may 
 make mention of two which he himself originated, 
 in one of which he was kindly aided by his lamented 
 friend, the late Cardinal Wiseman ; in the other by 
 Lord Talbot de Malahide. In the latter. Archbishop 
 Longley took the deepest interest, assisting in it 
 himself as far as was possible. Cardinal Wiseman, 
 through Dr. Theiner, then the sub-prefect of the 
 Vatican, and Lord Talbot, through Mgr. Talbot, used 
 every influence they possessed in regard to these lost 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 1 57 
 
 treasures of history, but in vain. Whether the exa- 
 minations now being made at the Vatican under the 
 direction of the Rolls Commission, which were so 
 kindly assisted by the late pope, and have been 
 equally favoured by his successor, will be able to 
 throw any light upon the matter remains yet a problem. 
 Cardinal Wiseman, though he informed the writer 
 that in the vaults of the Vatican and under its vast 
 library the correspondence of legates and the com- 
 munications of the Holy See with its world-wide 
 dependencies have been preserved from a compara- 
 tively early age, yet doubted whether documents so 
 early as the lost registers of Canterbury could have 
 survived the tumults and sackings of Rome during 
 the succeeding centuries. When we consider that 
 the missing records must have included those of 
 Becket, of St. Edmund, and probably of even Lan- 
 franc himself, the extent of our ruinous loss may be 
 conjectured, though hardly estimated ; while the hope 
 that it may yet be in some measure redeemed must 
 be excited in the same degree. From our brief re- 
 trospect of the events of the period in which it has 
 caused so fatal a blank we may proceed to make a few 
 remarks on the development of the beneficiary system 
 in the diocese upon which the register of Archbishop 
 Peckham (beginning in 1279) throws back so instruc- 
 tive and suggestive a light. The many abuses which 
 had grown up during the period over which this 
 chapter extends, led on to many remedial laws, and 
 these had so important a bearing on the state of the 
 diocese at the present time that we cannot delay the 
 mention of them to a later stage of our narrative. 
 
 M 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 The opening of the thirteenth century forms an 
 important epoch in the history of the Church gene- 
 rally, and one which ought to be carefully noted in 
 the history of the diocese. In 12 15 the Lateran 
 Council under Innocent III., carrying out the pro- 
 visions of several provincial Councils, decreed the 
 establishment of perpetual vicarages in those churches 
 which, from their connection with monastic and colle- 
 giate foundations, had hitherto been served by vicars 
 or substitutes removable at the will or caprice of the 
 body by whom they were appointed. In the diocese 
 of Canterbury, where the majority of the livings were 
 appendant to the manors, and where the religious 
 foundations held so large and increasing a proportion 
 of the churches, the effects of a law like this must 
 have been peculiarly felt. It will not, therefore, be 
 inopportune in this place to exhibit the state of the 
 Church before this important change, in order that 
 we may fully estimate its results upon the diocese. 
 Between the year in which the law was made universal 
 and the first year of Archbishop Peckham (1279) we 
 have but little documentary evidence to fall back 
 upon. We find, however, incidental proofs that the 
 Lateran decree was acted upon in the diocese within 
 a few years of its promulgation, the vicarage of Bap- 
 child having been made perpetual as early as 1229 ; 
 while between that date and the close of the century 
 the vicarages of Elham, Ash, Aldington, Heme, 
 Newchurch, Eastry, Swalecliffe, Shepherdswell, and 
 the churches dependent upon that of Minster in 
 Thanet, viz., St. John's, St. Peter's, and St. Laurence's, 
 were made perpetual, to which might probably be 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 
 
 159 
 
 added those of Lyminge and Wrotham, which the non- 
 residence of the rectors had so long deprived of 
 spiritual oversight as to lead to the active intervention 
 of Archbishop Peckham in 1280. But to give the 
 reader a clear insight into this important change we 
 will again have recourse to the words of Bohmer — 
 " I proceed," he writes, from canonical and capi- 
 tular vicars to the parish clergy, who were the more 
 bound to residence on the ground that the care of 
 souls, which at no time could be suspended, devolved 
 upon them. In these, however, non-residence was 
 accidentally allowed after parishes, through an evasion 
 of the law, had been by right of tmion attached to and 
 consolidated with monasteries, abbacies, provostries, 
 and cathedral or collegiate churches. For since these 
 corporate bodies or representatives of the dignified 
 clergy were unable to fulfil the ofiice of parish-priest, 
 and the union was made in favour rather of the pre- 
 lates and monks than of the congregation of the 
 faithful or the Church, the result was that the revenues 
 of the parishes came to them, while it was tacitly 
 permitted them to fulfil the office of parish-priest by 
 means of a vicar to whom some portion of the paro- 
 chial income was assigned." ..." And the abuse 
 from the first was the more serious in regard to these 
 vicarages on account of the vicars being appointed 
 temporarily and being removable at the caprice of the 
 rector (/.^., the principal) or of him to whose prelature 
 the parish was joined by reason of the union in the 
 same manner as a servant taken about with him might 
 be dismissed at pleasure — an abuse which was repro- 
 bated and prohibited at last by various councils. 
 M 2 
 
i6o 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Thus, the Synod of Mayence in 1225 complains of 
 the ' outrageous custom which is marked in some 
 parts of Germany of putting itinerant priests {co7i- 
 diiditii sacer dotes) as temporary vicars,' and severely 
 prohibits the abuse, enjoining that the prelates to 
 whose prebend a parish church is annexed shall ap- 
 point for such parish church a sufficient and perpetual 
 vicar who shall have a fit portion {portio congrud) out 
 of the income of the church. Hence it comes that 
 these vicars (as they are now called) are ordinary parish 
 priests, and to that end are duly ordained, and possess 
 the certain income assigned to this vicarial office as 
 an ecclesiastical benefice 
 
 The settlement of the question what ought to be 
 the congrua portio of the vicar was made at that time 
 in England (as it is now in countries where still the 
 tithes are appropriate to religious foundations) by a 
 suit in the Court of the Ordinary to whom properly the 
 adjudication belonged. And hence we must regard 
 the final decrees of the archbishops establishing per- 
 petual vicarages in different churches as judicial 
 determinations, and date from these several periods 
 the fixed succession of the parish-priests in such 
 churches. The fatal effects of non-residence and the 
 frequent collation by the archbishops of aliens to 
 some of the richest rectories in the diocese, gave 
 occasion to the extension of this system of perpetual 
 vicarages, even to churches not specially attached to 
 the religious foundations. It is to this grave abuse 
 of patronage, remarkably illustrated in the case of 
 
 * Bohmer; '*Jus. Eccl." 1. iii. tit. iv. s. xxxviii. 
 
FROiM BECKET TO PECKHAM. l6l 
 
 Archbishop Boniface, the Savoyard, that may be attri- 
 buted the foundation of vicarages in the churches of 
 Lyminge, Wrotham, Aldington, Newchurch, and many 
 others. The estabHshment of perpetual vicarages was 
 so much evaded by the monastic and capitular bodies 
 that even in the time of the Council of Trent the 
 Ordinaries are charged, in visiting churches thus united 
 to religious foundations, to inquire diligently whether 
 perpetual vicarages have been founded in them in 
 every case, and to assign to such vicars their portio 
 congrua. As .late as 1686 the abuse continued in 
 France, and was prohibited by a Royal edict in that 
 year.i 'Phe monks and chapters whose object it was 
 to retain these movable and temporary vicars were 
 brought into constant conflict at this point with the 
 bishops, whose interest as well as duty it was to create 
 a perpetual benefice. This added another element 
 to that conflict between the regular and secular clergy, 
 which lasted up to the dissolution of the monasteries 
 in England, and up to our own times in those coun- 
 tries where the religious orders have preserved their 
 ancient endowments. 
 
 The description of the value of the livings in the 
 King's Book " gives in every case the portio 
 congrua assigned to the vicarages, which, in the 
 case of those in which no decree and date of 
 foundation is named, must be held to represent a 
 fixed composition between the patron and the vicar, 
 not liable to change unless made the subject of a 
 
 ' See van Espen, p. ii. tit. 34, c. i., where the whole subject 
 
 i:^ admirably explained. 
 
l62 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 special suit. In a deed of 1349, in the possession 
 of the writer, the vicarage of Lyminge is described 
 as non litigiosa nec portionaria nec pensionaria," 
 the first words apparently expressing the fact that the 
 portio congrua was not in litigation, but had been 
 settled by established custom. 
 
 To this great change in the beneficiary system, which 
 provided a permanent resident priest in every parish, 
 and removed those hirelings who had so long discredited 
 the work of the ministry in the eyes of the people, must 
 be attributed, far more than to any other cause, the great 
 outburst of church-building zeal which distinguishes 
 the thirteenth century, and made it the culminating 
 period of Gothic art, both in England and in Con- 
 tinental Europe. The beautiful style improperly 
 termed by us " Early English,'' but by our Continental 
 brethren called with greater propriety the "first 
 ogival," or Pointed style, was the fruit of this re- 
 naissance of Christian art, which perhaps has fewer 
 examples in Kent (except in its plainer and more 
 ordinary form) than in any other part of England. 
 The chief reason appears to have been the extreme 
 difficulty of moulding the native Kentish stone — 
 generally of extreme hardness, and abounding with 
 fossils — into the slender and refined forms of this 
 highest development of Gothic art. Hence this style, 
 except in few instances, presents in our churches 
 rather the massive octagonal columns suggested by the 
 Transition period, than the clustered shafts so rich 
 with foHage and elaborate mouldings which adorn the 
 structures of other counties where a more practic- 
 able stone is to be found. Yet this was, in Kent 
 
FROM BECKET TO PECKHAM. 1 63 
 
 as well as elsewhere, eminently the age of church- 
 building. 
 
 The chancel of Hythe presents an exquisite speci- 
 men of the finest work of this kind which the diocese 
 posse^es, but here the introduction of Caen stone 
 and Bethersden marble indicates more ample means 
 than an ordinary parish church could have adopted. 
 The chancels of Cheriton, Folkestone, Alkham, and 
 many others, are approaches to this higher stage ; 
 while that of Stone in the adjoining diocese of 
 Rochester, recently restored in a true conservative 
 spirit, is perhaps the finest specimen, on the whole, 
 to be found in the county. The magnificent choir 
 of the Cathedral of Canterbury presents to us perhaps 
 the most perfect instance in England of the transition 
 between the Norman style and that which succeeded 
 it, exhibiting to us in beautiful combination the cir- 
 cular and pointed arches which form the most dis- 
 tinctive features of the two systems. The octagonal 
 columns which support the arcades of so many of 
 the churches of Kent have here their earliest and 
 most beautiful type, and evidently suggested to the 
 local builders the imitation, as far as was possible, 
 of the great metropolitical church. 
 
 The perfect calm which succeeded the death of 
 John, and extended over the last years of the primacy 
 of Langton, uninterrupted by the voluntary exile of 
 St. Edmund, gave an opportunity to the Church of re- 
 covering the influence she had lost ; while the shrine 
 of Becket was amine of wealth for the church-building 
 labours of the monastery which can hardly now be fully 
 estimated. The great Monastery of St. Augustine, 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 whose revenues had never been disturbed Hke those 
 of the rival foundation, appears to have restored 
 many of its dependent churches at the same period. 
 That of Minster presents a beautiful specimen, both 
 of Norman and first-pointed work ; while the chapels 
 of St. Lawrence and St. John (Margate), built pro- 
 bably between the close of the twelfth and the early 
 years of the thirteenth centuries, and made parochial 
 (with that of St. Peter's) in 1299, were among the 
 fruits of this architectural revival. 
 
 A few remarks may here be made on the state 
 of preaching and doctrine in the diocese, for 
 although the scope of our present work precludes 
 any observations of a controversial nature, an 
 account of the diocese would be necessarily im- 
 perfect were not the general tendency of the teaching 
 of its ministry to be noted from time to time. We 
 have observed how closely the pastoral and prac- 
 tical doctrine of Lanfranc preserved the simplicity 
 of the first teaching of the Saxon missionaries, and 
 how perfectly the features of his exegetical teaching 
 resemble those which are still preached within the 
 walls of his cathedral. The same remark may be 
 made on the general teaching of the archbishops 
 during the period to which this chapter refers. The 
 impartial reader of the religious writings of the age 
 will at once observe, that not only the separate 
 features of this teaching, but their relations to one 
 another— not only the doctrines, but the proportions 
 of faith it delineates, are identical with those which 
 our Church has so happily preserved. A singular 
 proof of this is given us in the beautiful treatise of 
 
FROM EECKET TO PECKHAM. 1 65 
 
 St. Edmund of Canterbury, called the Speculum 
 Ecdesice^ which puts together the elements of Chris- 
 tianity in their proper form and order, and might 
 be used in the present day as a safe and faithful 
 manual of Christian doctrine. This was written during 
 his exile at Pontigny, and very shortly before his 
 death, at the time in which he w^as preaching from 
 church to church as a mere monk, taking his turn 
 with his brethren, and therefore fairly represents the 
 method and course of his religious teaching. The 
 comparison of such a manual as this with the elaborate 
 scholastic system developed in the Catechism of the 
 Council of Trent illustrates forcibly the too much- 
 neglected truth that the Reformation was rather the 
 assertion of the ancient proportions of faith, and their 
 relations to the entire body and to one another, than 
 a mere negation of mediaeval doctrines or settlement 
 of technical controversies. Short as was St. Edmund's 
 primacy, the reign of his teaching has been a very 
 long one : for no intelligent and unbiassed reader of 
 the Speculum Ecclesm will fail to acknowledge that 
 the scope of its teaching and the proportions of 
 doctrine which it exhibits are the same as those which 
 our Church still represents ; the only points of differ- 
 ence being in the number of the sacraments, the 
 supposition of a substantial change in the Eucharist, 
 a single allusion to the intercession and merits of the 
 saints, and a very faint reference to the doctrine of 
 Purgatory. The constant repetition of the Pater 
 Noster and the neglect of it for other and human 
 compositions are both reprobated by St. Edmund. 
 Do not," he writes, " be careful in multiplying 
 
i66 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Pater Nosters^ for it is better to say once the Lord's- 
 Prayer with a good understanding and attention than 
 a thousand times over without understanding or de- 
 votion ... In the same spirit you ought to take 
 part in the service of the Church." The ^' internal 
 manifestation of God" he defines to be ^' by revela- 
 tion and reason;" His "external manifestation by the 
 Scriptures and by works of the creation." He admits 
 of no separation of worship when he writes, " Every 
 man is bound to serve God only, and faithfully to 
 adore Him." There is, therefore, no address to the 
 saints, or even the shadow of Mariolatry. It is neces- 
 sary to observe this close resemblance of the teaching 
 of St. Edmund to that of our Church in the pro- 
 portions and relations of Christian doctrine, as the 
 permanence of this kind of teaching to the days 
 of the Reformation throughout the diocese was 
 among the causes which occasioned that remarkable 
 unanimity with which, as we shall observe hereafter, 
 the doctrines of the Reformation were received in a 
 Church which might otherwise be reasonably expected 
 to have been the last to entertain them, as it was the 
 very first and most devoted of any in England to the 
 obedience of the See of Rome. 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 
 
 Our Diocesan history has been hitherto traced rather 
 in the biographies of the archbishops than in the 
 annals of the diocese itself. From loss of the registers 
 of the see during the Norman period and up to the 
 age of Peckham we are enabled to gain but few and 
 distant glimpses of the diocese itself, which we see 
 rather as an appendage to the primacy than as a 
 distinct existence. Occasionally the various scenes 
 in Kent which are connected with the lives of the 
 archbishops become visible, and even clear to the eye, 
 as the monasteries and churches with which they 
 were connected, and the towns over which they held 
 a peculiar jurisdiction, become prominent objects in 
 our long retrospect. AVhen we read of Lanfranc's 
 almost mortal illness at Aldington and the vision of 
 the white horses, on one of which was the sainted 
 Dunstan, whose appearance was the omen of his 
 victory over the rapacious Bishop of Bayeux, we seem 
 to realize for an instant the picture of the diocesan 
 life of the primates ; while in the brief periods of 
 Becket's visits and progresses in Kent, we trace the 
 current of popular religious sentiment in that age of 
 uninquiring obedience which represents the feudal 
 period of faith. The miracles of the sainted arch- 
 
i68 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 bishops, which are mentioned in connection with 
 many of the lesser as well as of the greater towns of 
 the diocese, are suggestive indications of the same 
 state of simple devotion in the rural population of 
 the diocese ; and the lives of Dunstan and Lanfranc, 
 the great re-establishers as well as reformers of 
 Monachism in England, enable us in some degree to 
 fill up the lines of the picture, and to measure the 
 relative influence of the parochial and the monastic 
 systems, and their bearings upon the religious and 
 social life of the age. Yet our view, even with all 
 these helps, is but transient and fragmentary. The 
 diocese has no distinct individuality. Its towns and 
 villages, not excepting even the important city from 
 which it derives its name, appear only in the connec- 
 tion in which they stand with the chequered fortunes 
 of the primates. Of those which lie along the route 
 of their progresses, whether of triumph or to exile, we 
 have occasional notices ; but of their visitations of 
 the diocese itself and the state of its parishes we 
 have no record ; and scarcely the faintest lines of the 
 picture of the diocese as it presented itself in the 
 days of Becket, of Langton, or of St. Edmund, remain. 
 The seasons of exile of the archbishops, so frequent 
 in the early period, are also blanks in the diocesan 
 life ; and the vacancy of the primacy even makes a 
 corresponding vacancy in the history of the see. 
 The accession, however, of Archbishop Peckham in 
 1279 opens a new page in our annals, and for the 
 first time the history of the diocese separates itself 
 from that of the primates and the primacy. The 
 register of Peckham, at once the earliest and the most 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 1 69 
 
 interesting of those which remain in the vast collec- 
 tions at Lambeth, was first brought into notice by 
 Dr. Ducarel's proposal for its publication, and by his 
 admirable reproduction of it, which is still among the 
 " Additional MSS." of the British Museum, as well as 
 in the Library at Lambeth. ^ 
 
 It was carefully transcribed, with a view to its 
 publication, by Mr. Edward Rowe Mores, and is pre- 
 served in this very readable form in the same collection 
 in the British Museum.^ It opens with a description 
 of the progress of the archbishop from one to another 
 of his great manorial residences, which took place 
 immediately after his return from Paris to take 
 possession of the temporalities of the see. When we 
 remember that these manors extended from one 
 extremity of the diocese to the other — from Croydon 
 and Otford in the west, to Canterbury, Wingham, and 
 Ford, in the east — from Northfleet and Reculver on 
 the north, to Romney, Aldington, Lyminge and Salt- 
 wood on the south, we cannot but see that such a 
 progress was equivalent to a continuous visitation of 
 his diocese, and that almost every part of it was 
 under the ceaseless inspection of its chief The first 
 place which is mentioned in the archbishop's itinerary 
 is Lyminge, at which manor he arrived in the begin- 
 ning of June, 1279. It was here that the great Earl 
 
 * Among the additional MSS. the collection fills fifty folio 
 volumes, numbered from 6062 downwards. Up to Archbishop 
 Arundel the work is carefully executed. After this it seems to 
 consist of Dr. Ducarel's rough notes preparatory to the com- 
 pletion of the Lambeth copy. 
 
 3 Additional MSS. No. 61 11. 
 
170 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 of Gloucester, Gilbert de Clare, did homage for the 
 castle and lowy ^ of Tonbridge, and for the other 
 possessions he held of the see of Canterbury. In 
 right of this feud, the Earls of Gloucester were 
 hereditary seneschals of the archbishops, and presented 
 to them the cup at the banquet succeeding their 
 enthronization. By a special composition with the 
 primates (which is minutely described in the register 
 of Archbishop Meopham) the seneschal was to be 
 entertained at any one of their manors they might 
 choose in the four divisions of Kent, but were limited 
 to a retinue of fifty horsemen, and to a stay of two 
 nights ; receiving for their official perquisites " seven 
 robes of scarlet, twenty quarts of wine, fifty pounds 
 of wax, hay and corn for sixty horses for two nights, 
 and the cup with which the archbishop is served.^' 
 The office of seneschal devolved afterwards to the 
 Earls of Stafford as succeeding to the feudal holding. 
 The site of the palace of the archbishop at Lyminge 
 which covers the fields adjoining the church, and 
 was also that of the Saxon monastery, can now 
 only be traced by the mounds and depressions which 
 mark the position of its ancient walls. A portion of 
 the foundation, which appeared to be that of the 
 archbishop's chapel, was disclosed some years since, 
 but it shortly after perished from the effects of a 
 severe frost. The ''chamber" or "hall" of the 
 palace, having been built upon the Roman foun- 
 dation of the ''Villa of Lyminge/' has still left 
 a few traces of its existence ; and the vast collec- 
 tion of fragments of stone-work and of encaustic 
 
 ^ Lowy {^kiicata) is a kind of liberty extending for about 
 a league round a town or fortress. 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 171 
 
 tiles, which were found in the process of excavation, 
 indicated the place in which the earl took the oath 
 of feudal allegiance to the archbishop, which the 
 record before us thus describes : — " On the fifth day 
 of June the Earl of Gloucester did homage and swore 
 fealty to the archbishop in his chamber of Lymyngs 
 standing beside his bed on the east side (juxta lectum 
 suum in parte orientali) in the presence of the Dean 
 of St. Paul's ^' and other dignitaries and great officials. 
 " And the said earl declared and professed that he 
 held the honour of Tunbridge with all belonging to it 
 and all the land and whatever he possessed in the 
 Lowy of Tunbridge from the archbishop and none 
 other." The words of the oath are as follows : Jeo 
 deveng (defend ?) vostre hon're Sir encontre tuz ceus 
 ki present vivre et murir de la terre que jeo tieng de 
 nul sauve la foy le roy et Farcevesk se recente, sauve 
 son droit e lautri (?) la fealte en ceste jeo porterai 
 bone foy al Arcevesk de Cantor-Johan par la grace de 
 Deu, de vie et de membre et de tril (?) hon^' et leal- 
 ment contraire les services feray et les custumes que 
 la tre (terre?) dong jeo claim de vous tenir, se Deu 
 m'aid et les soinz." On the same day Bertram de 
 Criol, the great Norman knight of Westenhanger, did 
 homage for a military feud held of the archbishop, 
 as did Bartholomew de Valoigns, whose name is as 
 illustrious in the history of the country as of the 
 county itself At the same time and place appeared 
 William de Montecamero, to swear the same fealty, 
 but he is described as standing at the foot of the bed 
 ad pedes lecti") a less honourable place it would 
 ajipear than that occupied by the great Norman earl. 
 A series of homages and great receptions is carried 
 
172 
 
 CAN lERBURY. 
 
 on at Lyminge, till in the middle of July the arch- 
 bishop passes on to Wingham, where in his chapel 
 he carried on the same tedious process, and doubtless 
 exercised the same feudal hospitality. From Wing- 
 ham he visited Charing, where among other tenants 
 appearing to do homage was Alexander de Balliol, of 
 that great house which gave a pretender to the crown 
 of Scotland as well as the founder of one of the 
 greatest of the Kentish houses, the Scotts of Scott's 
 Hall, whose stately monuments fill the church, and 
 even usurp the place of the altar at Brabourne. From 
 Charing the archbishop proceeded to Cranbrook ; 
 from thence into Sussex, to his manor of Mayfield, so 
 celebrated in a later day for its beautiful palace and 
 hall, which made it one of the favourite residences of 
 the primate. From Mayfield he travelled towards 
 London, taking up his residence for a short space at 
 Mortlake ; then visiting Otford, famous in more recent 
 times for the costly restoration of its palace by Arch- 
 bishop Warham, but chiefly memorable in that earUer 
 day as the frequent and favourite residence of Becket. 
 From Otford his progress was extended to Maidstone, 
 whence he proceeded to Tarring (in Sussex), Chart- 
 ham, Teynham, afterwards reappearing successively at 
 Lambeth and Mortlake. From this sketch of the 
 archbishop's first journeys we may be led to infer that 
 his knowledge of the diocese was personal and intimate, 
 and that he fulfilled the part of a diocesan as zealously 
 as he carried on the more conspicuous duties of a 
 primate. We are also reminded that the state of the 
 rural districts in which most of these manors were 
 situated was one of primitive simplicity, the rents of 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 1 73 
 
 the tenants being rather given in kind than in money, 
 the support of the archbishop and his retinue during 
 his stay in his different manors standing in Heu of a 
 money payment, at least in the case of the cultivators 
 of his demesnes, among which all his principal manors 
 were included. His visits to these manors were not, 
 however, merely for the purposes we have already 
 described. They enabled him to inquire into the 
 state of the clergy and laity, and to redress any evils 
 which might be occasioned by the negligence of the 
 one or the necessities of the other. Thus, his visit 
 to his manors of Lyminge and Wrotham was made 
 the occasion of a remarkable letter of complaint and 
 remonstrance to the pluralist rector, Petrus de Albi 
 (or Blaune), a Savoyard, who had been promoted to 
 the most lucrative offices by his countryman. Arch- 
 bishop Boniface. This letter is a characteristic monu- 
 ment of his zeal both for the temporal and spiritual 
 welfare of his diocese. Lately,'^ he writes, " making 
 a progress through our said churches we found therein 
 that the cure of souls was altogether neglected as far 
 as belongs to our office ; and the poor parishioners, 
 from the want of a good steward, afflicted with hunger 
 and (to sum up in few words) defrauded of all tem- 
 poral and spiritual consolation. Wherefore we have 
 enjoined our proctor, Master Poncius, for the need of 
 the parishioners, whom you are bound to relieve both 
 temporally and spiritually, to distribute among the 
 poor parishioners of Lyminge a hundred (solidos ?) 
 sterling and to assign the same sum at Wrotham. 
 For so great a famine has prevailed at this time, that 
 none of them had anything of his own to live upon ; 
 
 N 
 
174 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 nor, as far as we have heard has there been lany one^ 
 during the whole period of your incumbency of these 
 churches to relieve the wants of the parishioners in 
 our name, for which cause without doubt you have 
 offended the Most High, Whom we believe that we 
 also have displeased by allowing such conduct to pass 
 by for so long a time under the shadow of dissimula- 
 tion. It becomes therefore your own honour and 
 will, we believe, be fruitful for the salvation of souls 
 for you to take an early opportunity of coming to visit 
 for some days the cures committed to your govern- 
 ment, and to have an interview with us on several 
 matters." The importance of this letter in its bearing 
 upon the history of the diocese must be apparent to 
 every reader of it. We observe the evil of non- 
 residence developed in a very early period, and are 
 led to see how irregularly and perfunctorily the 
 services of some of the principal churches were 
 fulfilled ; those in episcopal patronage being often 
 habitually neglected, while those held by the monas- 
 teries as appropriate to them were for the most part 
 served by regulars belonging to the house, — an abuse 
 which prevailed largely as late as the period of the 
 Reformation. This led, as has been already observed, 
 to the foundation of perpetual vicarages, most of the 
 earliest in Kent dating from the period of which we 
 are writing. Albi, who seems to have been almost 
 the evil genius of the archbishop, was not only chaplain 
 to the queen who was the niece of Boniface, but also 
 the executor of his will. Peckham in vain appeals 
 to him to fulfil the duties of his executorship, by 
 reimbursing him the vast expenses he had suffered 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 1 75 
 
 through the dilapidations of his manor-houses and 
 churches. " You well know," he adds, in the letter 
 already referred to, " in what a state we received 
 the manors belonging to the see, which in the time 
 of my lord Boniface our predecessor, of good memory, 
 were in a strange state of dilapidation (in parte 
 notabili sunt confusa) by reason of whose neglect 
 you know that we have already spent more than 
 2,000 marks." Every remonstrance, however, was 
 vain in the case of an ecclesiastic who was at once 
 an alien and a client of the queen, and could exercise, 
 as executor of her uncle, the archbishop, so injurious 
 an influence over the affairs of the see. The deter- 
 mined non-resident defied the power of the primate 
 whose only remedy was first the sequestration of his 
 benefices and then his deprivation. Equally fruitless 
 in their results were the efforts of the archbishop to 
 recover the treasures and registers of the see which 
 had been taken away with him by Archbishop Kil- 
 wardby when he went to Rome to receive the 
 Cardinal's hat. These are described as the " mov- 
 able vessels and church ornaments, the books and 
 judicial processes and the registers of the see." A 
 proctor was sent to Rome with the special object of 
 recovering these invaluable documents, but every 
 endeavour of that earlier day was as unsuccessful as 
 the many recent efforts which have been made in 
 our own age, and the records of the see still com- 
 mence with the primacy of Peckham himself. And 
 indeed if the failure was complete at a time when 
 Kilwardby was still living, it could hardly be success- 
 ful after the lapse of so many centuries. Notwith- 
 
 N 2 
 
176 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Standing, however, all these losses, and the expenses 
 he had incurred through the negligence of Boniface 
 and the dishonesty of his executor, the archbishop 
 planned the erection of a " decent chapel of stone " 
 at Otford, " since it was unbecoming that to so stately 
 a hall (tarn solempni aulae) as now exists there, a 
 mean wooden building should be attached.'^ Ordina- 
 tions to all degrees, both of the greater and lesser 
 orders, fill a large space in the register of the arch- 
 bishop. These were solemnised at various of his 
 own chapels or churches in the diocese, the arch- 
 bishop occasionally delegating the office to some 
 other bishop but generally fulfilling it in person. In 
 1 281-1283 we find the primate engaged in another 
 progress through his manors. Aldington, Saltwood, 
 Charing, Teynham, Maidstone, and Lyminge being 
 visited in succession. The variety of the duties con- 
 nected with the diocese which devolved on the arch- 
 bishops is indicated from time to time in the pages 
 of his register. At one time he is called upon to 
 defend the clergy or his retainers from imprisonment 
 and other evils incident to feudal despotism. These 
 were assertions of what are called the " liberties of 
 the church of Canterbury," and gave protection not 
 only to the unfortunate cleric, as William Wyldegos, 
 a priest of Canterbury," but even to the barber of 
 the archbishop. The value of a copy of the Scrip- 
 tures at this time is indicated by a letter of Peckham 
 requiring the restitution of a certain Bible which had 
 been written out for his predecessor, and for which 
 113 marks had been paid out of the property of the 
 Church. The ancient discords which reigned peri- 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. I? 7 
 
 odically in the priory of Christ Church were also an 
 object of the archbishop's solicitude — as were also 
 the needs of those churches in which the bishops 
 through age or infirmity were unequal to the labours 
 of their sees, — to whom he assigned " coadjutors," 
 or, as we might term them, suffragan bishops. 
 
 But in the midst of his diocesan and primatial 
 work the archbishop was called upon to defray the 
 enormous charges which had been exacted or rather 
 demanded by the Court of Rome, and was even 
 threatened with excommunication and deprivation if 
 he should fail to satisfy its extortionate claims. Well 
 might he appeal to the Pope in almost despairing 
 words, complaining of the letter of the " curia " as 
 horrible in its aspect and terrible in its sound," a 
 grievous addition to the trials which his efforts to 
 reform the state and manners both of the clergy and 
 laity had brought upon him. But the mercy which 
 he sought for at the hands of the pope was cruelly 
 denied to the unfortunate Jews, whom after the un- 
 christian fashion of the age, he ceaselessly, but 
 happily unsuccessfully, persecuted. He "hears with 
 horror that they are building a new synagogue in 
 London," and writes to the Bishop of London urging 
 him to unite with him in the severest measures of 
 excommunication against all who assist in the work. 
 
 In the appointment of the clergy to benefices he 
 exercised so wise a judgment as even to resist the im- 
 portunities of the Pope in favour of one Bartholomew 
 de Ferentino, who is reported to be ^' not only ignorant 
 of the English language, but scarcely able to speak 
 grammatically (safi's literaliter loqui nescit). His 
 
178 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 numerous and important letters to the king and the 
 great officers of state upon European and poUtical 
 subjects do not fall within our present scope, but 
 they indicate Peckham to have been fully equal to 
 the office he held in the secular, as he undoubtedly 
 was to that which he so ably fulfilled in the eccle- 
 siastical world. His zeal and energy as a diocesan 
 bishop appears to have specially subjected him to the 
 taunts and depreciatory remarks of the chroniclers, 
 whose devotion to the monastic orders ever makes 
 them the severest judges of all who have maintained 
 the interests and improved the position of the secular 
 clergy. Seen, however, through his register, which 
 reflects also the progress of the diocese under his 
 government. Archbishop Peckham must ever be 
 regarded by the impartial historian as one of the 
 wisest and best of those who have united the larger 
 functions of the primacy with the more limited but 
 not less important labours of a diocesan bishop. 
 Probably his severity on pluralists and non-residents, 
 and the stern morality which he exacted from clergy 
 and laity alike, may have inspired a popular feeling 
 against him, of which the chroniclers became naturally 
 the ready exponents. Among the instances of his 
 severity against the moral delinquencies of the highest 
 classes was the penance he inflicted on Sir Osbert 
 Giflard for stealing two nuns out of the convent of 
 Wilton, which at least proved the impartiality and 
 independence with which he exercised the great 
 powers of his office. His foundation for a provost 
 and six secular canons in the church of Wingham 
 indicated a munificence which, but for the great dis- 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 1 79 
 
 advantages with which he entered upon the primacy, 
 might have had still more conspicuous proof. Arch- 
 bishop Peckham died at Mortlake in 1292, and was 
 buried in his own cathedral, where his tomb (in the 
 Martyrdom), with its singular recumbent figure carved 
 in bog-oak, which has survived the stonework of many 
 more recent monuments, is well known to every visitor. 
 Few archbishops have conferred greater benefits on the 
 diocese; by few, indeed, has the diocese been more fully 
 known than by the good archbishop, who was almost 
 better known by his cotemporaries under the name of 
 " Brother John " than under any of his higher titles. 
 
 His successor was Robert de Winchelsey, elected 
 in 1292. His register is described in the note of 
 an early scribe, prefixed to it, as mytch out of 
 order, and the first years of his transacyion about 
 the mydest of y^ book." Probably the chief cause of 
 this confusion was the conflict in which he was so 
 early engaged with King Edward I. in regard to the 
 subsidy of the fifth of the clergy revenues, in order to 
 carry on the war with Scotland. The archbishop 
 resisted this impost, and the king, appealing to Rome, 
 banished him from the kingdom, his restitution not 
 taking place until 1307. Winchelsey, like his prede- 
 cessor, passed his time during his residence in the 
 diocese in progresses from one manor-house to 
 another, closing his days at his manor of Otford on 
 May nth, 13 13. In 1302 he held an homage at 
 Lyminge and at other of his manors ; but very little 
 light is thrown upon the history of the diocese from 
 his register. We find the ancient warfare between 
 the monks of St. Augustine's and those of Christ- 
 
i8o 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 church coming again into prominence, and the 
 excesses " of the great exempt foundation are 
 brought by the archbishop under the eye of the 
 pope j but the influence exercised by the proctors 
 of St. Augustine's protracts the suit, and apparently 
 leaves it undecided — one of the numerous proofs of 
 the evils arising out of a distant appellate jurisdiction 
 like that of Rome. 
 
 The liberties of the church of Canterbury, and its 
 temporal rights, were as assiduously protected by 
 Winchelsey as by his predecessor, and the institution to 
 the office of janitor of the monastery has as prominent 
 a place in his register as that to the archdeaconry, or to 
 the highest dignities of the Church. Notwithstanding 
 the zeal of the primate for the foundation of which he 
 was the supreme head, the numbers of its monks were 
 at this time rather diminishing than increasing, the 
 rival monastery evidently presenting greater induce- 
 ments to those entering the conventual life ; for the 
 archbishop has to admonish the prior to increase and 
 fill up the number " of the monks of his foundation, 
 and also to complain to him of their wanderings 
 from the cloister (super devagatione monachorwn). 
 The same complaint is made against the monks of 
 Ely and the Knights Templars, whose impending 
 fate " casts its shadow before " in the commission 
 issued by the archbishop to examine into their 
 heresies.^' The old subject of the exemption of 
 delinquent priests from the secular authority — the 
 great bone of contention in the days of Becket — re- 
 appears during this as in many subsequent primacies, 
 the clergy of Canterbury receiving a large measure of 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. l8l 
 
 this mischievous kind qf protection. Non-residence 
 for special and not inconsiderable periods, some 
 extending to three years, was frequent at this time, 
 and must have greatly tended towards the more 
 absolute forms of non-residence which at last roused 
 even the reforming zeal of the Council of Trent, and 
 evoked the really admirable bull of Pius IV. against 
 non-resident bishops and priests. ^ The abuse of 
 pluralities, the natural fruit of that of non-residence 
 was now assuming, under the shadow of the dispensing 
 power of the pope, very serious dimensions. It was 
 usual at this time for dispensations to be given to 
 those who could afford to pay for them, allowing 
 them to hold benefices in plurality not exceeding in 
 value a certain sum fixed by the papal chancery, and 
 probably sufficiently elastic to adapt itself to the tariff 
 of fees which the Roman court was able to exact 
 without any fear of revision or taxation. One John 
 de Sandale is accordingly instituted to the following 
 charges : — The chancellorship of the churches of 
 Dublin, St. Andrew's, and Dunbar ; the livings of 
 Wymbish and Simonsburn in Yorkshire, and Mimms 
 in Hertfordshire, with a canonry in Wells, to which 
 the archbishop adds the benefice of Wimbledon, in 
 Surrey, in his own gift. 
 
 Among the grants and concessions relating to the 
 diocese there is one which to many will have peculiar 
 interest. It is the grant to WiUiam de Brockhull 
 permitting him "to celebrate divine service in his 
 chapel at Saltwood," dated in 1 310. A fragment of 
 
 ^ See the bull, *^In suprema militantis Ecclesise specula," 
 A.D. 1564. 
 
l82 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 this ancient oratory now forms part of a cottage, which 
 represents the last remains of the ancient house of 
 Brockhull, a property which has descended in unbroken 
 succession fro'm the Norman period through the Criols, 
 the Brockhulls, the SeUinges, and the Tournays to the 
 present possessor, Mr. Allen Tournay, of Brockhull. 
 An entry of general interest appears in connection with 
 the chapel of St. John the Baptist at Sevenoke. It is an 
 inventory of the furniture of the chapel and residence 
 of the chaplain taken in 1313. Among the objects 
 mentioned is a small chalice, a missal not according 
 to the Use of Saruin (which would indicate that such 
 a missal was in somewhat general use in Kent, the 
 presence of a missal of diiferent use here being 
 alluded to as exceptional), a gradual, a psalter with 
 hymns, a volume containing the office of St. John the 
 Baptist, and other things, ^ an ordinal, a surplice with 
 a poor rochet, a thurible, &c. The effects in the 
 house and grange include a horse, worth ten shillings, 
 and two oxen worth twenty. The visitation work of 
 the archbishop seems to have been carried on less in 
 a general form than at intervals, and separately in the 
 different deaneries, and chiefly by officials acting under 
 his commission. Hence our view of the diocese 
 during his primacy, and, indeed, until the time of 
 Courtenay, is very imperfect and fragmentary. 
 
 His successor was Walter Reynolds, promoted by 
 the king in opposition to the choice of the monas- 
 tery, which had fallen upon a member of the great 
 
 ^ The register is here somewhat obscure, there being a gap 
 between the words baptista " and **alia," but I conceive this 
 to be the meaning. 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 1 83 
 
 historic family of Cobham. The pope eagerly con- 
 firmed the royal candidate in the possession of the 
 see, and in return for many gifts and pensions to the 
 Court of Rome, conferred upon him in eight succes- 
 sive bulls very extraordinary privileges, which largely 
 extended the power of the primacy. Unlimited 
 powers of visitation, absolution, dispensation for all 
 causes, reservations, pardons, and other concessions 
 were included in the papal grants, and the spiritual 
 interests of the diocese were fatally sacrificed in these 
 unprecedented efforts to increase the powers of the 
 primacy. The prospect of the diocese during this 
 period, as far as we can discern it from this register, 
 discloses constant changes in the places of the 
 clergy, and an accumulation of benefices on the 
 favoured few, among whom the chronicler Adam de 
 Murimuth, is conspicuous. Perhaps a yet more 
 flagrant instance, which even Murimuth ventured to 
 chronicle as the climax of Italian rapacity, was that 
 of the Cardinal Gaucelinus de Ossa, the nephew of 
 Pope John XXII., who on his coming to England to 
 negotiate a peace between the king of England and 
 Robert Bruce in 1315, acquired that year benefices 
 worth more than a thousand pounds a year, including 
 the rectories of Lyminge, Hollingbourne, and Pagham, 
 in the gift of the archbishop, the church of Hackney 
 in Middlesex, and the prebend of Drifiield in York. 
 Not content with this accession to his non-residentiary 
 titles, he applied for the church of Stepney, then just 
 vacant. This large income he drained out of England 
 until the year 1349, when he died at Avignon, where 
 his uncle was carrying on the exile of the Papacy. 
 
i84 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 An account of the taxation of the archbishop's manors, 
 which is given us in his register, presents a tolerably 
 clear view of the possessions of the see in Kent 
 while they were under the careful stewardship of 
 Winchelsey. They are thus given : — 
 
 
 £' 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 
 
 d. 
 
 VVCSlgtiLC < • 
 
 57 
 
 T "5 
 
 Q 
 
 Tirkofr^n 1 T^r»iirrri_ 
 
 
 
 Reculver. 
 
 6i 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 ton) . . . 
 
 ^2 14 
 
 4 
 
 Westhalimote . 
 
 40 
 
 14 
 
 6i 
 
 Teynham . . 
 
 85 12 
 
 5 
 
 Wingham . . 
 
 249 
 
 3 
 
 7 
 
 Northfleet . . 
 
 107 2 
 
 5 
 
 Bishopsbourne . 
 
 42 
 
 13 
 
 10 
 
 Aldington . . 
 
 133 II 
 
 10 
 
 Petham and 
 
 
 
 
 Charing . 
 
 53 4 
 
 3 
 
 Waltham . . 
 
 22 
 
 
 
 9i 
 
 Maidstone . . 
 
 83 16 
 
 II 
 
 Dale .... 
 
 16 
 
 13 
 
 4 
 
 Otford . . . 
 
 198 5 
 
 
 
 Lyminge. 
 
 56 
 
 18 
 
 6 
 
 Bexley . . . 
 
 40 
 
 
 
 Saltwood . . 
 
 22 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 Wrotham . . 
 
 80 15 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Gillingham . . 
 
 95 II 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 499 18 
 
 7 
 
 To the total sum there is added from the manors in 
 the diocese of London ;^i28. 19s. 8jd., in Winchester 
 diocese, ;£6^, os. od., in Chichester, ;^354. os. 9^d. 
 The whole sum upon which the archbishop was taxed 
 amounted therefore to ^^2,047. 19s. ofd., the pro- 
 perty of the Priory of Christ Church being rated at 
 ;^i,32i. 1 8s. id. It is curious to observe that the 
 greatest of the modern estates of the see was then 
 one of the least ; Lambeth being only taxed at £iS- 
 A comparison of this list with that given in Doomsday 
 enables us to see how greatly the value of the estates 
 in West Kent was beginning to predominate over 
 those in the less fruitful districts of East Kent. 
 Perhaps the most difficult problem is presented in 
 the value of Wingham, while the enhanced value of 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 1 85 
 
 Otford, Northfleet, Gillingham, and Maidstone point 
 to the influence of London, and the water-communi- 
 cation which gave so easy an access to the metropolis. 
 
 During the primacy of Reynolds, the terrible blow 
 so long impending over the ill-fated order of the 
 Knights Templars fell with all its force of cruelty, 
 and even barbarism, but its effects in the diocese 
 were but little felt. The villages of Ewell, near 
 Dover, and Waltham, near Canterbury, still bear the 
 prefix which marks their connection with the order, 
 but its possessions in Kent were few and unimportant. 
 The primacy of Simon de Meopham, the successor of 
 Archbishop Reynolds, began in 1327, but only a 
 fragment of his register has survived. It is not, 
 however, without interest in its bearing on the history 
 of the diocese, as we find in it the entire form of 
 electing the prior and other officers of the Monastery 
 of Christ Church. The election of Richard de 
 Oxenden gave occasion to this full account of a 
 ceremonial which those acquainted with the cathe- 
 dral will easily realise. When the archbishop had 
 taken his place in the choir a schedule containing the 
 votes of the monks was placed in his hands, upon 
 which he retired with his retinue to Chartham, a 
 village and then residence of the primates near the 
 city, where he conferred upon the matter with his 
 clergy, and, when he had fixed upon the most fitting 
 candidate, returned to Canterbury and proclaimed 
 the name of the prior elect. After this he placed 
 the golden ring of investiture upon his finger and 
 made him sit on his right hand in the chapter. 
 The Te Deum " was then sung, and a procession 
 
i86 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 formed to the altar, at which an " oration was pro- 
 nounced by the archbishop over the said prior;" and 
 the primate retired again to Chartham. A curious 
 and considerable portion of Meopham's register con- 
 sists of a minute detail of the fees required by the 
 archbishop for consecrating in the cathedral the 
 suffragans of his province, by which it would appear 
 that the precedent of the Court of Rome was but too 
 faithfully carried out at Canterbury,^ and the most 
 sacred offices of the Church discredited by a very 
 mercantile kind of taxation. The fees paid to the 
 Earls of Gloucester, and their successor the Earl of 
 Stafford, which have been already described, find 
 here their appropriate place. The archbishop is said 
 to have rebuilt the parish church of his native place, 
 Meopham, in North Kent, but his connection with 
 the diocese was rendered more painful and harassing 
 than that of any of his predecessors by reason of the 
 severe controversy carried on between him and the 
 monks of St. Augustine's. The monks prevailed as 
 ever against the unfortunate primate, being supported 
 by the Court of Rome against the ordinary, and the 
 archbishop was condemned to pay 1,210 to the 
 monastery for costs of the suit. Refusing to submit 
 to this judgment, he was pronounced contumacious, 
 and retired in great distress of mind to Mortlake, 
 
 ^ It was computed in the Parliament held in the 23rd year of 
 Henry VIII. that the Papacy had received out of England 
 for the investitures of bishops only, since the second year of 
 Henry VII., not much above forty years, ;^i6o,ooo sterling, an 
 enormous sum for that day, but only an item in the long and 
 ruinous list of exactions which had impoverished the country 
 since its fatal connection with the see of Rome. 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 187 
 
 where he died under sentence of excommunication, 
 and could not be buried until the Abbot of St. 
 Augustine's had absolved him. A reversal of the un- 
 just judgment was obtained by his successor, but 
 the case remains as a monument of the degradation 
 of the Church of England under the Roman yoke 
 which has but too many parallels in its history. 
 
 The successor of Meopham was John de Stratford, 
 whose register, while equally imperfect, is even less inte- 
 resting. He was permitted by the king to form a park 
 at Otford, a place which from the time of Becket to that 
 of Warham seems to have been the favourite residence 
 of the archbishops. He was rather a primate than a 
 diocesan, and more a courtier and civil servant ot 
 the crown than either, attending on the king as his 
 chancellor, and following him in his varied fortunes 
 with singular fidelity. The fifteen years of his primacy 
 give us scarcely a glimpse of the history of the diocese, 
 and his chief work was the foundation of a college at 
 his place of birth — afterwards far more celebrated as 
 the birthplace of Shakespeare. His character is de- 
 scribed to us as one of great gentleness and beauty, and 
 his fidelity to Edward II., at the time of the fall of the 
 Spensers, instead of involving him in their penalty, 
 appears to have been the very cause of his safety. 
 
 Upon the death of Stratford the prior and 
 convent elected Thomas Bradwardine, whose great 
 work in defence of the Augustinian doctrines of 
 grace has given him a name and a place in 
 the history of the Church, and an influence over 
 its teaching more than that which the longest enjoy- 
 ment of the primatial dignity could have obtained for 
 
i88 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 him. His possession of the see, however, lasted but 
 for a few months, as he fell a victim to the plague which 
 was then raging in all its intensity in London, dying 
 miserably of that dreadful disease which the fatigue 
 of his journey to Rome had brought upon him 
 within five weeks and four days of his consecration, 
 and before he could enter upon the temporalities of 
 the see.^ The vacancy was filled by the election of 
 Simon de Islep, whose register has reached our day 
 in a perfect form. It is, however, as deficient in 
 interest as it is copious in details connected with 
 the ordinary government of the diocese. We see 
 less of pluralities than in former periods, but the 
 licences for non-residence fill no less than thirty 
 pages of Dr. Ducarel's index. Mention occurs of 
 the castle of Saltwood and its park, the keepership 
 of which is bestowed upon the archbishop's valet 
 (valetto suo), Simon de Dinghurst. A visitation of 
 the diocese was held in 1350, and a commission for 
 another appears in 1357. We find a licence given 
 in the case of a person too infirm to attend church 
 to have a portable altar, while there are indications 
 of an occasional resort to other churches than that 
 of the parish, which seems to have been then as 
 later a prevailing temptation. Burials in chapels, 
 in derogation of the rights of the parish church, are 
 severely dealt with, and a curious judgment of this 
 kind was pronounced by the ofiicial of the archbishop 
 at Maidstone, ordering the disinterment of one Sarah 
 
 ' The short primacy of Archbishop Ufford, who was in- 
 truded by the pope, and died before his consecration, has here 
 been omitted as having no bearing on the history of the diocese. 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 1 89 
 
 Cole, who had been buried in the chapel of Paddles- 
 worth in derogation of the rights of the parish church 
 of Lyminge, whither the offending churchwardens are 
 charged to remove the body at their own cost. 
 
 Islep died in 1366, and was succeeded by Simon 
 Langham, bishop of Ely. In 1368 he was created a 
 cardinal, and resigned the archbishopric. But, during 
 his short tenure of office, he seriously disturbed the 
 good work of his predecessor, who had founded a 
 college at Canterbury^ for secular scholars, by forcing 
 upon it monks instead of seculars. Among those 
 whom he thus displaced was one whose name from 
 'this period becomes conspicuous both in Church and 
 State — John Wycliff. Among the many problems 
 •which the life of this remarkable man presents, not the 
 least interesting in its historical bearing is suggested 
 by this, his first experience of the conflict between 
 monachism and secular learning. Again an appeal 
 was lodged at Rome, and again the monastic influence 
 overcame both law and right. A bull of Urban V. 
 against pluralities revealed, in the pages of Langham's 
 register, the vast proportions which this abuse had 
 reached, both in the diocese and in the country at 
 large. The bulk of his register consists of the returns 
 from the dioceses of the province of the livings held 
 by pluralists and iii coimiiendam. As these were 
 always held under papal dispensations, the court of 
 Rome may be regarded in this instance as giving at 
 least a show of penitence for an error which, however 
 it may have left its infallibility untouched, gave fatal 
 
 * Other writers describe this as "Canterbury College" at 
 Oxford, which probably is the more correct account. 
 
 O 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 disproof of its moral integrity. Non-residence, how- 
 ever, which alone made pluralities possible, remained 
 still as a blot upon the ecclesiastical system of the 
 age, and licences of this kind are still among the 
 prominent documents of the archiepiscopal registers. 
 
 On the resignation of Langham, the primacy was 
 conferred upon William Whittlesey, bishop of Worces- 
 ter, a nephew of Archbishop Islep. The first feature 
 which strikes us in his register in connection with 
 the diocese is the increasing frequency of exchanges 
 of livings, and the generally unsettled state of the 
 clergy, which must have seriously affected their in- 
 fluence with a laity with whom they could never have 
 been able to form ties of friendly intimacy or of 
 lasting interest. The power of the regular clergy 
 could not but have been increased in proportion as 
 that of the secular and parochial clergy became 
 diminished, in all the churches which lay within their 
 reach ; and the Church was virtually losing the 
 benefit of that institution of perpetual vicarages, 
 which was the greatest diocesan work of the thirteenth 
 and fourteenth centuries. It is not easy to believe 
 that this wide-spread system of exchanges was free 
 from suspicion of simony, and the eagerness with 
 which the beneficed clergy of the day bartered their 
 livings suggests a natural doubt of the purity of these 
 contracts, to which the archbishops seem to have 
 given too ready a sanction. Prominent among the 
 documents contained in this register is the " Royal 
 Prohibition against Papal Bulls," whose publication 
 in the kingdom is forbidden under the severest 
 penalties. The archbishop himself gives a token of 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 191 
 
 his independence by relaxing the rigour of the papal 
 law in regard to the benediction of second marriages. 
 
 Whittlesey died in 1375, and was succeeded by 
 Simon de Sudbury, who had been previously bishop 
 of London. He was enthroned at Canterbury on 
 Palm Sunday in the following year by the prior of 
 Christ Church, assisted by the Bishop of Rochester, 
 the priors of St. Augustine's, Battle, St. Radegund's, 
 Langdon, and Rochester, with many other eminent 
 persons, both lay and cleric, the Earl of Stafford 
 officiating as seneschal. The accumulation of benefices 
 in England upon foreigners had now become one of 
 the scandals of the age, and a letter of inquiry in 
 regard to this abuse is a feature of interest in 
 Sudbury's register. The diocese of Canterbury suffered 
 probably more than any other from this draining 
 away of its revenues by aliens ; the sinecure rectories, 
 as well as the dignities of the cathedral, having been 
 frequently bestowed on the favoured candidates of 
 the court of Rome, the representatives and emissaries 
 of the pope, who, on the pretext of some political 
 mission, set forth to gather the richest fruits of a 
 country of which Pope Innocent IV. said, "vere 
 hortus noster deliciarum est Anglia et puteus inex- 
 haustus ; et ubi multa abundant de multis multa 
 sumere licet. 
 
 The register of Sudbury throws but little light upon 
 the diocese, and it would appear that the political 
 troubles in which he was involved and which closed 
 his life so tragically disabled him from entering as 
 fully into his episcopal duties as many of his prede- 
 
 ' Matth. Paris. 
 O 2 
 
192 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 cessors. The frequent appointment of the parochial 
 clergy as advocates in the Court of Arches is indicated 
 at this period, and must have tended to disturb them 
 in those duties which more properly belonged to 
 their office. The extension of the diocese of Canter- 
 bury over Calais and the adjacent districts, effected by 
 a bull of Urban VL, reminds us of the English occu- 
 pation of that part of Picardy, and denotes its eccle- 
 siastical results. The presentation of one William 
 Grene to the parish church of St. Mary in Calais, and 
 of a Yorkshire priest to the Church of St. Nicholas in 
 the same town, shows that the king, in whom the 
 patronage vested, however intolerant in regard to an 
 alien clergy in England, was by no means scrupulous 
 in regard to the same grievance, when inflicted by 
 himself upon another country. Andomarus de la 
 Roche, or as he is commonly called the Lord Andomar 
 de Rupy, was at this time Archdeacon of Canterbury 
 and one of the great pluralists of the age. Mixing 
 himself up with the dangerous political movements of 
 the period he brought upon him the censures of the 
 pope and of the archbishop, and was finally deprived 
 of all his benefices and dignities. These included, 
 with the archdeaconry, the rectories of Lyminge, 
 Teynham, the vicarages of Hackington, St. Clement 
 in Sandwich, St. Mary in Sandwich ; and their pro- 
 ceeds were given by the king to Sudbury to carry on 
 the great work which he was engaged in on the nave 
 of the cathedral, whose date may, therefore, be fixed 
 at this period. The kindred zeal of the archbishop 
 for the memory of his predecessor, St. Augustine, 
 was indicated by his making his feast a double " 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 1 93 
 
 one.^ In the year 1378 the archbishop appealed for a 
 voluntary subscription (charitativa subventio) for the 
 fabric of the nave of the cathedral, probably the 
 earliest instance of an appeal of this kind for church- 
 building purposes, which the wealth and the zeal of 
 the monks had in former ages been sufficient to effect 
 without external aid. Non-residence seems still to 
 have prevailed, as we find a monition on the subject 
 put forth as early as 1377, while the licences for non- 
 residence are fewer than in previous records. 
 
 A papal subsidy was demanded by Gregory XI. 
 from all the dioceses of the province, and as we 
 gather from one of the numerous documents relating 
 to this ruinous impost, was ruthlessly exacted, extreme 
 measures being taken against all defaulters. Our re- 
 stricted space has hitherto prevented any reference to 
 the numerous and very interesting wills which are 
 interspersed throughout these registers, though they 
 illustrate in many of their directions and bequests 
 the state of the religious feeling of the age, and might 
 well give the materials of a work of great historical 
 and doctrinal interest. But the will of Edward the 
 Black Prince, indicating his burial-place in the cathe- 
 dral, has too direct a bearing upon our history not to 
 find mention here. The words of his last testament 
 run thus : — " Nostre corps d^estre enseveli en TEgHse 
 Cathedrale de la Trinite de Canterbrygg, ou le corps 
 du vray Martir Mons. Seint Thomas repose, en ma 
 lieu de la chapelle de notre Dame Undercrofte, 
 
 ^ Mandatum Archiep. de tenendo festum St. Augustini sub- 
 duplici festo (a.d. 1396, f. 18, b). 
 
194 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 droitement devant Tautier, si que le bout de nostre 
 tombe dont les pees soit dix pees loing de Tautier, 
 et que mesme la tombe soit de marbre de bone 
 masonerie faite."^ 
 
 The opening of the great Schism of the west dis- 
 closes itself in the year 1378, the first symptom of it 
 being a bull of Urban VI., announcing his election, 
 which was presently followed up by a monition of the 
 cardinals declaring the invalidity of the election, and 
 charging the faithful everywhere to withhold their 
 obedience. This latter document was not admitted 
 by the English clergy, who adhered to Urban. In 
 close and significant connection with this breach in 
 the " centre of unity " we find the first proceedings 
 taken against Wycliff, which assume considerable 
 proportions in Sudbury's register. We have already 
 seen the early but brief relation in which the great 
 reformer stood to the diocese, and we now find him 
 putting forth those famous conclusions " on religion 
 and philosophy which called for the intervention of 
 popes and bishops, but were not finally condemned 
 until the assembly of the Council of Constance, in 
 141 5. We may here observe that the heresies " of 
 Wycliff ought not to be confounded with the doctrines 
 of Lollardism, whose unfortunate professors find such 
 frequent mention in the succeeding registers of the 
 see. The Lollards were rather a sect of pietists than 
 of philosophers, and though many of the more 
 educated among them held also the philosophical 
 conclusions of Wycliff, the majority of them belonged 
 
 ' F. 90, b. 91, a, b. 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 1 95 
 
 to a class whose education was far too limited to 
 enable them to follow his teaching. Thomas de 
 Elmham, writing in 141 4, clearly separates the two, 
 and as clearly indicates the point of union between 
 them which made the clergy and monastic orders of 
 the day so envenomed in their hatred of both. This 
 was the hostility of both alike to the wealth and 
 territorial position of the Church. Both these and 
 other heretics, as Elmham writes, endeavour to root 
 up ''the flowers of ecclesiastical property." ^ He 
 naturally deduces their pedigree from the mythical 
 Thunor, whose attempt to frustrate the good design 
 of the king at Minster in Thanet the reader will 
 doubtless remember. Gregory XI. addressed a 
 mandate to Sudbury and the Bishop of London to 
 proceed against Wycliff without delay, which was 
 followed up by a citation of him to Rome. His 
 " conclusions " are put into a regular form and a new 
 citation issues. Those relating to the eucharist seem 
 chiefly to have terrified the clergy of the day, for we 
 find a special attempt to refute these on the part of 
 William de Brecon, chancellor of the University of 
 Oxford. The violent death of Sudbury during the 
 rebellion of Wat Tyler, which was closely connected 
 with the opening persecution against the Lollards 
 (the archbishop having imprisoned one, John Balle, a 
 popular preacher in Maidstone jail, for maintaining 
 heterodox doctrines), more properly belongs to the 
 history of the country than of the diocese. To the 
 latter as to the church and city of Canterbury, he was 
 
 ^ "Hist. Monast. S. Augustin." p. 214: ed. Hardwick, 
 1858. 
 
196 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 a munificent benefactor, as his svork at the cathedral 
 and his rebuilding of the Westgate, besides other 
 monuments, very fully testify. 
 
 He was succeeded by the lordly Courtenay, who- 
 had filled successively the sees of Hereford and 
 London, and was, soon after the death of Sud- 
 bury, translated to the primatial see. No less 
 than seven separate bulls were needed for this 
 translation, a process whose enormous profits to the 
 Court of Rome were only equalled by its tedious- 
 ness and ruinous loss to the church and to the country. 
 The archbishop, who, in the baronial castle of his 
 ancestors, had rather realised the military than the 
 civil side of feudalism, found on his entrance on the 
 see that the expense of keeping up so large a number 
 of manor-houses was as great as the danger of living, 
 in such defenceless abodes in an age of civil and re- 
 ligious commotions, as well as perils from foreign 
 invasion. He obtained, therefore, the licence of the 
 king and of the monastery to pull down all his less 
 necessary residences and to build and embattle the 
 castle of Saltwood, so as to render it at once a palace 
 and a fortress, a union of beauty and strength, of 
 pleasure and of defence, which should make it in every 
 sense a fitting abode for himself and his successors. A 
 castle of some importance appears to have existed 
 here from very early times, and the learned members 
 of the Archaeological Institute during a recent visit 
 held that the mounds and earthworks around it 
 might well have belonged to the very earliest period. 
 The casde itself, which is entirely the work of Cour- 
 tenay — for the most ordinary observer would con- 
 
FROM PECK HAM TO WARHAM. 1 97 
 
 elude that the whole is of one structure, and that no 
 inferior or earlier building could have been incor- 
 porated with a plan so grand and symmetrical — 
 exhibits that transition between the mere military 
 stronghold and the feudal residence which begins 
 in the early part of the fifteenth century, and is so 
 beautifully developed towards its close. De Cam- 
 mont, in his admirable treatise on early military archi- 
 tecture, points out that from the year 1450, after the 
 re-taking of Normandy, the change of the fortress 
 residence into the castellated abode of a palatial 
 character began in France. In England, however, 
 the change appears to have been somewhat earlier. 
 
 The introduction of fire-arms, and especially 
 cannons, in the fifteenth century, ''diminished the 
 importance of the ancient castles, whose strength 
 depended on the height of their walls. It was fore- 
 seen that this system of defence would soon be greatly 
 changed, and that less importance would be attached 
 to all which formerly constituted the main strength 
 of feudal mansions. Nevertheless, a number of the 
 castles, even of the latter half of the fifteenth century, 
 preserved outwardly a certain appearance of strength 
 — the entrance was defended by towers, portcullis, 
 and drawbridge — the walls adorned with towers and 
 machicolations."^ This description gives a perfect 
 picture of the castle erected by Courtenay, whose 
 magnificent ruins, grievously as they have suffered 
 from age and neglect, prove that the execution of his 
 work was not unworthy of the grandeur of its design. 
 
 ^ Cours d'Antiquites Monumentales," p. v. p. 844. 
 
198 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Everyone who surveys the stately towers and gate- 
 way and the mutilated wall of the castle of Saltwood, 
 may easily fill up in imagination the picture of 
 princely magnificence which the primacy displayed at 
 this culminating point of its splendour. A commis- 
 sion was issued in 1382 to pull down the houses on 
 several of the archbishop's manors, and to sell the 
 stones and other materials in order to carry on the 
 great work in which he was engaged, reserving a 
 portion of them for the reparation of the neighbouring 
 churches or chapels. 
 
 The numerous parks and chases, so expensive 
 and useless to the see, were now gradually disused 
 or consolidated. The ancient park of Lyminge was 
 added to that of Saltwood and placed under the 
 management of the same keeper, by another commis- 
 sion dated in 1387. It does not clearly appear which 
 of the manor-houses were actually taken down, and 
 which merely disused and suffered to fall into ruin. 
 From an inquisition taken on the attainder of Arch- ^ 
 bishop Arundel in 1398 being held at Lyminge, we 
 may conclude that this ancient residence was yet 
 undestroyed though disused. Otford, which had 
 been the principal and favourite residence of so many 
 of the primates, was doubtless spared, awaiting the 
 magnificent restoration of Archbishop Warham. The 
 influence of this change upon the diocese was marked 
 in the less intimate relations which it involved between 
 the primate and his diocese, relations which, during 
 the period from Lanfranc to Courtenay, were so close 
 and personal. The registers, as a natural conse- 
 quence, throw less and less light upon the diocese 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 199 
 
 and more upon the primacy, and the great estates of 
 the see were managed by stewards and bailiffs or 
 seneschals, whose accounts of the different manors 
 have been only recently disentombed from the 
 numerous bags in which they were gradually wasting 
 away. These are now being carefully catalogued and 
 arranged by a skilled hand, and may at a future time 
 furnish materials for the social and statistical history 
 of the county of the greatest value and interest. 
 Though Courtenay's primacy extends from 1381 to 
 1396, the events which it comprises are comparatively 
 few and unimportant. Wycliff comes but once on 
 the scene in a letter addressed to the Bishop of 
 Lincoln. In his visitation of the Priory of Dorchester 
 three Lollards, William Smith, Roger Dexter, and 
 Alicia, his wife, are brought before him to abjure 
 their heresies and seek absolution from the excom- 
 munication they had incurred, which, after the per- 
 formance of a due penance, is accorded to them. We 
 do not find that Lollardism has much hold on the 
 diocese at this period, and there are no traces of the 
 cruel persecutions with which Archbishop Arundel 
 followed it up in Kent. A " Lollard chaplain " is not 
 remitted to the stake, but " restored to the unity of 
 the church,'' while others are described as " recon- 
 ciled." How far these persons held the condemned 
 opinions or " conclusions " of Wycliff does not appear. 
 Archbishop Courtenay held a general visitation of 
 the diocese in 1393, beginning his visitation at 
 Lenham. As we shall have occasion to give a picture 
 of the visitation of Archbishop Warham rather more 
 than a century later, it will be unnecessary to dwell 
 
200 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 upon this earlier and less important survey of the 
 diocese. 
 
 Archbishop Courtenay died on the last day of 
 July, 1396, and was succeeded by Thomas Arundel, 
 son of Robert, brother of Richard Fitzalan, earl of 
 Arundel by his wife Eleanor, daughter of Henry Plan- 
 tagenet, earl of Lancaster. His enthronisation took 
 place at Canterbury with great magnificence in the pre- 
 sence of the king himself. But the royal favour soon 
 forsook him, and his very nearness to the throne in- 
 volved him in the dangers which invariably attended 
 it in that day of rivalry and intrigue. Under a charge 
 of high treason, he was attainted and the whole of his 
 possessions sequestrated and kept in the king's hands. 
 The death of Richard H., however, freed him from 
 danger and restored him to his former offices and 
 estates, and the favour of the new king rendered his 
 subsequent career one of almost unexampled pros- 
 perity. He is chiefly known to us as the bitter and 
 cruel persecutor of the Lollards, whom he followed 
 up with unrelenting severity in his own diocese, as 
 well as throughout the province. Except in his 
 gifts to the cathedral, whose completion he greatly 
 assisted, building the spire on the north-west steeple, 
 — since destroyed with the tower on which it rested, 
 to give place to a tower exactly modelled after 
 the corresponding one on the south-west,^ — we read 
 of nothing great or good done by this primate. 
 In 1 40 1 we find him consecrating the chapel of 
 
 ^ This attempt to make the west front uniform at the expense 
 of historical association and picturesque variety was disapproved 
 of by many at the time, including the late Archdeacon Croft. 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 20I 
 
 St. Mary and St. Thomas a Becket," in the castle of 
 Saltwood, upon the exact position of which recent 
 antiquaries have been divided. It appears from one 
 or two obvious indications to lie to the right of the 
 great hall, which some have erroneously identified 
 with it. In one of the grisly oubliettes of this stately 
 ruin several unfortunate Lollards expiated the guilt 
 of holding a simpler creed and observing a more 
 spiritual rule than those whom their example at once 
 rebuked and exasperated. These unhappy people 
 were evidently looked upon as worse than felons, 
 whose guilt received frequent absolution from the 
 archbishop. Campanologists might claim Arundel 
 as an early devotee to their art, for w^e find him 
 engaged in blessing bells for his chapel at Otford, 
 and also for that at Maidstone, while he left a peal of 
 five bells to the cathedral dedicated to the Trinity, 
 the Virgin Mary, the Angel Gabriel, St. Blaize, and 
 St. John the Evangelist. In 1401 a general collection 
 was made throughout the diocese towards the defence 
 of the Eastern Emperor, Manuel Palseologus, and the 
 city of Constantinople, then threatened by the 
 Saracens. There could have been little, however, 
 left out of the archbishop's treasury to give to this 
 urgent cause, when he had to provide such enormous 
 sums to meet the demands of the court of Rome on 
 his predecessor and himself. We find a receipt or 
 acquittance given for 350 golden florins, followed 
 up by another for 2,300 ; while the enormous sum 
 of 5,000 golden florins is presently claimed for 
 the insatiable curia. Not content with this plunder, 
 the court of Rome threatened to sequester the estate 
 
202 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 of Archbishop Courtenay in order to satisfy a claim 
 upon him for 1,575 golden florins. Well might a wit 
 of these times write : 
 
 Roma capit marcas, Bursas exhaurit et areas 
 Ut tibi tu parcas, fuge Papas et Patriarchas. " 
 
 The court of Rome was now, however, in the 
 throes of the great schism of the west, and the popes 
 and cardinals on either side are compelled to become 
 rather suppliant than peremptory rulers, soliciting the 
 king and the archbishop to recognise their conflicting 
 claims. We find in Arundel's register a state of the 
 side-light thrown upon the fragmentary records of Arch- 
 bishop Sudbury's primacy. It appears tha*t Sudbury's, 
 register was stolen from the chest of the see at Reigate, 
 as was also that of Courtenay.^ All that Arundel can 
 do is to excommunicate the offenders, a process of law 
 which could only strike an undiscovered thief in the 
 conscience, a faculty of which he was probably destitute. 
 
 The fatal zeal of the archbishop against the Lollards- 
 culminated in the terrible part he took against Sir 
 John Oldcastle, in right of his wife. Baron Cobham, 
 and those who suffered with him or in the same 
 cause. In some cases a revocation and reconciliation 
 saved the life of the convicted person at the expense 
 of his faith, and we read of the " revocation " of John 
 Becket, a name hardly suggestive of Lollardism ; 
 while one, by name John " dictus de Seyvonus 
 (Sevenoke ?), undergoes the gentler process of " con- 
 version." 
 
 * This latter must have been recovered, unless it existed in 
 duplicate, as the original seems to be that still to be found at 
 Lambeth. 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 203 
 
 The churches and residence-houses of the diocese 
 were at this time in such a state of disrepair as to 
 need a general monition of the archbishop for their 
 reparation throughout the whole of his jurisdic- 
 tion. This might well be borne in mind by those 
 who are interested in the architectural history of the 
 churches of Kent, as much of the early Perpendicular 
 work which abounds in them might with great proba- 
 bility be traced to this period. An interesting list of 
 the benefices in the gift of the archbishop, given us 
 in this register, enables us to see the extent of his 
 patronage and the value in marks of every separate 
 piece of preferment. Whether this return was in any 
 way connected with the charge to repair the churches 
 and residences already mentioned does not distinctly 
 appear, though it may be reasonably conjectured. 
 The park of Aldington was now added to those of 
 Lyminge and Saltwood, for the purposes of the 
 keepership and the economic policy of Courtenay is 
 thus carried on in the case of these unnecessary ap- 
 pendages to the primacy. The same evils of non- 
 residence and pluralities remained though in lesser 
 degree, for the serious changes which impended over 
 the Church compelled the clergy to begin the long- 
 neglected work of setting their house in order. In 
 some sense Arundel may be said to be the last (if we 
 except Bourchier) of those princely archbishops whose 
 alliances with royalty gave then an exceptional place 
 in the long succession of the primacy, and who had a 
 kind of posthumous representation in our own day in 
 Archbishop Manners-Sutton, who found a seat in the 
 House of Lords his natural place, being enabled to 
 
204 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 recognise all the greater peers around him as his own 
 kinsmen. The closing years of Arundel carry us on 
 into the fifteenth century, extending to the year 141 4, 
 when he was succeeded by the munificent Chicheley, 
 whose name has so far more lasting a memorial from 
 the great foundation at Oxford, which has made the 
 very greatest in the land anxious to prove their kin- 
 dred to one whose origin was more obscure than that 
 of most of his predecessors in the primacy. His 
 connection with the diocese seems from his register 
 to have been but slender ; and though his gifts to the 
 city of Canterbury and the cathedral find an ap- 
 propriate recognition in the mandate of the prior and 
 chapter directing the place and ceremonial of his 
 burial, he seems rather to have had an eye to the 
 splendour of the temporal reign than to the higher 
 duties of his spiritual office. A significant proof of 
 this is given us in the bull of Martin V., authorising 
 him when he had begun his visitation, to turn his 
 attention to other things, and to continue his visita- 
 tion by the agency of a commissary." It is singular 
 that the founder of so many imperishable educational 
 monuments should have been so anxious to build 
 himself a mausoleum, in his case so little needed. 
 Yet we cannot read without interest, however it 
 may be mixed with surprise, the document in 
 which the prior and chapter consent to the erection 
 of this splendid tomb, in which the taste of the re- 
 naissance seems struggling into life in the midst of so 
 many triumphs of mediaeval art and skill. After a 
 preamble setting forth the special affection which 
 the archbishop ever bore to his church, and which 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 205 
 
 led him in his lifetime to select a burial-place for 
 himself in the cathedral, namely, on the north side of 
 the choir, between the place of the relics and the en- 
 trance of the choir leading up to the high altar," and 
 setting forth "that to the honour of God and the 
 adornment of the church he hath built and completed 
 a sumptuous monument or mausoleum, and arranged 
 it for the reception and burial of his body," it pro- 
 ceeds : ^' Therefore, we, the prior and convent afore- 
 said, having regard to the intention of the most 
 reverend father, and considering that he hath given 
 certain goods and jewels for the use and ornament of 
 our church, and hath spent large sums of money in 
 the reparation of the said church and of the bell- 
 tower thereof, and specially hath given money for the 
 construction of a new library, and furnished it with 
 divers precious books relating to all the faculties, 
 have given and granted as follows — that whenever the 
 body or bones of the same father shall be brought to 
 our church for burial, we, or our successors, shall 
 receive the same body and remains and cause them 
 to be borne, processionally, as is the custom in the 
 burials of the archbishops, and placed solemnly in the 
 said tomb or mausoleum." The archbishop carried 
 out with a care which indicates the fear which the 
 popular preaching of the day inspired, the constitu- 
 tion of his predecessor to prohibit preaching without 
 a licence. The growing fear of Lollardism is thus 
 again indicated, and is farther illustrated by a letter 
 of the archbishop for the purgation of one John Barton, 
 a physician of London, " long-time charged in London 
 and elsewhere with heresy and Lollardism." Another 
 
2o6 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 absolution for the same charge (on March 31, 1420), 
 and processes taken against various heretics, remind 
 us that the impending danger was only averted for a 
 season. We find in this and several earlier registers 
 frequent entries relating to the removal of the feasts 
 of the dedication of the churches of the diocese to 
 more convenient days — a precedent which might well 
 be followed by those who are reviving this long 
 extinct observation. Archbishop Chicheley died in 
 1442, and was succeeded by John Stafford, translated 
 from Bath and Wells. The light thrown upon the 
 diocese at this point becomes faint indeed. The 
 frequent ordinations made in various places in the 
 " diocese, to both the lesser and greater orders, fill a 
 large portion of this register, and indicate the fact 
 that, however the monastic system had become 
 weakened by its contact with the increased learning 
 and civilization of the age, the ranks of the secular 
 clergy were still well filled. 
 
 The wills which are incorporated with the other 
 records of the see become occasionally invested 
 with a more general and public interest. We 
 find the well-known author of the " Provinciale," 
 John Lyndwode, official of the court of Canter- 
 bury, and keeper of the privy seal of the arch- 
 bishop, after directing his interment in the chapel of 
 St. Stephen, Westminster, where he received his 
 
 consecration,'^ adding this provision : " Also I will 
 that the book which I have compiled on the Pro- 
 vincial Constitutions shall have chains and iron clasps 
 put upon it, that it may be kept safe and sound in the 
 wupper part of the chapel, or else in the vestry.'' 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 207 
 
 Whether this useful provision was carried out or the 
 book preserved to our day, the historians of the palace 
 of Westminster can best determine. Very remarkable, 
 and illustrative of the growing luxury of the age, is the 
 will of the Duke of Exeter ; while in touching contrast 
 to its costly directions stands the will of the Duke of 
 Suffolk — My wretched body to be beryed in my 
 charterhouse, where I wol myn ymage and stone to 
 be made, and the ymage of my best beloved wyf by 
 me, she to be there with me if she lust." 
 
 Stafford was succeeded in 1452 by John Kempe, 
 afterwards cardinal, whose primacy, lasting for less than 
 two years, is as sterile in its fruits for the diocese as it 
 was brief in its duration. He was succeeded by Thomas 
 Bourchier, of the great house of the Earls of Ewe, 
 representing also the historic family of the Bohuns, 
 Earls of Hereford. Whether the state of the diocese 
 was exceptionally bad at this period (which is but too 
 likely from the neglects of the primacy of Chicheley 
 and Stafford, and the brief reign of Kempe which 
 succeeded them, which left little opportunity for 
 diocesan inspection), or, on the other hand, the new 
 archbishop was merely fulfilling a formal and per- 
 functory office (for which, however, we do not observe 
 any direct precedent), we find among his first acts a 
 commission addressed to his principal official "to 
 reform the crimes and excesses of the clergy and laity 
 of the diocese of Canterbury." Reversing at this 
 point the policy of his predecessor, Courtenay, he 
 added to the palaces belonging to the see the magni- 
 ficent house of Knole, in Sevenoke, which, as it lies 
 within a few miles of the palace of Otford, upon 
 p 2 
 
208 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 whose extension and reparation so much had been 
 already spent, and so vast a sum was afterwards ex- 
 pended by Warham, was a most unnecessary and 
 burdensome addition to the heavy charges on the 
 primacy. He had the honour of crowning King 
 Edward IV., and afterwards of marrying him to 
 Elizabeth Woodville, the year after which he 
 entertained the king and queen at Canterbury 
 for several days together with great magnifi- 
 cence. His long primacy of thirty-two years ap- 
 pears to have left the diocese much as he found it ; 
 and although an increase of church-building and 
 restoration was the natural fruit of so long an 
 episcopate, as the wills in the registry at Canterbury 
 indicate, the spiritual condition of the people remained 
 apparently unadvanced or at least gave no proofs of 
 increased activity. He was succeeded in i486 by 
 John Morton, also afterwards cardinal, who is more 
 celebrated for his singular fidelity to King Henry VI. 
 in all his troubles than for his devotion to the higher 
 duties of his spiritual office. He had contributed 
 largely to the buildings of the see by repairing and 
 increasing his houses of Knole, Maidstone, Aldington, 
 Charing, Ford, Lambeth, and Canterbury, and the 
 central tower of the cathedral was chiefly his work. 
 He died at the first-mentioned of these manors in 
 1500, and was succeeded by Henry Dene or Denny, 
 who, dying in the beginning of 1502, before his 
 enthronisation, left only the record of his name in 
 the history of the diocese. To him succeeded the 
 justly eminent Archbishop Warham, the precursor of 
 the Reformation, whose primacy is the link which con- 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 209 
 
 nects the close of the feudal system with the com- 
 parative freedom of modern times. With him the 
 learning and life of the primacy may be said to 
 revive ; and the friend and patron of Erasmus was 
 also the first to break off the yoke of that foreign 
 allegiance against which England had so long 
 vigorously, but vainly, contended. He was enthroned 
 at Canterbury with even unusual splendour, the last 
 glories of ecclesiastical feudalism shedding their lustre 
 upon its final scene. In 1509, he entertained the 
 king with the wonted magnificence of archiepiscopal 
 hospitality, and two years after entered upon that im- 
 portant visitation of his diocese which from the 
 peculiar bearing it has upon our history w^ill be 
 described in a separate chapter. At the present time, 
 and in order to prepare the reader for the later history 
 of the see, it will be well to examine, as far as our 
 space permits, the civil and social changes which 
 during the fifteenth century passed over the face of 
 the diocese, and which will best prepare us for the 
 great reconstruction it experienced in the days of 
 the Reformation. We have already seen how large 
 was the proportion of the estates of the Church in 
 Kent at the period of the Domesday Survey to those 
 of the other great feudatories of the Crown. They 
 not only extended throughout the country in every 
 direction, but were by far larger in their territorial 
 extent than any of the manors held by lay owners. 
 The very few tenants under the Crown mentioned 
 under Kent, in Domesday, w^ere increased con- 
 siderably by the breaking-up of the great estate of 
 the Bishop of Bayeux, w^hose 184 lordships were 
 
2IO 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 confiscated on his disgrace, and granted to new 
 favourites. Fifty-seven manors, however (as Mr. 
 Furley observes), alone remained in lay hands even 
 after this great change, forty-nine of which fell to the 
 lot of Hugo de Montfort. The sub-infeudations (or 
 holdings under the first grantee) as far as we find 
 them recorded in the Survey, were less numerous 
 under the ecclesiastical than under the civil lords, 
 and a vast extent of the property of the archbishops 
 was held in Demesne, managed doubtless as it was 
 in the thirteenth and later centuries by bailiffs and 
 seneschals, while the principal manors of the monas- 
 teries, being assigned to different objects connected 
 with the monastic life, were managed much in the 
 same manner. The result was that a vast portion of 
 Kent was peopled by a very impoverished class of 
 inhabitants, a result which the destitution described 
 at Wrotham and Lyminge in the letter of Peckham 
 vividly illustrates. During this earlier period we can 
 discern no intermediate class between the great 
 feudal nobility and the tenants who held under them, 
 either immediately or as sub-feudatories. When, 
 however, these great houses, the Montforts, the Clares, 
 the Sayes, the Leybournes, the Badlesmeres, and 
 others were represented by co-heiresses, which was 
 generally the case in two or three generations, their 
 properties became divided ] and a change took place 
 in the county which tended to enlarge the number 
 of the resident nobility, and to bring a general 
 accession of prosperity to those parts of it in which 
 the lay holders of land predominated. It was not, 
 however, thus with the great estates of the Church, 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 211 
 
 which, though divided by sub-infeudations almost as 
 largely as the lay-feuds, could not be so easily relieved 
 of the pressure of a lord-paramount, or convey to a 
 tenant so secure and permanent a position as was 
 given by the actual division of the estate, or by an 
 hereditary connection between the tenant and the 
 feudal lord. Under the shadow of the Church and 
 the greater earls and barons a second rank of nobility 
 had gradually sprung up, whose origin can be traced 
 to the Domesday period, and which formed the 
 nucleus of those great knightly families which domi- 
 nated in the county when the massive estates which 
 were centred in the few names mentioned in the 
 Survey were broken up. The number of holders 
 under the few churches or families between whom 
 the whole of Kent is parcelled out in Domesday, 
 appear very clearly in that Survey, but their names 
 have in most instances no distinct mention. We 
 find, however, in these the ancestors of that second 
 dynasty of mighty families who were celebrated in the 
 county during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 
 and who became, with very few exceptions, abso- 
 lutely extinct in the middle of the fifteenth century. 
 A very important cause was added in this century to 
 the natural process of extinction through failure of 
 the male line, which had operated in the case of the 
 earliest nobility. The power of transferring land 
 which previously was incapable of alienation, together 
 with the great increase of personal property by means 
 of mercantile adventure or agricultural success, pro- 
 duced a revolution in the state of the county and of 
 the diocese which it is difficult fully to estimate. We 
 
212 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 may instance the progress of this transition in the 
 history of the now extinct family of Hardres, deriving 
 its name from the ancient village of Upper Hardres, 
 near Canterbury, which held a feud under the arch- 
 bishop, in his manor of Lyminge, at the time of the 
 Conquest.^ Their principal lands were held under 
 the great family of the Clares, whose chevron is 
 borne over the lion rampant of their own arms, to 
 denote this feudal relation. As the greater house 
 failed they naturally held a place in the foremost rank 
 of the newer nobility, and carried on their male line 
 until the close of the last century, when their ancient 
 inheritance passed away into the hands of strangers. 
 But they were among the last representatives of this 
 second dynasty, the Pluckleys, Surrendens, and 
 Hautes, having failed in the male line three cen- 
 turies before, while the Peyforers, the Sandwiches, 
 the Northwodes, the Septvans, the Leybournes, and 
 a number of knightly houses had passed away at 
 even an earlier period. Upon the ruins of these 
 greater houses came in the ancient families which 
 have since gained so great a celebrity in the political 
 history of the county — the Derings succeeding to 
 three of these families by a fortunate marriage in the 
 middle of the fifteenth century,^ the Knatchbulls 
 purchasing their estate at the same period; the 
 Brockmans acquiring first Shuttlefield, and then 
 
 ^ Robertus de Hardres is described in a register of the manor 
 of Christchurch cotemporary with the Domesday-book. 
 
 ^ The authentic pedigree of the Derings in the male line 
 begins at this period. See the full pedigree in the Arch. Cant." 
 (vol. X. p. 327). 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 213 
 
 Beachborough ; while many other ancient houses, 
 both in East and West Kent, became prominent at 
 the same period. But the mention of these names 
 recalls to the mind so forcibly the eloquent words of 
 the late lamented antiquary and genealogist, whose 
 loss to the county and diocese can never be repaired, 
 the Rev. Lambert Larking, in his Inaugural Address 
 on the formation of the Kent Archaeological Society, 
 that we cannot but fall back upon them here; 
 " Hence," he writes, in earlier days sprang the 
 Nevills, the Maminots, the Says, the De Crescies, 
 the Clares, the Crevecoeurs, the De Chilhams, De 
 Thurnhams, De Leybournes, the Averenches, the 
 De Burghs, the Criols, the Rokesles, the Cobhams, 
 the Malmaynes, the Beauchamps, the Greys, the 
 Poynings, the Valorigns, the Strabolgies, the Badles- 
 meres, the Northwoods, the Peches, the Freming- 
 hams, and Hants. Hence, in after ages, sprang the 
 Wyats, the St. Legers, the Cheynes, the Bulleyns, 
 the Sydneys, the Guldefords, the Ropers, the Isleys, 
 the Woottons, the Moyles, the Hales, the Cromers, 
 the Harts, the Bretts, the Levesons, the Scotts, the 
 Roberts, the Kempes, the Monins, the Twysdens, 
 the Derings, the KnatchbuUs, the Tokes, the Darells, 
 the Colepepers, the Walsinghams, and Fanes. Hence, 
 too, the Astleys, the Richmond Stuarts, the Sack- 
 villes, the Finches, the Vanes, the Filmers, the 
 Maneys, the Brockmans, the Tuftons, the Botelers, 
 the Clerks, the Selbys — the men who at all periods 
 stood up for the freedom of England at home, and 
 her aggrandizement abroad. With such examples as 
 these to look back upon, we may be forgiven our 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 attachment to the past ; our reverence for the homes 
 which gave birth to such men, and that home-loving 
 and homely feeling which characterized their lives in 
 its most chivalrous aspect. The reader will observe 
 the kind of stratification in the ancient nobility and 
 gentry of the county which Mr. Larking, with almost 
 the discriminating eye of a geologist, here so dis- 
 ' tinctly marks, and how gradually that ancient landed 
 aristocracy which unhappily is so rapidly passing 
 away in Kent, was formed. The rapid disintegra- 
 tion of the Domesday Settlement is sometimes attri- 
 buted to the system of the equal division of land, 
 known under the name of gavelkind, but this is an 
 insufficient cause, as most of the larger estates were 
 early " disgavelled," and entailed in the ordinary 
 way. We may safely conclude that that third stage 
 of our social history which exhibits the first ground- 
 plan of its present structure, and which was laid down 
 in the middle and at the close of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, was mainly the result of the causes we have 
 previously suggested, and tended very greatly to pre- 
 pare the diocese for that great religious change by 
 which the feudal power of the Church was as entirely 
 broken up as that of the lay feudatories of an earlier 
 day. From the many indications given us in the 
 parochial history of the diocese, and which the reader 
 of Hasted and of the local papers in the "Kent 
 Archaeologia " will readily recall, the state of the 
 church-manors and parishes was far below that of 
 those under lay influence at this period. On the 
 former there were scarcely any residents who could 
 
 ^ " Arch. Cant." torn, i., introd. p. 17. 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 215 
 
 be called opulent, or even independent, and though 
 the interest taken in the churches was remarkably 
 displayed in the constant bequests left to them in 
 the wills, even of the poorest holders of land, from 
 1390 to 1500, whether in the lay or ecclesiastical 
 parishes, the comparative opulence of the former is 
 everywhere visible, and the churches and manors 
 farmed for the archbishops and sinecure rectors fared 
 far worse than those held by or under a lay-proprie- 
 tor. A resident gentry had, in fact, sprung up in 
 the middle of the fifteenth century having an interest 
 in the diocese as well as in the county, which could 
 not have well been awakened either in the distant 
 and non-resident primates, or in their often needy 
 and always unprogressive tenantry. The amount of 
 park and woodland which still covered a large portion 
 of East Kent, rendered large districts unproductive 
 except for fuel and game, while the gradual severance 
 of the dennes in West Kent from the East Kent 
 m.anors impoverished the inhabitants of the latter 
 district, and offered another obstacle to their pro- 
 gress. The great pilgrimages to the shrine of Becket 
 had reached their culminating point in the previous 
 century, and the tide which had once set in, not only 
 from the different parts of England but of the Con- 
 tinent, and which had once flowed so freely, was now 
 on the ebb.^ The visits of the archbishops to the 
 
 ^ A great number of Nuremberg tokens, and similar inferior 
 money, found in many parishes in East Kent, and most probably 
 dropped by pilgrims, indicates a poorer class of visitors to the 
 favoured shrine than that which bestowed such priceless gifts 
 upon it in an earlier day. 
 
2l6 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 cathedral city had become fewer and shorter, and 
 the office of diocesan was becoming rather an ap- 
 pendage to the primacy than a co-ordinate dignity, 
 as it was in earlier days. At the same time, it 
 cannot fail to be observed that the absorption of 
 nearly all the churches of the see into the patronage 
 of the archbishop, or of the religious houses, pre- 
 vented that strong tie being formed between the 
 higher laity and the clergy which is so valuable a 
 result of private patronage, and tends so much to 
 awaken the interest and promote the liberality of the 
 laity. ^ Even late in the fifteenth century the be- 
 quests for church purposes were generally given in 
 kind, as we shall see presently illustrated in the 
 complaints of their non-payment in Warham's visita- 
 tion. On the whole, a survey of the period com- 
 prised in this chapter leads us to regard the later 
 portion of it as in all respects as much a transition 
 period in its social and ecclesiastical history as it was 
 in its architectural development. In regard to the 
 outward fabric of the church which this comparison 
 suggests, we may observe that the style which is 
 termed (from the tendency of the lines of its window 
 tracery, and the comparatively debased forms of its 
 
 ^ The proportion of private to public patronage in the 
 present day in the original parishes of the diocese is about 109 
 to 270, but many of the livings originally belonging to the 
 archbishops were surrendered by Cranmer, and at a later period, 
 rendering the disproportion more apparent. With very few 
 exceptions, all the largest are in the gift of the archbishop, not 
 even those connected with the most ancient residences in the 
 county (as Pluckley, Mersham, Great and Little Chart, Leeds, 
 Godmersham, and others) being in lay hands. 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 2 I J 
 
 mouldings and characteristic ornaments) the Per- 
 pendicular " style, became universally prevalent from 
 the time of Bourchier and Morton, and almost all the 
 churches in Kent present some features of reparation, 
 and often of extensive reconstruction, peculiar to this 
 style. The extreme difficulty of moulding the native 
 stone into the more graceful curvilinear features of 
 the previous 2)eriod probably made this style earlier 
 in Kent than in most other counties. We observe in 
 one or two places, and notably in the beautiful gate 
 of Christ Church which leads into the precincts, an 
 attempted imitation of the "flamboyant" style, which 
 was coeval with the so-called " Perpendicular" on 
 the Continent. But this, unless the softer Caen stone 
 was within reach, could never become acclimatized in 
 Kent, where the intractable nature of the material 
 compelled the masons, even of the "Decorated" 
 period, to confine themselves to the massive and 
 plain octagonal columns which are to be found so 
 commonly dividing the nave from the aisles in the 
 churches of East Kent. The flood of light which 
 was thrown upon the Norman and "Early English" 
 churches by the insertion of the large Decorated and 
 Perpendicular windows of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries, not only illustrates the increased security of 
 the worshippers from the fear of assailants, but fitly 
 symbolizes that approach to a more enlightened and 
 intelligent worship which appeals to the ear and to 
 the understanding rather than to the eye — a change 
 heralding the approach of the age of reading and 
 printing which the primacy of Archbishop Morton 
 was the earliest to witness, and that of his successor 
 
2l8 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 saw SO fully developed in the presses of Frobenius 
 and the literary labours of Erasmus, which they re- 
 corded for all time. Yet the fatal estrangement 
 between the clergy and the laity in the diocese and in 
 the country was rather increased than removed by 
 the reviving learning of the age. The cruel persecu- 
 tions with which the Lollards had been in a manner 
 hunted down by Arundel, and even by his more 
 enlightened successors, had led the people to regard 
 prelacy much in the light in which their Puritan 
 descendants regarded episcopacy in the days of Laud. 
 The vast wealth and pomp of the prelates and of the 
 regular clergy, who were under the obligation of 
 poverty, draws forth the severest censure from the 
 popular religious writers of the age. In the treatise 
 of the Carmelite Henry Parker, in the reign of 
 Edward IV.,^ after the description of the earlier 
 bishops of the Church, we find them thus contrasted 
 with the prelates of the time : " But now God may 
 say, Prelates have reygned in holy churche but not of 
 me, ne by my plesance. I made them not, I chose 
 
 them not For prelates for the most parte 
 
 seke more their owne profite thanne the profite of 
 man's soule. Such prelates and curates be not faders 
 of the people, but wolves of raven that devoure 
 Goddes people simf escam panis^^ (p. 147). Of their 
 negligence in their spiritual duties he complains else- 
 where. There is neither bishoppe, ne prelate, ne 
 curate, ne preacher that will speke ayenste the vices 
 and errors that been so highe ayenst Goddis wor- 
 
 Lonclon, Berthelet, 1536. 
 
FROM PECKHAM TO WARHAM. 
 
 219 
 
 shyppe. And so by misuse and sleuth (sloth) of 
 men of holy churche, vice is taken for vertue, and 
 error for treuthe, the fende is worshypped, and God 
 is despised (p. 69). 
 
 Such is the picture drawn by a not unfriendly hand 
 of that Church of which the archbishops of Canterbury 
 were the recognised head, and of which their diocese 
 might be expected to present the most perfect type. 
 It may well prepare us for the apparent indifference 
 with which the men of Kent beheld the crushing 
 blows which fell upon the religious houses which had 
 so ill fulfilled their trust, and on the vast estates of 
 the primacy, which had rather tended to promote the 
 temporal and spiritual poverty of its tenants than to 
 advance their interests in soul and body. Such was 
 the state of the age which preceded the Reformation, 
 and the picture of the diocese as it comes before the 
 eye in the visitation of Archbishop Warham tends to 
 confirm the impression which the words of the 
 English Carmelite cannot fail to convey to the unpre- 
 judiced mind. 
 
220 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE DAWN OF THE REFORMATION. 
 
 At no period of the history of the diocese can we 
 obtain so perfect a view of its religious and social 
 state as in the year 15 ii, during which Archbishop 
 Warham, in the eighth year of his primacy, made a 
 general visitation of it, the record of which, carefully 
 condensed by the late Mr. Maitland, discloses the 
 exact condition both of the conventual houses and of 
 the parish churches and foundations throughout the 
 county. The editor of it, by whom it was commu- 
 nicated (unfortunately in irregular fragments) to the 
 British Magazine,"^ observes that not only is its 
 ecclesiastical interest very remarkable, but that it 
 supplies materials of great value to the philological^ 
 the antiquarian, the topographical, and genealogical 
 student. It begins with the visitation of the 
 monasteries and conventual foundations of the 
 diocese, including also the hospitals and other 
 charitable establishments, and this is given through- 
 out in Latin. It then proceeds with the visita- 
 tion of the parishes grouped together under their 
 respective deaneries, and these, as the inquiries and 
 returns are given in English, have an obvious interest 
 
 * Vols. xxix. XXX. xxxi. xxxii. 
 
THE DAWN OF THE REFORMATION. 22 1 
 
 to the philological student. The visitation of the 
 monasteries begins with that of Christ Church, whose 
 members are given by name under the certificate of 
 the prior, and include one or two of historical in- 
 terest, memorably those of Richard Deryng and 
 Edward Bokyng, who were executed as the principal 
 instigators of the imposture of the famous Elizabeth 
 Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent," in 1533 — a fate 
 which was shared by Richard Master, the successor 
 of Erasmus in the rectory of Aldington, and one in 
 which even the archbishop himself was all but entan- 
 gled on account of the encouragement he was sup- 
 posed to have given to the prophecies of the unfor- 
 tunate victim of the political intrigues of those in a 
 much higher station. 
 
 The celebrated Cuthbert Tonstal, chancellor of 
 the archbishop, accompanied him throughout his visi- 
 tation, which began on the 9th of September, in the 
 chapter-house of the cathedral, after mass of the Holy 
 Ghost, and a Latin sermon on the appropriate text, 
 
 Behold and visit this vine" (Ps. Ixxx. 14). On the 
 next day the archbishop sat judicially in the same 
 place, and after enjoining the prior and other officers 
 to reform some general defects which had been found 
 in the house before the following ist of April, he sat 
 in the chapel of the palace to visit the chaplains of the 
 several chantries, who exhibited their letters of orders 
 and letters of institution of their chantries. The 
 Priory of St. Gregory was next visited (Sept. nth). 
 A sermon was preached by John Thorneton, after- 
 wards prior of St. Martin's Novi O peris at Dover, on 
 the text, " Wherefore standest thou without ? for I 
 
 Q 
 
222 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 have prepared the house" (Gen. xxiv. 31). This 
 visitation revealed some of those internal dissensions 
 which exhibit the weak side of the conventual life of 
 that period, in which the zeal and devotion which 
 gave the first impulse to the religious orders had so 
 completely died out. William Tailor, the pre- 
 ceptor," is accused of sowing strife and discord 
 among the brethren, and is accordingly admonished 
 by the archbishop. The Priory of St. Sepulchre, a 
 foundation of nuns, was next visited, after a sermon 
 on the text, " Hearken, O daughter, and consider, 
 and incline thine ear" (Ps. xlv. 10). The prioress 
 confesses that they do not rise to matins in the middle 
 of the night, but at daybreak, because the enclosures 
 •of the convent are under repair, and great tumults 
 were heard around the church. The House of the 
 Sisters of St. James was visited on the same day by 
 the chancellor. The prioress, who was eighty-four 
 years old, was charged by the sisters — two of whom 
 were past eighty — with defaming their character, to 
 the great scandal of the house. The visitor admo- 
 nished her accordingly against using contumelious 
 words, requiring the sisters to be obedient to her rule, 
 as required by their profession. The collegiate 
 church of Wingham was next visited, after a sermon 
 from a text which seems rather singularly chosen for 
 the occasion, ^'Though ye have lien among the pots, 
 &c. although as several of the houses of the canons 
 were in a ruinous condition, and called for injunc- 
 tions to repair them from the archbishop, there would 
 seem to be some grounds for the selection of such a 
 theme. At this visitation one or two suggestive cir- 
 
THE DAWN OF THE REFORMATION. 223 
 
 cumstances are to be noted. None of the canons 
 resided at his own house and kept his own table, 
 which was contrary to their statutes ; ahiiost all the 
 houses were in a state of disrepair ; several canons 
 exhibited letters of orders and dispensations, which 
 ^' were nothing to the purpose,'^ and so were peremp- 
 torily ordered to cease from performing service ; 
 others appear as pluralists ; others complain that the 
 benefices which they ought to have had are given to 
 strangers. This visitation called for many admoni- 
 tions of the archbishop. The Convent of St. Martin 
 at Dover was visited on Sept. i8th, after a sermon 
 from the very doubtful text, " Nosce tempus,'' pro- 
 bably an excerpt from the words Non est vestrum 
 nosse temporal The inquiry disclosed the fact that 
 the monastery was in many places ruinous ; that the 
 constant access of the brethren to the town produced 
 great irregularity and many scandals. Complaints are 
 made of the mayor and townsmen, who seem to have 
 been on ill terms with the monks ; the third prior is 
 accused of punishing the novices for small and trifling 
 offences, and even inventing charges against them. 
 Complaint is made that they have linen instead of 
 woollen sheets, as the rule of St. Benedict requires, 
 also that there is no teacher to instruct them in 
 grammar. On all these points the archbishop gives 
 precise and strict injunctions. The house called the 
 Maison Dieu, at Dover, was then visited, but the 
 complaints in this case are comparatively trifling. 
 The Priory of Folkestone was visited on the 22nd of 
 the same month. Here also nothing worthy of note 
 is mentioned. Then followed the visitation of the 
 Q 2 
 
224 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 College of Wye, where also nothing noteworthy occurs. 
 The Nunnery of Davington passes a good examination, 
 while the Domus Dei at Ospringe is found to have 
 dwindled down into a mere sinecure, the master or 
 custes being its sole representative. He wisely sub- 
 mits himself and his hospital to the reformation and 
 ordinance of the archbishop, who adjourns his visi- 
 tation to Feversham. This convent appears to have 
 presented a very degenerate state. Eatables and 
 drinkables are withdrawn from the poor and given by 
 the monks to their friends ; women have ingress and 
 egress into the cloister ; the food is not duly served 
 in the refectory ; the abbot is charged with extreme 
 severity to a monk, who had been reduced in conse- 
 quence to great necessity. Another complains that 
 the butler and all the monks are hostile to him ; 
 while the sacrist is charged with being so contume- 
 lious and quarrelsome that he creates discord among 
 the monks. Another complains that sufficient clothes 
 are not provided him ; while the butler is again ac- 
 cused of ill-behaviour, and of conducting himself more 
 like a master than a servant. The cellarer is accused 
 of spoiling the food for the refectory, it being scarcely 
 half-boiled or roasted. Altogether, the picture of this 
 important house is not an inviting one, and it may well 
 point a moral to those who too anxiously desire to see 
 the revival of monastic life in England. The view of 
 the Priory of Leeds has features which are still less 
 attractive. The prior is accused of acts of violence 
 and outrage, one of the brethren charging him with 
 laying violent hands on him and treading him under 
 foot. He therefore naturally prays that the prior may 
 
THE DAWN OF THE REFORMATION. 225 
 
 not in future lay hands and feet on his brethren (non 
 mittat manus et pedes in confratres suos). The arch- 
 bishop gives the necessary admonitions and injunc- 
 tions in this as in the previous cases, which indicates 
 the fact that they had been sufficiently proved. The 
 Nunnery of Minster in Sheppey next underwent exa- 
 mination. The chief complaint here was the want of 
 a female servant ("a convente servante") to serve 
 them with food, and as a nurse in sickness. The 
 prioress is enjoined to find one, and also to bring up 
 the number of her nuns to fourteen. The fact that 
 the nunneries of England were failing in numbers 
 shows that the taste for a conventual life was gra- 
 dually dying out, and prepares us (among many 
 other causes) for the general apathy with which 
 the dissolution, already impending, was received by 
 the people. The visitation of the College of Maid- 
 stone contains nothing of special interest. That of 
 the Priory of Cumbwell indicates the same deca- 
 dence of monastic life and observance which was in- 
 stanced at Feversham. There are the same com- 
 plaints of violence, of neglect in the matter of food 
 and raiment, of inattention to the care of the sick, 
 of educational destitution, of disrepair of the build- 
 ings, which we have found elsewhere, and the same 
 injunctions to amend all these particulars by a fixed 
 time. We now pass from the conventual to the paro- 
 chial portion of the visitation, which to us is far more 
 interesting, not only from the light which it throws 
 upon the present state of the diocese, but also from 
 the fact that it is written in English, and gives a vivid 
 retrospect of social and parochial life in Kent at this 
 
226 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 period. We need not here follow the archbishop in 
 his progress through the various deaneries into which 
 the diocese was then, as now, divided. We shall 
 better fulfil our purpose by regarding the visitation in 
 its three principal features : those of the fabric of the 
 Church, with the incidents connected with it ; the 
 ministry of the Church, and the disclosures relating 
 to it ; and the religious and social state of the parishes 
 as it reveals itself to us in the course of the visitation. 
 In regard to the first of these subjects, we are led to 
 the conclusion that the portion of the Church which 
 depended upon the parishioners for its support and 
 reparation was generally in a very satisfactory state. 
 With a few exceptions the complaints are here con- 
 fined to the state of the windows and their glazing, or 
 of the roof, but we rarely find the dilapidation to be 
 of a serious kind. Ivychurch is a striking exception, 
 where the churchwardens complain that the parish 
 church is sorely decayed, and likely to fall down ; " 
 while Eastry Church is said to " need great repara- 
 tions." The duty of the rectors and impropriators of 
 the great tithe appears to have been far less carefully 
 fulfilled. The ruin and dilapidation of the chancels 
 are a constant subject of complaint. The neglect is 
 most conspicuous in the case of those churches which 
 belonged to the monasteries and religious foundations, 
 whose representatives are admonished to repair them 
 without fail within a certain time. Equally negligent 
 are the executors of the wills of those benevolent 
 parishioners who left money or cattle or grain towards 
 the reparation of churches, or in order to found in 
 them obits either temporary or perpetual. From the 
 
THE DAWN OF THE REFORMATION. 227 
 
 earliest period to which the wills in the Registry of 
 Canterbury extend, we find innumerable bequests left 
 for the reparation of churches or roads, or public 
 works of other kinds, and for the celebration of reli- 
 gious services, or the provision for lamps and candles 
 at the various altars with which every church more or 
 less abounded. These gifts appear to have been 
 continually delayed or appropriated, and the executors 
 of the wills under which they were given were accord- 
 ingly summoned to give account of them and to pro- 
 mise their immediate restitution. On some occasions 
 the existence of them is denied and the counterclaim 
 admitted, but in most cases the churchwardens are 
 described as being in treaty with the parties interested. 
 A curious feature in these returns is the farming-out 
 of cows and kine for the benefit of the church, a 
 provision which is necessarily precarious, and offers a 
 great temptation to the farmers of them to turn them 
 to their own profit. Thus the Church of St. Dunstan 
 in Canterbury purchases a cow "to be put to farm 
 for the behoof of the church, the money for the pur- 
 chase of it having been withdrawn, and the cow also.'^ 
 Two kine and another cow are put out to farm for the 
 same church, but those who had to procure them 
 died in such poverty as to make the churchwardens 
 return the cases as ''desperate." This is a very 
 frequent case in these returns. But if the beneficial 
 keeping of cattle is thus " withdrawn " from the 
 church, the injurious results of cattle of another kind 
 are no less pathetically detailed. The churchyards 
 seem very generally to be unfenced and " haunted 
 with hogs,'' or, as it is elsewhere expressed, embruid 
 
228 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 and foul with beasts that goeth to pasture there." A 
 curious complaint occurs from Barham, That the 
 trees in the churchyard are an impediment to them 
 that bear the cross in procession, insomuch that it 
 cannot be borne upright for the boughs." Many 
 other nuisances are reported and removed, but the 
 most important result of the visitation in regard to the 
 temporal interests of the Church was the restitution of 
 a large amount of real property which had been ab- 
 stracted and appropriated, and which, under the 
 terrible threat of excommunication, was restored to it 
 on this occasion. 
 
 The state of the ministers of the Church is no less 
 diligently inquired into and reported upon. First, we 
 have the charge of non-residence, which under various 
 circumstances continually recurs. Notwithstanding 
 the ordination of perpetual vicarages in almost all 
 the churches in Kent, where a resident rector was not 
 established, a number of cures appear still to have 
 been served by itinerants from the monasteries, and 
 canons of the several foundations, by which abuse 
 the people were deprived of all spiritual comfort in 
 regard to parochial visitation and relief Thus the 
 Church of Holy Cross, Westgate, returns that "there 
 is no secular priest that serveth the cure these three 
 years, but the Prior of St. Gregory's of Canterbury 
 causeth one of his own canons to serve it, the which 
 goeth to the priory every night, and when we should 
 have him, oftentimes it is required in the night season, 
 we cannot have him." The same charge is made 
 against the same prior in regard to the Church of 
 Thanington. In the Church of Sibertswould, of 
 
THE DAWN OF THE REFORMATION. 229 
 
 which the Prior of St. Radegund was impropriator, a 
 singular conflict between the regular and secular 
 priest is recorded. The archbishop had augmented 
 the vicarage which sorely displeased the canons — one 
 of whom " came unto me," complains the vicar, and 
 spake many opprobrious and contumelious words 
 openly, and said, ^ Thou priest, what doest thou here 
 in our church ? get thee hence or we shall pluck thee 
 out by the head ; howbeit thou beareth thee bold, and 
 was instituted by my lord of Canterbury, he hath 
 nought to do here, for we are exempt from him, and 
 so tell him ' — with many more words long to re- 
 hearse." The abbot and convent intended an appeal 
 to Rome, in this instance, certainly, hardly a centre 
 of unity." At Monk's Horton "the parson had 
 not been among the people for five years," and 
 having been called to residence by the archbishop, 
 did not appear, and was therefore deprived. The 
 complaints of non-residence were numerous in the 
 more distant and rural parishes, and appear to have 
 been always proved. In the case of Ivychurch the 
 " parson " is described as an outlandish man, who 
 has never come among us sith his induction." Neg- 
 lect of duty is another charge of frequent recurrence, 
 and one which naturally arose from non-residence ; 
 while pluralities are another just cause of complaint. 
 Exactions in matters of tithe and offerings occur 
 not unfrequently, while in some cases the moral 
 character of the clergy is very severely animadverted 
 upon. In not a few, their social asperities are matter 
 of curious complaint. Thus the Vicar of Stodmarsh 
 is complained of as " sometimes malicious and looking 
 
230 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 on his neighbours with a grym and sower countenance^ 
 where they think him, God knoweth, no hurt." The 
 Vicar of Bridge is accused of giving no rights 
 (? rites) to them that will not content his mind, 
 and when they do not agree with him after his 
 pleasure." Almost all these subjects are entered into 
 judicially, and the result is generally a solemn admoni- 
 tion to amend, accompanied by the threat of excom- 
 munication in case of a continued delinquency. The 
 state of the people was naturally affected both socially 
 and religiously by the decadence which this visitation 
 reveals in that of the clergy. The neglect of the 
 services of the Church is one of its more immediate re- 
 sults. Some (as St. Dunstan's, Canterbury), ^'keep the 
 tavern and alehouses in the times of service — others 
 resort to the monastic churches instead of their proper 
 parishes; one is accused of ^^etting the people of 
 their devotions ; " another of neglecting to furnish a 
 " pair of silver shoes for the Roode of Chislet " — left 
 charged upon a certain house. The failure to render 
 an account of legacies left to the various churches, 
 and the complaints that they are never satisfied, fill 
 a very large portion of these returns. The reader 
 unacquainted with the vast collection of early wills 
 in the Registry of Canterbury, would be surprised at 
 the number and sometimes the amount of bequests 
 for every imaginable purpose connected with the 
 Church. The visitation of Warham shows how very 
 seldom these were carefully accounted for and secured 
 to the several churches at this time. Masses and 
 obits appear to have been neglected very commonly — 
 and those who have seen the almost fabulous account 
 
THE DAWN OF THE REFORMATION. 23 1 
 
 of the masses which were thus neglected even in Italy 
 in the last century— which in the single Church of St. 
 John and St. Paul at Venice amounted, in 1743, to^ 
 16,400 — and in that of the Madonna dell 'Orto to 
 14,300,1 will hardly wonder at the more moderate 
 defalcations of the fifteenth century in England. 
 Some are charged with not assisting to pay the salary 
 of the parish clerk, and several of the returns refer 
 to that official now so generally dispensed with. A 
 man who is charged with laying violent hands upon 
 his ghostly father for asking his tithes" (Seasalter) is 
 remitted to the common law, at which, instead of in 
 the ecclesiastical court, the vicar is prosecuting him. 
 An interesting instance is here presented of the 
 manner in which the canon law had been superseded, 
 even in a matter which a century or two before would 
 have exclusively dealt with crimes against the clergy. 
 One Valentine Cole is charged with " troubling the 
 Church by reason of his evil disposition," who is 
 accordingly enjoined, " ut sit in Ecclesia orans sedendo- 
 non fabulando aut garrulando " — (Heme). The 
 Church of Knowlton is remarkable for having only a 
 single parishioner from time immemorial. He is, 
 however, required to procure a chalice for the church, 
 which hitherto had only borrowed one. At Elham, 
 Thomas Rigdon is accused of " letting the people 
 from their devotions because drinking in the church 
 is put down." At Willesborough a similar complaint 
 is made — indicating that the practice of drinking in 
 
 ^ See the " Scrittura del Segretario Pietri Franceschi sopra 
 le messe testamentarie," addressed to the Councillor of State,. 
 Marc Antonio Grimani, in 1763. 
 
232 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 the church at obits and other celebrations had been 
 recently prohibited in the diocese. In the will of 
 Thomas Duffyn, vicar of Lyminge (1508), a sum of 
 money is left to build a place for the regaling of the 
 parishioners at the anniversaries — doubtless with a 
 view to supply the need occasioned by this prohibition. 
 Among the complaints against laymen for withholding 
 the goods of the Church, we not unfrequently find 
 cases in which chalices were thus held in lay keeping. 
 In all these a promise is given to restore the articles 
 thus held in pawn, but a suspicion naturally arises 
 that they were held as pledges for money lent either 
 to the parish or the minister. Dr. Maitland amusingly 
 notes that while Sir John Russell is charged with thus 
 withholding a chalice, Sir Robert Pele, vicar of Chil- 
 ham, is accused of withholding a legacy. At Wye 
 we have the case of a man impeding the celebration 
 of matrimony between a certain couple, and menacing 
 the priest, saying, If thou ax them any more here, 
 I will styk thee." A terrible series of charges is made 
 against one Richard Ricards, of Kennington, who 
 has threatened to slay the vicar, has slain a man, with 
 many other serious accusations — all which he denied, 
 and is required to clear himself with six honest men 
 of his neighbours." In many cases the charges 
 appear to have little or no foundation, while in others 
 the parties are remitted to the archbishop, or the 
 cause is adjourned. Numberless charges of scandal 
 are brought both against clergymen and laymen, and 
 many again are charged with being slanderers and 
 propagators of slander. A number of curious illus- 
 trations of the religious life of the diocese appear in 
 
THE DAWN OF THE REFORMATION. 233 
 
 this visitation. We find days mentioned which are 
 evidently rather of local than general celebration, as 
 " hopp monday " (Little Mongeham), " Relic Sunday/' 
 under Rolvenden. The latter was the day appointed 
 for pilgrimage to the relics — probably to Becket's 
 shrine. The vicar is reported to have declared that 
 for " every foot that a man or a woman set to the relics- 
 ward he should have great pardon." Whereupon 
 John Baylis replied to his wife who told him this, 
 " He said so because he will have folk's money ; " a 
 very sensible speech for days of greater enlightenment, 
 but born at this time out of due season. He ac- 
 cordingly had to purge himself quarta inanu^ as the 
 phrase was — in other words, by four witnesses lay and 
 cleric. The failure to provide books and ornaments 
 for the church is another frequent accusation, the 
 graduals and antiphoners being chiefly in request. 
 Books containing masses for new festivals are wanting 
 in some churches, viz. the Feast of the Visitation, of 
 the Transfiguration, and of the Name of Jesus (Great 
 Chart, &c.) SurpHces are wanting in many churches, 
 and rochets in others. The farmers of the rec- 
 tories " who have constantly to appear to answer to 
 charges of neglect, appear to have left the churches 
 under their care in a very dilapidated state. The 
 poverty into which the diocese had fallen at this time 
 is perhaps one of the most remarkable of the circum- 
 stances which this visitation disclosed. The support 
 of a Church whose ritual observances and ceremonial 
 were so expensive, fell heavily on the poorer parishes 
 of the diocese, and the bequests of very many in this 
 behalf fail on account of the poverty, and even 
 
234 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 destitution, of those who left them in the vain hope 
 that their limited means were equal to such a burden. 
 The fact that pews and regular sittings in churches 
 belonged to this period, and even to a much earlier 
 one, is indicated not only by numerous wills in the 
 Registry of Canterbury during the fifteenth century, 
 but by a petition of the inhabitants of Minster in 
 Sheppey that they might remove the effigies of a 
 knight and his wife, " and lay in the place a plain 
 stone with an epitaphy, that the people may make 
 setts and pewys where they may more quietly serve 
 God.'^ The Church of Middleton (or Milton) had a 
 simple rood "that lacketh Mary and John." This 
 important defect has of course to be restored. A 
 certain widow holds the erroneous opinion (which, 
 however, she denies) that " whensoever she shall curse 
 by these words, I curse thee by St. Germayne's curse, 
 they shall never prosper in bodily health nor in goods." 
 She escapes on her denial; but James Morris, in the 
 parish of Sutton Valence, has to undergo a severe 
 penance, being enjoined " to go before the processions 
 made in the Church of Sutton, on the three following 
 Sundays, bareheaded and barefooted, wearing only a 
 shirt, and holding in his hand a taper, value 2d. ; and 
 that on the third Sunday, after the Gospel should 
 have been read at high mass, at the time when 
 Christians offer, he should humbly and devoutly offer 
 the said taper into the hands of the officiating minister. 
 
 Our space will not admit of the examination of all 
 the details of this remarkable visitation, which exhibits 
 the state of the diocese in the period immediately 
 preceding the Reformation. Those who look back 
 
THE DAWN OF THE REFORMATION. 235 
 
 upon the pre-Reformation Church with too Uvely a 
 regret, might learn from it that the former days were 
 not so far better than those in which they Hve. They 
 were days of transition, which we are too apt to neglect 
 when estimating the work of the Reformation and the 
 changes it brought about, apparently with so much 
 suddenness, but truly by many and gradual stages of 
 development. Already in the age of Warham the 
 ties between England and Rome, so often severely 
 strained, and at several periods almost entirely broken, 
 were giving way almost imperceptibly in the scene of 
 Rome's earliest conquest. In the constantly recurring 
 complaints during this visitation of the refusal or 
 neglect to pay " Peter's pence," and in the rash threat 
 ■of the Canon of St. Radegund's to carry his appeal 
 to Rome, we see the symptoms of a change of feeling, 
 which present a striking contrast to the devotion with 
 which the Anglo-Saxon converts in Kent regarded the 
 Roman Church. We are apt, perhaps, to forget in 
 this contrast the fact that a new power had sprung up 
 in what we term the Court of Rome " which might 
 have led even the docile Saxons, had it developed 
 itself in their day, to an open rupture with the see 
 which was under so terrible and galling a yoke. We 
 cannot wonder in any case that if Warham so soon 
 after shook off his allegiance to the Roman primacy, 
 his diocese even at an earlier moment should have 
 found their obedience to it giving way ; and that when 
 the power of the regular clergy was broken down by 
 the dissolution of the monasteries, the secular clergy 
 should have sided with the primate, in opposition to 
 the Papacy which had made the yoke of monasticism 
 
236 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 SO oppressive to them. The character of the gentle 
 and courtly Warham, whose portrait has been drawn 
 for us by the hand of Erasmus, was singularly fitted 
 for this period of transition, and resembles in many 
 of its features the contemporary life of the great Leo 
 X., who as the patron of learning became uninten- 
 tionally the promoter of the Reformation. In the 
 dedication of his edition of St. Jerome to the primate 
 who had been his constant friend, Erasmus affirms 
 that the memory of that great Father could have no 
 higher honour than its connection with the name of 
 one who virtutum omnium episcopalium circulum et 
 harmoniam mire temperavit." Of the progress of 
 England (and we must naturally include the diocese 
 in this compliment) " in religion, righteousness, and 
 moral culture," he gives his testimony in this dedica- 
 tion ; which written originally in 15 16 he renews in 
 1533 as a kind of epitaph to the primate that " in- 
 comparabilis heros " — vir ex omni virtutum et orna- 
 ment orum genere concinnatus." One portion of his 
 eulogy, though brief, is very significant, and to those 
 who estimate the labour involved in this visitation in 
 a day when travelling was comparatively difficult will 
 be readily appreciable. " Nemo vidit ilium nihil agen- 
 tem." Erasmus, to whom he had given the valuable 
 rectory of Aldington, must have had ample opportunity 
 of estimating his conduct in his diocese ; and we may 
 remember with pleasure the often neglected fact that 
 Warham was the President of that convocation which 
 abrogated the Papal authority in England, and was 
 in a certain sense the first Primate of the Reformation. 
 The gradual removal of the Papal legislation was 
 
THE DAWN OF THE REFORMATION. 237 
 
 easy after the great principle of the independence of 
 the English Church was established, for as the rule 
 of the canon law affirms, " Non firmatur tractu tem- 
 poris quod de jure ab initio non subsistit ; " — and "quae 
 contra jus fiunt, debent utique pro infectis haberi." 
 The Court of Arches, from which the Canon of St. 
 Radigund threatened to carry up his appeal to Rome, 
 had now recovered its natural rights, and the freedom 
 of the archbishops and of the Church of England 
 began before the primacy of the " incomparabilis 
 heros " of Erasmus had closed. 
 
 R 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 
 
 The visitation of the entire diocese by Archbishop 
 Warham in 15 ii may be said to present the last 
 complete view of its state in the pre-Reformation 
 period. The church-building zeal which had been 
 carried on from the close of the twelfth to the begin- 
 ning of the sixteenth century was now exhausted. If 
 we may beheve the historians and writers of the age, 
 this zeal had taken a worldly and secular form, and 
 had become rather a rivalry of towns and villages 
 and a mark of the increasing luxury of the age than 
 an indication of that deep religious sentiment which 
 had first inspired it. The towers of the churches of 
 the southern districts of Kent, with their beacon- 
 turrets and manifest contrivances for defence and 
 security against invasion from the Continent, were 
 naturally the work of this period or of that imme- 
 diately preceding it ; and these beacon-turrets formed 
 a system of coast-guard defence similar to that of the 
 Martello towers of a later age.^ In the rare and 
 remarkable Dialogue, written in the time of King 
 Edward IV., by Henry Parker, a Carmelite monk of 
 Doncaster, which we have already cited, we find a 
 passage which probably expresses too well this deca- 
 
 ^ The beacons are hence carefully marked in maps of the 
 time of Elizabeth. 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 239 
 
 dence, both in the outward work of the Church and 
 in the spirit which had once animated it : — " If the 
 makyng of churches and the ornamentes and the 
 service in this londe w^ere done principally for devo- 
 cion and for the worshippe of God, I trow this londe 
 passed all other londes in worshyppinge of God and 
 holy Churche. But I drede me, that men do it more 
 for pompe and pride of this worlde to have a name 
 and worshyppe thereby in the countreye, and. for envy 
 that one towne hathe ayenst another, not for devo- 
 tion, but for the worshyppe and the name that they 
 see them have by araye and ournamentes in holy 
 Churche, or elles by slygh covetyse of men of holy 
 Churche ... for tl>e people nowe adays is full 
 undevout to God and to holy Churche, and they love 
 but a lytell men of holy Churche, and they ben lothe 
 for to come in holy Churche when they be bounde to 
 come thyther, and fulle lothe to here Goddis service. 
 Late they come, and sone they go awaye. If they 
 ben there a lytel while, them thinketh full longe. 
 They have leaver to go to the taverne than to holy 
 Churche- Leaver to here a songe of Robynhoode or 
 of some ribaudry than for to here masse or matynes, 
 or any other of Goddis service or any word of God. 
 And sythen that the people hath so lyttell devoeion 
 to God and to holy Churche, I canne not see that 
 they do suche coste in holy Churche for devotion ne 
 for the love of God. For they despise God day and 
 nyght with their evylle and wycked lyvynge and their 
 wycked thewes.''^ When we add to this picture that 
 
 ' *' Dives and Pauper. " London: Berthelet, 1536, p. 69. 
 R 2 
 
240 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 of the convents and religious houses, as given 
 by the same impartial witness/ we shall easily come 
 to the conclusion that the Reformation was less a 
 violent revolution in the spiritual world than a re- 
 vival of religious life taking the direction of the 
 Augustinian theology as opposed to the petrified 
 divinity of the schools. The fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries had witnessed in the inextinguishable flame 
 of Lollardism, and the extraordinary vitality of the 
 theses and doctrine of Wycliff, the first inspiration of 
 this great movement. In the work we have referred 
 to this popular teaching appears in all its force, very 
 thinly veiled under the scholastic distinctions which 
 abound in the text. The diocese of Canterbury was 
 one of the earliest of those in which, in spite of the 
 almost crushing influence of the archbishops, the 
 new doctrines proved their vitality. Archbishop 
 Arundel had vainly attempted to extinguish it in 
 the terrible dungeons, or rather oubliettes of Salt- 
 wood. In the venerable ruins, of that castle may be 
 seen to this day the vaults where the persecuted 
 Lollards expiated the then fatal guilt of professing a 
 more spiritual faith than agreed with the worldliness 
 of the age. The succeeding archbishops down to 
 Warham had generally (and in his case most re- 
 luctantly) to lend their names and their influence to 
 the reign of persecution, which seemed to the autho- 
 rities of that day to be the only means left them for 
 resisting the gathering tide of spiritual life and power. 
 As the political divisions of the kingdom and the 
 
 * Dives and Pauper," pp. 139-142. 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 24 1 
 
 power of the collateral branches of the Royal family 
 had assisted in so great a degree the progress of the 
 doctrines of Wycliff, so it was ordained that the ex- 
 cesses and even sins of the autocratic Henry should, 
 by freeing the Church of England from the papal 
 yoke, bring in the reign of a reformed church and 
 faith. The inauguration of this great work belonged 
 not, as is too popularly believed, to Cranmer, but to 
 Warham himself, who presided over that convocation 
 in which the papal authority in England was reduced 
 to that of an ordinary bishopric, and the freedom of 
 our Church placed upon the same basis as that upon 
 which the Council of Ephesus established the inde- 
 pendence of the island of Cyprus. It is very re- 
 markable that in no diocese of England was this 
 change effected with such ease as in that of Canter- 
 bury — and that the scene in which the papacy was 
 most absolutely worshipped in the day of the con- 
 version of England, was the first to throw off that 
 allegiance in the period of the Reformation. But 
 there are many reasons to account for what must at 
 first appear to be so difficult to explain satisfactorily. 
 The first is the immense power of the archbishopric 
 while its estates were still entire, a power which was 
 absolutely transferred to the Crown and its most de- 
 voted adherents when the vast estates of the Church 
 were surrendered under the specious pretext of ex- 
 changes with the king. To this may be added the 
 influence which the continental reformers exercised 
 so specially in Kent, in which their exiles had a 
 residence, and a freedom of worship assigned them 
 in Canterbury, Sandwich, Maidstone, and other 
 
242 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 places, which could not but be most favourable to 
 the progress of the reformed doctrine. Yet another 
 cause presents itself in the danger which every popish 
 recusant incurred by residing in a county which was 
 so immediately under the eye of the Government, 
 and which on account of its being the place of transit 
 to the Continent was watched by means of a regular 
 espionage whose head-quarters were at Dover Castle.^ 
 But whatever may have been the causes of the early 
 and paramount reign of the principles of the Reforma- 
 tion in Kent, the results are conspicuous and un- 
 deniable, for scarcely a recusant of note could be 
 found in the county at periods when they abounded 
 elsewhere. And almost the last of the ancient county 
 families professing the faith of Rome in our day are 
 those of the Darells of Calehill, and of the Hales of 
 Hales-place, near Canterbury. ^ These preliminary 
 observations wall tend to prepare us for the great 
 changes w^hich the Reformation effected, both in 
 regard to the spiritual state and to the outward con- 
 stitution of the diocese. The tokens of this spiritual 
 
 ' There was till recently in the Bering Collecticfn at Sur- 
 renden a MS. book containing the correspondence with the 
 Government of the celebrated Sir Edward Bering, of the Long 
 Parliament, when he was Beputy-govemor of Bover Castle. 
 From this it appears that every one passing to and from the 
 Continent suspected of Roman tendencies was most carefully 
 watched, and a chaplain to convert recusants was specially 
 appointed for that important place of transit. 
 
 The writer made this observation many years since to the 
 late Cardinal Wiseman, who agreed with him that on no other 
 grounds could the sudden and entire alienation of the diocese 
 from the Papacy be accounted for. 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. .^43 
 
 revolution became \'er}' marked as the primac} of 
 Wartiam drew on towards its dose. His letters to 
 Wolsey, with whom his relations were very- far from 
 cordial, and who in everything endeavoured to in- 
 terrupt his course as primate, were (as a recent 
 Avriter^ has termed them) "grimly civil,' and con- 
 trast strangely with the jocose letters he addressed to 
 his friend Erasmus. They discover, however, fears 
 which were common to both alike of the great move- 
 ment which was so rapidly extending from Germany 
 to England. One of them recounts the committal 
 of a priest (by name Sir Adam Bnidshawe) for pulling 
 down the wirings and seals of the papal condenma- 
 tion of the theses of Luther from the too-f^mious 
 Abbey of Boxley. This was in 1522. In the same 
 year the archbishop mentions his receipt from Dr, 
 Sampson of the "Lutheriana damnatissima opera," and 
 certain jMSS. of Wy cliff, non minoris malitice ac 
 hseresis." He congmtulates the cardinal on their pos- 
 sessing so ** pious, holy, and catholic a king and yet 
 a sad presentiment appears to lurk in the words which 
 follow. But if his majesty (whicli heaven forefend I) 
 shall fall from the Catholic taith, not a little loss would 
 accrue to the Chrisuan commonwealth." 
 
 Disiiffection to the king in the matter of sulv 
 sidies, es^>ecially on the part of the religious 
 houses, gi\-es another indication of the coming 
 change. The miserable state of po\-erty into which 
 the diocese had fallen at this time is pathetically 
 urged by Warham as a ground of its relief from the 
 subsidy, which originally claiming a third of the 
 
 ^ Aa^h. Cant./' vol. i. p. 10. Letter? of Abp. Warham. 
 
244 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 revenues of the clergy, was afterwards reduced to a 
 sixth, even this being an intolerable burden. A far 
 more interesting feature in the history of the diocese 
 is the attempt which was now being made to convert 
 several of the conventual foundations into public 
 schools, a plan which in another form was so suc- 
 cessfully carried out by Edward VI. and Elizabeth. 
 The archbishop, in a very interesting letter, inquires 
 into the views of the people of Tunbridge, offering 
 them a free school for forty scholars, with exhibitions 
 at Oxford, in lieu of their ancient priory. The 
 majority of the inhabitants, however, prefer the 
 monastic institution to the scholastic, and the pro- 
 ject falls to the ground. This is in 1525. Another 
 matter in this correspondence of peculiar interest to 
 the diocese, and one which placed the primate in 
 very imminent danger, was his patronage of Eliza- 
 beth Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent, whom he 
 introduces to the cardinal in order that she may 
 have a private interview with him. He describes 
 her as a " very well-disposyd and vertuouse woman 
 whiche hadd all the visions of our Lady of Courtup- 
 street." These letters are almost all dated from 
 Otford, where the archbishop, having quarrelled with 
 the citizens of Canterbury in the matter of his palace 
 there, had laid out the then enormous sum of 
 ;j^33,ooo, in order to make what he still continues to 
 call his "poor house of Otford" a palace worthy of 
 the primacy. It is strange to read his pleas of exemp- 
 tion from the subsidy, in connection with this princely 
 expenditure. One of the most suggestive of these 
 letters is that addressed to Wolsey, in 1522, in which 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 
 
 245 
 
 the archbishop excuses himself from meeting the 
 legate at Canterbury on the occasion of the visit of 
 the Emperor Charles V. and King Henry VIIL to 
 that city. This was almost the last gleam of royal 
 splendour that shone on the scene of the " martyr- 
 dom which had witnessed in earlier days so many 
 pilgrimages of almost equal grandeur, but with a 
 spiritual object of so far deeper a significance. War- 
 ham excuses himself on economical grounds, having 
 already so lately entertained the king's grace at his 
 
 power (poor) house at Otford. " His real purpose was 
 doubtless to avoid meeting the hated legate, and the 
 fear that he could scarcely dissemble his joy at the 
 narrow escape he had had from greeting Wolsey as 
 pope. In an equally interesting letter of Longolius, 
 the friend of Sadolet, Bembo, Pole, Erasmus, and 
 our own Linacre, we find how near the chance of 
 Wolsey 's election had become. ''While I was 
 writing this," are his words, '' news was brought to 
 our friend Pole that Thomas Wolsey, of York, that 
 Briton, I mean, has been made a pope. If that has 
 happened nothing has happened more wonderful in 
 the memory of our fathers and our grandfathers.'' 
 Further on he writes, "When I had finished my letter 
 I received yours, from which I learned that not Wolsey, 
 but our own Hadrian, has been declared pope." ^ Per- 
 haps Wolsey was as anxious to dissemble his indig- 
 nation at Canterbury as Warham to conceal his joy. 
 
 But there is a dark side to the brightest character, 
 and we cannot but regret that the cruel persecutions 
 which followed the earlier converts to the reformed 
 
 ' Christ. Longolii Epp., 1. iii. Ep. 10, ed. Basil, 1558, p. 185. 
 
246 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 doctrine were carried on by Warham with a severity 
 which stands in singular contrast to the gentler 
 features of his life. We must, however, remember 
 that not even the highest persons or the most enlight- 
 ened minds of the age, whatever may have been their 
 influence, could have resisted the tide of barbarism 
 which rendered the laws of England under the Tudor 
 dynasty a code of the most refined and vindictive 
 tyranny, whose traces survived in English criminal 
 jurisprudence up to our own day. Warham, in the 
 dreadful part he took against the earlier martyrs of 
 the Reformation, was a mere instrument under the 
 law to which he himself nearly fell a victim. He and 
 his still more eminent commissary, Cuthbert Tonstal, 
 were associated together as colleagues in the execution 
 of a law which they were unable to abrogate, or even 
 to mitigate. The charge of heresy, less pardonable 
 in that darker day than murder itself — inasmuch as 
 it w^as supposed to involve the ruin of the soul as well 
 as the body — had been one of life or death, even 
 from the enlightened age of the great Justinian, whose 
 code is as deeply stained with the capital law against 
 the Manich8eans,as that of EHzabeth is with the judicial 
 murder of the unfortunate Baptists. The blot which 
 rests upon the name of Warham rests also upon that 
 of Cranmer, and in a far higher degree upon that of 
 Calvin ; and when we think of the horrible punish- 
 ments inflicted upon the alleged traitors of a later 
 day, and remember that almost every oflence against 
 property was punished by death in our own, we shall 
 look with less severity upon those who were the 
 instruments of a sanguinary law in an age of twilight 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 247 
 
 like that in which Warham lived. An immense and 
 uncontrollable power had been introduced into the 
 world by the invention of printing ; and almost the 
 earliest use which w^as made in England of this great 
 discovery was the multiplication and propagation of 
 the works of Wycliffe and others, by whom many of 
 the received doctrines of the Church and its entire 
 hierarchy were held up to the animadversion and 
 often ridicule of the multitude. The early settlement 
 of French, Flemings, and other foreigners in West 
 Kent, Sandwich, Canterbury, and other places, ren- 
 dered the propagation of such doctrines too easy, 
 and the danger (as it appeared) to the clergy very 
 imminent. The very year of the visitation, which 
 the archbishop conducted with so much gentleness 
 and moderation was marked by a process against a 
 number of alleged heretics in the diocese of Canter- 
 bury, whose names being chiefly of a foreign origin 
 lead to the belief that they were among th*ose immi- 
 grants who established so many industries in the 
 Weald of Kent, and in the principal centres of its 
 commerce. We have William Carder, of Tenterden, 
 weaver — a name doubtless derived rather from his 
 craft than from his forefathers. Then there is Agnes 
 Grebil — an evidently foreign name — who was accused 
 (among others) by Stephen Castelin, also of Ten- 
 terden, William Olbert, of Godmersham, and by 
 many of her own nearest relatives, including her son 
 and husband, and brought on their evidence to the 
 stake — a hideous proof of that utter extinction of the 
 most sacred ties of kindred which is effected by the 
 ^doctrine of heresy as it is laid down in the Roman 
 
248 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Church. William Carder, though he professed his 
 repentance if he had held an heretical doctrine on 
 the sacraments, and his willingness to conform to the 
 Church's teaching, was yet condemned by the arch- 
 bishop, though (as Fox alleges) there is no appearance 
 whatever in the register that he had relapsed, and 
 was delivered as an excommunicated person to the 
 secular power. 
 
 The unfortunate Agnes Grebil, against whom the 
 archbishop acted with even less pardonable zeal, was 
 condemned on the evidence of her own husband and 
 of her two sons, who were compelled to bear witness 
 against their sexagenarian mother, and in a manner to 
 deliver her to death ; as though the terrible prophecy 
 of our Lord were now a second time fulfilled, with 
 circumstances of even augmented horror. Numbers 
 who escaped the last penalty, but were supposed in 
 some degree to be compromised by the conversations 
 they had' had with the unhappy victims, were com- 
 pelled nevertheless to abjure, and among these were 
 Christopher Grebil and John Grebil — both of Benen- 
 den ; William Rich, of Benenden, William Olbert, of 
 Godmersham, Agnes Ive, of Canterbury, Joan Colin, 
 Stephen Castelin, William Olbert the younger, John 
 Frank, of Tenterden, and others. These names, as 
 we observed before, lead to the supposition that the 
 new doctrines had been propagated in West Kent by 
 the immigrants from France and Flanders, who had 
 so early settled there. The s]Dectacle of these terrible 
 and revolting cruelties which even in that day must 
 have shocked the public mind, contributed not a 
 little to prevent the spread of the reformed doctrines 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 249 
 
 in Kent. In any case it is clear that during Warham's 
 primacy, and especially in its intermediate portion, 
 there was a great lull of religious activity in Kent, 
 ominous, perhaps, of the violent convulsion which was 
 so soon to change the face of the diocese and of the 
 country. 
 
 The wills of this period, which give so clear an 
 impress of the prevalent religious sentiment, offer no 
 indication of the coming revolution. The offerings 
 to particular shrines, the devotion to patron saints, 
 the foundation of masses and obits, are as general as 
 they were in an earlier day, and even the political 
 events which were so rapidly developing themselves 
 in the closing years of Warham's primacy seemed 
 little likely to open so new a scene in the religious 
 life of the country. Nevertheless the results of the 
 discovery of printing and the manner in which the 
 public mind was being almost imperceptibly educated 
 for the reception of the doctrines of the Reformation 
 were now gradually appearing, and the influence of 
 the clergy in the diocese, from the primate downwards, 
 was perceptibly reduced, while that of the religious 
 orders had altogether passed away. Only the terrors of 
 the law remained, a significant token of which appears 
 as late as 1535, in the municipal records of Canter- 
 bury ; where we find 14s. Zd, paid for *^the expenses 
 of bringing a heretic from London, and for one and a 
 half load of wood to burn him, 2s. ^ for gunpowder, i^., 
 a stake and staple, 8^." As a set-off to this great 
 expense, and as a proof of the levity with which its 
 object is regarded, we find immediately after, Re- 
 ceive Hi". Zd, from sale of John Barley's harness." 
 
250 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 But while the penalties of heresy, from which 
 Warham was sufficiently safe, were so easily incurred, 
 the political danger which involved like results was 
 not escaped so lightly. The case of the unfortunate 
 nun of Court-at-Street, in Lymne, was a startling indi- 
 cation of the difficulties through which the highest in 
 the land, both in Church and State, had to thread 
 their way between the temporal and spiritual perils 
 which bristled along their path on either side. The 
 chapel of Court-at-Street, situate at a small hamlet,, 
 called in Domesday Billerica, in the parish of Lymne, 
 had been built in early times for the inhabitants of 
 that village, and had fallen into a state of such neglect 
 and disrepair at the time of Henry VIII. that it seems 
 to have been mostly occupied by a hermit. To 
 hinder, it would appear, its total ruin, Richard Master, 
 the rector of the neighbouring parish of Aldington, 
 encouraged the unfortunate Elizabeth Barton, whose 
 name has been already mentioned, to begin a course 
 of prophecies, and to pretend that she held miraculous 
 conferences with the Virgin Mary, to whom the chapel 
 was dedicated. These began in the year 1525, and 
 were continued for some months, till the celebrity 
 they were acquiring among the common people 
 induced the archbishop to appoint a commission 
 to report on them, at the head of which was 
 Dr. Booking, one of his chief officials. The members 
 of this body rather countenanced the imposture than 
 inquired into it, for they attended a service held at 
 the chapel, in company with many of the gentry 
 of the neighbourhood, as well as near 3,000 of the 
 common people. 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 25 1 
 
 Soon after this the archbishop became compro- 
 mised in the matter by his appointing the Nmi of 
 Kent," as she was afterwards called, to a vacant place 
 in the convent of St. Sepulchre, in Canterbury, where 
 she continued to see visions and to work miracles in 
 a more extended sphere and from a more conspi- 
 cuous position. As long as her prophecies were of a 
 purely spiritual nature, and consisted of earnest 
 appeals in behalf of the pilgrimages and vows, which 
 were now beginning to be held in such light esteem 
 and even openly denounced, the archbishop and his 
 clergy could only have regarded her teaching as a 
 providential antidote to that of the poor martyr, 
 Agnes Grebil, whose seventh heresy lay in the asser- 
 tion that pilgrimages to holy places and holy relics 
 be not necessary nor meritorious to soul's health," 
 and in moving her to Canterbury may have had an 
 eye to the transfer of her influence to Becket's shrine 
 from the obscure and dreary scene of her first revela- 
 tions. But scarcely had she entered on her new 
 scene than the project of the king's divorce turned 
 her prophecies into a new and more dangerous 
 channel, and she ventured to predict that if the king 
 carried on his suit he would not remain on the throne 
 for one month longer. The attention of Henry being 
 thus called to the Holy Maid of Kent," as she was 
 now termed, it was not long before all who were 
 implicated in what might have turned out to be a 
 very serious conspiracy were brought before the 
 Star Chamber and compelled to confess that the 
 whole affair was an imposture — a confession which 
 brought the extreme penalty on all engaged in it, and 
 
252 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 would probably have involved Warham himself in the 
 condemnation had he not passed away from the 
 scene just before the gathering storm had burst. 
 Elizabeth Barton herself, Edward Booking, and 
 Richard Bering, monks of Christ Church, Richard 
 Master, rector of Aldington, Henry Golde, rector of 
 Aldermanbury, and Richard Risby, gent, were exe- 
 cuted at Tyburn in 1534; while the great and good 
 Bishop Fisher, afterwards cardinal, with others were 
 found guilty of misprision of treason, and adjudged 
 to forfeit their estates and to be imprisoned during 
 the king's pleasure. The severity of this sentence 
 must strike us very forcibly, and though it forms no 
 contrast to the ordinary cruelties of the age, we 
 cannot but remark that while the intercession of 
 Queen Anne Boleyn was put forth for the unhappy 
 followers of the poor visionary, neither Cromwell nor 
 Cranmer lifted a finger in their behalf. The sug- 
 gestive entry we have referred to, from the records 
 of Canterbury, was made during the primacy of the 
 latter, and the Act of Conviction must have been 
 signed by his hand. A long letter of Cromwell's is 
 extant in the Cotton MSS., upbraiding Fisher for the 
 mildness with which he had acted in regard to the 
 deluded or deluding nun, but we see no effort to 
 mitigate the very disproportionate punishment with 
 which her error was visited, and seem to read 
 throughout this long reign of crime and lust and 
 suffering the fulfilment of the divine declaration, that 
 they who take the sword shall perish with the 
 sword.'^ Burnet ascribes the severity of the sentence 
 to some fresh intrigues which were discovered between 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 
 
 253 
 
 the nun and her accomplices. But of these he gives 
 no sufficient evidence. 
 
 We now approach the history of a period, which, 
 as our adversaries affirm, has made such a change in 
 the history and the teaching of the diocese, and such 
 a break in the continuity of its succession, both of 
 teacher and doctrine, as in a manner to have created 
 a new primacy and a schismatic body, and to have 
 left the Church of England as a severed member of 
 the great and once united Church of the West. It 
 must be admitted that the strangely extended 
 ignorance of the history of the Reformation in 
 England, and the principles upon which it was con- 
 ducted, have too much contributed to justify such 
 specious misrepresentations to the public mind. In 
 taking up, therefore, the thread of our history at the 
 time of the nomination ofCranmer to the archbishopric, 
 it will be necessary to point out as briefly as possible the 
 regularity of those stages of progress, both in point of 
 law and doctrine, through which the diocese has 
 reached its present state, and the unbroken con- 
 tinuity, both of orders and teaching, which we claim in 
 behalf of our Church. Our Reformation rests upon 
 the great principle which our Church, even during the 
 Roman usurpation, claimed and exercised, that every 
 national Church, as it has a right to call a provincial 
 synod (from which the African Church admitted no 
 appeal)^ and to lay down therein definitions of doc- 
 trine and rules of discipline and reformation (as the 
 same African Church did at Milevis and Carthage), 
 
 ^ See the notes of Justellus on the African canons — (Cod. 
 Cann. Eccl. African, not. p. 35). 
 
 S 
 
254 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 has no necessity to apply to any external and foreign 
 authority either to authorize the convocation of such 
 an assembly or to confirm its decrees when established. 
 In virtue of this right, inherent in every national 
 Church, and necessary to its very existence, the Church 
 of Poland, notwithstanding the reclamations of Pope 
 Paul IV.,1 and the fact that the Council of Trent 
 had then been already summoned, convoked under 
 the presidency of its primate, Nicholas Dziergowski, 
 archbishop of Gniezno, a national synod, in which it 
 put forth a body of doctrine and discipline as large as 
 the Tridentine decrees themselves, and even fuller in 
 its definitions and statements. This is called the 
 Confession of Catholic Faith, " made by the Fathers 
 in the Provincial Council of Piotrkov, in May, 1551," 
 and was published at Posen in 1557 (while the 
 Council of Trent was yet sitting) under the Royal 
 authority. Exactly the same course was taken by 
 Warham in England, though the results of the deli- 
 berations of the one council were so different from 
 those of the other. Dziergowski and his colleagues 
 elaborated a system of doctrine resembling, though 
 by no means identical with, that afterwards mani- 
 pulated at Trent, while the English synod, first under 
 Warham (whose only act was to relieve it of its Papal 
 restraints) and then under Cranmer, who had resumed 
 under the Royal sanction the title of Metropolitan, 
 promulgated those articles and canons which form the 
 basis of the teaching and discipline of the Anglican 
 
 ^ See his dissuasive letter addressed to the Archbishop of 
 Gniezno, given by Le Plat, Monumenta Concil. Trident." torn, 
 iv. p. 567. 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 
 
 ^55 
 
 Church. The words of the Archbishop of Gniezno 
 might well have been those of Cranmer himself: — 
 Since many sought our offices as bishops in this 
 matter, and held that we were not free from blame in 
 not having prescribed a certain form of teaching to the 
 clergy in which they might rest, . . lest we should seem 
 to any to be unwilling to provide for the salvation of 
 our flock, we have called together a synod hereupon, in 
 which, when we had deliberated on laying down our re- 
 ligious views de constituenda religione") every one 
 agreed that certain articles should be drawn up on 
 which all the bishops should severally give their opinion, 
 the obligation of an oath being added that no one should 
 be permitted to teach otherwise. These words are 
 in his opening address to Sigismund, the then king, in 
 which, strangely enough, there is not even an allusion 
 to the pope. The idea of the Papacy, which is con- 
 veyed in this confession, is of a very limited character. 
 The pope is described to be of the same honour and 
 dignity as the humblest bishop, though he has the 
 plenitudo potestatis^ while they have only the pars 
 sollicitudinis. His appellate jurisdiction is only de- 
 fended on the ground that he has assessors from 
 among the most learned men everywhere, by whose 
 advice he determines the more weighty causes. 
 Therefore, " no one ought to think that it is only Paul 
 or Julius that gives judgment in such cases. The 
 infallibihty would seem therefore to rest rather in the 
 counsellors than in the counselled, or simply to be re- 
 
 ^ I quote from the rare folio edition published at Posen (Joanne 
 Patruo Bibliopola Posnaniensi imprimi curante) A.d. 1557. 
 S 2 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 solved into the notion of irreformability, on the ground 
 of the Court of Rome being an ultimate tribunal. To 
 this, Bossuet, in his Defence of the Declaration of 
 the Gallican Clergy," does in fact reduce it. 
 
 But to return to our immediate subject, we may 
 observe that while our synod, at least in regard to 
 doctrine, was free, and fairly represented the English 
 Church, the Council of Trent was a body so entirely 
 influenced by the pope as to be unable even to 
 initiate a subject, the legates insisting on this as their 
 exclusive right — while it was packed with Italian 
 bishops, and bishops in partibus, who outnumbered 
 by an overwhelming majority the bishops of every 
 other country in Europe. Many of them, moreover, 
 were so poor that the pope had to find their daily 
 bread, while none of the representatives of the Pro- 
 testant states were even allowed to speak or to appear, 
 except to retract their alleged heresies. But there 
 was even a more serious obstacle than these, 
 great as they were, to the reception of the decrees of 
 Trent in England. Every one of the ancient doc- 
 trines of the English Church was repudiated, through 
 the fatal influence of the Jesuit Lainez and his fol- 
 lowers in that assembly. The doctrine of Justifica- 
 tion by Faith, maintained by all the great Roman 
 divines, including Cardinals Cajetan, Contarini, and 
 Pole, and that eminent bishop, Pflug, with the divines 
 of Cologne, was absolutely condemned at Trent, and 
 this unexpected result led to the departure of Pole 
 from the council, to which he never returned. The 
 doctrines of grace, which from the time of Archbishop 
 Bradwardine's great treatise had been one of the 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 
 
 distinctive features of the teaching of the Church of 
 England, were reduced at Trent to a semi-Pelagianism, 
 in which it is hard to recognise a single relic of the 
 Augustinian teaching. If, therefore, the Church of 
 England arrived at different conclusions from the 
 Italian bishops on these subjects, it must be remem- 
 bered that her teaching from the days of Lanfranc had 
 been essentially different from theirs, and that she had 
 never learned that Jesuit casuistry which is repre- 
 sented in the conflicting teachings of the chapters and 
 canons of Trent. We may here observe, in vindica- 
 tion of our own position, that the discrepancies of 
 teaching in the decrees of the Council of Trent arise 
 not only from the studied endeavour to avoid giving 
 offence to the conflicting orders of the Roman Church 
 and to the chief leaders of the council, but also from 
 the fact, too generally overlooked, that there were 
 properly two distinct councils of Trent, and that very 
 few of those who took part in the former one lived to 
 take their place in the latter. The protest of the 
 orators of the King of France to the council in 1563 
 affirms that their sovereign sent orators ^'to the First 
 Council of Trent and then to this second one^^ and 
 constantly we find the first and second council con- 
 trasted (Le Plat, tom. vi. p. 233). The development 
 of doctrine by the Jesuits between the two councils 
 produced what was virtually a new religion, and 
 hardened into a dogmatic form the floating opinions 
 of the innovating divines of the age. The almost 
 entire ignorance of Greek which pervaded the council, 
 and the absolute ignorance of Hebrew which pre- 
 vailed in it, must disqualify it in the eyes of all who 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 do not actually believe in its inspiration for the great 
 work of doctrinal definition on which it entered. 
 Cardinal Pole, almost the only representative in it of 
 the English Church, left in disgust, after a doctrine 
 of Justification so opposed to that of the ancient 
 Church of his country, was propounded ; and even had 
 he remained, the representatives of all the other 
 Churches in the world might have said of the Italian 
 bishops, " What are we among so many ?" — the latter 
 numbering 187 against the 81 which represented the 
 rest of Europe, only one Englishman taking part in 
 this truly Italian council. At all events the English 
 Church was represented in the Convocation of 1562, 
 and by her own lawfully-consecrated bishops, having 
 both order and jurisdiction. 
 
 It would lead us far indeed from our subject were 
 we to enter upon the mazes of the controversy on 
 what is called " Apostolic succession," which by an 
 imprudent afterthought the Roman Church has so 
 pertinaciously denied to our episcopate. This has 
 been exhaustively treated by abler hands, and we 
 may be contented to say of it what the Polish 
 orator said at Trent, — " It does not become our 
 dignity in these calamitous times to waste our 
 time in interminable genealogies. The pro- 
 gress of the great work of the Reformation was 
 much slower and more gradual than is generally 
 supposed. The office of the mass remained almost 
 unchanged in the earlier directions of Edward, the 
 communion of the people being merely substituted 
 for the reception by the clergy alone. The small and 
 ^ Le Plat, torn. v. p. 577. 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 
 
 slender chalices which gave so much scope to the 
 skill of mediaeval artificers then gave place to the 
 large and rude cups of a more debased workmanship.^ 
 The vestments and other goods of the churches in 
 Kent were, until 1552, carefully preserved, and pro- 
 bably many of them were still used on festival days. 
 They are minutely described in the return of the 
 commissioners who were appointed to take account 
 of them ; and their report has been reproduced in 
 several of the later volumes of the Kent Archaeological 
 Society. It is difficult to believe that some at least 
 of these costly vestments were not included in the 
 much-disputed rubric which falls back on the practice 
 of the second year of Edward VI. The course of 
 the Reformation in Kent cannot perhaps be better 
 traced than by taking up as a clue to it the history of 
 its progress in a single parish in which its record has 
 been preserved. We are fortunate in possessing the 
 churchwardens' accounts of many parishes both in 
 East and West Kent, some taking us beyond the Re- 
 formation period, while others begin about the time 
 when the great change was approaching. The records 
 of the Church of Hawkhurst belong to the latter class, 
 and give us so clear a view of the transition from the 
 
 ^ In the work by Mr. Wilfrid Cripps, recently published, on 
 Silver Plate, the most learned manual on the subject in the 
 language, this change is fully illustrated. The rude and ancient 
 cups at Lyminge and St. Laurence Jewry, in London, were 
 among the earliest chalices of the reformed rite which came 
 under his observation. From the visitation book of Archbishop 
 Parker, in 1562, it appears that the Lyminge chalice was 
 bought in that year, and it is, therefore, one of the earliest 
 instances of a cup for the communion of the laity. 
 
26o 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 usages of the primacy of Warham and those of 
 Cranmer that we cannot but accept them as a kind 
 of typical example from which the change in the 
 diocese itself may be fairly estimated. In 1548-49, 
 the sale of various articles of church furniture, ren- 
 dered useless under the new doctrines which had now 
 spread so generally, takes place, including a holy- 
 water stoup, an old sepulchre frame, a Mary Mau- 
 delen tabernacle," St. Laurence's tabernacle (the 
 patron of the church), the high altar frame and altar 
 stones, two altar tables, and (which is in some sense 
 more to be deplored) a quantity of glass — painted 
 glass without doubt — besides a vast number of other 
 items connected with the earlier form of worship. 
 
 The late lamented secretary of our Archaeological 
 Society observes hereupon:^ — "These entries of 
 1548 are interesting as showing the activity with 
 which the work of the Reformation proceeded imme- 
 diately on the accession of Edward VI. Cranmer 
 had commenced it in November, 1547, by his great 
 speech in convocation, exhorting the clergy to 'throw 
 out all the popish trash which was not yet cast out' 
 In February came the letter of the council to Cran- 
 mer, ordering that all images should be taken down, 
 and commanding him to look to it in his own dio- 
 cese, and to give injunctions to the bishops for theirs. 
 Accordingly, in his visitation of that summer, he in- 
 quires whether his clergy have * removed and de- 
 stroyed all images, shrines, and monuments of feigned 
 miracles, idolatry, and superstition,' and in these 
 
 Mr. T. Godfrey-Faussett, *'Hawkhurst Notes," by W. J. 
 Lightfoot — Arch. Cant." vol. v. p. 55, n; 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 
 
 261 
 
 accounts we find the result. The items of sale of 
 church goods begin immediately after an entry dated 
 May 20. The holy-water stoup is first disposed of, 
 tabernacles of saints — even of the patron, St. Lau- 
 rence — albs, altars, and sanctus-bells, carved wood, 
 brass and iron-work, stained glass, wax-candles, and 
 other not less suggestive property follow in quick suc- 
 cession. From the third item in the expenses of this 
 I year we may suppose an auction of some of the ' im- 
 ' plements ' to have taken place. The visitation itself 
 is mentioned, and immediately follows the destruc- 
 tion of St. Laurence's tabernacle, as if the vicar had 
 returned, smarting from the archbishop's rebuke, and 
 had lost no time in obedience. Then follows a large 
 expense in whitewashing, to hide the paintings with 
 which we may suppose the interior walls to have been 
 covered, and in glass, doubtless a very poor substitute 
 for the departed glories of mediaeval art." 
 
 The articles of visitation of Cranmer for the dio- 
 cese of Canterbury, which are here referred to, are 
 of the most searching and inquisitorial character, but 
 are too well and generally known to need any full 
 description of them here.^ The completeness of the 
 ' spiritual change, or rather revolution, which they in- 
 dicate must excite wonder in every mind, that it was 
 accomplished with so little displacement of persons 
 or violent disturbance of the feelings and habits of 
 the rural population. Such a convulsion, at a time 
 when the dogmatic systems on either side of this 
 great controversy had been fully developed, and in a 
 
 * They are given in Bishop Sparrow's collection and in all other 
 similar republications of the articles and canons of the Church. 
 
262 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 manner stereotyped, would have been impossible. 
 But at this period the rural, and in great measure the 
 urban population, knew nothing of doctrine but the 
 Apostles' Creed ; of Christian practice, but the Ten 
 Comniandments ; and of the Christian liturgy, but the 
 Lord's Prayer, and the short courses of devotion then 
 in use. Preaching, except on very rare occasions, 
 was unknown, and when practised was limited to 
 moral duties, and even in Cranmer's visitation was 
 only obligatory four times in the year. And as by 
 the same articles the pope's supremacy and the king's 
 were to be handled, the one negatively and the other 
 positively, the same number of times yearly, there 
 could have been little opportunity to enter upon doc- 
 trinal subjects in the vast majority of the parishes of 
 the diocese. It was quite a different question in the 
 conflict of the Church with Puritanism in later days. 
 In this case, doctrine was the great and only test, 
 and the change of parties produced an entire dis- 
 placement of the principal advocates on either side. 
 The great difficulty of the earlier period arose out of 
 the destruction of the furniture and ornaments of the 
 churches, so historical in their character, and so natur- 
 ally endeared to the people by the associations with 
 which they were bound up. This was a reckless act of 
 spoliation, which has no parallel in Christian history. 
 
 Every subsequent age has mourned over this whole- 
 sale destruction of all the treasures of art and works 
 of mediaeval piety, which the iconoclastic zeal of the 
 period assumed to be incompatible with the revived doc- 
 trines of the primitive Fathers, and the severer school 
 of teaching which was now imposed upon the Church. 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 263 
 
 The words of the psahii come upon us with all 
 then* force, " He that hewed timber afore out of the 
 thick trees was known to bring it to an excellent 
 work ; but now they break down all the carved work 
 thereof with axes and hammers." Yet, if we could 
 realize the spiritual dangers and necessities of the 
 rural population of that darker day, as well as we can 
 measure the Vandalism and immoderate zeal of their 
 guides, we might discover some ^'extenuating cir- 
 cumstances'' in this process of ruinous destruction, 
 which has left us only the outer shell of the ancient 
 worship, and (until the recent revival of ecclesiastical 
 taste) has fitted up our parish churches with the 
 modest furniture of a cottage. The completeness of 
 the destruction of the vestments and instruments of 
 the Roman service on the accession of Mary is illus- 
 trated by the directions of Cardinal Pole, in his " Re- 
 formation of the English Church,^' in which, among 
 his visitation questions, is this suggestive inquiry, 
 " Whether there is, in every parish church at least, 
 one clergyman serving at the mass in a clean and 
 decent surplice ?" When we read how vast a num- 
 ber of the ancient vestments were still in existence in 
 1552, this visitation question, only four years after, 
 seems suggestive of a sad destruction. ^ 
 
 As a necessary preliminary to these important 
 changes in the forms and requisites of public worship, 
 the monasteries and convents, out of which so much 
 of the ritual magnificence of the Roman Church and 
 its multiplied festivals arose, were dissolved and de- 
 
 1 Le Plat, *'Mon. C. T.'^ torn. iv. p. 597. 
 
264 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 stroyed, a work of demolition which was far more 
 disastrous to the archaeology of the county than any 
 which has ever fallen upon it in its long history. In 
 this place, therefore, we may well give a passing view 
 of the monasteries, greater or lesser, which fell under 
 this summary process, not only of " disestablishment 
 and disendowment," but of ruinous and final destruc- 
 tion. The first step in this act of confiscation was 
 the suppression of all religious houses which were 
 under the clear annual value of two hundred pounds. 
 By this first act fell the Abbey of West Langdon, the 
 Priories of Folkestone, Dover, Bilsington, St. Gre- 
 gory's in Canterbury, St. Radigund's, Cumbwell, Hor- 
 ton, Hedcorne, Mottenden, Aylesford, Newenden, 
 and Sandwich, with several lesser foundations in Can- 
 terbury, and the Nunnery of Minster in Sheppey. Soon 
 after the greater foundations falling under the dis- 
 pleasure of the king, for the part they were supposed 
 to have taken in fomenting the disturbances which so 
 naturally followed an act which combined sacrilege 
 with robbery, were successively surrendered to the 
 Crown, under that irresistible pressure which was 
 afterwards applied to the archbishop himself in a 
 more disguised form. In this list were the great 
 foundations of Christ Church and St. Augustine's, the 
 Priory of Faversham, the Abbey of Boxley, and the 
 Nunneries of Mailing and St. Sepulchre's in Canter- 
 bury. Then followed Dartford Nunnery and Leeds 
 Priory, the commanderies of St. John of Jerusalem 
 (or Knights Plospitallers), at West Peckham and 
 Swingfield, and after these all colleges, chantries, free 
 chapels, hospitals, and guilds which had not been 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 
 
 265 
 
 hitherto surrendered. These included Eastb ridge, 
 Maynard's, and Northgate Hospitals in Canterbury, 
 Harbledown, Hythe, St. Bartholomew's Sandwich, 
 St. Laurence, and St. Margaret's in Canterbury, 
 founded for poor priests, St. Bartholomew's and the 
 Maison Dieu in Dover, the Hospitals of Thanington, 
 Sevenoke, Bredgar, Maidstone, Wingham, Cobham, 
 and Wye. The suppressed chantries and free chapels 
 were as follows : — 
 
 Ash (by Sandwich). 
 
 Bapchild. 
 
 Chidingstone. 
 
 Cranbrook. 
 
 Herne. 
 
 Horton Kirby. 
 Maidstone. 
 East Mailing. 
 Orpington. 
 
 Penshurst. 
 Pepenbury. 
 Petham (Deepdene 
 
 Chantry). 
 Reculver. 
 
 Sandwich (St. Peter's). 
 Sevenoke. 
 Sittingbourne. 
 Teynham. 
 
 The sites of these venerable buildings, and the lands 
 attached to them, were for the most part granted to the 
 numerous favourites of the Crown, but they passed 
 more rapidly into other hands in the case of the Kentish 
 monasteries than those of the great foundations in 
 other counties. The monastery of Christ Church was, 
 however, dealt with in a manner worthy of its early 
 history, being transformed from a conventual building 
 into the cathedral of the metropolitical see, which 
 thus became one of those cathedrals designated of the 
 
 new foundation." Of this great centre of the religious 
 life of England, and scene of some of the most re- 
 markable events of her history, nothing remains but 
 
266 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 the fabric of the cathedral itself and a few suggestive 
 and picturesque ruins of the surrounding monastic 
 buildings. Out of these scarcely-connected frag- 
 ments, by the aid of documentary evidences, Pro- 
 fessor Willis has constructed a description of the 
 entire monastery, with scarcely less skill than that of 
 Professor Owen, who, out of a few bones, was able 
 to construct in theory a perfect skeleton of the Moa, 
 which was verified at last by the recovery of every 
 missing link in the marvellous structure. It is im- 
 possible in this place, without transgressing our ap- 
 pointed limits, to give even a sketch of this remark- 
 able restoration on paper of the venerable monastery 
 of Christ Church, which is given in the " Archseologia 
 Cantiana," with those illustrations so necessary to its 
 full apprehension.^ We will pass on, therefore, to 
 what might be termed the second act of this great 
 confiscation, the transfer of the most ancient and 
 valuable of the estates of the archbishopric, under 
 the specious pretext of an exchange with the king, in 
 order to add yet more of the plunder of the Church to 
 that new and most unconstitutional treasury, "the court 
 for the augmentation of the revenues of the Crown." 
 In the thirty-first year of Henry VIII. (1539-40), Arch- 
 bishop Cranmer, by a single act of surrender, and in 
 one most comprehensive deed, transferred to the 
 king, under the specious pretence of an exchange for 
 other of the confiscated lands of the Church, four of 
 
 ^ The Architectural History of the Conventual Buildings 
 of the Monastery of Christ Church, in Canterbury," "Arch. 
 Cant." vol. vii. pp. 1-206. 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 267 
 
 his oldest and largest manors and lordships, viz., 
 Aldington, Lyminge, Saltwood, and Croydon, with 
 all their dependencies in the Marsh and in the Weald 
 of Kent. Never was a more flagrant robbery con- 
 cealed with a more transparent misrepresentation. 
 The agents of the king produced a comparative valu- 
 ation of the 'properties to be " exchanged," without 
 giving the archbishop the benefit of a valuer on the 
 part of the Church, and thus these great estates 
 passed away for ever from the possession of the see of 
 Canterbury. Aldington was kept in the king's hands 
 for a considerable period, and it is said that he de- 
 signed to retain it as a royal park ; a plan, however, 
 which was never carried out. Lyminge, after having 
 been held for some years, was granted to the Master 
 of the Jewels, Sir Anthony Aucher, for a fixed sum 
 and an annual payment. Saltwood was granted to 
 Cromwell, earl of Essex, reverting to the Crown on 
 his attainder ; and other surrendered possessions of 
 the see passed into the hands of other equally favoured 
 courtierSj a transfer which tended greatly to establish 
 the influence of the Reformation in East Kent, as the 
 new proprietors of these great estates were even more 
 devoted to the Crown than the archbishop himself, 
 and were more zealous advocates of its supremacy. 
 It is to be regretted, however, that by this severance 
 of the most ancient ties of property which had con- 
 nected the primates with the diocese, the evils of 
 episcopal non-residence were fatally increased ; and 
 when even the palace of Canterbury itself was surren- 
 dered, almost the last link which connected the arch- 
 bishop with his diocese was broken, and that soli- 
 
268 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 tudo ecclesiaricm which Cardinal Pole and his 
 colleagues deplored in their report on the state of 
 the Church to Pope Paul III., as existing in Italy, 
 through the non-residence of the bishops, was wit- 
 nessed for the first time in the Church of England. 
 
 The life of Cranmer was too constantly entangled 
 in the complicated political events of* the age to 
 enable him to fulfil his duties as a diocesan in the 
 manner of his predecessors in the see. He lived for 
 the most part in a comparatively distant scene, 
 Lambeth and Croydon having been his chief resi- 
 dences, and his visits to Canterbury itself seem to 
 have been few and far between. The close connec- 
 tion between the archbishops, as abbots, and Christ 
 Church had now ceased, and the tie between the 
 primate and the new prebendaries, who had super- 
 seded rather than succeeded the prior and his monks, 
 was slender and feeble. Christ Church was now a 
 kind of Crown foundation, having very little connec- 
 tion with the life or duties of the primates. The 
 independence of the new dean and chapter of the 
 archbishops contrasted strangely with the relations 
 which had subsisted between the monastery and its 
 ancient heads, and the surrender of the palace in 
 Canterbury and its entire secularization was an 
 ominous token of the spiritual severance of the 
 cathedral and the primacy. The public life of 
 Cranmer as it affected the diocese rather indirectly 
 and generally, than immediately and in connection 
 with its local history, cannot well be dwelt upon in a 
 work of such limited scope as the present. His 
 sentence, however, against the unfortunate Joane 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 269 
 
 Boucher (or Bocher), commonly known as the Maid 
 of Kent, who had advanced erroneous doctrines in 
 regard to the humanity of our Lord, and its cruel 
 execution, has left a stain upon his memory which is 
 all the deeper from its having been carried out in the 
 reign of the young and gentle Edward VI., who 
 pleaded so touchingly against it, and while Cranmer 
 was in a position of power all but supreme. This 
 mournful process and the documents which embody 
 it exist yet in the register of the archbishop, and 
 must have led both the clergy and laity of the diocese 
 to look upon the similar fate which afterwards fell 
 upon himself with but little sympathy. It seemed, 
 indeed, a kind of Nemesis that the pardon he received 
 on the ground of his treason made the very charge 
 he had brought against the unfortunate Joane 
 Boucher to fall back upon his own head. He had 
 rekindled the fires of persecution in a day when a 
 single breath might have extinguished them, and 
 could hardly wonder that they blazed with new fury 
 under the reign of a reactionary queen. The connec- 
 tion of the primate with the diocese w^as somewhat 
 strengthened by the appointment of his brother to the 
 Archdeaconry of Canterbury, whom he loaded with 
 preferments with a lavishness not unworthy of those 
 of his predecessors most noted for their nepotism. 
 Edmund Cranmer in 1534, was collated to the arch- 
 deaconry and the provostship of Wingham, and had 
 several other rich benefices conferred upon him by 
 his brother soon after. In 1549 he was made a pre- 
 bendary of Christ Church, and promoted to the 
 rectories of Cliffe and Ickham in the diocese — all 
 
 T 
 
270 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 which offices he held until the year 1554, in which, on 
 the accession of Mary, he was deprived of all his pre- 
 ferments as being a married priest, and compelled to 
 fly to Germany in order to save his life. The process 
 against him, which is fully recorded in the registers 
 of the see, gives an interesting view of the course 
 adopted against the married clergy. He had plainly 
 confessed his marriage, and maintained its lawfulness^ 
 alleging that he could never forsake his wife with a 
 clear conscience. Upon this confession sentence of 
 deprivation and of separation from his wife was 
 pronounced upon him. Against such a sentence 
 there was, of course, no appeal at such a time as 
 this. 
 
 Scarcely were the death of Edward VI. and the acces- 
 sion of Mary known in Rome than Julius III. hastened 
 to declare Pole his legate. The letter of the pope, 
 after recounting the religious and political changes 
 which this early loss of the youthful king had brought 
 about, enumerates the motives which induced him to 
 commit to Pole, and to none other, a legatine office 
 of so great difficulty — the " love of his native soil 
 and its citizens," the " knowledge of their language, 
 manners, and feelings,^' the royal blood from which 
 he derived his descent, and the authority and favour 
 he acquired thereby," his singular prudence and 
 eloquence," and, ^^what was chief of all, his burning 
 love of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, and love 
 and devotion to His holy Catholic Church." The 
 choice was indeed in all respects a wise one, and yet 
 the jealousy of the court of Rome led it in the ensu- 
 ing pontificate to attempt to supersede the man whom/ 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 
 
 27T 
 
 it had so lately declared to be unique and perfect, 
 " Non sane primus sed solus omnium. 
 
 The terrible death of Cranmer,and the great reaction 
 which took place in the country and in the diocese 
 when the work of the Reformation, so far advanced 
 during the reign of Edward, was so suddenly checked, 
 must have been specially felt in Kent. Closely con- 
 nected as the county was in all its parts with the 
 leading nobility of the period of the Reformation, the 
 trusted friends of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. who 
 had succeeded to the vast estates of the primacy, we 
 cannot wonder that it formed the centre of the 
 rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyatt, and that many of its 
 influential inhabitants took part in that abortive pro- 
 ject.^ The suppression of Wyatfs rebellion, which 
 gave new firmness to the authority of Mary, was 
 naturally succeeded by a strong reactionary move- 
 ment in the direction of Roman rites and usages. 
 W e find accordingly in the Hawkhurst records already 
 cited, the purchase of two albs, an amice, a cope, a 
 stole, baldrics and corporalia, a mass-book, a pro- 
 cessional, and two " portasses,'^^ a cross and altar, 
 and a " holy-water stick." " We may date these items,'' 
 observes Mr. Faussett;^ " early in the spring of 1554, 
 
 ^ Julii III. Ep. ad Reg. Pol. in Ep. Sadsleti — Append., torn. 
 V. p. 287. 
 
 2 As Sir William Cromer, of Tunstall, Sir George Harper, 
 of Sutton Valence, Sir Henry Isley, the Knyvets, the Culpepers, 
 the Rudstons, and many others. (See Arch. Cant." vol. iii. 
 pp. 179-183.) 
 
 ^ Breviaries. 
 
 ^ Arch. Cant." vol. v. p. 69, n. 
 
 T 2 
 
272 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 when Wyatt's attempt being suppressed and Mary 
 firm on the throne, the act repealing King Edward's 
 laws was passed and the old service restored. In 
 Kent at least, Wyatt's own Kent, we may well suppose 
 that there would be no unnecessary alacrity for the 
 change." The terrible cruelties that followed this 
 fatal and ill-advised movement were more unfortu- 
 nate to the queen than even to the sufferers, for 
 they awakened a feeling of reaction towards the 
 doctrines and the work of the Reformation that might 
 have gradually languished had severity at least been 
 tempered with mercy. Executions took place daily. 
 Never in its long and eventful history had London 
 witnessed such a scene as now ensued. Fifteen 
 gibbets with eighty men dangling from them filled 
 its streets with horror. ' At all crossways and at all 
 thoroughfares,' said Noailles, the French ambassador, 
 ' the eye was met with the hideous spectacle of 
 hanging men.' So did the queen pursue her 
 vengeance until even the lords, poor though they 
 were in number and spirit when compared with that 
 proud body who had awed the Plantagenets, plucked 
 up courage to remonstrate. For Elizabeth, on that 
 day, and it was Palm Sunday, had been committed 
 to the Tower, and gloomy apprehensions existed as to 
 her probable fate. Lord Paget was their messenger. 
 * He found Mary in her oratory after vespers ; he 
 told her that the season might remind a sovereign of 
 other duties besides revenge, already too much blood 
 had been shed ; the noble house of Suffolk was all 
 but destroyed ; and he said distinctly that if she 
 attempted any more executions he and his friends 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 
 
 would interfere ; the hideous scenes had lasted too 
 long, and as an earnest of a return to mercy, he de- 
 manded the pardon of six gentlemen. Mary, as she 
 lamented afterwards to Renard, was unprepared. 
 She was pressed in terms which showed that those 
 who made the request did not intend to be refused, 
 and she consented. In the course of the week the 
 council extorted from her the pardon of Northampton, 
 Cobham, and one of his sons, with five others. . . . 
 It was at the close of the year 1555 that the recon- 
 ciliation with Rome took place ; and when Cardinal 
 Pole made his progress through Kent on his way to 
 London, Lord Cobham received him on November 
 23rd at his castle of Cowling."^ The cardinal did 
 not display the insignia of his legatine power till he 
 reached Gravesend on the following day. If it were 
 even possible (and it is devoutly to be hoped that 
 under the present altered circumstances of the Papacy 
 it never may be) to reconcile our Church with Rome, 
 the precedent of Cardinal Pole's primacy and the 
 spirit in which his work was conducted might well 
 claim the attention and invite the imitation of the 
 promoters of this often-attempted reunion. The 
 early life of Pole had been spent among the greatest 
 and noblest of those whose lives and writings would 
 be an ornament to the purest ages of our faith, and 
 would do no discredit to the more enlightened learn- 
 ing of a later day. Associated with Sadolet, Con- 
 
 ^ I am here indebted to the interesting paper in the Arch. 
 Cantiana," by Mr. J. G. Waller, on "the Lords of Cobham, 
 their monuments and the church " (vol. xii. p. 123). The in- 
 cluded quotation is from Froude's History. 
 
274 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 tarini, ^gidius of Viterbo, and many of the best and 
 greatest ecclesiastics of the day, he had joined in that 
 celebrated report to Paul III. on the abuses of the 
 Church, which had it been acted upon might have 
 retained vast numbers in the communion of Rome. 
 A zealous advocate of the doctrine ^f justification by 
 faith in the Council of Trent, his influence with that 
 of Contarini (whose writings alone represented him 
 in the council) and of many others went far to carry 
 the day against the Jesuits, who repudiated the teach- 
 ing of St. Bernard, on the " Imputed Righteousness 
 of Christ," and confounded justification with sanctifi- 
 cation, founding upon the mistranslated verse of the 
 Apocalypse, " He that is righteous, let him be 
 righteous still," or, as the Vulgate has it, " Qui jasti- 
 ficetur, justificetur adhuc^^ an inherent and increasing 
 justification, unknown to the ancients from the days 
 of Origen downwards. Against this doctrine both 
 Pole and Contarini had contended, one in the council 
 itself, the other in his famous " Letter on Justification " 
 read in the council, but their reclamations were in 
 vain. Even Cardinal Seripandi warned the bishops 
 at Trent to beware, lest in condemning Luther, they 
 did not condemn their own party, especially Con- 
 tarini and ^gidius of Viterbo, both cardinals, with 
 Pighius and a host of great divines. As soon as it 
 was clear that the council intended to set aside the 
 received views on the "imputed righteousness of 
 Christ," the "certitude of grace," and the doctrine of 
 justification by faith, this ominous announcement 
 appears in the records of the council, — " On the 
 31st of October, Cardinal Pole, the third president of 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 
 
 the council, on account of ill-health, departed from 
 his legation with the consent of the pope."^ On all 
 these subjects the council was most bitterly divided. 
 Twenty-one to fourteen were for the doctrine of the 
 certainty of grace," while on the doctrine of justifi- 
 cation we are told by an eye-witness, Jacobus de 
 Jacomellis, bishop of Belcastro, that " in full congre- 
 gation " (in pleno senatu) " there were found those 
 who contended for the absolute dependence upon 
 the righteousness of Christ as imputed to ourselves, 
 and an absolute renunciation of all claim to salvation 
 on the ground of the merit of works," as though they 
 were fighting "pro aris et focis."^ It is easy to see 
 how the 187 bribed Italian bishops turned the 
 scale against the most zealous and eminent represen- 
 tatives of other Churches. It is not too much to say 
 
 * Le Plat. torn. iii. p. 475. 
 
 '-^ The work of Giacomelli, "De Justitia Christi Imputata," 
 has never been published. A MS. copy on vellum, written 
 in the council and dedicated to Cardinal Farnese, is in the 
 possession of the writer. Its introduction is suggestive and 
 important : Superioribus diebus cum de impii justificatione 
 in Sancta hac Tridentina synodo ageretur . . . fuere quidam 
 . . . eruditi viri meo judicio et diserti, qui summa nobis con- 
 tentione summaque eloquentia persuadere conati sunt, opera 
 nostra quamlibet in gratia patrata quamlibet a charitate eman- 
 antia longe abesse ab eo ut sufficiant et quse satisfaciant legi 
 Dei et quae gloriam mereantur, nisi ad justitiam Christi ad 
 misericordiam Patris novo quodam modo nescio unde eruto 
 confugiamus. Manca enim ipsa nostra opera esse et debilia 
 quamvis a divina gratia fulciantur. Ipsis propterea non 
 fidendum, a Christi mentis, a sola justitia Christi opem et 
 auxilium implorandum. Appellabantque hanc justitiam, jus- 
 titiam imputatam." 
 
276 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 . that the doctrmal views of Cardinal Pole on this 
 vital point were in as close resemblance to those of 
 our Article on Justification as they were in absolute 
 dissimilarity to those of the Council of Trent, which 
 he refused to ratify by his presence. His views 
 regarding the general doctrines of the Church and 
 the restoration of its ancient discipline are fully con- 
 veyed to us by his scheme for the " Reformation of 
 the Church," which is well known to every student of 
 ecclesiastical history. 
 
 Here, it is notable, he makes the Council of 
 Florence, and not that of Trent, whose first portion 
 was now promulged, the groundwork of his doctrinal 
 system, and recognises the Florentine Council as the 
 eighth General Council ; thus ignoring all the inter- 
 mediate councils of the West which claim oecumenicity, 
 including the Lateran Councils, and that of Lyons, 
 which introduced so many innovations into the 
 Church. 
 
 ■ The establishment of cathedral schools and semi- 
 naries of learning is an important feature of his 
 projected reformation, and the directions he gives in 
 regard to this subject are as judicious as they are 
 minute. It may, indeed, be said that this first w^ork 
 of the cardinal on his entrance upon the primacy is 
 a monument of wisdom, which shows that he, if any 
 ever could be, was the rightly-chosen man for bringing 
 about what is termed the "reconciliation" of England 
 — and his complete failure must render the problem 
 for ever an increasingly difficult, if not an actually 
 insoluble one. To all these qualifications for his 
 arduous task must be added those of a simplicity of 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 277 
 
 life and a sanctity of character but rarely seen in 
 these days of laxity of manners and indifference to all 
 but worldly gain and selfish aggrandizement. The 
 picture of the private life and character of the car- 
 dinal, as seen in his writings and letters, and in those 
 of his most intimate friends, is one of singular 
 beauty. He had passed through strange vicissitudes 
 and heartrending trials. A touching letter of Cardinal 
 Sadolet describes the fortitude with which he bore 
 up against the dreadful afflictions which had fallen 
 upon his house, the murder of his venerable mother 
 — for murder it truly was — the almost extinction of 
 his family at the hands of one, who, as Sadolet writes, 
 can hardly be called a king, as the barbarity and 
 magnitude of his cruelties have scarcely left him the 
 name of a man." ''To hear from Pole,'' continues 
 his friend, " the bitter lot of his family, and know that 
 his noble house had been almost extinguished by the 
 cruelty of that barbarous tyrant, affected me so deeply 
 with the sense of its misery and cruelty, that unless I 
 had been soothed by the virtue and wisdom of him 
 upon whom all this injury was inflicted, I could not 
 have put any bounds to my grief. But he, who is of 
 such singular constancy and moderation under any- 
 thing that happens to him, ever submitting himself to 
 God, and ever ready to obey His will, spoke of all 
 his bitterest trials as though they had happened to a 
 stranger, and bravely bore up against his domestic 
 affliction, while he was most deeply moved at the 
 public injury which had been done to the Christian 
 name."^ 
 
 * Sadoleti, Epp. Rom. 1764, p. iii. Ep. 318. 
 
278 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 The connection of Pole with the diocese had been 
 made slender indeed through the surrender of those 
 great manors and estates to which Cranmer so fatally 
 submitted, and which he appears rather to have 
 encouraged than endeavoured to prevent. This 
 second great act of the plunder of the Church was 
 even more serious to its interest than the first, for 
 the loss of the monasteries was a lesser evil than the 
 crippling of those vast means which might have 
 extended the episcopate according to the manifest 
 design of the reformers, and prevented the strange 
 anomaly of the Church of the nineteenth century 
 possessing an episcopate fitted to it in the sixteenth, 
 — the one ever growing, while the other remained 
 unchanged and unchangeable. Pole had indeed too 
 large a work in the reconciliation of the whole king- 
 dom to what was now a new faith to enable him to 
 reconstruct the episcopate. But one point he de- 
 voted himself to with an energy worthy of its 
 importance, and this was the residence of the bishops 
 in their sees, upon which he has an important 
 chapter in his decrees of Church Reformation, and 
 which he so greatly promoted, as one of the com- 
 mission of cardinals under Paul III. j in whose 
 report the evils of episcopal non-residence are so 
 eloquently denounced. How far the effects of his 
 reformatory labours were felt in the diocese will be 
 best shown by the results of his visitation of it, which 
 we propose to examine hereafter. His efforts to re- 
 store the cathedrals to their proper place as semina- 
 ries of teaching and centres of theological and general 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 279 
 
 learning, were worthy of his close relations with those 
 Royal founders of schools and colleges whose example 
 he was so anxious to emulate. The few and touching 
 words which his friend, the younger Sadolet, wrote to 
 one who was almost his brother, Luigi Priuli, describe 
 a life which every age may well regard with admira- 
 tion, and a death which even his greatest opponents 
 might well have envied. 
 
 "Your letter of the 17th of April .... together 
 with the precious treasure of peace invoked for me 
 by that blessed soul on its departure from the world, 
 have so bound up my heart with sweet and bitter 
 tears and thought, renewing the grief with which on 
 the first news of his death we realized that great and 
 unspeakable loss, that I am forced to pray your 
 Holiness to excuse me if I write confusedly and 
 interruptedly. I had heard last summer the death 
 of this unequalled lord (quelP unico signore) at first 
 with different and varying accounts, which aggravated 
 my grief j although he was indeed ready for death, 
 since he died in company with his good and beloved 
 queen, before the new tumults of that kingdom, 
 quietly and honourably, and not without an evident 
 mystery of Divine Providence."^ 
 
 After dwelling on " his persecutions, and the manner 
 
 ^ It is curious to see this observation, so commonly made by 
 those of our own Church in regard to the deaths of the queen 
 and the cardinal on the same day, employed here by one of the 
 Roman obedience. In the eyes of the one party they were 
 taken away from the evil to come, in those of the other to make 
 way for good things to be again restored. 
 
28o 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 in which he had borne up against these earthly 
 injuries, sustaining the weakness of others with his 
 invincible constancy, regulated by true Christian 
 piety and charity," he adds, but both in Hfe and 
 death one sees clearly that that angelic spirit has 
 confuted and confounded everyone who wished to 
 be the adversary and calumniator of its irreprehen- 
 sible virtue ; that he has heaped upon the heads of 
 his enemies the burning coals of his charity for 
 their amendment, if they are indeed capable of it, 
 and for our example, as evidently appears from this 
 declaration of his last will and belief, so con- 
 formable to all the actions of his life. Pray to God 
 in my behalf, not indeed for his salvation and 
 heavenly glory (for in this he has no need of our 
 feeble prayers), but that I may become worthy of 
 that most honourable lot of being esteemed during 
 his life, and numbered at his death, among the dear 
 friends of that dear lord."^ 
 
 Letters like these, springing from the heart, and 
 written by the hand of one who had been among the 
 chosen friends of Pole and whose life was like his, 
 have a freshness and an eloquence which can never 
 fade, even under the withering detractions of the 
 most searching modern criticism. They tell us of an 
 inner life, which only the most intimate friendship 
 can know and estimate, and lead us to form a juster 
 judgment of the public life of those to whose secret 
 counsels they seem to introduce us. The death of 
 the queen and her favourite cousin, whom she so 
 
 ^ Pauli Sadoleti, Epp. (App. Epp. Sadoleti, p. 290.) 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 
 
 281 
 
 little resembled, occurring on the same day, the 
 stage on which the great reactionary drama was 
 opened with so much solemnity and magnificence 
 was cleared at once for new scenes and new actors. 
 The corpse of the cardinal, who had re-entered his 
 native land with all the triumphant accessories of a 
 conqueror, was consigned to its tomb in his own 
 cathedral, silently and almost secretly, and the brick 
 vaulting with its broken stucco, the only token of his 
 burial-place, stands in strange and suggestive contrast 
 to those of his royal kinsmen and ancestors in the 
 Trinity Chapel of the Cathedral. 
 
 The most magnificent tomb could hardly tell so 
 grand a history as this strange memorial, whose only 
 interpretation (now read no more) was the coat- 
 armour of the illustrious man who reposed beneath, 
 with its quarterings. 
 
 As this blazoning is now almost entirely obliter- 
 ated, it may not be uninteresting to the heraldic 
 reader to record it here : — 
 
 The coat of Pole was of eight quarterings — 
 
 I St. Quarterly, France (3 lys) and England ; over 
 all a label of three points. 
 
 2nd. Per pale; a saltire engrailed, for Pole. 
 
 3rd. A saltire and label of three points, for Neville. 
 
 4th. A fesse between six cross crosslets, for Beau- 
 champ. 
 
 5th. Chequy, a chevron ermine, for the old Earls 
 
 of Warwick. 
 6th. Three fusils in fesse, for Montacute. 
 7th. An eagle displayed, for Monthermer. 
 
282 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 8th. Quarterly : ist and 4th, three chevronels, for 
 Clare ; 2nd and 3rd, a fret ; over all, a 
 bendlet, for Spencer, 
 representing the blood that had been shed during 
 centuries of civil wars and religious persecutions : a 
 moral teaching too deep for words, yet fatally un- 
 learned in the century which followed, and which 
 opened the ancient warfare on another field. 
 
 Falling back upon the history and state of the 
 diocese during this period of reaction, we are natu- 
 rally directed to the only document which represents 
 it — the visitation of the diocese by the archbishop, 
 which he entered upon early in the year 1556. The 
 previous year had witnessed his solemn consecration 
 in the presence of the queen, on the day after the 
 dreadful death of his predecessor, and in the deep 
 gloom of horror which succeeded that revolting 
 spectacle. It is difficult to picture a volume more 
 singularly suggestive than that which contains the 
 visitation of his diocese by the cardinal, with a view 
 to the reconciliation of it to its ancient state of re- 
 union with the Roman see. Though carefully written, 
 and evidently the original copy, it has a bald and 
 fragmentary appearance, containing many blanks 
 which have never been filled up, and many inquiries 
 which seem to have been never satisfied. When we 
 compare it with the perfect pages of Warham's visita- 
 tion, where every one of the Coniperta et deteda are 
 most clearly exhibited, and the judicial investigations 
 arising out of them are fully developed, we see at 
 once that the ancient power of the primacy had 
 passed away, that the excommunications which gave 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 283- 
 
 SO terrible a sanction to Warham's injunctions, had 
 ceased to be effective ; for here the power of the 
 keys finds no mention whatever. Everything is 
 feeble and tentative, timid and faltering. The magic 
 influence of the undivided Church was at an end ; 
 and the apparent haste, and even slovenliness, of all 
 the proceedings remind us of the strange and touch- 
 ing features of the death of their author— of the 
 burial by night and in haste, of the hurried service — 
 of the mean and unfinished grave. And yet like 
 that grave which was only known by the grand 
 historic quarterings which filled the coat-armour 
 painted on the wall above it, the volume now before 
 us bears this proud title : — 
 
 Acta habita et facta in visitatione ordinaria reve- 
 rendissimi in xpo pris et dni, dni Reginaldi misera- 
 tione dia tituli Sancte Marie in Cosmedin, Sancte 
 Romane ecclesie pbri Cardinalis, Poli nuncupati, 
 Cantuar. Archiejoi. totius Angliae Primatis et Aplice 
 sedis legati nati^ necnon ad illustrissimos in xpo prin- 
 cipes Philippum et Mariam sanctissimi dni nri Papae 
 et ejusdem aplice sedis etiam de - latere legati, exer- 
 citum in et per civitatem et diocesiam Cantuarien/' 
 
 * The title of " legatus natus " was little more than honorary, 
 as was proved when Archbishop Chichely contended in vain for 
 precedence against Cardinal Beaufort. The letter of Pope 
 Eugenius IV, written from the Council of Florence to Chichely 
 tells him that a legate de latere denotes his belonging to the very 
 body of the Pope, and presents the most curious specimen of 
 the snubbing of Lambeth by the Vatican which is to be found 
 anywhere. (See Tamagna, ^' Originie prerogative dei Cardinal! 
 della S.R.E.") 
 
284 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 The ruin and desolation which the churches of Kent 
 presented at this period discloses itself in every page 
 of the Visitation. Altars, fonts, vestments, books, 
 not to speak of images and ornaments less necessary 
 even from a Roman point of view, had been dese- 
 crated and destroyed everywhere. In St. Mary Bred- 
 man three altars, with all their necessary furniture, 
 including books, the lamp for the Sacrament, and the 
 image of the crucifix, with Mary and John and that 
 of the patron of the church, are all wanting. The 
 two last works of art are found wanting everywhere, 
 and the destruction of crucifixes here indicated was 
 sometimes attended with acts of blasphemous irre- 
 verence. For in the Church of Buckland, near Dover, 
 one Thomas Hide destroyed and burnt the crucifix, 
 maliciously uttering these words on the said crucifix, 
 ' If it be God, let it rise and come out of the fire.'" 
 In many places, both in town and country, charges 
 are made against parishioners for refusing to come 
 to the Sacrament, or to be sprinkled with holy water, 
 to receive the sanctified bread, and to join in the 
 processions.'' A not unfrequent charge is that of 
 looking down on the ground at the elevation of the 
 host to avoid worshipping it ;^ one of these delin- 
 quents is accused of hiding himself behind a column 
 of the church with the same object.^ Contempt of 
 the Sacraments and ceremonies of the Church " is a 
 constant ground of accusation; and still more common 
 is the refusal and neglect to receive the Communion 
 
 . ^ As at St. John's, Thait^t (Margate), and at Wingham. 
 2 At Wingham. 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 285 
 
 on llie greater festivals. A priest in Thanet is charged 
 with not using a decent and becoming vestment 
 suited to the clerical order." At Birchington one 
 John Alchorne, besides his contempt for the ceremo- 
 nies, is guilty of possessing "certain schismatical 
 books." A priest^ is charged with "visiting a sick 
 man without a light and bell," and a layman (Wing- 
 ham) with blaspheming the Sacrament, by saying "the 
 Masse is an Idoll^ and the Sacrament of the Altar is 
 the Sacrament of the Halter" — a sad indication of 
 the irreverence which the extreme party in the Refor- 
 mation had occasioned among the common people in 
 regard to the most sacred and touching ordinance of 
 Christianity. A certain William Jackson is reported to 
 the cardinal as " suspected of heretical pravity;" while 
 many of the married clergy (whose wives are treated 
 with every name but that to which they were entitled) 
 are accused of not deserting them, and still keeping 
 company with them either openly or clandestinely.^ 
 Strangely enough, in the same parish in which a 
 married priest is very hardly dealt with, a woman is 
 accused of not attending the church, alleging that " it 
 
 * At Stelling. ^ The same charge is made at Buckland. 
 
 ^ In Bekesbourne, " Compertum est quod Marmaducus 
 vSmyth fuit conjugatus et quod nonmmquam habet accessum ad 
 concubinam suam, et etiam accedit ad civitatem Cantuariensem 
 una cum dicta sua concubina, ubi palam et publice cum ilia 
 epulare et potare non erubescit in grave scandalum et offensam 
 aliorum Christi fidelium." He is charged also with serving 
 other churches " quia omnia quos lucrari possit non sufficient 
 sustentationi concubinae et liberorum suorum." From a later 
 entry (under Patrixbourne) we find that the poor wife is "ex- 
 pelled from the diocese." 
 
 U 
 
286 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 is a diabolical thing to hear the divine service cele- 
 brated by a married priest, and that those are accursed 
 who hear it." It would seem from this that the mere 
 state of marriage did not disqualify a priest who was 
 living apart from his wife from fulfilling his duties at 
 this period. The remarkable moderation of Cardinal 
 Pole in enforcing the laws of the Roman Church has 
 been noted in a paper by the writer on a " Passage 
 in the History of the Twysden Family/'^ illustrating 
 the dispensing power of the Papacy as asserted by 
 the Crown, and partially conferred on the primates. 
 Marriage places the priesthood in the fatal guilt of 
 apostasy," and yet it would appear from this passage 
 of Pole's visitation that a married priest was not in- 
 volved in this ruinous charge. There is no objection 
 made to the claim of the priest in question to either 
 orders or jurisdiction, though Cranmer most probably 
 conveyed both. And here it may be noted that the 
 Bishop of Aghadoe (Acadensis) in the Council of 
 Trent asserted and persuaded the fathers there that 
 the English Orders had every element of a perfect 
 ordination but one, viz., the papal confirmation — 
 whose absence, he alleged, invalidated the sacramental 
 authority.^ So much for the fabulous histories and 
 
 * Archaeol. Cant." vol. viii. 
 
 ^ Acadensis Ibernus ostendit &c. . . . ' * In Anglia Rex 
 vocat se caput ecclesise Anglicae, et creat Episcopos, qui con- 
 secrantur a tribus Episcopis, aiuntque se veros episcopos qui 
 sunt a Deo, nos vero id negamus, quia non sunt a Pontifice 
 Romano adsciti, et recti dicimus, hacque tantum ratione illos 
 convincimus non alia, nam et ipsi ostendunt se fuisse vocatos, 
 electos et consecratos, missos." (Le Plat. '*Mon. Cone. Trid." 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 
 
 287 
 
 grotesque conclusions with which Sanders and his 
 followers of a later day have endeavoured to obscure 
 both fact and law in the cause of their idol of the 
 Papal supremacy. In the same parish of Bekesbourne, 
 which enjoyed the ministry of a married priest, we 
 find one Susanna Barret and her maidservant re- 
 ceiving the communion in both kinds, and according 
 to the English form^' (sermone Anglica). As an 
 atonement for her sin she is required to attend mass 
 on the Sunday after the 5th September, 1556, and to 
 exhibit due reverence at the elevation of the host. 
 At Littlebourne, the curate, John Woodye, is accused 
 of preaching and affirming " that if any one bows 
 down before an image in the church he commits 
 idolatry;" also, " that in the sacrament of the Eucha- 
 rist, when it is elevated by the priest in the mass, 
 those who see it with carnal eyes see bread only.'' 
 Perhaps this good man had remembered the older 
 teaching of Aquinas's famous hymn — 
 
 Prsestet fides siipplementun 
 
 Sensuimi defectui," 
 
 for an absolute presence like that assumed by his 
 accusers needs no faith to realize it. At Elmsted, 
 William Swaford and his wife are charged with utter- 
 ing contumelious words against the cardinal's "in- 
 quisitors," viz., " that they were knaves and blud- 
 suckers " — a charge which they afterwards denied. At 
 Folkestone, a long list of persons refusing to give due 
 
 torn. V. p. 578). This was in 1562, on the 30th of November, 
 nearly three years after Parker's consecration and the invention 
 of the Nag's Head fable. This Irish bishop forgot that the 
 Council of Florence recognised the Eastern Orders, notwith- 
 standing this supposed defect, 
 
 U 2 
 
288 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 worship to the Sacrament is given, ljut none of them 
 seem to have made any appearance or to have cleared 
 themselves of the charge. The pages exhibit a suc- 
 cession of names at long intervals, and with ominous, 
 blanks intervening. To account for this catalogue of 
 recusants we find the notice that meetings (conci- 
 liabula) and illicit and clandestine conventicles are 
 held there." On the visitation of the ancient church 
 of Northbourne an original petition of the church- 
 wardens to the cardinal is bound up with the visita- 
 tion. This describes the utter destruction of the 
 church by fire,^ and appeals to the archbishop for 
 assistance in the work of restoration. To those who 
 remember that the stone-work of this church is clearly 
 of Norman structure, and that no such complete 
 destruction could possibly have occurred, this address 
 to Pole must be very inexplicable. Perhaps this 
 evident exaggeration may give a clue to those earlier 
 accounts of church conflagrations which have misled 
 so many, and may suggest the belief that even the 
 Danish devastations were not so ruinous as the monk- 
 ish chroniclers, too eager to celebrate the church- 
 restorers of their age, would lead us to conclude. 
 We have reserved to this point of our review the ac- 
 count which is given us of the absolute plunder of 
 the Church of Womenswould, or Wymlingswould, in 
 East Kent, as it gives the fullest idea of the work of 
 destruction which fell, in the earlier days of the 
 Reformation, in more or less degree, upon all the 
 
 • Not alone their parish churche with the chauncell and 
 steeple be hooly consumed and destrowed, but also the mansion 
 bowse of the vicaradge," &c. 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 
 
 289 
 
 churches of the diocese. The church, it appears, 
 was without a curate, and the following articles were 
 robbed from it under the pretext that they were no 
 longer necessary for public worship, viz., A surplice, 
 a rochet for the clerk, a latten^ pyx, five corporaces, 
 with cases ; two mass books, the one of parchment ; 
 one manual of parchment, one portis^ of parchment, 
 one chrismatory, a pax, a cross of copper, a cross with 
 the image of St. Margaret, a streamer and four banner- 
 cloths, a stained (painted) cloth of the Salutation 
 before the altar, a pendant over the same of blue and 
 red silk, fringed with silk, two curtains at the end of 
 the altar, stained ; seven altar-cloths, a houseling 
 towel of diaper, a Lent cloth, stained ; a cloth for 
 the rood, a font cloth, a sepulchre cloth of red and 
 green silke, a shippe chest in the rood-loft, two stalls 
 in the quire and certain paving stones taken away ; the 
 vestry, the rood-loft, the partition between the church 
 and chancel, the church porch (tiled), and the lead of 
 the steeple all pulled down and taken away, and a 
 dove-house thereof made. Item, the font-stone taken 
 away, and it is used to serve swine in. Item, an altar- 
 stone taken away also to make a grave-stone. 
 
 Some almost hieroglyphical letters, which might 
 puzzle even an expert, follow this melancholy cata- 
 logue, written in another hand. 
 
 Reparation in a case like this was hopeless. All that 
 the cardinal could do was to restore, as far as pos- 
 sible, the losses of his own cathedral, which were not 
 
 ^ A mixed metal much used in the vessels of the church at 
 this time. 
 
 ^ A portis or portas is a breviary. 
 
290 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 a few. In a precious fragment which the loving care 
 of Mr. Sheppard has preserved among the reHcs of 
 tlie cathedral documents, and carefully mounted in 
 one of the scrap-books he has formed out of them, is 
 an imperfect list of the vestments of the . church, which 
 is evidently merely the last portion of a paper of con- 
 siderable length. After describing the costly " chesi- 
 bles " and tunicles " which closed the list, one em- 
 broidered with griffins, another with circles of gold 
 and red roses ; another with orfrays of gold ; 
 others with vines, burrs (tufts ?), hyndes and run- 
 ning orfrays," fleurs-de-lys, and birds, including a 
 precious relic of the Prior Goldstone of blue damask 
 with orfrays of tissue, we find a list of the " orna- 
 ments geven by the late L(ord) Cardynalle Poole," viz. : 
 
 A mytre of sylver and gylte sett with pearls and stone wayeing 
 XX. li. xvii. oz. defaced. 
 
 A payre of gloves of knytt crymson silke embrodered with 
 golde and tassells also. 
 
 Another payre of gloves of white knytt sylke embrodered 
 with gold and crimson sylke. 
 
 A payre of Buskyns and a payre of shoes of cloth of golde 
 and a payre of shoes and a payre of buskyns of white taffeta. 
 
 A payre of Tunycles of crymsen Taffeta with a crosse and 
 borders of purple taffeta lyned with crymsen sarcenett. Another 
 payre of Tunycles of white Taffeta layed with lace and fringe 
 of golde. 
 
 A Cambricke clothe edged with golde to take the mytre off 
 tharchbusshoppe's heade. 
 
 A vestment of clothe of golde braunched with whyte sylver 
 and the crosse of purple clothe of tissue.^ 
 These last relics of a parted faith and an obsolete 
 ritual followed, without doubt, the fate of their pre- 
 ^ Archiv. Chr. Ch. Cantuar. MS. Scrap Book, C. 23. 
 
FROM WARHAM TO PARKER. 
 
 291 
 
 decessors, and but for this mutilated record would 
 have perished as completely from memory as they 
 have done from sight. 
 
 The death of Pole and the queen on the same day 
 left a clear field for Elizabeth, who now stood the 
 only claimant of the vacant throne, and who hastened 
 to appoint the chaplain of her mother, the unfortu- 
 nate Anne Boleyn, to the primatial dignity. Matthew 
 Parker, like very few of his predecessors, had ancient 
 Kentish blood in his veins, his mother having been of 
 the family of Monyns of Waldershare, descended 
 from Sir Simon de Monyn of the Castle of Mayon, 
 in Normandy, who attended the Conqueror in his ex- 
 pedition to England. His successor in the reign of 
 Henry VI. acquired Waldershare through an heiress 
 of the great Norman family of Malmaines, and their 
 granddaughter, Alice Monyns, was the mother of 
 Archbishop Parker.^ Everything in the diocese and 
 in the Church at large fell back, on this great change, 
 upon the usages of the last days of Edward. The 
 work of the Reformation, interrupted during the 
 years of reaction of Philip and Mary, was resumed 
 without delay. The laws repealing the acts of Edward 
 were in their turn repealed, and the shadowy recon- 
 ciliation of England with Rome passed away like a 
 fitful dream. The fear of being called upon to re- 
 store the property of the Church had hung like a 
 threatening storni over the courtiers and the higher 
 nobility, and the return of a reformed government 
 was hailed by them on grounds of self-interest as 
 
 ' Burke's Extinct Baronetage," p. 362. 
 
292 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 gladly as it was welcomed by the masses of the popu- 
 lation from the deliverance it gave them from the 
 deeper fears which the cruelties of Mary had every- 
 where awakened. But the opening of the second 
 Reformation period must be reserved for another 
 chapter. 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 FROM PARKER TO LAUD. 
 
 The state of the diocese on the accession of Queen 
 EHzabeth and the elevation of Parker to the arch- 
 bishopric was naturally one of the greatest uncertainty 
 and confusion. The temporalities of the Church had 
 been fatally plundered. The brief reign of Cardinal 
 Pole had rather raised the ghost of a departed faith 
 than restored its substance and reality. The churches 
 which were beginning their return to the usages of 
 the past rather under the gentle guidance than the 
 severe inj unctions of the Legate, must have presented 
 a melancholy and almost grotesque appearance, ex- 
 hibiting the last struggle between the Roman and 
 the reformed ritual. The ruin which is disclosed by 
 the Comperta of Pole's Visitation would now become 
 increased by the further destruction even of those 
 modest restorations which were there rather suggested 
 than enjoined. After the suppression of Wyatt's re- 
 bellion, and the security thus given to Mary's plans, 
 we find that at least the more important and richer 
 churches had been compelled to purchase again the 
 implements and furniture of the old ritual. At Hawk- 
 hurst, where the churchwardens' books have been 
 so fortunately preserved, we find a long succession 
 of these purchases. Books, albs, mass-books, crosses, 
 
294 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 manuals, cruets, amices, girdles, vestments, a " holy- 
 water styck," corporas cloths, stoles, candlesticks, 
 porties (breviaries), a rood made and painted, and 
 numerous other items connected with the revived 
 faith, follow one another during the years of Mary's 
 reign in rapid succession. But the scene presently 
 changes, and we . trace the steps of the returning 
 Reformation as clearly as those of the Marian reaction. 
 Here, however, we find a noteworthy fact, on which 
 Mr. Godfrey-Faussett has remarked with his usual 
 historical precision. The " making of a scaffold to 
 paint the rood " is mentioned as succeeding the 
 purchase of the book of " Artycholls " which is the 
 first indication of the return to the reformed ritual. 
 " Observe," writes Mr. Faussett, " that nevertheless 
 the rood is newly painted after this purchase, 
 Elizabeth being well known to be tender of images, 
 and her injunction against them not being issued till 
 the visitation of the summer of 1559. Later still, 
 Edwin Sandys, afterwards archbishop of York, remon- 
 strated with the queen on the crucifix still kept in 
 her private chapel, and seems to have obtained its 
 removal after some displeasure on her part.''^ What 
 became of the remade or repurchased articles of 
 the Marian period we know not, and can hardly 
 safely conjecture. 
 
 The transition to the restored forms of worship 
 appears to have been unattended by any resistance, 
 and probably the return to an English service after 
 the brief restoration of a ritual in an unknown tongue 
 
 ^ Hawkhurst Notes, Arch. Cant." vol. v. page 71. 
 
FROM PARKER TO LAUD. 
 
 was even more welcome to the vast masses of the 
 rural population than it had been on its first intro- 
 duction. The right of all Christian people to hear 
 in their own tongue the wonderful works of God, 
 a Pentecostal law which no human authority could 
 supersede, when once recovered could not be easily 
 parted with, and the more learned of the reformed 
 clergy must have remembered that the greatest divine 
 of the Roman Church within their own times had 
 written that " it would conduce better to the edifi- 
 cation of the Church if the public prayers which were 
 said in the hearing of the Church were said in a 
 tongue common to the priests and people rather than 
 in Latin."! In the same place, on the words, If I 
 pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my 
 understanding is unfruitful," he observes, " Experience 
 shows that when anyone ignorant of the Latin tongue is 
 moved by the Holy Spirit to pray in Latin, his feeling, 
 that is, his feeling part, prays, but his mind, that is, his 
 understanding, does not reflect upon the sense of the 
 words he utters, does not contemplate their meaning, 
 nor is able to penetrate it, and thus his mind . . . 
 is without its proper fruit, which is to be nourished 
 by the meaning of the prayer, and the things signified 
 in it." The return to an intelligible service had pro- 
 duced an intelligent body of worshippers, and we 
 can have little wonder that it was unattended by 
 those disturbances which a great change, when it 
 is also an unpopular one, never fails to occasion. 
 But while the new ritual was thus favourable to the 
 
 ^ Cardinal Cajetan on i Cor. xiv. 
 
296 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 inner life of the spiritual body, it cannot be denied 
 that it was eminently the reyerse to the external 
 form and comeliness of the Church, and to the 
 material results in which a less enlightened faith has 
 ever been so prolific. Church building and restora- 
 tion ceased in the ever-present fear of still farther 
 works of sacrilege and destruction under the influence 
 of Puritanism, which so soon became prominent and 
 powerful. The means which the clergy possessed of 
 contributing to the repairs of the church, and to those 
 new works which we find from the wills of the fifteenth 
 and sixteenth centuries to have been almost uninter- 
 ruptedly carried on in every church in the diocese, 
 and the motives by \vhich they were enabled to 
 influence others in the same direction, were now cut 
 off altogether. The fifteenth century towers which 
 adorn almost every extended landscape, both in 
 East and West Kent, constitute the last of the glories 
 of the dispensation which was passing away. The 
 rude and massive tower at Lyminge, begun about 
 1480, and only finished, and then with the greatest 
 difficulty, in 1527 — the actually unfinished tower of 
 Aldington, begun in 1507, the final stage of which 
 was not built till 1557, and represents the last failing 
 effort of the Roman revival, are among the countless 
 instances of this architectural decadence. " Sir 
 Thomas Duffyn" (as he is called), the vicar of 
 Lyminge in 1508, who had left more than ;^3o for 
 the tower of the church and a new bell, was repre- 
 sented in 1575 by John Grimston, who was only able 
 to leave ^s. Sd. a-piece to his nine surviving 
 
 daughters, the tenth, whom he significantly named 
 
FROM PARKER TO LAUD. 297 
 
 Sufficient," having died before him. The great 
 and important churches belonging to the monasteries 
 of Kent were now left to the precarious support of 
 the parishioners, who were burdened not only with 
 their churches, but with the poor who once received 
 what the Italians would call the " carita de' frati," 
 at the convent-gates, a method of relief which would 
 hardly be approved of by the economists of a later 
 age. From the sudden drying-up of all these sources 
 of charity a poor law had become a necessity ; and 
 this greatest of all the burdens upon land has so 
 borne down the agricultural interest for the last three 
 centuries that we can little wonder that churches have 
 fallen into decay, livings become united, parsonage- 
 houses taken down or left in a state of perilous dilapida- 
 tion until our own age, which has witnessed so great 
 a 7'enaissance in the ecclesiastical state of the diocese. 
 The severance of the ties between the archbishops 
 and the diocese, which, beginning in an earlier day, 
 was completed by Cranmer*s fatal surrender of all 
 liis greater manors, was followed by the breaking-up 
 of those ties which had hitherto connected the founda- 
 tion of Christ Church with its dependent churches. 
 The cathedral, as Henry VIII. originally designed 
 it, was to have included within itself not only a 
 grammar-school, such as was ever connected with 
 such an establishment, but also a perfect school of 
 divinity, which would have enabled it to become not 
 only the model but the motive power of the spiritual 
 life of the diocese. Readerships of divinity in Greek, 
 Hebrew, and Latin; readers in civil law and medicine; 
 besides forty scholars in divinity to be maintained at 
 
298 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Oxford and Cambridge, form a part of the draft 
 scheme which the king submitted to Cranmer.^ It 
 is strange that the latter, in his reply, suggests the 
 omission of the prebendaries who were to form a 
 part of the new foundation, and suggests twenty 
 divines instead, so that the cathedral hardly escaped 
 being turned into a great divinity college. It has now, 
 (probably in order to obviate such a danger for the 
 future), entirely excluded that teaching of divinity for 
 the benefit of the diocese which constituted the prin- 
 cipal feature of the king's design. It is to be hoped 
 that the restoration of the study of divinity which has 
 thus been eliminated, will be among the earliest of 
 those reforms which the Cathedral Commissioners may 
 propose, and that the great foundation which now has 
 a solitary existence, though in the midst of a populous 
 city, and a life apart from the diocese (if that can in- 
 deed be called a life which is rather a close captivity 
 in the chains of obsolete statutes and in the ceaseless 
 routine of perfunctory obligations), will resume its 
 ancient place in the Church and in the diocese. 
 But while the laity appear to have acquiesced in the 
 change which was now being gradually brought upon 
 the Church, the higher clergy by no means so readily 
 submitted to it. Nicholas de Harpsfield, Pole's 
 energetic and influential archdeacon, "in a sermon 
 at Canterbury, in February, 1559, stirred the people 
 much to sedition ; and the members of that cathedral 
 had openly said that religion should not and could 
 not be altered. The council also had heard that the 
 
 ^ See Burnet's Hist, of the Reformation," Appendix. 
 
FROM PARKER TO LAUD. 299 
 
 prebendaries there had bought up many arms ; so a 
 letter was written to Sir Thomas Smith, to examine 
 into that matter. Harpsfield was not put in prison, 
 but received only a rebuke. 
 
 The process of transition from the Roman system, 
 as reintroduced by Mary, went on very slowly and 
 with prudent stages during the year 1559. The 
 queen's injunction at length came out, not without 
 great hesitation, in regard to the destruction or re- 
 moval of images, for which she herself, probably more 
 on aesthetical than theological grounds, had a strong 
 predilection. The restoration of the right of marriage 
 to the clergy ; the ordering the public worship of the 
 Church according to the Edwardian liturgy, now again 
 substituted for the mass ; the ordering of communion- 
 tables instead of altars for the church, where altars 
 had" been removed ; the licensing of preachers, and 
 the various observances required by the restored 
 ritual, were the chief features of these injunctions, to 
 whose authority Archbishop Laud appealed in his argu- 
 ment against Prynne and his colleagues in the Star 
 Chamber. Parker, who, on account of feeble health 
 and failing energies had vainly endeavoured to escape 
 from the anxious and exalted position which was. in a 
 manner thrust upon him, foretold too well the 
 dangers to which the Church was exposed through 
 the inevitable renewal of those bitter conflicts 
 which the exiles from England in the Marian per- 
 secution had opened so painfully at Geneva and 
 Zurich. ^^The whole strength of the Church," he 
 
 ^ Burnet, Hist, of the Reformation," p. ii. book iii. (1559). 
 
300 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 said in his letter to the Lord Keeper, depended on 
 the unity of the brethren in doctrine, but if there 
 should be heartburnings among them and the private 
 quarrels that had been beyond sea should be brought 
 home, the peace of the Church would be lost, and the 
 success of all their plan would be blasted.'^ ^ Un- 
 happily, the fears of the primate were too fully 
 realized. The same heats which had arisen among 
 the exiled clergy in regard to vestments, ceremonies, 
 and Church government, were now transferred to the 
 very centre of the Church, and were even more 
 virulent in the day of her re-establishment than in 
 that of her persecution and exile. It is impossible 
 to look back upon such a conflict without grief and 
 shame, and yet it has been so often renewed in times 
 of greater enlightenment that at least we cannot 
 reflect upon it with wonder. This fatal controversy, 
 which, from the necessity attached to the ceremonies 
 on the one side, and the equally superstitious belief in 
 their sinfulness which prevailed on the other, grew on 
 insensibly to such a degree of implacability as to 
 admit of no pacification, brought about at last that 
 open nonconformity whose development in so many 
 forms meets us everywhere in this as in every other 
 diocese of England. The fallacies which were alleged 
 on the side of those who opposed the ceremonies 
 might have been easily exposed and refuted, had not 
 the other party in the heat of the conflict attached a 
 kind of necessity to them which deprived them of the 
 character of things indifferent. Milton's rule would, 
 
 ^ Burnet, I.e. 
 
FROM PARKER TO LAUD. 
 
 if carried out, reduce the whole Church to a state of 
 anarchy such as no human society could tolerate and 
 which certainly none could survive. " He is w^ont to 
 say," are his words, "he enjoins only things in- 
 different. Let them be so still ; who gave him 
 authority to change their nature by enjoining them?"i 
 The answer is obvious, that by enjoining them as 
 useful and orderly helps to devotion and discipline, 
 we do not change their nature." The mere injunc- 
 tion of them does not affect their indifferent character, 
 but leaves it where it was, as would be the case with 
 any human law regulating public order or decency. 
 But, unfortunately, the zealots of the Jacobean period 
 instead of apologizing for them and commending 
 them with such arguments as Hooker afterwards 
 alleged, insisted on Episcopacy, and the ceremonies 
 connected with it, as matters of necessity, which pro- 
 voked that just observation in the Letter of the 
 Synod of Zeeland to the Church of Scotland," " As 
 for such ceremonies and rites as have their original 
 from minds arrogant and not contented with divine 
 institution, a7id to which an opinion of necessity is 
 added^ as if without these holy things could not be 
 decently gone about and the worship but coldly 
 performed, truly we cannot see how such ceremonies can 
 be called indifferent.'''''^ It is at this point that the 
 controversy became so inveterate and almost irre- 
 concilable. 
 
 During the first ten years of Elizabeth's reign, the 
 
 ' Milton on TTercsy, 6cc. 
 
 ^ "Letter of the SynoJ of Zeeland," Edinb. 1643. 
 X 
 
302 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Roman Catholics came to our churches, and until the 
 excommunication of that queen by Pius V. (whose 
 conspiracy with Ridolfi to murder her has lately been 
 so thoroughly established as to add to his title of saint 
 that of regicide), the loyalty of the adherents of the 
 Papacy to the Crown was marked by their union with 
 the National Church in her public worship. This 
 general conformity appears to have been but little 
 disturbed by the bull itself ; but, on the accession of 
 James I., and the exaction of the oath of allegiance 
 and fidelity, the communion between the members of 
 the two Churches was violently interrupted by the 
 brief of Paul V., addressed to the " English Catholics'* 
 in 1604. In this the faithful are specially forbidden 
 to attend the churches, services, or sermons of the 
 Church of England, or to hold any communion with 
 its members in religious rites or duties. At the same 
 time they are strictly forbidden to take the oath of 
 allegiance prescribed by the Government. It seems 
 that up to this period the attendance of the Roman 
 Catholics at the churches, whether freely or by com- 
 pulsion, had been in great measure carried on, but it 
 would appear at the same time that a large portion of 
 our clergy had not improved the good opportunity 
 which was thus given them of conciliating all classes 
 to the Government, which was the great object 
 of the queen, and too many of the preachers had 
 made their pulpits the means of carrying on a 
 continual warfare against Popery both in its civil 
 and ecclesiastical aspect. These, as they affected 
 a far higher degree of moral and doctrinal purity 
 than the clergy of the more moderate party, went 
 
FROM PARKER TO LAUD. 303 
 
 by the name of Puritans or Precisians^ a title 
 which, like that of the Methodists, whose separation 
 from the Church began in much the same manner 
 and on not dissimilar grounds, has adhered to them 
 ever since. 
 
 The friends of this great movement derived its 
 origin from the coldness and worldliness of the 
 national clergy, their dislike to preaching, and their 
 general idleness and insufficiency. Sir Robert Cotton 
 thus describes the fatal results which were occa- 
 sioned by that cold fit which followed ^*the zeal 
 begotten in the time of the Marian persecution,'^ 
 ''In those days," he writes, "there was an emula- 
 tion between the clergy and the laity, and a strife 
 arose whether of them should show themselves 
 most affectionate to the Gospel. Ministers haunted 
 the houses of worthiest men, where Jesuits now 
 build their tabernacles, and poor country churches 
 were frequented with the best of the shire ; the 
 Word of God was precious, prayer and preach- 
 ing went hand-in-hand together until Archbishop 
 Grindal's disgrace and Hatfield's hard conceit of 
 prophesying brought the flowing of those good graces 
 to a still water." Thus " most men grew to be 
 frozen in zeal and benumbed, that whosoever (as the 
 worthy Lord Keeper Bacon observed in those days) 
 pretended a little spark of earnestness, he seemed no 
 less than red-fire hot in comparison of the other. 
 And as some fare the worse for an ill neighbour's 
 sake dwelling beside them, so did it betide the 
 Protestants, who, seeking to curb the Papists, or 
 reprove an idle drone, were incontinently branded 
 X 2 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 with the ignominious note of Precisiaii.^^^ The real 
 origin of the division was not unUke that which was 
 opened between the secular and regular clergy of 
 an earlier age, and was simply the rivalry between a 
 preaching and a non-preaching ministry. The 
 Puritans had secured the pulpits, very much as the 
 regulars contrived to supplant the seculars and to 
 become the popular preachers in an age which was 
 eminently a hearing and not a reading one, when the 
 monasteries were the sole repositories of learning, 
 and the seculars were in outer darkness. To the 
 Court and Government (and the Court was then 
 the Government) the great object of uniting the 
 recusants with the Church was completely frus- 
 trated by those who sought to curb the Papists 
 while the reproof of the idle drones'' (/>., the non- 
 preaching clergy) only opened a fatal chasm in the 
 ranks of the Church itself. As late as the Canons of 
 1603, the distinction between the preaching and the 
 non-preaching minister is distinctly drawn, and the 
 rivalry between them most clearly indicated. ^ 
 
 The prophesyings" authorized by Grindal, whose 
 inclination towards the Geneva doctrine and discipline 
 was very marked, had brought him into serious dis- 
 grace v*^ith the queen, who, in 1588, put forth a 
 proclamation against the attempts which were then 
 being made to discredit the form of government by 
 bishops and the present settlement of the English 
 Church. In 1573, a similar proclamation had been 
 
 » See the ** Healing Attempt," Lond. 1689, p. 3. 
 Cann. 49, 56, 57. 
 
FROM PARKER TO LAUD. 305 
 
 directed against those who met together in private 
 houses or public places to use any other rites or 
 prayers than those of the Liturgy, followed by another 
 against the "sectaries'^ of what was termed the 
 " Family of Love." At the same time the most 
 severe restraints were laid upon preachers in regard 
 to their licenses, and the bishops were invested with 
 an absolute power, even in the case of incumbents ; a 
 power which by Grindal and Abbot would have been 
 used in a very different manner from that in which 
 Bancroft and Laud would have exercised it. 
 
 Besides, therefore, the original division which arose 
 between the preaching and the non-preaching min- 
 isters, — those who relied rather on the prayers and 
 sacraments than on the efficacy of preaching, in which 
 Puritanism originated, — an impulse of a still stronger 
 nature was given to it at a later period by the growth 
 of two schools of preaching, one Calvinistic, or more 
 properly Augustinian, and the other adapted to the 
 principles of a still earlier and simpler system, that 
 upon which the creeds themselves were built for every 
 age and race. The diocese of Canterbury, for many 
 obvious reasons, and not least of all from the larger 
 element of foreign Protestantism which was so early 
 introduced into it, and the almost entire elimination 
 from it of the papal element, had a strong and growing 
 tendency towards Puritanism. Some of its greatest 
 divines and preachers were of this school, notably 
 the celebrated Edward Bering, of the ancient family 
 of Surrenden, who held at one time the rectory of 
 Pluckley, and was chaplain to the queen at the 
 Tower. He was also Lady Margaret Professor of 
 
3o6 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Divinity at Cambridge and a prebendary of Salisbury. 
 He was a man of fearless boldness, and " in a sermon 
 preached before the queen in 1569 he warned her lest 
 she who had been (" tanquam ovis as a sheep ap- 
 pointed to be slain (Ps.xliv. 22) should come to be chas- 
 tised (" tanquam indomita juvenca ") as an untamed 
 and unruly heifer (Jerem. xxxi. 18). Her Majesty 
 deemed the allusion a little too forcible, and Edward 
 Bering was forbidden to preach any more before the 
 Court. Some time afterwards he was prosecuted for 
 Puritanism before the High Commissioners, and after 
 a long suit was suspended from all his clerical func- 
 tions.^ Of the terrible Nemesis which followed up 
 the High Church party of a later day in the person of 
 his great-nephew, the famous Sir Edward Bering, of 
 the Long Parliament, we shall have occasion to speak 
 in a later chapter. The Puritan divine is said to have 
 ^^strengthened the foundations of Protestantism in 
 the hearts of thousands who listened with rapture 
 whenever he preached, and bought up with eagerness 
 large editions of his published sermons." His in- 
 fluence in his native county was doubtless as great as 
 it was in London ; and his Catechism," printed by 
 Jugge, the first printer of the plays of Shakespeare, has 
 the strong Calvinistic character of the early Eliza- 
 bethan divines. His prayers were of singular beauty, 
 and his " Commentary on the Hebrews " has passages 
 of great interest and value. 
 
 But while there were many men of learning and 
 eminence adorning the diocese, and even gaining 
 a just celebrity throughout the Church of England 
 
 * Proceedings in Kent," (Camden Society), preface p. vii. 
 
FROM PARKER TO LAUD. 307 
 
 at the opening of the reign of Elizabeth, the state 
 of the diocese itself at that period was one of 
 confusion and darkness which can hardly be well 
 exaggerated. Two of the visitation books of Arch- 
 bishop Parker, one dated in 1561 and another in 
 1573, have just been rescued from the obscurity 
 in which they have lain ever since that day, and 
 the latter of them (which has a clear and orderly 
 arrangement) gives us a picture of the state of the 
 parishes in Kent which may safely be said to have 
 been never equalled in any earlier age. The former 
 of them is drawn up in so slovenly and imper- 
 fect a form as to appear to be simply the rough 
 draft of some more finished document. It only 
 leaves us to conjecture from the visitation held twelve 
 years after what must have been the condition of the 
 churches throughout the diocese at the opening of 
 Parker's primacy. As the visitation in September 
 and October, 1573, was held only a year and a half 
 before the archbishop's death, it proves how slow was 
 the progress of the Reformation during his episcopate, 
 notwithstanding the advantages it enjoyed from the 
 settlement of the throne under Elizabeth. In thirty- 
 eight important parishes the clergy were absolutely 
 non-resident. In six there was either no minister 
 whatever or the churches were vacant. In four the 
 clergy maintained a kind of half-residence. In 
 several there were only deacons, in others only 
 readers. In some cases two, in one even three 
 parishes had a single minister between them. Other 
 churches had only occasional services, and thus 
 about sixty parishes either suffered an entire " famine 
 
3o8 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 of the word of God," or received their spiritual food 
 so irregularly as to make one feel but little surprise 
 that the spirit of the Reformation flagged so soon in 
 that scene where it had been so triumphant at first. 
 The rarity of preaching, of which this visitation gives 
 us remarkable proof, has been already suggested as 
 the main cause of that great Puritan movement 
 which this fatal departure from the practice of all 
 the reformed churches so naturally provoked. Four 
 sermons a year might satisfy the statutable require- 
 ment, but certainly did not satisfy the people, who 
 required something more than a quarterly disproof 
 of the poke's supremacy, or a quarterly defence of the 
 queen^s. But even this scant measure was often 
 denied them. In Goodneston (near Wingham) it is 
 complained that "they have not their ordinary ser- 
 mons." In Crundall there is the same complaint, 
 and also at Ickham and at Whitstable. At Tilman- 
 stone the parishioners only had three sermons since 
 the previous visitation. At Worth they had had no 
 sermons for two years ; at Seasalter none for a twelve- 
 month, and at Westbere none for the same period. 
 At Ewell they were somewhat more fortunate, for 
 they had one during the year; the same liberal 
 measure was given also at Capel-le-Ferne. Even 
 Saltwood was destitute of its quarterly sermons, while 
 Wootton was fortunate in having two. Stanford had 
 had none for a twelvemonth ; while Paddlesworth 
 had one during the same period, a privation which is 
 charged to the farmer of the rectory, as it is in several 
 other places. At Leysdowne they had one sermon 
 a-year ; while Bapchild, more fortunate, could boast 
 
FROM PARKER TO LAUD. 309 
 
 of three. Kingsdown had no sermons all the year 
 round, and was only served by a reader. Bobbing 
 and Stockbury, Badlesmere and Sheldwich, had but 
 one sermon in the year ; Debtling, again, none. 
 Brasted remembered none since the kst visitation ; 
 while at Harden the zealous parishioners, being 
 deprived of preaching through the absenteeism of 
 the vicar, procured a preacher for themselves. At 
 Newenden the people could not get their ^'ordinary 
 sermons" because "the vicar could get none to 
 preach them.*' Other parishes make like complaints, 
 and the form in which they are made indicates 
 clearly the sense their inhabitants felt of this great 
 privation. To add to the destitution in regard to 
 their public worship we find the complaint made in 
 the important parish of Milton-next-Sittingbourne that 
 the vicar will not allow the singing of psalms or 
 other things, and he will not suffer us to sing or say 
 with him" (i.e., to repeat the responses) "as before 
 he was wont to do, which is a great hindrance to 
 our youth and others, who being shut from the saying 
 and singing with him, they spend their time in service 
 lewdly or evil." Still more serious is the charge 
 against William Lovell, minister of St. Margaret's, Can- 
 terbury. He is said to be " suspected in religion, for 
 that he goeth suspiciously mumbling undecent prayers 
 to himself," &c. On this account the parishioners allege 
 that they "cannot with safe conscience receive the 
 communion from him." Poor Mr. Lovell had doubt- 
 less been used to recite the prayers from his breviary 
 in the days of Cardinal Pole, and unconsciously 
 extended his work of repetition into the days of 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 Archbishop Parker. Truly the clergy of that day 
 were more worthy of our pity than of our blame in all 
 that they did or failed to do. To change their 
 religion with every reign, and their ritual with every 
 new injunction of the queen, required a degree of 
 aptitude and versatility of character which few but 
 a Vicar of Bray could claim. 
 
 A singular feature of this visitation is the constant 
 complaint that the clergy use "common" instead of 
 "wafer bread." The latter appears to have con- 
 tinued in use up to the middle of the reign of 
 Charles I., and to have been, perhaps, from early 
 habit, a very important point in Archbishop Parker's 
 ritual system. The "lack of the Paraphrase of 
 Erasmus," which is here constantly complained of, 
 leads to the inquiry what could have become of the 
 numerous copies which filled the churches in the 
 earlier days of the Reformation? Were they de- 
 stroyed in Mary's reign or sold ? If the latter, the 
 book would assuredly be a more common one in 
 England, and would still be found in many parish 
 churches. Images and " blasphemous windows " 
 are discovered in some churches, the latter in the 
 chapel of Mr. Roper, at St. Dunstan's, in Canter- 
 bury, probably a relative of the great Sir Thomas 
 More. The curate at Wye is charged with " not 
 coming doWn to read the Bible in the middle of 
 the church according to the injunctions," while at 
 Stodmarsh the chancel is said to be " destitute of 
 pews and seats, both for the minister and preacher." 
 The duties of the sidesmen are curiously illustrated 
 at Birchington, where a person is found in an " ale- 
 
FROM PARKER TO LAUD. 
 
 house in service-time, whereupon, he being admo- 
 nished for the same by the sidesmen, he bade them 
 scornfully go shake their ears." But if the state of 
 the clergy is discovered to be so unsatisfactory, that 
 of the laity is no less severely noted by the im- 
 placable churchwardens. If their "charges" and 
 " suspicions " are true, the general state of morality 
 must have been as lax as that of the churches was 
 dilapidated ; and, indeed, the picture of the diocese 
 at this time makes us look with natural sympathy 
 upon the noble but unsuccessful efforts of the good 
 Archbishop Grindal to atone for the laxity of his 
 predecessor by encouraging the revival of preaching, 
 and restoring to the Church a learned and a faithful 
 ministry. We have already seen the just remarks of 
 Sir Robert Cotton on the fatal and irretrievable error 
 into which Elizabeth was led in removing Grindal 
 from her councils and depriving him of her favour. 
 His meetings for " prophesyings," in other words, for 
 the study of the Scriptures, might, if encouraged, have 
 created a preaching ministry such as would have 
 given life and fervour to the Church, and prevented 
 the Puritan movement from developing itself into 
 one of open enmity to the Established Church. But 
 the golden opportunity was lost, and the troubles of 
 a later day were the fatal and inevitable result. The 
 influence of Grindal, as Bishop of London, had been 
 employed to unite the friends of the Reformation 
 both among the English and foreign Churches, and 
 to enable them to disprove the calumnies of their 
 adversaries by a conversation worthy of their higher 
 religious privileges. Nicholas Gallars, an eminent 
 
312 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 French divine, who was at the conference of Poissy, 
 addresses him thus in his dedication to him of the 
 works of Irenaeus : " I am able myself to testify as I 
 was myself present, saw and experienced with what 
 care and vigilance you consulted the peace of the 
 Churches over which you presided ; with how great 
 zeal you purged them not only from impious rites, 
 but from the errors of the Anabaptists which had 
 then crept in ; with what diligence you appeased the 
 tumults and discords which had arisen, either among 
 your own people or among those without. For as 
 far as you were able you did not merely preserve the 
 outward fabric of the foreign Churches which were 
 gathered together in London through the favour of 
 Queen EHzabeth, but preserved them internally from 
 fear, discord, and division. You kept the rash and 
 innovating within bounds, repressed the insolent 
 and refractory, humbled the proud, protected the 
 innocent, appeased quarrels and disputes, and made 
 yourself, in fine, a veritable Irenaeus, and peace- 
 maker. Such was the character of Grindal when 
 he was Bishop of London, and it was unchanged in 
 any of its features when he attained to the primacy 
 on the death of Parker, in 1575. Of the first 
 Elizabethan archbishop we may truly affirm on a 
 careful examination of his visitation book in the 
 fourteenth year of his primacy, that however great he 
 was as a divine, an historian, a munificent benefactor 
 of his university, and a magnificent host of royalty, 
 both at Croydon and Canterbury, he failed in his 
 
 ^ Ep. ad Edm. Grindal, Gen. 1570. 
 
FROM PARKER TO LAUD. 
 
 duty as a diocesan, and left his see to the devoted 
 and unfortunate Grindal in a state which was a dis- 
 grace to the Reformation, and a miserable contrast 
 to that which it presented in the days of Archbishop 
 Warham. During a period of unexampled prosperity 
 church-building and church-reparation seem to have 
 ceased altogether. The chancels and parsonages are 
 constantly reported as being in a state of disrepair, 
 and often falling down. Surplices are wanting in 
 many churches, and the charges against non-com- 
 municants are frequent. At Sturry there is the 
 curious entry that Elizabeth Saunders is faulty (fautie) 
 in the XVI I th Article. Perhaps her views on pre- 
 destination may have been as obscure as the Article 
 itself, or did not quite agree with those of the church- 
 wardens. It is curious that they present the vicar 
 for " receiving at the communion some that were not 
 in charity, as we suppose^'' a rather doubtful proof of 
 their own. The vicar is also accused for not call- 
 ing the youth to be instructed, nor yet doth nothing 
 contained in the Xth Article." The former portion 
 of the charge would merely involve a failure to teach 
 them the doctrine of original sin and prevenient 
 grace \ but the latter one is much more perplexing, 
 as though there is much scope for faith, there is none 
 at all for action in the Article in question. From an 
 entry under Wye it would appear that copes were 
 still in use ; while so lax was the practice on the 
 other side that even the surplice was in some cases 
 not used during the service. It is almost unaccount- 
 able that fourteen years of religious settlement, both 
 in doctrine and rite, should have left the diocese in 
 
314 • CANTERBURY. 
 
 SO disorganized a state ; and the only reason which 
 can be assigned is that Parker was wholly a primate, 
 and hardly in any sense a diocesan. His princely 
 entertainment of Elizabeth at Canterbury, whose full 
 details are given us in Dr. Hook's Hfe of him, proved 
 that he had not forgotten the '^stylus curice^^ of his 
 predecessors, however he may have affected a simpler 
 ritual and a purer faith. No doubt this strange 
 combination suited well the taste of the queen and 
 her court, though it must have prevented that exten- 
 sion of the charity of the archbishop to his own dio- 
 cese which the continuous plunder of the see, carried 
 on by the queen as by her father under the specious 
 pretext of exchanges with the Crown, still more fatally 
 contracted.^ Her only quarrel with Parker appears 
 to have been his marriage, and his predilection for a 
 married clergy. At this time, and on this account, 
 the Elizabethan bishops were not accustomed to 
 live with their wives and families under the same 
 roof, Parker himself purchasing a house at Beakes- 
 bourne for his wife and family to reside in when he 
 took up his abode there, and also a house near the 
 Palace at Lambeth, called Duke's-place, during their 
 stay at that residence.'^ 
 
 ^ He left many legacies to his numerous friends from the 
 queen downward — while to the city of Canterbury he left the 
 miserable sum of £100 to be lent out to the wool manufacturers 
 of the place, to enable them to employ the poor in that industiy. 
 Poor as he was, after leaving aU that he had besides for 
 charitable purposes, Archbishop Grindal left the same sum to 
 the Metropolitical city. 
 
 Batteley's "Somncr," ii. p. 80, Hasted's ^^Cent," vol. xii. 
 P- 455. 
 
FROM PARKER TO LAUD. 
 
 3^5 
 
 It was at Lambeth that the archbishop gave 
 the grand entertainment to the queen, which is 
 described in his Antiquities of the British Church " 
 (ed. Drake, p. 557). "The queen removing from 
 Hampton Court to Greenwich visited the arch- 
 bishop at Lambeth, where she staid all night. 
 That day was Tuesday — the next day being Wednes- 
 day it was usual, as it was the season of Lent, 
 that a sermon should be preached before the 
 queen. A pulpit was therefore placed in the quad- 
 rangle near the pump, and a sermon was delivered 
 by Dr. Pearce. The queen heard it from the 
 upper gallery that looks towards the Thames ; the 
 nobiUty and the courtiers stood in the other galleries 
 which formed the quadrangle. The people from 
 below divided their attention between Her Majesty 
 and the preacher. When the sermon was over they 
 went to dinner. The other parts of the house being 
 occupied by the queen and her attendants, the arch- 
 bishop received his guests in the great room next to 
 the garden below stairs. Here on Tuesday he invited 
 a large party of the inferior courtiers. In the same 
 room on the Wednesday he made a great dinner ; at 
 his own table sate down nine earls and seven barons : 
 at the other table the comptroller of the queen's 
 household, her secretary, and many other knights and 
 esquires — besides the usual table for the great officers 
 of state, where sate the Lord Treasurer, the Lord 
 Admiral, the Chamberlain, and others. The whole 
 of their charge was borne by the archbishop. At four 
 of the clock on the Wednesday afternoon, the queen 
 and her court removed to Greenwich." 
 
3i6 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Poor Archbishop Grindal, it would appear, having 
 less courtly tastes and a clearer eye to his spiritual 
 duties, was never honoured with a Royal visit ; while 
 his successor, Whitgift, who made such extravagant 
 attempts to recal the mediaeval grandeur of the 
 primacy (once entering Canterbury with a train of 
 500 horsemen, of whom a hundred were his own 
 domestics) received no less than fourteen recorded 
 visits from Elizabeth, who sometimes stayed two and 
 sometimes three days with the archbishop. Whitgift 
 succeeded Grindal in 1583. He was in some respects 
 the greatest benefactor the diocese has ever had, from 
 the days of the Reformation to our time. 
 
 Having recovered many of the possessions of the 
 archbishopric, which had been unjustly held in lay 
 hands, and reduced the over-taxation from which it 
 had suffered, he made use of the means he had thus 
 acquired for the endowments of vicarages and stipends 
 of curates, even abating for this purpose the fines on 
 the renewals of his leases. He endowed in his life- 
 time the hospital which goes under his name at 
 Croydon, the building of which alone cost ;^2,7oo, 
 while the endowment added to it was ;^i84 a year. 
 There can be no question that the new development 
 of the episcopate under the reign of Elizabeth, and 
 its return to that " lordly prelating " which Latimer 
 so sternly rebuked, was one of the chief causes of the 
 great outbreak of the Puritan faction, whose distinctive 
 name is assigned by Heylyn to the seventh year of 
 Elizabeth. The great apostle of the new party which 
 triumphed so completely, somewhat more than half a 
 century after, was Dr. Cartwright, Professor of Divinity 
 
FROM PARKER TO LAUD. 317 
 
 at Cambridge, who took up in the course of his pubhc 
 teaching the question of Church discipline and govern- 
 ment while Whitgift himself was Vice-Chancellor. 
 The propositions which he advanced, and which 
 formed the main principles of later Puritanism, were 
 (I.) that, the names and offices of archbishops and 
 archdeacons ought to be abolished ; (II.) that those 
 of bishops and deacons ought to be reduced to their 
 first apostolic institution — the deacons serving the 
 tables of the poor, the bishops giving themselves to 
 tlie Word and prayer ; (III.) that the government of 
 tlie Church by chancellors or officers of archdeacons 
 ought to be restored to the ministers and presbytery 
 of every church ; (IV.) that every minister ought to 
 have a fixed and definite place in the Church ; (V.) 
 that no ministers ought to be appointed by Royal or 
 other patronage ; (VI.) nor made by the bishops only, 
 but by the Church itself. Whitgift procured the ex- 
 pulsion of Cartwright from the University, but the 
 influence of a man of learning and high character, of 
 whom Beza wrote that " the sun never shone upon a 
 more learned man,'' was by no means so easily re- 
 pressed. 
 
 King James sent to him, offering him the Professor- 
 ship of Divinity at St. Andrew's, and the Archbishop of 
 Dublin offered him preferment in Ireland. But 
 his appointment by the Earl of Leicester as Master 
 of the Hospital at Warwick kept him in England. 
 Here he was urged by Sir Thomas Walsingham and 
 tlie learned of both Universities to answer the 
 authors of the Rhemish Testament and its pestilent 
 doctrines ; but Whitgift, like an evil genius, again in- 
 
 Y 
 
3i8 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 terposed, fearing (as Fuller affirms) lest any of the 
 arrows shot against Rome might glance at Canterbury. 
 And here we may observe the fact, too little borne in 
 mind, that there were two distinct periods of Puri- 
 tanism, one arising out of mere questions of Church 
 order and discipline, and another involving also doc- 
 trine. At the period of Whitgift the doctrine of the 
 Church of England represented a fully- developed 
 system of Calvinistic, or, more properly, Augustinian 
 teaching on the doctrines of grace, and on the more 
 mysterious questions of predestination, election, and 
 reprobation, which were defined with almost legal 
 precision in what are known as the Lambeth Articles.^ 
 Here, therefore, there was no scope for any contro- 
 versy with the Puritan party, whose Calvinism was of 
 course unimpeachable. But at a later day, and 
 during the milder reign of Abbot, a system of doctrine 
 more nearly approaching that of Arminius was gaining 
 ground in the Church, and this, brought out fully 
 by Archbishop Laud, fixed "a great gulf " of doctrine 
 as well as ritual and disciplinary controversy between 
 the High Church party and the Puritans of the 
 Laudian period. Up to the time of Charles I., the 
 doctrines of Arminius, though they undoubtedly re- 
 present the teaching of the Western Church up to the 
 period of St. Augustine, and of the Eastern Church 
 
 * For a further proof of this statement we may refer to a 
 remarkable treatise published in 1696 **by J. Gailhard, Gent," 
 called a **Plea for Free Grace against Freewill," in which the 
 evidence of the early Calvinism of the Church of England is 
 forcibly stated. 
 
FROM PARKER TO T.AUD. 319 
 
 uninterruptedly to our own day, were regarded with 
 a degree of horror which we can hardly account for. 
 On the accession of Charles I. the increasing learning 
 of the age broke away from the restraints of the 
 Augustinian teaching, and vindicated for the first time 
 the truth that Christianity, as a universal religion, 
 could not do less than propose to its converts a uni- 
 versal salvation. It was on this ground that the 
 struggle between Puritanism and the Church became 
 a conflict of Hfe and death ; and rites and ceremo- 
 nies, a preaching ministry, and even Church govern- 
 ment itself, which gave the first impulse to Puritanism, 
 became as dust in the balance against the great and 
 fundamental truth that God, who would have none to 
 perish, but all men to come to the knowledge of the 
 truth, could not possibly have withdrawn by a secret 
 •decree the salvation he had published by an open 
 proclamation to all alike. Accordingly, in the later 
 period of Puritanism, towards which our history is 
 hastening on, we shall find that the main charge 
 against the clergy in Kent was their Arminianism, 
 which was held to be next akin to Popery. Few of 
 them, indeed, could have had any idea of the meaning 
 of such a term — who Arminius was, and where and 
 when he lived ; like the equally celebrated Erastus, 
 he gave name to a great theory, and a still greater 
 party, but few who employed it had any very clear 
 apprehension of the meaning they attached to it, and 
 it had no sooner become a reproach than it easily 
 fastened itself upon the very best and most faithful of 
 the clergy. There can be no question, however, that 
 if Parker had encouraged a preaching ministry, and 
 
 Y 2 
 
320 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 enabled the mind of the people to have been educated 
 and enlightened during his long primacy, the violent 
 reaction of the men of Kent against a Church which 
 they had so devotedly adhered to might have 
 never occurred, and the " root and branch " Re- 
 formation, to which their impulsive and eccentric 
 leader, Sir Edward Bering, hurried them on, 
 would not have ended as it did in the temporary 
 destruction of the national Church, and the disper- 
 sion of its ministry. Nor was the habitual negligence 
 in matters of ritual less dangerous in its results, as it 
 prepared the way for the great conflict on ceremonies 
 which opened the religious troubles in Kent and 
 in the country generally. If the apostolic precept 
 of doing all things, and especially the things per- 
 taining to divine worship, decently and in order," 
 had been carried out by Parker and his successors 
 the communion tables would have been duly railed 
 in, the services conducted with reverence, and 
 nothing would have been left for the zeal of Laud, 
 unhappily ever vehement and overbearing, to exercise 
 itself upon. A preaching ministry would have 
 satisfied the just requirements of the age, and the 
 people would have been taught how light and in- 
 significant in the presence of the great realities of 
 religion were those bitter conflicts on the merest 
 trifles of ritual observance which formed the keynote 
 of the Laudian controversies. Roman advocates, 
 wiser in their generation than those of our own 
 Church, took advantage of this laxity of practice, and 
 encouraged it in order to bring in the Roman doctrines 
 and usages, and by leading the people to brand with 
 
FROM PARKER TO LAUD. 
 
 321 
 
 the stigma of Popery even the modest rites of AngHcan 
 Episcopacy, in order to bring on the reaction in their 
 own direction which was certain to follow the excesses 
 of their extreme opponents. It is a curious fact that 
 the Jesuit Contzen, who died in 1635, had in his 
 Politics," laid down the most approved rules of 
 bringing in again the Roman system in countries 
 which had cast it out. These rules, which the famous 
 Puritan preacher, Matthew Newcomen, cited at large 
 before the House of Commons^ against Laud, would 
 have been obviated altogether, had Parker, Whitgift, 
 and Abbot brought up the ritual of our Church to 
 that decent and comely form into which it so naturally 
 settled itself on the Restoration as to have never since 
 provoked any general remonstrance from either clergy 
 or laity. Read in the light of what were assumed to 
 be positive innovations, the rules of the Jesuit had 
 too apparent a bearing upon the Laudian changes. 
 Had the decent order of the Church of the Reforma- 
 tion been retained from the time of Parker, the sixth 
 rule of the Jesuit would have been superfluous, which 
 is to " foment the quarrels that are among the Pro- 
 testants, and strengthen the party that is in nearest 
 compliance with Rome." Had the Puritans and the 
 Episcopalians never quarrelled there would have been 
 little room for this direction. In order, however, to 
 sow the seed of discord more completely between 
 them, he adds, " For who might not easily reduce the 
 Puritans of England into order, if he could extort 
 
 ^ " The Craft and Cruelty of the Church's Adversaries Dis- 
 covered." A Sermon preached before the H. of C, 1643, P- j^* 
 
322 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 from them an approbation of the bishops ? " by which 
 two-edged sword of Jesuitry he inflicts a wound upon 
 the bishops, by enabHng the Puritans to charge them 
 with Romanising tendencies, and upon the Puritans 
 by rendering them still more hateful to their Episco- 
 palian fellow-subjects, and pointing out how they 
 might be imperceptibly beguiled into the hated 
 bondage of Rome. The first rule, which is the key 
 to the rest, is " to proceed as musicians do in tuning 
 their instruments j who strain their strings with a 
 gentle hand, and set them up by little and little." It 
 is clear that no such tuning would have been needed 
 if the Church's practice had been raised to its natural 
 pitch in the earlier days of the Reformation. 
 
 The character of Archbishop Whitgift presented 
 perhaps the most singular combination of conflicting 
 elements that could be conceived. A rigid Calvinist in 
 doctrine, a high-churchman in matters of government, 
 and a prince-bishop almost after the fashion of his 
 greatest Roman predecessors, a munificent patron of 
 learning, and the head of a family of domestics who 
 were trained to military discipline as in feudal times, 
 and ever prepared to assist in the defence of the 
 country, so often threatened with invasion — we see 
 him under such a variety of aspects as makes it 
 difficult for us to judge of his life by the ordinary 
 standard of opinion. His successor, Richard Ban- 
 croft, was translated from the bishopric of London, — a 
 man of far more definite character, a high-church- 
 man and energetic opponent of the Genevan and 
 Scottish discipline. The character of Bancroft, like 
 that of many of his predecessors, is drawn with suck 
 
FROM PARKER TO LAUD. 
 
 dark colours on the one side, and with such brilHant 
 tints on the other, that it is not easy to fix its true 
 value, or to determine how far he was fitted for the 
 very anxious charge which he filled but for six years. 
 We have, however, his picture as one of the memor- 
 able group of bishops and Puritan divines in the 
 Hampton Court Conference, drawn by the hand of 
 his devoted friend, Bishop Barlow, and are con- 
 strained to admit that Lord Clarendon's panegyric 
 upon his character and lamentation over his irrepar- 
 able loss are by no means justified by the representa- 
 tion of him as he lived and talked at that scene of 
 Royal buffoonery and episcopal flattery which Barlow 
 has so faithfully depicted — apparently in perfect un- 
 consciousness of the impression it would make upon 
 the reader in other days. This memorable con- 
 ference — in which the king, instead of acting as a wise 
 moderator, and preserving the impartiality of such a 
 position without compromising the dignity of royalty, 
 exhibited his skill merely in dreary witticisms and in 
 an affected pedantry ; while the bishops contended for 
 the prize in a competition of fulsome adulation, which 
 Barlow himself crowns by attributing to the king the 
 title of a living library and a walking study" — presents 
 the most humiliating picture which the Church of 
 England has ever yet exhibited before the world. It 
 must be noted, however, that the account given of 
 the conference by Dr. Reynolds and the Puritan 
 party represented the king as altogether on their side, 
 and some described him as using language amount- 
 ing even to obscenity. Bishop Barlow in setting 
 before us the " true version," as he affirms it to be^ 
 
324 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 though he clothes his narrative in courtly language, 
 by no means produces a picture less humiliating in 
 its view of the bishops or more dignified in its portrait 
 of the king. The part which Archbishops Whitgift 
 and Bancroft (then Bishop of London) took in this 
 abortive colloquy tended to alienate the Puritans 
 more than ever from the Church of England, or 
 rather from that high- church party which had with so 
 fatal and short-sighted a policy made use of this 
 golden opportunity in order to crush its opponents. 
 The accession of James had given the greatest hope 
 to the party of progress, which believed that as he 
 was brought up in the still severer Puritanism of the 
 north, he would not turn a deaf ear to the more 
 moderate Puritans of the southern kingdom. But 
 the cry, No bishop, no king," had acted as a charm 
 upon the weak mind of James, and the disappoint- 
 ment of the Puritans must have been great indeed 
 when at the close of the first day's conference " his 
 Majesty professed," that " howsoever he lived among 
 Puritans and was kept for the most part as a ward 
 under them, yet since he was of the age of his son, 
 ten years old, he ever disliked their opinions ; as the 
 Saviour of the world said, ' Though he lived among 
 them, he was not of them.' " According to the 
 narrative of Bishop Barlow, Bancroft lost his temper 
 in the second day's conference. ^' His Majesty, 
 observing my Lord of London to speak in some 
 passion, said that there was in it something which he 
 might excuse, something that he did mislike." In 
 such hands as these it was that the interests of the 
 Church of England and the care of the diocese of 
 
FROM PARKER TO LAUD. 
 
 Canterbury, then one of its most important divisions, 
 was placed in these anxious times. The careful 
 reader of the history of the Hampton Court Con- 
 ference cannot fail to regard it as the seed-plot of 
 that harvest of sorrow and violence which forty years 
 after was reaped by other hands, and brought to a 
 terrible death the noble young prince who was 
 sitting by upon a stool ^' while the king was making 
 his " short but pithy and sweet speech, to the same 
 purpose which the first day he made."^ 
 
 Whitgift lived but a short time after his appearance 
 at Hampton Court, and his decease was among the 
 causes which delayed Bishop Barlow's pen. He is 
 described in the preface to the bishop's narrative as 
 " a man happy in his life and death, loved of the best 
 while he lived, and heard of God for his decease ; 
 most earnestly desiring, not many days before he was 
 stricken, that he might not yet live to see this Parlia- 
 ment, near as it was." The fear of the conflict with 
 Puritanism in which he had been so actively engaged, 
 and which was now threatening to be more urgent 
 than ever, doubtless inspired this prayer. Bancroft, his 
 successor, carried on the warfare during his brief 
 primacy ; and, according to Clarendon's very doubtful 
 estimate, would have carried it on with much greater 
 success had he not been succeeded by the milder 
 Abbot, who, according to the view of the great his- 
 torian of the Rebellion, prepared the way for the Puritan 
 triumph and the fatal campaign of Laud. The twenty- 
 
 ^ Barlow, Summe and Substance of the Conference at 
 Hampton Court, Jan. 14, 1603 ; " London, 1 604, p. 22. 
 
326 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 two years of Archbishop Abbot's primacy were years of 
 comparative peace to the diocese, but whether these 
 years of peace were years of real progress, or rather 
 of laxity of discipline too well preparing both the 
 clergy and laity for the terrible conflict under the 
 reign of his successor, must be left to the judgment 
 of the reader rather than for the decision of the ex- 
 treme historians on either side. Between Lord 
 Clarendon's estimate and that of the Puritan writers 
 it is hard indeed to draw a reasonable mean. But 
 later writers have done more justice to the .character 
 and rule of the archbishop than his heated contem- 
 poraries, and it is no little credit to his name that 
 without compromising the rights or interests of the 
 Church he gained the respect, and even affection 
 of all parties in it, at a moment when the religious 
 troubles, which culminated in the Great Rebellion, 
 were growing on to a fatal maturity. 
 
 His successor was the famous Laud, who, after 
 a series of preferments, ending in the bishopric of 
 London, was elevated to the primatial see in August, 
 1633. Of his primacy, and the part w^hich the diocese 
 of Canterbury took in the great events with which it 
 was so mournfully connected, we shall have to speak 
 in the ensuing chapter. 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FROM LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 We have already directed attention to the peculiar 
 causes which facilitated the progress of the Reforma- 
 tion in the diocese of Canterbury, and left in it so 
 small a residue of those who were devoted to the 
 Roman see.^ The vast extent of the estates of the 
 Church in Kent, and the fact that all those which 
 were surrendered to the Crown passed into the hands 
 of the greater nobility, or of those immediately 
 attached to the Court, — the extreme danger incurred 
 by those disaffected to the new order of things by 
 remaining in a county which, from its position be- 
 tween the metropolis and the Continent, was under 
 the most rigid and inquisitorial inspection on the 
 part of the Government, — the vast number of foreign 
 Protestants who were received and tolerated in all 
 the ports and towns of Kent, and who tended to 
 leaven the population with which they intermarried 
 and held daily intercourse — these causes, added to 
 the characteristic independence of the Kentish 
 
 * The list of Popish recusants in Kent, as late as 164.1, num- 
 bered only sixteen names, of which only those of Guide ford 
 Finch, Hawkins and Roper represent the older county families. — 
 
 Proceedings in Kent," Camden Society's Publ. 1861, p. 65. 
 
328 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 yeomanry, and of those who had established other 
 industries among them — the clothiers of the Weald, the 
 iron-workers of the district bordering upon Sussex, 
 and the gardening population of Sandwich and 
 south-eastern Kent — all contributed to the signal and 
 almost unparalleled success of a movement which 
 brought at the same time temporal prosperity and 
 spiritual freedom. But the same causes which led to 
 this sudden and perfect change led on, at a later 
 period, to those divisions which culminated in the 
 overthrow of Episcopacy and the successive triumphs 
 of Presbyterianism and Independency. The same 
 energetic spirit which had led the people of Kent to 
 throw off the yoke of Rome with so strange a 
 unanimity, gave to every one of the divisions which 
 the new state of freedom had induced, an indepen- 
 dent and antagonistic force. Even in the days of 
 Elizabeth, and far more in those of her successors, 
 James I. and Charles I., every diocese, and most 
 especially this of Canterbury, was divided into three 
 great parties, which might be termed the parties of 
 rest, of movement, and of reaction. The first repre- 
 sented those earlier reformers who believed that they 
 had arrived at a via media^ equally removed from 
 Roman error and from the excesses of doctrine and 
 nakedness of rite which marked the Presbyterian 
 system of the Continent. These have their type in the 
 divines who flourished in the earlier years of 
 James I., in iVrchbishop Abbot, Dean Boys, and the 
 Casaubons ; men of as much moderation as erudi- 
 tion, and who defended the middle ground which 
 the higher churchmen had then assumed against their 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 adversaries on either side. Opposed to these was 
 tlie party of movement, which held that the settle- 
 ment effected by Edward VI. and Elizabeth was only 
 a halting-place, and believed it to have been merely 
 a wise expedient for making the Reformation more 
 gradual and progressive. Thus Fuller compares our 
 first reformers to the Patriarch Jacob, who would not 
 overdrive his tender flock, saying, " I dare not march 
 my Lord Esau's pace.'' Of these men of movement 
 there were again two classes, those who, like Lord 
 Bacon,^ contended for gradual changes tending to 
 assimilate the Church of England more closely to the 
 other Churches of the Reformation ; and those who^ 
 like the more active and turbulent members of the 
 Long Parliament (led on in the beginning by the 
 famous Sir Edward Bering, who deserted them so 
 timidly in the end), were termed the " Root and 
 Branch" party, whose object it was to destroy 
 Episcopacy, and with it all those distinctive features 
 which made the Church of England the envy and 
 admiration of the most learned of the French and 
 German reformers. Lastly, there was a party of re- 
 action, whose almost avowed object it was to bring 
 back the Church into a sufficient degree of confor- 
 mity to Rome to enable it to accomplish at a future 
 time that plan of reunion, which, however imprac- 
 ticable it has been made by the infatuated policy of 
 the Court of Rome at a later period, was naturally enter- 
 tained by those who were not content to pray for the 
 
 • *^ Reasonable Consideration for the Better Establishment of 
 the Church." 
 
330 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 unity of the Church without in some degree contri- 
 buting actively to the object of their prayers.^ 
 
 The party of movement was naturally identified 
 with those Calvinistic views which the Ehzabethan 
 reformers held in a modified form, and was bent on 
 carrying them to their extreme results ;2 while the 
 party of rest adopted a system which avoided at 
 once the extremes of Calvinism, and what was de- 
 nounced as Arminianism, and believed to be the 
 inevitable forerunner of Popery. Those of the clergy, 
 however, who tended towards the reaction which 
 began to set in towards Rome held doctrines on 
 grace, freewill, and other kindred subjects which so 
 far harmonized with the Roman views as to expose 
 them to an hostility even more violent than that 
 to which the open profession of the former faith 
 would have made them liable. The state of the 
 diocese of Canterbury at the opening of that troubled 
 
 * The most prominent of the charges against Laud were 
 those which related to his correspondence with Romish priests, 
 and to his sympathies and endeavours for an accommodation 
 with the Church of Rome. Although the statements of Prynne 
 must be received with great caution, there is enough in his work 
 to show that an influential party existed having the reactionary- 
 tendency here described. 
 
 ^ In proof of the extreme views which this party sought to 
 enforce we need only refer to the larger draft of the ** Petition 
 of the County of Kent," which reckons among the truths of 
 God," which the ministers were too fainthearted to preach, the 
 doctrines of predestination, of free grace, of perseverance, of 
 original sin remaining after baptism, of the Sabbath, the 
 doctrines against universal grace, election for faith foreseen, and 
 free will." — Proceedings in Kent," p. 30. 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 period upon which we are now entering can hardly, 
 be clearly understood without keeping in view the 
 fact, that while the higher clergy and most of the 
 great county families belonged to what we have here 
 termed the party of rest, the mass of the population 
 had everywhere the strongest tendency towards the 
 party of movement, and to that kind of Root and 
 Branch " reformation whose first apostle was the 
 famous Dr. Cartwright, and whose most powerful 
 advocate in Parliament was the popular Sir Edward 
 Bering, whose near relative, Dr. Edward Dering, the 
 chaplain to Queen Elizabeth at the Tower, was one 
 of the most eminent among the Calvinistic 
 preachers of his age. During the primacy of Arch- 
 bishop Abbot, and while Dean Boys was not only 
 influential at Canterbury but powerful at Lambeth, 
 the Protestantism of the Church of England was so 
 vigorously maintained, that the Puritans (as they were 
 termed from the seventh year of Elizabeth) did not 
 come into direct collision with the conforming clergy. 
 Although they had given out that " there were but 
 four profitable preachers in the greater part of Kent," 
 as Dean Boys tells us, " their spite is now vented in 
 corners, and all their light is under a bed or bushel, 
 but our clergy shine as lights in the world in the 
 midst of a wicked and crooked nation. Words like 
 these were certainly not unprovoked after the petition 
 of the Millenarians to the king, in 1603, in which 
 the established clergy were denounced as a dumb 
 
 ^ Expos, of the Epistles and Gospels," part I. p. 183, ed. 
 Lond. 1610. 
 
332 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 and insufficient ministry." But it is much to be 
 de]:)lored that the Church was not represented at 
 this time by an Usher instead of a Laud, and the 
 Puritans by a Baxter or Herle instead of an Owen or 
 a Bering. Then, to use the words of Herle, " Our 
 differences would rather have ruffled the fringe than 
 
 rent the garment of Christ We should have 
 
 rather prayed them less, than argued them more." 
 But the temper of Laud in the first years of this 
 embittered conflict brought about so violent a re- 
 action in his diocese, that all attempts at union or 
 compromise were hopeless. 
 
 The valuable collection of papers relating to the 
 ^'Proceedings in Kent," published by the Camden 
 Society from the MSS. at Surrenden Bering, discloses 
 a picture of the state of the Church throughout the 
 county which must at once prepare us for the cata- 
 strophe then so near. In the notes of the proceedings 
 taken by the " Sub-Committee on Religion, appointed 
 Nov. 23, 1640" — a body delegated by the " Grand 
 Committee" (or Committee of the whole House) on 
 the subject,! we have a portrait of Laud as he was 
 in his diocese — the only view of that many-sided 
 character, so grand in some of its features and yet 
 so mean in others, which the scope of our narrative 
 permits us to take. It~represents the case of a Mr. 
 Snelling, Vicar of Paul's Cray, and the deposition of 
 the facts of it by John Sedgewick, clarke :" — 
 
 " Br. Wood (Chancellor of Rochester) came up, 
 
 * These are comprised in a MS. in the handwriting of Sir 
 Edward Bering himself. 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 333 
 
 Staring and chafing, halfe out of breath, saying, ' For 
 Jesus' sake — for God's sake — for the king's sake — 
 somebody helpe me against this Puritan, SneUing. 
 I demand justice against this dunce.' Wood's 
 fury continuing, Bishop White asked, * What's the 
 matter ?' Wood said that SnelHng would not read 
 the Book for Sportes, therefore he had suspended 
 him. The Bishop sayd he had not done so much, 
 and going on in his discourse, Sir John Lambe in- 
 terrupted, saying, ' Hold, my Lord.' Mr. Snelling 
 presented two answers, a large one, that was rejected; 
 then a shorter one was exhibited, which was received. 
 And Dr. Ryves said it was an answer for theire turne, 
 but it was first defaced (as Mr. SnelHng says) by Sir 
 John Lambe on his appointment. After the day of 
 sentence of deprivation the archbishop asked Mr. 
 Snelling, saying, ' Are you conformable ? ' Mr. Snell- 
 ing : ^Yes, as far as is by law established.' Arch- 
 bishop : * Are you conformable to the new con- 
 formity?' Then turning to the company, said, 
 ' There is no more believing this kinde of men then 
 of a dogge.' Then Bishop Wren said, 'You may 
 know him by his band that he has a wonderful tender 
 conscience,' and so said Sir John Lambe." Mr. 
 Snelling was suspended al? officio et beneficio for not 
 reading the " Book of Sports." He was finally ex- 
 communicated for the same offence. And though it 
 appears that no authority was found in the book itself 
 for the suspension and excommunication of ministers 
 refusing, yet Dr. Wood, in his great zeal upon a mere 
 verbal command of the late Bishop of Rochester, 
 and upon another verbal direction from the arch- 
 
 z 
 
334 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 bishop in his garden at Croydon," did " suspend Mr. 
 Snelling, for he saith that my lord of Canterbury 
 expressing his pleasure to be such, he did take that 
 pleasure soe expressed to be as a command, and ac- 
 cordingly enforced it/'^ Poor Mr. Snelling mean- 
 while was allowed only a moiety of his benefice, and 
 was obliged to borrow money for his support, and " is 
 never likely," continues Sir Edward Bering, " to be 
 recovered from his debts." This was but one out of 
 a number of Laud's severities in the diocese. Richard 
 Culmer, writing to Sir Edward to announce the pre- 
 paration of a petition from Canterbury against the 
 archbishop, writes : I have had very ungracious 
 dealings with the Lambeth patriarch, by whom I 
 have been deprived of my ministry, and all the profits 
 of my living, three years and seven months, having 
 myself, my wife, and seven children to provide for ; 
 such is the prelate's tyranny for not consenting to 
 morris-dancing on the Lord's Day."^ The cause of 
 this persecution for disobedience to what the arch- 
 bishop significantly termed the " new conformity/' was 
 the republication of the "Book of Sports" by Charles I. 
 on Oct. 1 8th, 1633, y^^^ of Laud's accession. 
 The shibboleth of orthodoxy and the determination 
 of the qualification for orders in that day were in- 
 volved in the three questions — Whether the " Book of 
 Sports " be allowable ? whether bowing towards the 
 altar be superstitious ? and whether the Church have 
 power to determine matters of faith ? On the failure 
 to answer the first and third in the affirmative,, and the 
 
 * "Proceedings in Kent," pp. 91-93. ^ Id. p. 120. 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 335 
 
 second in the negative, numbers of faithful ministers 
 were suspended or silenced, and the Church lost the 
 services of some of the most valuable and efficient 
 of her teachers. From the authentic documents 
 which are collected in the volume here referred to, it 
 is difficult to imagine a condition more helpless, and 
 even hopeless, than that of the clergy of the diocese 
 of Canterbury. The primate and the Crown exer- 
 cised, the one actually and the other virtually, and by 
 a kind of connivance, an authority both spiritual and 
 temporal that had no precedent in the worst periods 
 of the Roman usurpation, and certainly has had no 
 example in more recent times. On a mere suspi- 
 cion of disaffection to the Book of Sports " and the 
 Laudian conformity, the unfortunate clergyman was 
 made a prisoner in his own house, watched over by 
 a pursuivant of the primate's, and treated almost as 
 an outlaw. The case of Mr. Thomas Wilson, the 
 rector of Otham, was one of a hundred. A pursui- 
 vant had been despatched for him, whose clutches 
 he had contrived to escape. Sir Edward Bering took 
 him with him to London, and presented a petition to 
 the House in his behalf. His words on this occa- 
 sion were interesting and significant : — Now, Mr. 
 Speaker ... I will present unto you the petition of 
 a poor oppressed minister in the county of Kent, a 
 man orthodox in his doctrine, conformable in his life, 
 laborious in his ministry as any we have or I do 
 know. He is now a sufferer (as all good men are) 
 under the general obloquy of a Puritan. . . . The 
 pursuivant watches his door, and divides him and his 
 cure asunder, to both their griefs. . . . About a week 
 
 z 2 
 
33^ 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 since I went over to Lambeth to move that great 
 bishop (too great indeed) to take this danger off from 
 this minister and to recall the pursuivant. And 
 withal I did undertake for Master Wilson . . . that 
 he should answer his accusers in any of the king's 
 courts at Westminster. The bishop made me answer 
 (as near as I can remember) in haec verba, ' I am 
 sure that he will not be absent from his cure a twelve- 
 month together, and then (I doubt not) but once in a 
 year we shall have him. ' This was all I could obtain, 
 but I hope (by the help of this house) before this 
 year of threats runs round, his Grace will either have 
 more grace or no grace at all. For our manifold griefs 
 do fill a mighty and vast circumference, yet so that 
 from every part our lives of sorrow do lead unto him, 
 and point at him, the centre from whence our miseries 
 in this Church, and many of them in the Common- 
 wealth, do flow."^ It is deeply to be deplored that 
 words like these, spoken in the ears of the excited 
 members of the Long Parliament, and contributing so 
 largely to the terrible fate of the primate, were occa- 
 sioned by a series of cruelties and persecutions which 
 made his earlier history so sad a contrast to its clos- 
 ing scene. They seem to contain the prophecy of his 
 terrible destiny, while they give the reasons which 
 hardened the hearts of his judges. The famous peti- 
 tion from the county of Kent which the committee on 
 religion had evoked hastened on the fatal consum- 
 mation. This, as it is one of the most important of 
 the documents which belong to our diocesan history, 
 
 ^ '* Proceedings in Kent," p. 39, note. 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 337 
 
 cannot be fully appreciated unless we present it to the 
 reader in extenso, A much larger version of it was 
 sent to Sir Edward Bering in the first instance, but 
 the petition, as it was actually presented, runs thus : 
 
 " The humble petition of many of the inhabitants 
 within his Majesty's county of Kent. 
 
 Most humbly showing that by sad experience we 
 do daily find the government in the Church of En- 
 gland by archbishops, &c. ... to be very dangerous 
 both in Church and Commonwealth, and to be the 
 occasion of manifold grievances unto his Majesty's 
 subjects in their consciences, liberties, and estates, 
 likely to be fatal to us in the continuance thereof. 
 The dangerous effects of which lordly power in them 
 have appeared in these particulars following. 
 
 " They do with a hard hand overrule all other 
 ministers, subjecting them to their cruel authority.^ 
 
 " They do suspend, punish, and deprive many 
 godly, religious, and painful ministers upon slight and 
 do upon no grounds ; whilst in the meantime few of 
 them preach the Word of God themselves, and that 
 but seldom ; but they do restrain the painful preaching 
 of others both for lectures and for afternoon ser- 
 mons on the Sabbath Day. They do countenance, 
 and have of late encouraged papists, priests, and 
 Arminian, both books and persons. 
 
 They hinder good and godly books to be printed ; 
 
 ^ This alludes to the charge against Laud of having '^sup- 
 pressed and abrogated the privileges and immunities granted by 
 his Majesty and his Royal ancestors to the Dutch and French 
 Churches " as Pym's speech before the House of Lords in 1641 
 expresses it. 
 
338 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 yet they do license to be published many Popish, 
 Arminian, and other dangerous tenets. 
 
 They have deformed our churches with Popish 
 pictures, and suited them with Romish altars. 
 
 " They have of late extolled and commended much 
 the Church of Rome, denying the pope to be Anti- 
 christ, affirming the Church of Rome to be a true 
 Church in fundamentals. 
 
 " They have practised and enforced antiquated and 
 obsolete ceremonies, as standing at the hymns, at 
 Gloria Patri, and turning to the east at several parts 
 of the Divine Service ; bowing to the altar, which they 
 term the place of God's residence upon earth ; the 
 reading of a second service at the altar, and denying 
 the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist to such as have 
 not come up to a new-set rail before the altar. 
 
 " They have made and contrived illegal canons and 
 constitutions, and framed a most jDernicious and 
 desperate oath — an oath of covenant and confede- 
 racy for their own hierarchical greatness, besides 
 many other dangerous and pernicious passages in the 
 said canons. 
 
 " They do dispense with plurality of benefices ; they 
 do both prohibit and grant marriages, neither of 
 them by the rule of law or conscience ; but do pro- 
 hibit that they may grant, and grant that they may 
 have money. 
 
 " They have procured a licentious liberty for the 
 Lord's Day, but have pressed the strict observation 
 of saints' holidays ; and do punish, suspend, degrade, 
 deprive godly ministers for not publishing a book for 
 liberty of sports on the Sabbath Day. 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 339 
 
 ^'They do generally abuse the great ordinance of 
 excommunication, making sometimes a gain of it, to 
 the great discomfort of many poor souls who, for 
 want of money, can get no absolution. 
 
 " They claim their office and jurisdiction to be Jure 
 dzvi7to, and do exercise the same (contrary to law) in 
 their own names and under their own seals. 
 
 "They receive and take upon them temporal 
 honours, dignities, places and offices in the Common- 
 wealth as if it were lawful for them to use both swords. 
 
 They take cognisance in their courts and else- 
 where of matters determinable at the common law. 
 
 "They put ministers upon parishes without the 
 patron and the people^s consent. 
 
 " They do yearly impose oaths upon churchwardens 
 to the most apparent damage of filling the land with 
 perjury. 
 
 " They do exercise oaths, ex officio, in the nature of 
 an inquisition even into the thoughts of men. 
 
 " They have apprehended men by poursuivants 
 without citation or missives first sent ; they break up 
 men's houses and studies, taking away what they 
 please. 
 
 " They do awe the judges of the land with their 
 greatness, to the inhibiting of prohibitions and hin- 
 dering of habeas corpus when it is due. 
 
 " They are strongly suspected to be confederate with 
 the Roman party in this land^ and with them to be 
 
 ' Richard Carpenter, a convert from Rome, was advised by 
 Dr. Baker (the licenser) not to publish his sermon in vindication 
 of his change "because the Church of Rome and we are in a 
 
340 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 the authors, contrivers, or consenters to the present 
 commotions in the North ; and the rather because 
 of contribution by the clergy and by the papists in 
 the last year, 1639, and because of an ill-named bene- 
 volence of six subsidies intended to be granted this 
 present year 1640, thereby and with these moneys to 
 engage (as much as in them lay) the two nations into 
 blood. 
 
 " It is therefore humbly and earnestly prayed that 
 this hierarchical power may be totally abrogated, if 
 the wisdom of this honourable House shall find that 
 it cannot be maintained by God's Word and to His 
 glory. 
 
 " And your petitioners shall ever pray, &c."i 
 This remarkable document gives the key to the 
 entire position of the diocese at this eventful period, 
 and is illustrated and cleared up by the numerous 
 petitions to the committee from various parishes in 
 all parts of the county appended to the narrative of 
 Sir Edward Dering. We observe, first, that the whole 
 diocese, excepting only those parishes which were 
 occupied by the chaplains and nominees of the arch- 
 bishop, had fallen into a laxity of rite and observance 
 which almost exactly resembled those of the Pres- 
 byterian Churches which since the toleration edicts of 
 Edward VI. and Elizabeth had been estabhshed at 
 Canterbury, Sandwich, and the other principal centres 
 
 peaceful way, and therefore not fit to augment controversies."' 
 He was " advised therefore to say as little as might be (some- 
 thing must be said) against the Church of Rome." ("Pro- 
 ceedings," &c., p. 85.) 
 
 ' Proceedings in Kent," pp. 29-32, note. The larger peti- 
 tion is given in the text. 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 of population in Kent. The primacy of Archbishop 
 Abbot had brought about a state of negHgence in the 
 diocese both in doctrine and rite, which sowed the 
 seeds of those fatal disorders which were developed 
 during the government of his successor. Lord Cla- 
 rendon describes him as a man totally ignorant of 
 the true constitution of the Church of England ; and 
 the state and interest of the clergy," as having made 
 very little progress in the ancient and solid study of 
 divinity, but adhering to the doctrine of Calvin, whose 
 discipline he did not think so ill of as he ought to 
 have done." He is charged with having been 
 extremely remiss in regard to churches and chapels, 
 and the neglected state both of these and of the 
 services which were held in them rendered the 
 government and re-organization of the diocese a most 
 difficult work. Unfortunately, these were left to a 
 man whose vehemence of temper and extreme impru- 
 dence precipitated a conflict Avhich a gentler and 
 more forbearing spirit might have averted, or at least 
 delayed, until a period in which more moderate 
 counsels prevailed on both sides. The immense and 
 hitherto latent powers of the archbishopric were now 
 wielded with a vigour and energy which had been 
 never witnessed since the days of Becket or Langton ; 
 and the almost autocratic power which was exercised 
 in the diocese is sadly illustrated in the petitions of 
 the clergy and the depositions both of clergy and 
 laity before the " Committee of Religion." In the 
 days of Abbot it was enough that the clergy should 
 hold the Augustinian views on grace, election, predes- 
 tination, and such higher doctrines," and should 
 
342 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 denounce the Church of Rome on every available 
 occasion as the Antichrist ; it signified little how far 
 the directions of the ritual, the canons and orders of 
 the Church were neglected or thrown into abeyance. 
 We must read, therefore, both the general petition 
 and the individual addresses by which it was sup- 
 ported with caution and reserve, while at the same 
 time we give full value to the facts which they detail 
 — remembering always, however, that we have only in 
 a few cases the counter-statements of the accused, 
 and that where we have them they generally explain 
 away the more startling charges of the accuser. 
 
 The summary jurisdiction exercised by the arch- 
 bishop in the way of suspension, deprivation, and even 
 excommunication for the most trivial causes ; the 
 disturbance of the clergy by pursuivants and other 
 officers ; their dispensations in the case of pluralities 
 and marriages, and the other charges against Laud of 
 violating the rights of the subject and perverting the 
 course of justice, have too great a weight of proof to 
 enable us to resist the plea of the petitioners. But 
 the denunciation of " standing at the hymns," " bowing 
 at the altar," turning to the east," as " antiquated 
 and obsolete ceremonies," shows that the memory 
 of the petitioners was not much older than the days 
 of Abbot, and that they had adopted the bare and 
 irreverent usages of the Presbyterian Churches which 
 had been found among them, and which seemed (as 
 Dr. Heylin says) but the "setting up Presbytery to 
 confront Episcopacy, and a commonwealth in the 
 midst of a monarchy." The excesses which the 
 neglect of ''decency and order" in the Church had 
 
LAUD TO BANCROFT. 
 
 343 
 
 occasioned induced Laud to order the railing-in of 
 the communion-tables, and the disuse of the prevailing 
 practice of bringing the table into the body of the 
 church at the time of the celebration, or of carrying 
 the elements down into the church and handing them 
 from pew to pew. Complaints against this new 
 arrangement, and the manner it which it was carried 
 out, came up to the committee from Woodchurch, 
 East Peckham, Yalding, Capel, Leysdown, Boughton- 
 under-Blean, Horsmonden, Sturry, Lyminge, Ton- 
 bridge, Chatham, Rolvenden, and other places, — all 
 of them very suggestive as indications of the pre- 
 Laudian practice — all of them proofs of the violence 
 and extreme indiscretion with which the change was 
 introduced and enforced. Of the Vicar of Wood- 
 church it is complained, He is a man superstitiously 
 affected, by his actions manifested in his exalting 
 the communion-table, and violently compelling the 
 churchwardens to rail in the same.'' The Vicar of 
 East Peckham had gone further by " setting up our 
 communion-table at the east end of the chancel, close 
 to the wall, altarwise, the said table there railed in, 
 and a new wainscot at the east side of the said table, 
 .made with the picture of angels therein carved.'' 
 The Vicar of Yalding is charged with the same inno- 
 vation, his rail having "two ascents thereto." From 
 Capel the complaint is made of the vicar, He is so 
 ceremonial, that if he come out of the rails he saith 
 he shall offend God," and did "dismise some five or 
 sixe of us when we presented ourselfes one our knees 
 in the chansell to receive the sachrament, because we 
 did not come to the raiels wheare he doth cringe and 
 
344 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 bowe." At Horsmonden the communion-table was 
 set up unto the walle and upon the said wall was 
 written these words, " Wee have an altar," &c. The 
 rector is charged further with going up to the table to 
 read great part of the service (i.e., the Communion" 
 portion), an indication of the general practice of 
 reading the entire service from the desk. Not only 
 the arbitrary refusal of the Communion to all who did 
 not come up to the rails to receive (as in these pre- 
 vious cases), but the most unseemly and violent 
 conduct to the communicants is charged against the 
 Rector of Sturry ; while, in addition to the altar-rail 
 complaint, the Vicar of Lyminge is accused of being 
 a defender of image-worship, affirming that the papists 
 were in a righter way than we. And being asked by 
 Richard Cozins of the same parish, '^Why Shadrak, 
 Mesach, and Abednigo would not worshipp the King's 
 Image, hee answered, that it was a ffable." 
 
 In consequence of these innovations the Tonbridge 
 petitioners complain that divers of the best-minded 
 families there have removed their dwellings into other 
 parishes, and some gone out of the kingdom." The 
 same depopulation is described as threatening the 
 town of Tenterden, but in that case arising from the 
 non-residence and neglect of the vicar. The curate 
 of Chatham, in the neighbouring diocese of Rochester, 
 is denounced for " complaining how he is abased in 
 administering the sacrament, going from pew to pew, 
 as one that dealeth alms, or a dole to the people." 
 When urged by the Apostle's words (on his saying 
 that seldom-preaching was that he looked for), that 
 his duty did consist in preaching, and to be instant 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 345 
 
 in season and out of season, ^ In season,' he saith. ' is 
 to preach upon Sundaies in the forenoones, and out 
 of season in the afternoones.' " 
 
 Among the evils of the Church which Laud had 
 rather inherited than provoked were those of the 
 non-residence of the clergy, insufficiency of their 
 maintenance, pluralities, doctrinal excesses, and irre- 
 gular and oppressive exactions in the matter of tithes. 
 Complaints against non-resident clergymen came in 
 from Little Chart, Smarden, Sutton Valence, Minster, 
 Goudhurst, Ivychurch, Hucking, Maidstone, and 
 Tenterden. The poverty of their ministers is alleged 
 by the parishioners of Walmer, Brabourne, Oare, 
 Whitstable, Folkestone, and Waltham. These were 
 probably mere typical cases of a much larger class of 
 necessitous cures. Of pluralities we have the cases 
 of Minster and Sutton Valence. Chislet, Molash, 
 Stourmouth, Rolvenden, and other places complain 
 of the life or doctrine of their ministers, or of both ; 
 while St. Mary Cray, Shoreham and Otford, Fairfield, 
 Promhill and Midley, represent cases of hardship and 
 oppression in the matter of tithes. If the time of 
 Laud had been spent in his diocese instead of in the 
 Star Chamber or in the Council, — at Canterbury in- 
 stead of at Lambeth, and if, instead of delegating his 
 authority to his officials, he had exercised it in his own 
 person — in other words, had substituted his pastoral 
 for his judicial office, the petition of the county of Kent 
 had never been drawn up, nor its sad corroborative 
 evidences set before the Committee of Religion. But 
 the fatal die was cast. The death-struggle between 
 the archbishop and his Puritan clergy was entered 
 
34^ 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 upon without the sHghtest effort at mediation or recon- 
 ciliation, and a war d ozi^rance was the result. 
 
 To the spiritual misery and destitution occasioned 
 by this continual warfare, were added the temporal 
 evils so necessarily associated with them. The Weald 
 of Kent and the Marsh appear, from many indica- 
 tions of these papers, to have presented a sad con- 
 trast to that which they exhibited in the earlier days 
 of the Reformation. The petition from Ruckinge 
 discloses the attempt of the farmers there to establish 
 paupers in the farm-houses of the parish, not able 
 to give relief, but to receive," by which the people 
 became unable to contribute either to the Church or 
 poor, or to find arms to serve his Majesty. This plan 
 doubtless led on to the depopulation of the Marsh, 
 and to the non-residence of its clergy, evils which 
 survived even to our own day, and which have in 
 many cases been only recently remedied. The poverty 
 of some of the principal livings offered a melancholy 
 contrast to the pluralities which united some of the 
 richest benefices, and often added to them a cathedral 
 dignity besides. These occurred chiefly in the livings 
 in the archbishop's own gift; Dr. Meric Casaubon, 
 Laud's chaplain, holding the vicarages of Minster, 
 Monkton, and Birchington, together with a prebendal 
 stall at Canterbury, while Maidstone, even then num- 
 bering 6,000 inhabitants, was left to a poor curate, 
 the archbishop himself receiving the tithes, which 
 amounted to "at least ;^4oo a year." It had been 
 well if the zeal and influence of Laud had been exer- 
 cised in redressing these practical grievances, instead 
 of being exhausted in efforts to force the inhabitants 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 347 
 
 of the diocese into a more reverent observance of 
 ritual matters. As it was, they gave additional weight 
 to the heavy charges which became so fatal to him, 
 and prepared the way for that great revolution which 
 involved destruction rather than reformation. An 
 anonymous writer, fifty years after, thus judiciously 
 summarized the case between Laud and his adver- 
 saries : — " Many, to avoid the superfluous and super- 
 stitious rites whereby the worship of God was in the 
 Church of Rome corrupted and obscured, have run 
 into a contrary superstition, avoiding and neglecting 
 even natural expressions of reverence and decency in 
 it. This justly moved some of our bishops, and Dr. 
 Laud especially, to labour (as he saith), that the 
 external worship of God (so much slighted in many 
 parts) might be preserved, and that with as much 
 decency and uniformity as might be. But it was 
 pressed too far, in unnecessary matters, in a kind of 
 arbitrary manner, without an equal concern for the 
 promotion of real and internal piety 3 nay, with obsti- 
 nate refusal and opposition of reformation of other 
 great abuses in discipline, non-residence, pluralities, 
 &c., and with opposition even of some means of the 
 promotion of religion, the observation of the Lord's 
 Day, lectures,! and the purchase of impropriations, as 
 
 ^ The undue elevation of preaching was the characteristic of 
 the Puritan movement which Laud so energetically opposed — 
 the undue depression of it was the error of the Laudian system. 
 Dean Boys said well, Preaching may not thrust out of the 
 church common prayer, for it is an oratory — neither may prayer 
 shuffle preaching out of the church, for it is an auditory J'^ On 
 the Epistles, &c., Summer Portion," p. 230.) 
 
348 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 V 
 
 if it were the only thing necessary, and that it and 
 absolute subjection to the will of the prince under 
 the notion of loyalty was the sum of all religion. 
 And this again, on the other side, made it to be 
 looked upon as mere formality, and a project to pre- 
 pare us for the readmission of Popery, and so raised 
 a greater antipathy against it, which at last cast all 
 out, but in its place brought in indecency, profane- 
 ness, and confusion."^ 
 
 Notwithstanding the evils which afflicted both the 
 diocese and the Church at large during this fatal 
 period, we may rejoice that the best results of the 
 zeal of Laud remain, and that the restoration of the 
 ritual of our Church to its first estate, which certainly 
 was his great design, was not retarded or neutral- 
 ized in the day of her re-establishment. The revul- 
 sion of feeling which succeeded his cruel death 
 brought the higher features of his life into promi- 
 nence, and his earlier errors and severities, so bitterly 
 felt in his own diocese, and made conspicuous by the 
 " Committee of Religion,'^ were gradually forgotten. 
 The proverb seemed, in his case at least, to be re- 
 versed, qualis vita, Jims ita^^ for the fidelity he de- 
 clared to the doctrines of the Reformation on the 
 scaffold rather contrasted with than completed the 
 testimony of his primatial reign. The altar-rails, 
 which were his work, the coming up to the table to 
 receive, the reading of the Communion Service from 
 the altar instead of at the desk, these and many other 
 
 ' '*The Spirit of the Church-Faction Detected." London, 
 1 69 1, pref. 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 349 
 
 results of his zeal for the reverential observances of 
 the Church still survive in the diocese and in the 
 Church at large. Many of the altar-rails and tables 
 of the rural churches in Kent belong either to this 
 period, or to the revived and very doubtful taste of 
 the epoch of the Restoration. Yet it would be ill to 
 forget at how dear a price the forced uniformity of 
 Laud was obtained, and the immense injury it in- 
 flicted upon the diocese. These are partly set forth 
 in the larger petition of the county, which alleges its 
 immediate results to have been ^^the discouragement 
 and distraction of all good subjects, of whom multi- 
 tudes, both clothiers, merchants, and others being 
 deprived of their ministers, and overburdened with 
 their pressures, have departed the kingdom to Hol- 
 land and other parts, and have drawn with them a 
 great part of the manufacture of cloth and trading out 
 of the land into the place where they reside, whereby 
 wool (the great staple of the kingdom) is become of 
 small value, and vends not ; trading is decayed, 
 many poor people want work, seamen less employed, 
 and the whole land much impoverished, to the great 
 dishonour of the kingdom and blemish of the govern- 
 ment thereof. "1 It will be observed that the principal 
 complaints against the Laudian changes came from 
 the Weald of Kent and the places adjacent, where 
 these industries were specially established. In the 
 rural parishes of East Kent the complaints relate 
 chiefly to the inadequate stipends of the ministers, 
 to non-residence, and the disputes which had arisen 
 in regard to tithes. 
 
 * Proceedings in Kent," p. 37. 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 The first effort of Laud for the better observation 
 of the ritual in the diocese was put forth at Canter- 
 bury. He drew up a body of new statutes for the 
 cathedral, in which, among many injunctions for the 
 greater solemnity to be observed in the services, he 
 equired all the clergy summa reverentia adorare 
 Deum versus altare.^' He next ordered the removal 
 of what the chapter, in their letter of reply, describe as 
 the " exorbitant seats within our quire," reminding the 
 archbishop of the ^'extraordinary expenses " they had 
 been involved in "for the ornaments of the altar."i 
 The archbishop had already written to his vicar- 
 general, Sir Nathaniel Brent, requiring him to com- 
 mand the Communion Table at Maidstone to be 
 placed at the upper or east end of the chancel, and 
 there railed in, and that the communicants there 
 shall come up to the rail to receive the Blessed 
 Sacrament ; and the like you are required to do in 
 all other places where you are to visit metro- 
 politically."^ This was in 1633, the year of his 
 accession. 
 
 His next act was much more questionable, and is 
 incapable of any reasonable defence. The Dutch 
 and French congregations at Canterbury, Maidstone, 
 and Sandwich, had enjoyed the most complete tole- 
 ration, under special grants of the Crown, from the 
 time of Edward VI., every succeeding sovereign 
 either confirming or enlarging them. Laud appears, 
 from the opening of his primacy, to have resolved to 
 limit these privileges to the persons of the then 
 
 ^ Prynne, Canterburies Doom." p. 79. ^ Id. p. 89. 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 351 
 
 existing ministers and their congregations, and by 
 enjoining upon them the observance of the English 
 Liturgy in its French and Dutch translations, to 
 bring them into a perfect conformity with the Church 
 of England and an entire subordination to himself. 
 By this very doubtful policy he hoped to remove the 
 anomaly which his devoted chaplain and biographer, 
 Heylin, describes as the setting up Presbytery to 
 confront Episcopacy, and a commonwealth in the 
 midst of a monarchy.'' He believed, doubtless, that 
 by the gradual removal of the model by which toO' 
 many of the churches of the diocese had adjusted 
 their ritual, he should be enabled to raise the 
 standard of religious observance in his diocese, and 
 destroy an influence whose results we have already 
 seen in the laxity which prevailed almost everywhere. 
 Accordingly, he issued injunctions to the Dutch and 
 Walloon congregations in his diocese " to hear divine 
 service in their parish churches ; " and required 
 their ministers and other strangers that may come 
 over to them to have the English Liturgy trans- 
 lated into French and Dutch, for the better settling 
 of their children to the English Governments^ 
 He denied them the exercise of any ecclesiastical 
 jurisdiction, and enjoined on them the use of the 
 
 * Prynne, p. 402 (eel. fol. 1646). This was a direct con- 
 travention of the orders in Council by which the foreign Churches-> 
 were protected, and which in every case permitted their members. 
 
 ihough born in the kingdom, to belong to their congregations 
 and extended the privileges to their children,''^ (See PhiEp 
 Nye's *' Discourse on the King's Authority in dispensing with 
 Eccl. Laws." Lond. 1687, p. 26.) 
 
 2 A 2 
 
352 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 English Liturgy, and obedience to the laws of the 
 Church of England. 
 
 This edict, which was issued in 1637, was a 
 jfiagrant infraction of the liberties enjoyed for a cen- 
 tury by the foreign Churches, and was a high dero- 
 gation of the authority of the Crown, justifying the 
 charges brought against the bishop in the Kentish 
 petition. The case of the foreign Churches was 
 fully laid before the world in 1645, in "A Relation of 
 the Troubles of the Three Foreign Churches in Kent, 
 caused by the Injunctions of William Laud, Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury ; by John Bulteel, Minister of 
 the Walloon Church at Canterbury." 
 
 In 1642, the county of Kent was in a state of 
 rebellion, and the proclamation of the king was 
 issued, promising pardon to all who were implicated 
 in this open resistance of his authority ; an exception 
 being made in the case of Sir Michael Lively, Bart., 
 and Thomas Blount, Esq. 
 
 In 1643, the Parliament, more interested (it would 
 appear) in the religious than in the civil disputes of 
 the age, passed several acts of the most Root and 
 Branch" character, w^hich they sent on to the king 
 at Oxford, but which he naturally refused to sanc- 
 tion. The first was for the suppression of divers 
 innovations in churches and chapels, for the due 
 observance of the Lord's day, for the better advance- 
 ment of preaching, &c. The second was an act for 
 abolishing archbishops, bishops, deans, and all the 
 episcopal platform, carrying out the Root and 
 Branch " reformation in its most radical sense. The 
 third w^as an act for the punishment of scandalous 
 
LAUD TO SAN CROFT. 353 
 
 clergymen ; the fourth, an act against pluralities ; 
 and the fifth, an act for calling together the assembly 
 of divines. Meantime the popular resentment against 
 Laud was increasing in violence and vindictiveness, 
 and the strange transition of his character from the 
 persecutor to the martyr became daily more marked 
 and impressive. It must have been difficult to those 
 who witnessed such scenes as that which his inter- 
 view with Snelling presented, to have realized the 
 fact that the same character stood before them in that 
 day of humiliation and suffering, in which the heart- 
 less Sir John Clotworthy, in reply to the aspiration of 
 Laud, Cupio dissolvi et esse cum Christo," rejoined, 
 That is a good desire, but there must be a founda- 
 tion for that desire, as assurance." "No man," said 
 the archbishop, " can express it ; it is to be found 
 within." "It is founded upon a word though,^^ 
 added the cold-blooded controversialist, " and that 
 word would be known." " That word," replied the 
 archbishop, " is the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and 
 that alone."^ Truly, the zeal which was "not accord- 
 ing to knowledge" of his earlier history was atoned 
 for by that practical knowledge of the Saviour in his 
 closing life which was witnessed in this hour of his 
 last conflict. Those in whose minds the earlier me- 
 mories of his life survived the later, must have been 
 few indeed in comparison with those who forgot in 
 the touching incidents of the final scene, the errors 
 which had led on to so terrible a destiny. With the 
 
 ^ See the original tract describing the last words of the arch- 
 bishop, 4to. p. i8. 
 
354 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 death of Laud began those fifteen years of anarchy, 
 during which Presbyterianism and CongregationaHsm 
 (or Independency) were successively estabHshed in 
 the diocese. 
 
 At this fatal period began also those " sufferings of 
 the clergy/' described by Walker in his famous narra- 
 tive, and those endless divisions which, when they 
 had worn out the very life of the Church, left it weak 
 and powerless in the day of the Restoration. The 
 death of Laud in the opening of the year 1645 left 
 the whole Church in a state of anarchy, and the 
 bonds of diocesan government were dissolved. The 
 abolition of Episcopacy, already effected in 1643, 
 was now completed by the cruel fate of the primate ; 
 and the meeting of the assembly of divines at West- 
 minster, in 1647, inaugurated a new system, both of 
 doctrine and government, in agreement with that of 
 the Churches of the Calvinistic confession on the 
 Continent, a system which is now represented by the 
 Scottish Kirk. It must, however, be carefully ob- 
 served that this advice of the assembly of divines 
 concerning a confession of faith," is so broad, 
 and even vague, in regard to the matter of Church 
 government, that ample room was left for the great 
 controversy between the advocates of the Presbyterian 
 and Congregational (or Independent) methods, which 
 so soon broke out in the midst of the general anarchy. 
 This omission of any clear direction in so grave a 
 matter was doubtless occasioned by the order of Par- 
 liament of Nov. 6, 1645, which empowered the com- 
 mittee to act, and instructed them " to endeavour an 
 union, if possible, of the different opinions of the 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 355 
 
 assembly in point of Church government ; and in 
 case that cannot be done, to find out some way that 
 tender consciences, not submitting in all things, might 
 be borne with,'' &c. There were many eminent peace- 
 makers in the assembly who endeavoured to bring 
 about a modus vivendi, and even a virtual reconciliation 
 between the two parties. Eminent among these was 
 Mr. Herle, the prolocutor, and Mr. Coleman, one of 
 the members of the assembly.^ But the attempts 
 to give to the Presbyterian government an organiza- 
 tion as complex and elaborate as that which had 
 grown up during the process of centuries in the Epi- 
 scopal Church, and the example which the Scottish 
 Presbyteries presented of the state of spiritual bond- 
 age into which a Church might fall under such a 
 system, hastened the triumph of Congregationalism, 
 for which the churches in Kent were far better pre- 
 pared than for the transfer of an absolute power from 
 an individual to a synodical organization. In the 
 rare and remarkable treatise of William Dell, called 
 The Way of Peace," addressed to ^' Lieutenant- 
 General Cromwell, and to the Lord-General Fairfax," "^ 
 the writer observes, " Most evident then it is, that 
 during the time of the apostasie, the Church hath 
 been most miserably lorded even amongst us ; for 
 the priest he lorded it over the people, the arch- 
 deacon over the priest, the dean over the archdeacon, 
 the bishop over the dean, and the archbishop over 
 the bishop ; under which woful bondage the Church 
 
 * Brief History of Presbytery and Independency," London, 
 1691, pp. 25, 26. 
 2 London, 1647, pp. 33-35- 
 
356 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 cried out, as Isa. xxvi., * O Lord our God, other lords 
 beside Thee have had dominion over us.' And is 
 this bondage of the Church now eased by casting off 
 those strange lords ? Yea,, do not men seek rather 
 to increase it, by setting yet stranger over it, whose 
 names are so full of mystery that the common people 
 cannot understand them ? For now they would have 
 the Classical Presbytery set over the Congregational^ 
 and the Provincial over the Classical^ and the Na- 
 tional over the Provincial^ for so it is voted, ^ that it 
 is lawful and agreeable to the word of God that theVe 
 be a subordination of Congregational, Classical, Pro- 
 vincial, and National assemblies for the government 
 of the Church.' Now here is mystery^ and nothing 
 but a certain rising up into the old power under a 
 
 new name If this might be brought about, 
 
 which they design, the Church would be so far from 
 being eased of its strange lords that it should have 
 them exceedingly multiplied. For what is a national 
 assembly but an archbishop multiplied ? and what a 
 provincial assembly but a bishop multiplied ? and a 
 classical but a dean and archdeacon multiplied?" 
 
 The controversy thus awakened became more and 
 more embittered, notwithstanding the efforts of the 
 best and wisest men on either side, and indeed the 
 only bond of union that remained was the obligation^ 
 rather political than religious, of the " Solemn League 
 and Covenant," taken by the House of Commons 
 and the assembly of divines on Sept. 25, 1643, on 
 which occasion a vigorous and not ineloquent address 
 was delivered by the famous Puritan divine, Mr. 
 Philip Nye, whose "thanksgiving beard" is cele- 
 
LAUD TO SANXROFT. 
 
 357 
 
 brated in " Hudibras." It does not appear that the 
 elaborate organization enjoined by the assembly was 
 ever established in Kent, where indeed from the cha- 
 racter of the clergy and people it would have been 
 perhaps more difficult to carry out than in most other 
 counties. The foreign Churches in Kent had be- 
 come from necessity, if not also from choice, more 
 Congregational than Presbyterian, so that the only 
 model for the new Church system was of the later 
 rather than the earlier type. Essex had already, in 
 gre!it part, followed her eloquent teacher, Dr. Owen, 
 in his transition from the Presbyterian to the Inde- 
 pendent views ; and it would seem that the ^' Country 
 Essay for the Practice of Church Government there 
 of Cromwell's favourite chaplain was as much followed 
 in Kent as in Essex, whose inhabitants and fortunes 
 were so closely connected with those of the metro- 
 political diocese. 
 
 Among the most fatal of the results which this 
 long-protracted religious conflict produced through- 
 oat the country, those who were living within me- 
 mory of it have noted the origin and progress of 
 Deism among the higher and more influential classes. 
 " In the time of King Charles I. (which confineth my 
 longest acquaintance with men)," observes the writer 
 of " An Account of the Growth of Deism in Eng- 
 land, in 1696," "'twas usual for gentlemen to send 
 their sons abroad into Italy, Spain, France, Germany, 
 &c., to accomplish themselves by travel. But lest 
 they should be prevailed upon to change their reli- 
 gion, care was taken that their tutor or governor 
 who travelled with them should show them the idola- 
 
358 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 try and superstition of the Roman religion, and also 
 let them see that Popery in all its branches was only 
 a device of the priesthood to carry on a particular 
 interest of their own ; to increase their wealth, 
 
 honours, and power over the lay-people Now 
 
 the young gentleman being thoroughly convinced of 
 this, returneth to Old England, where he meets with 
 zealous contests about religion (as was pretended) 
 between the Church of England, headed by Arch- 
 bishop Laud, on the one part, and the Presbyterian 
 Kirk on the other, and having carefully read the* de- 
 bate on both sides, with those very eyes which he 
 had so lately cleared up in Italy or France, he could 
 not forbear to see that both these Protestant parties, 
 under the pretence of religion, were only grasping at 
 power, and that the controversy at bottom was not 
 whose religion was best, but only what sect of the 
 clergy should make the best market of the mere lay- 
 men. And as this young gentleman had before re- 
 solved with himself not to become a property to the 
 Popish priesthood, no longer now will he be such to 
 the Protestant clergy of any denomination, since 
 both pursue the same ends."^ Perhaps on no other 
 grounds than these can the suddenness of the out- 
 burst of Socinianism and Deism in the day of the 
 Restoration be accounted for, and to scarcely any other 
 can we attribute the fact (though nothing can supply 
 the justification) of the chilling contrast which the 
 pulpits of that period present to the fervid teaching 
 
 ' * * An Account of the Growth of Deism in England ; " London, 
 printed for the author, 1696, p. 5. 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 359 
 
 of the Puritan divines, and the rich stores of both 
 patristic and later divinity which fill their discourses 
 and make the long series of their sermons before the 
 House of Commons so valuable and interesting.^ 
 
 Although the fifteen years which were interposed 
 between the death of Laud and the Restoration 
 formed, in a certain sense, a blank in the history of 
 the diocese, for all the limits and landmarks of 
 episcopal jurisdiction were obliterated in a moment 
 by the Act of the Long Parliament already referred 
 t(f, and the diocese merged in the country, the 
 Church history of the period is not altogether lost 
 to us, and the biographical notices of those who 
 succeeded to the ejected clergy give us a clear view 
 of the state of the diocese in all its principal towns 
 and villages during this lapse of its episcopal history. 
 On the accession of the Protector to the supreme 
 power, he appointed a committee to examine the 
 parish ministers with a view to the removal of those 
 who were (according to the new standard) incom- 
 petent. Of this committee the eminent Mr. Caryl 
 was president. For the eleven years which suc- 
 ceeded the death of Charles I., no system of Church 
 government was fully established. The Presby- 
 terians, if any, enjoyed this distinction ; but the 
 ministers, though agreed, with scarcely an exception, 
 in evangelical doctrine, held different opinions on 
 
 ' In two collections of sermons possessed by the writer, one 
 •of Puritan divines from the librar}^ of the late Duke of Sussex, in 
 five volumes, the other formed by Hooper, bishop of Gloucester, 
 extending from the Restoration to the time of George I., in 
 twenty volumes, this contrast is very conspicuous. 
 
360 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 ecclesiastical polity. Many of them were adherents 
 of the old episcopacy and the liturgy, many were 
 desirous of a reformed episcopal system like the plan 
 proposed by Archbishop Usher, others were Pres- 
 byterians, some were Independents, and a fev/ were 
 Baptists. Cromwell's policy encouraged this diversity, 
 as he dreaded the ascendency of any one party." ^ 
 
 The limits of the present work prevent us from 
 noticing more than a few of the most eminent among 
 the eighty who were ejected from the parishes of 
 Kent on the ground of Nonconformity, from whose 
 unhappy and forced separation from their conforming 
 brethren the older Nonconformist Churches in Kent 
 derive their origin. Many of them were on terms of 
 intimate friendship with the more learned and liberal 
 of the bishops (as Stillingfleet), many continued 
 devoted to the liturgy and offices of the Church of 
 England, attending her services as well as their own 
 special meetings, and thus laid the foundation for 
 that "occasional conformity" which awakened such 
 bitter controversies at a later period. The cathedral 
 pulpit was filled by Mr. John Durant and Mr. John 
 Player ; the former a practical preacher and author of 
 some note, the latter a man of higher education, who 
 had been a scholar in the King's School, and was a 
 brother of Sir Thomas Player, the chamberlain of 
 London. At St. Margaret's, in the same city, a native 
 
 ' Timpson's Church (Nonconformist) History of Kent" 
 (London, 1859, p. 152), a work of an Independent minister of 
 moderation and judgment, to which the writer is indebted for 
 the notices of the principal Kentish ministers here given. His 
 authority is that of Dr. Calamy. 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFU\ 
 
 361 
 
 of Canterbury, also a King's scholar, and a graduate 
 of Cambridge, Mr. Thomas Ventress, was appointed 
 the minister. He had been ordained by Laud, and 
 was curate to Archdeacon Kingsley ; he had so 
 conducted himself in these difficult times that he 
 found more favour with the gentry and clergy than 
 most of his brethren. He was, however, ejected in 
 1662, but continuing to labour in his ministry, 
 suffered much oppression, and finally imprisonment. 
 His death was touching, and worthy of his peaceful 
 and holy Hfe ; laying himself down on his bed, 
 dressed as he was, and taking his Greek Testament in 
 his hand, he kissed it and placed it on his heart, and 
 presently fell asleep in Christ, in the seventy-fourth 
 year of his age. Barham was fortunate in the ministry 
 of Mr. John Barton, who, after his ejectment, held 
 religious meetings which were attended by several 
 members of Parliament and other persons from the 
 adjacent parishes. At Benenden, Mr. John Osborne, 
 though appointed by Cromwell's committee, was so 
 beloved by the people that the patron. Sir John 
 Henden, desired him to continue his ministry after 
 the Restoration, but his scruples against the Act of 
 Uniformity prevented him from remaining. He lived 
 in friendship with the conforming clergy, and is said 
 to have been greatly beloved. Chatham was filled by 
 an excellent scholar, Mr. Thomas Carter, a friend of 
 Bishop Stillingfleet, who assisted him until his death. 
 After his ejection, he practised physic near London, 
 and died in 1685. At Chatham Dock, an equally 
 eminent man was minister, Mr. Laurence Wise, who 
 was sufficiently influential to be one of the five sent 
 
362 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 for by Charles II. when he proposed to grant liberty 
 to the Dissenters. He was imprisoned in Newgate as 
 a Nonconformist, and died in 1692. At Chilham, 
 Mr. Sampson Horne was supported by Sir John Fagge 
 at his house of Mystole after his ejectment, and died 
 there. At Cranbrook, an early seat of Nonconformity, 
 no less than ten ministers were ejected ; while Goud- 
 hurst lost the ministry of Mr. Edward Bright, " a 
 good man and endowed with a great deal of patience, 
 which indeed he needed, having the affliction of a 
 very froward and clamorous wife ; on this account, 
 as many thought, it was his happiness to be dull of 
 hearing.'^ The ejected minister of Ickham became, 
 like some others, a physician ; while Maidstone had 
 so moderate a teacher that after his ejectment the 
 minister of the neighbouring parish of Boxley often 
 admitted him into his pulpit. Some of those who 
 were thus silenced (as Mr. French, of Mailing) entered 
 into trade ; six of them, having been commissioners 
 for ejecting scandalous ministers,'^ were themselves 
 ejected in turn. Among these was Mr. Robert 
 Webber, of Sandwich. Mr. Poyntel, of Staplehurst, 
 was a singular instance of one whose learning and 
 moderation enabled the archbishop, with whom he 
 was very intimate, to license him to preach in his old 
 pulpit if the incumbent should allow him. Very dif- 
 ferent were the conduct and character of Mr. Richard 
 Culmer, who succeeded the learned Dr. Meric Casau- 
 bon at Minster. The reader will remember his bitter 
 complaints to Sir Edward Dering on the severities 
 exercised against him by Laud. His revenge, how- 
 ever, upon the "Lambeth patriarch" was strangely 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 manifested in an attack upon the great window of 
 the cathedral. Perhaps, as the reparation of the 
 stained glass at Lambeth was one of the charges 
 against Laud at his trial, the fanatical destroyer of 
 the magnificent w^indow at Canterbury might have 
 regarded his act as the greatest injury he could inflict 
 upon his memory. On Dr. Casaubon's restitution, 
 Culmer removed to Monckton. Mr. Thoroughgood, 
 of the latter place, was very eminent as a Noncon- 
 formist divine, and left a diary which throws much 
 light on the persecutions of this period. At Wootton, 
 Mr. Edward Coppin, after first conforming, became 
 uneasy in his conscience, and retired to his native 
 village of Beaksbourne, where ^* when liberty was given 
 he preached in his own house to all who would come, 
 but he frequented the established worship,'' another 
 early example of "occasional conformity in Kent." 
 The touching account given us of the last discourse 
 of Mr. William Lock, the minister of Loose, near 
 Maidstone, may well close the brief notice of the 
 more conspicuous of those who filled the pulpits of 
 the diocese in the day of the Protectorate. " Just 
 before his ejection in 1662, he preached his last 
 sermon to his people from Acts xx. 32, telling them 
 in his introduction that * Those words, which were 
 part of Paul's farewell sermon to the Ephesian elders, 
 he had chosen for the subject of his to them, but 
 with this sad difference, that Paul was but called by 
 Providence to service elsewhere, but he and a con- 
 siderable number of his brethren must be laid by in 
 silence. The Ephesians, it is true, were no longer to 
 hear him, but,' said he, ' our mouths must be stopped 
 
3^4 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 from speaking in a ministerial way any more as we 
 have done.' In these circumstances he declared that 
 he knew nothing that he could do better for them 
 than to ' commend them to God, and to the word of 
 His grace.' And now since his public ministry must 
 end, he ' commended them to God who takes care of 
 His Church and children as they had heard,' and to 
 the word of His grace, w^hich through mercy they had 
 in their hands, and which, studied and used aright, 
 would build them up and give them an inheritance 
 among all them that are sanctified.'^ It must be the 
 cause of ceaseless, though unavailing, regret to every 
 pious member of the Church of England, that men 
 of such a spirit and such a life as this were lost to 
 her so painfully in the day when they w^ere more than 
 ever needed. The mutual recriminations of Walker 
 in his Sufferings of the Clergy," and of Neale in his 
 " History of the Puritans," must ever jar painfully on 
 the ears of all who regard with grief and humilia- 
 tion the results of intolerance and persecution, from 
 whatever side they come. They sprang from political, 
 rather than religious passions, and from impulses which 
 have long died out ; and above all, from a theory of 
 the actual identity of the Church with the State. 
 This renders it an interesting subject of inquiry how 
 far the Church of England, as a Church, was involved 
 in excesses which every one of her members now so 
 deeply deplores. P2ven in the day when the remem- 
 brance of them was the freshest and the passions 
 they had evoked had hardly cooled down. Bishop 
 Burnet says of the ejected ministers of that day, 
 " Many of these were distinguished by their abilities 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 and zeal. They cast themselves upon the providence 
 of God and the charity of their friends, which had a 
 fair appearance as of men that were ready to suffer 
 for their consciences. This begat esteem and raised 
 compassion, whereas the old clergy, now much en- 
 riched, were as much despised." ^ Was then the 
 Church, as a Church, responsible for these great 
 evils? In a letter addressed "to the late Mr. Goul- 
 burn in 1850, the writer observed, *^the State in its 
 first adoption of the Reformed Church recognised 
 no other form of Christianity within its jurisdiction, 
 and by a severe compulsion fulfilled its acknowledged 
 obligation to provide for the religious instruction of 
 its people. The Church and State were thus made 
 conterminous and even identical Our re- 
 
 formers (as Dean Tucker remarks) considered non- 
 conformity to the external mode of public worship, 
 and nonconformity to the civil laws of the country, a§ 
 one and the same thing, and therefore they punished 
 both actions on the same principle," and this not- 
 withstanding the tolerant doctrines of the 20th and 
 34th Articles, in which, he observes, "they came 
 within sight of toleration and yet could not see it." 
 
 Unfortunately, the bishops, as sharing in the civil 
 government, took too large a part in those corrosive 
 measures which belonged rather to the temporal than 
 to the spiritual power. The mild reign of Archbishop 
 Juxon was too soon succeeded by the arbitrary and 
 impolitic government of Sheldon, and the last oppor- 
 tunity of so conciliating Nonconformity, as to prevent 
 
 * *' Letters to Dr. Kippis," p. 62. 
 2 B 
 
366 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 it from turning into the open, and even virulent hos- 
 tility of dissent, was irretrievably lost. We cannot read 
 the words of the Roman Catholic courtier of that day, 
 Lord Castlemaine, without feeling painfully conscious 
 of the justice of them in too many points :— It was 
 never known that Roman Catholics persecuted, as the 
 bishops do those who adhere to the same faith with 
 themselves, and established an inquisition among the 
 professors of the strictest piety among themselves ; 
 and however bloody the persecution of Queen Mary, 
 it is manifest that their persecution exceeds it, for 
 under her there were not more than two or three 
 hundred put to death, whereas under their persecution 
 above treble that number have been rifled, destroyed, 
 and ruined in their estates, lives, and liberties — being, 
 as is most remarkable, men of this same spirit for the 
 most part with those Protestants who suffered under 
 the prelates of Queen Mary's time.'' 
 
 The writer was evidently less acquainted with the 
 history of his own Church than with that of the Church 
 he censures, and failed to observe that the claim of 
 an unlimited supremacy and the supposed duty of a 
 passive obedience under every circumstance was the 
 real cause of both these persecutions. Yet let it not 
 be supposed that the Puritan party were in any degree 
 more tolerant in the day of their power. Toleration 
 has been, indeed, a plant of very slow growth and very 
 difficult culture, even in the most enlightened periods 
 of our history. The cruelties inflicted by the Par- 
 liamentary party in the ejectment of the conforming 
 clergy were merely retaliated upon their Puritan suc- 
 cessors in the day of the Restoration. The unifor- 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 mity for which Laud so violently contended as the 
 only means of bringing up to the same standard the 
 public observances of the Church, which had fallen, 
 under Abbot, into a state of universal irregularity and 
 confusion, was taken up by the State in the day of the 
 restored Monarchy as a political engine, and a test 
 of loyalty to the doctrines of Divine right and passive 
 obedience, which form almost the key-note of the 
 sermons of this period of spiritual darkness and de- 
 cadence. The pulpits were attuned by the Court. 
 The constant dread of Popery on the one side, and 
 Nonconformity on the other, led to a state of disquiet 
 and suspicion which affected society throughout. In 
 a sermon of Dean Sherlock's before the Court, which 
 traces all the misfortunes of the country to the death of 
 Charles L, which, ^'however we may not answer for 
 it in another world, we may suffer for in this," he 
 observes, "these terrible convulsions of State, like 
 a sharp fit of the gout when the pain is gone, leave a 
 great weakness upon the Government, and make it 
 very unquiet and liable to relapses." ^ 
 
 Archbishop Sheldon, who succeeded the gentle and 
 pious Juxon in 1663, had suffered so severely from the 
 Parliamentary party in his earlier life that he appears 
 never to have forgiven his sequestrations and imprison- 
 ment, and to have regarded Nonconformity as an inex- 
 piable crime. He opposed all efforts for a comprehen- 
 sion and wrote to all the bishops of his province to put 
 the laws into execution against the Nonconformists. 
 The description given of him by Bishop Burnet, even 
 
 * Sermon before the House of Commons, 1692. 
 
368 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 when deprived of its extreme, and perhaps exagge- 
 rated features, indicates him as a man least of all 
 qualified to govern a diocese which was suffering from 
 the severe and corrective remedy of the Act of Uni- 
 formity, as it had been applied at the Restoration. 
 
 He seemed," writes Burnet, not to have a deep 
 sense of religion, if any at all ; and spoke of it most 
 commonly as an engine of government and a matter 
 of policy."! 
 
 The blame of the severity of the Act of Uniformity, 
 which was (as Burnet, an eye-witness, affirms) the 
 inevitable and real cause of the dissent which has 
 separated so many thousands from the Church of 
 England, rested with Sheldon. He was the one who 
 moved the Privy Council for the punctual fulfilment 
 of the Act, and he himself undertook to fill all the 
 vacant pulpits in London. It was he who procured 
 the promotion of Archbishop Sharp to the Chancel- 
 lorship of Scotland, and was in great measure re- 
 sponsible for the results of that fatal appointment. 
 He was the chief advocate of the cruel and deplorable 
 
 Five-mile Act," which by placing the Dissenters in 
 a state of the most barbarous persecution, rendered 
 their separation inveterate, and furthered more than 
 any other measure the progress of the Romish party, 
 whose policy it was to complete the severance between 
 the sectaries and the Church of England, and to make 
 the former their allies, as they attempted to do (but 
 fortunately without success) in the subsequent reign. 
 
 * ''History of his Own Times;" Ed. fol. 1724, torn. i. p. 
 177. 
 
LAUD TO SANCROFT. 
 
 it had been well for the Church if the pious and 
 gentle Juxon had survived to prevent these sad ex- 
 cesses. Of their course in the diocese of Canterbury 
 we have already spoken ; their results are before us 
 in the vast influence of Nonconformity both in East 
 and West Kent, in almost every parish of which some 
 early martyr to this fatal severity became the seed 
 of a separate congregation. Among the most singular 
 of the results of this policy was the fear of Sheldon in 
 regard to the creation of a county militia. He alleged 
 that " the Commons, of whom the militia must be 
 composed, being generally ill-affected to the Church, 
 this would be a prejudice rather than a security."^ 
 A sad and humiliating confession, which the perfect 
 toleration of a later day enables us to look back upon 
 with amazement. 
 
 The death of Sheldon took place at a moment when 
 ■the religious anxieties of the country had taken 
 .another turn. The secret adherence to the Roman 
 Church of Charles II., whose leanings towards it had 
 <been so long suspected, compelled the bishops to de- 
 fend themselves from a far more urgent danger, and 
 Sheldon was appealed to by the king to prevent the 
 controversial treatment of Roman doctrines by the 
 ■clergy — a necessary prelude to the " toleration " which 
 was then contemplated, no longer as a means of 
 relieving Dissenters, but as an insidious method of 
 reintroducing Romanism. 
 
 This appeal was skilfully averted by the bishops 
 jeminding the king that he was a Protestant, and that 
 
 ^ Burnet's History of his Own Times," torn. i. p. 243. 
 
370 
 
 ^ CANTERBURY. 
 
 the defence of Protestantism was therefore a natural 
 and loyal course towards himself. 
 
 The primacy of Sheldon was succeeded by that of 
 Sancroft, during which nothing of note occurred in 
 relation to the diocese ; until the Revolution of 1688 
 (in whose opening scene he took so important a part), 
 ushered in the modern history of the see of Canter- 
 bury, and brings us on to the last portion of our 
 narrative. 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 
 
 From the period of the great political change of 1688 
 to the present time the history of the diocese of 
 Canterbury, like that of every other, especially those 
 nearest to the great centre of religious and political 
 life in England, ceases to have that distinctness of 
 character and individuality, so to speak, which it had 
 in earlier days, when it was identified with the history 
 of the Primacy, and (during its fatal lapse) with that 
 of the Parliamentary party in Kent. The new 
 doctrines, both religious and political, which were 
 now everywhere triumphant, tended to produce a 
 uniformity very unlike that for which the Laudian 
 party and the promoters of the Act of 1662 had con- 
 tended. The conversion of the clergy generally to 
 the principles of the new government was almost 
 universal. "I am sufficiently assured,'' writes a 
 dignitary of that period to another, " that much the 
 greatest part of the clergy have come in to the govern- 
 ment as you and I have done, out of a prospect to 
 preserve the Church. For. . . we did dreadfully appre- 
 hend . . . that if we had not taken the oaths the whole 
 Church might have been overturned all at once, and 
 Presbytery or something like it set up in the Church, 
 
 ^ Querela Temporum, or, the Danger of the Church of 
 
 England ; in a Letter from the Dean of to Prebend 
 
 of ; " London, 1695, pp. 1,2. 
 
372 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 The " Divine right of episcopacy," which so soon 
 after came on the scene, eclipsed at this critical 
 juncture the " Divine right of kings " and that 
 passive obedience to legitimate monarchy which 
 Bishop Lake in his famous dying declaration affirmed 
 that " he had been brought up in and had also taught 
 others,'* looking upon the doctrine of Passive 
 Obedience ^'as the distinguishing character of the 
 Church of England."^ Lake w^as one of the four 
 bishops who refused the oath of allegiance to William 
 and Mary, and had also been of the seven who had 
 immortalized their names as the subscribers of the 
 petition which led to their imprisonment in the 
 Tower, and precipitated the very results from which 
 he, in company with Sancroft, Ken, and Turner, re- 
 coiled with so great a dread. It is impossible not to 
 regard with the profoundest respect the course of the 
 four non-juring bishops and those of the clergy who 
 followed them into what was at once temporal ruin 
 and spiritual exile. Their accession placed those 
 who held with them the political doctrines of the 
 old high-church party in a position of considerable 
 rebuke and of no little perplexity. The dignitary 
 already cited describes somewhat pathetically the 
 situation of himself and his friends. After a melan- 
 choly review of the past he proceeds : — " Add to this 
 a very fatal dilemma in which the Dissenters have 
 caught us, and have improved it amongst the people 
 to our no small prejudice. For if we stick to ' pas- 
 
 ' Letter to a Person of Quality on Bishop Lake's Declara- 
 tion; " London, 1689, pp. i, 2. 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 373 
 
 sive obedience ' in the high sense, as it is contained 
 in the Homily against Rebellion, we must condemn 
 what we have done, and what we still continue to do. 
 But if we call that an error, then we own that our 
 Church has been all along, before this revolution, a 
 false guide, and that the Dissenters have taught the 
 truth in this point of doctrine. And then the people 
 make the application that it is safer trusting to them 
 than to us in other doctrines. . . How shall we 
 retract all the hard w^ords we have given them for 
 opposing that doctrine which we now profess? for 
 using those same distinctions which we now set up ? 
 . . , and though you and I can vindicate ourselves 
 as to the preaching of ' passive obedience ' in former 
 times, what is this to all that generality of the clergy 
 who were never weary, nor would give over, upon that 
 subject? who found it in every text they could 
 meet with, and pressed it oftener and more pathe- 
 tically than any article of the Creed.'' ^ He might 
 well conclude, Indeed our case here is very 
 difficult." The dilemma had been put in another 
 form by the Court party in the previous reign, in a 
 pamphlet which was greatly circulated among the 
 advocates of the so-called indulgence. ^ On the 
 other hand, the defenders of the Revolution somewhat 
 naively reminded their adversaries that the verse, 
 "Touch not mine Anointed," on which they so 
 greatly relied ought never to be wrested from its 
 
 ' Querela Temporum," pp. 21, 22. 
 
 - "A Layman's Opinion in a Letter to a Considerable 
 Divine;" London, 1687. 
 
374 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 context, " Yea, He reproved even kings for their 
 sakes."^ By the secession of the learned and ex- 
 cellent Sancroft and the gentle and pious Ken, the 
 Church of England and the diocese of Canterbury 
 experienced a loss which was in some sense irrepar- 
 able. A schism was thus opened which, though it 
 had rather a political than a religious origin, resulted 
 from the assertion of principles which had been un- 
 fortunately bound up with the outer life of the Church, 
 and were almost identified with her spiritual system. 
 Sancroft, in his defence, published the famous Con- 
 vocation Book of Bishop Overall, which was a kind 
 of historical introduction to the canons of 1603, 
 though it had never received any public sanction. 
 Unfortunately for his own cause, it provided a way of 
 escape for those who had taken the oath of allegiance 
 to the new Government ; for it declared that when- 
 ever a great change of government had been effected 
 which was succeeded by a general acquiescence and 
 a peaceful settlement of the kingdom, it must be re- 
 garded as the work of Providence, and submitted to 
 without resistance. Bishop Lloyd, one of the king's 
 chaplains, gave timely aid to this reasonable conclu- 
 sion in his Discourse of God's Ways of Disposing of 
 Kingdoms." He seems, however, to assert the king's 
 title rather on the ground of deliverance by conquest 
 than on that of popular acquiescence — a theory 
 doubtless better suited to the martial character of 
 WiUiam III. — and refers us to the case of Constantine, 
 
 ^ " History of Self-defence, in requital to the ' History of 
 Passive Obedience;"' London, 1680 (Qu. 1689?). 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 375 
 
 who (he affirms) though he might have taken upon 
 liim the government of the countries he had gained as 
 a conqueror, which title he seemed to affect upon other 
 occasions, yet where he had declared his cause of war 
 to be for the people's deliverance, this being so just 
 and so honourable a title, himself used it, and would 
 have no other in all his inscriptions."^ As the salus 
 populi is the root of all kingly power and of the 
 " Divine right" itself, the bishop properly calls such a 
 providential deliverance "God's transferring His powder 
 by way of justice." Upon this principle Tillotson 
 may be accepted as a legitimate successor of the good 
 Sancroft. There was simply a providential transfer 
 of authority, arising out of a virtual if not actual sur- 
 render of the archiepiscopal throne. While every 
 sound Churchman must mourn over the loss of San- 
 croft, he may well be thankful that he had a successor 
 so far beyond the chilling age in which he lived in 
 sound common sense and in practical religion and 
 piety. We are tempted in an age of life and energy, 
 both in spiritual and temporal matters, which has 
 hardly had a precedent in earlier times, to depreciate 
 the labours of men like Tillotson and Tenison, whose 
 lot w^as cast in times of a loose morality and a prac- 
 tical infidelity which we can hardly realize, and still 
 more hardly appreciate. If the light of their doctrine 
 seems cold and dim, we should do well to remember 
 the thickness of that darkness in which it shone. We 
 are accustomed to read the sermons of Tillotson as 
 
 * God's Way of Disposing of Kingdoms ; " London, 1691, 
 p. 69. 
 
37^ 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 beautiful specimens of the religious literature of a day 
 of formality and coldness such as the Church of 
 England had never before witnessed. We fail to see 
 that they were also the day-star shining on to a more 
 perfect dawn, and to realize the fact that their light 
 has brightened the path of many indeed at a period 
 when the most brilliant teaching might have dazzled, 
 and even misled. Yet the Church of England, and 
 least of all the diocese of Canterbury, ought never to 
 forget the debt it owes to Bancroft, or to regret the 
 obstacle which his strong convictions had raised 
 against taking the new oath of allegiance. The 
 London minister who wrote a " Vindication of their 
 Majesties' Wisdom in Nominating to the Vacant Arcli- 
 bishoprics and Bishoprics,"^ has these just observa- 
 tions hereupon : I thank God I never think of some 
 of these great men's stout defence of the nation's 
 religion and laws, by petitioning King James against 
 reading the Declaration ; by an undaunted appearance 
 at the Council table, and going in that unconcerned 
 manner to the Tower with the spirits of noble and 
 brave patriots and heroes; by standing a trial at 
 Westminster Hall — further, I never reflect upon that 
 noble and almost unparalleled act of the late Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, Dr. Sandcroft,^ with others of 
 his brethren, addressing to King James and telling 
 him to his face, with all modesty and becomingness, 
 yet with more than a Roman courage, all those faults 
 of his whereby he had violated the laws and incensed 
 
 ^ London, 1691, p. 20. 
 
 ^ This was the ancient spelling of the archbishop's name. 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 377 
 
 his subjects against him, with a humble desire to rec- 
 tify those errors of his government from time to time — 
 I say I never think of these things without thoughts 
 of great honour and admiration." Great were the 
 efforts made in every diocese, and by all classes, 
 to prevent the final act of deprivation of the non- 
 juring bishops. Equally great were the efforts of their 
 friends to persuade them into such a submission as 
 might have been accepted by the Government. In 
 a dialogue published at the time,^ the conforming 
 advocate, in reply to the question, " Was there no way 
 to have healed this rupture before it grew so wide ? " 
 observes, " I cannot tell that ; but the time assigned 
 by the law, and the king's long forbearance to fill 
 the sees after the day of deprivations, argues a willing- 
 ness in the State to give men time to consider, and 
 to allay their prejudices, and to use means to come 
 under the public shelter. . . . But the recusants 
 seem, against all entreaties, wanting to themselves 
 and a happy coalition. They have made no offers, 
 no applications, but receded further from civil and 
 social communion than at first they did." 
 
 The shameful misrepresentation of Archbishop 
 Sancroft's primacy by Bishop Burnet is too well 
 refuted in his life by Dr. D'Oyley to need any refu- 
 tation here. He is represented, in the same breath, 
 as dying in the poor and despicable manner in which 
 he had lived for some years and yet to have amassed 
 a large fortune. Both statements are absolutely false; 
 
 ' " Solomon and Abiathar, or the Case of the Deprived 
 Bishop discussed ; " London, 1692, p. 34. 
 
373 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 for he died peacefully and happily on his own estate 
 at Fresingfield, in Suffolk, which had descended to 
 him from a long ancestry. Bancroft's refusal to con- 
 secrate Burnet might naturally have embittered him, 
 but cannot justify positive falsehoods. But one year 
 elapsed between the deaths of Bancroft and Tillotson, 
 and it was hoped that the death of the former would 
 have healed the breach between the conforming 
 and the nonconforming clergy. It seemed, however, 
 rather to re-open the wound, and those who had 
 clung so tenaciously to their oath in the face of events 
 which had rendered its fulfilment impossible, rather 
 became more confirmed in their opposition as the 
 chances of its success became more desperate. 
 
 Not content with the mere passive state of resistance, 
 that kind of vis inertice which so well agreed with 
 their cardinal doctrine, they set forth a form of prayer 
 which was privately propagated,^ and designed to 
 foment those insurrections against the Government 
 which so soon broke out in Ireland. The object of 
 this devotional performance may well be discerned 
 from the prayer, " Restore us again the public worship 
 of Thy Name, the reverent administration of Thy sa- 
 craments ; raise up the former Government, both in 
 Church and State, that we may be no longer without 
 king, without priest, without God in the world." 
 And again, We beseech Thee to look compassion- 
 ately on this persecuted part of Thy Churchy now 
 
 * It was entitled Form of Prayer and Humiliation for 
 God's Blessing upon His Majesty and his Dominions, and for 
 Removing and Averting of God's Judgments from this Cliurch 
 and State ; " London, 1690. 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 379 
 
 driven from Thy public altars into corners and secret 
 
 closets We pray Thee to be gracious to our 
 
 Prince, who for the sins both of priest and people is 
 now kept out, and that in Thy due time Thou wouidst 
 deal with him according to the justice of his cause,'' 
 with much more to the same purpose. That this 
 invitation to disloyalty to the cause of the Revolution 
 prepared the way for the rebellion in Scotland which 
 broke out so soon after can hardly be doubted ; 
 while the fact that it proceeded from men who ought 
 of all others to have submitted cheerfully to the will 
 of the country is painful and humiliating. "There 
 are no small grounds to believe," are the words of a 
 contemporary critic, " that thousands of these prayer- 
 books have been printed and dispersed at a charge 
 more than private. In all probability they were cal- 
 culated for the expected descent of the Highlanders 
 with their officers from England and Ireland.^' ^ 
 
 Whatever success may have attended these sedi- 
 tious efforts elsewhere, they do not appear to have 
 had any appreciable influence on the diocese of Can- 
 terbury. The conflicts of bishops and churches were 
 now seen at a considerable distance, and the registers 
 of the archbishops no longer give us that inner view 
 of the life of the Church they represent, which they 
 did in the days when the primates were not only living 
 in the diocese but constantly passing from one to 
 another of their many dwelling-places. Perhaps their 
 silence is as suggestive as the more stirring events of 
 
 ^ ** Reflections upon a Form of Trayer lately set forth by the 
 Jacobites of the Church of England; " London, 1690, p. 24. 
 
38o 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 our earlier history are demonstrative. In any case it 
 shows that the religious life of the diocese, though it 
 was at this time destitute of that strong sentiment 
 and vigorous energy which had inspired in earlier 
 days the great Kentish petition, was too practical in 
 its character to fall an easy prey to a reaction which 
 threatened the safety of the Reformed Church, as well 
 as the overthrow of a Government which exhibited so 
 welcome a contrast to the tyranny and cruelty of that 
 which it had superseded. The mild and moderate 
 policy of Tillotson disarmed the hostility even of those 
 who least admired the principles upon which he came 
 in. His published w^orks had no less general an 
 influence for good than his private life and conversa- 
 tion, and it was indeed an influence greatly needed. 
 For as his successor, Archbishop Tenison, wrote on 
 the death of the good Queen Mary, Great is our 
 loss of a most pious queen, in an atheistical and 
 profane age, the seeds of which impiety had been 
 sowing for some years and now seem to spring up in 
 greater plenty than ever ! Great is our loss of a most 
 charitable queen, in an age which takes up the reverse 
 of our I^ord's saying, and declares that it is more 
 blessed to receive than to give."^ At this time, how- 
 ever, the feelings of the clergy throughout England 
 took a very fatal and almost ruinous tendency. The 
 Toleration Act, which had given freedom of worship 
 to the Dissenters, had ever been to the mass of the 
 clergy an unpopular, and even hated measure. The 
 dignitary we have already quoted affirms that " it 
 
 * Sermon preached at the Queen's Funeral, 1695 J " P- ^7- 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 38 1 
 
 shook and rent and almost overturned our Church. 
 The very next Sunday after it was known/' he con- 
 tinues) "the churches in many places were almost 
 quite deserted, and the meeting-houses, which before 
 were neglected, .... were like trenches when the sea 
 hath broken the dykes, swollen and overflown in a 
 moment. Toleration upon toleration," he adds, "has 
 brought ruin upon ruin since, so that we are now 
 loose at the very roots, and at the mercy of every 
 wind and wave." ^ A humiliating confession that the 
 Church depended for her very life upon those penal 
 laws which were the true cause of her decadence and 
 spiritual death. She had leaned since the Restoration 
 on the secular arm, and identified her very existence 
 with the "divine right of Episcopacy." The one prop 
 had failed her in the deprivation of the non-juring 
 bishops, and the other in the sanction of the Tolera- 
 tion Act. Her clergy, destitute of spiritual influence 
 themselves, dreaded the introduction of any such 
 influence from without, and as their very raison d'etre 
 was involved in the penal laws which had simply 
 restrained the outward action of the Nonconformists, 
 but had given their pent-up feelings an almost irre- 
 sistible influence over the minds of their former 
 people, they began to devise schemes by which the 
 toleration would become, if not practically inoperative, 
 at least very seriously compromised. Among these 
 was the famous Bill against the "Occasional Con- 
 
 ^ Querela Temporum, or, the Danger of the Church of 
 
 England ; in a Letter from the Dean of to Prebend 
 
 of London, 1695, p. 5. 
 
 2 C 
 
382 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 formity of the Dissenters/' which was introduced, and 
 was very nearly successful, at the close of the primacy 
 of Archbishop Tenison. That excellent prelate (if 
 we may believe Burnet, who here at least appears to 
 speak from actual facts) was almost persecuted by the 
 clergy even of his own diocese for the then unpar- 
 donable guilt of being a tolerant bishop and a calm 
 moderator of the different factions which then were 
 rending the Church. The object of the promoters 
 of this fatal movement was to prevent all those who 
 had taken the sacrament in the Church of England 
 (under the Test and Corporation Acts) from ever 
 attending any dissenting place of worship, or any 
 religious assembly different from those of the Church 
 under penalties which were of an almost ruinous 
 character — the preamble of the Bill professing never- 
 theless an entire devotion to the Toleration Act 
 which it was virtually destroying.^ The Bill was in 
 the end lost, but not so much on the grounds of its 
 gross injustice and falsehood as through differences 
 which arose between the two Houses in regard to its 
 technical details. 
 
 It is strange that the extreme advocates both of 
 the Church and of Dissent were engaged in the de- 
 fence of this monstrous, but happily abortive, effort 
 to undermine the great principles of the Toleration 
 Act. Thus, a Dissenter who addressed the famous 
 Mr. How under the initials D. F., described " Occa- 
 
 ^ See the tract called, *' Contra Torrentem Brachia, or, A 
 Vindication of our present English Liberty of going either to 
 Church or to Meetings;" (London, 1703) where the case 
 against the Bill is fairly stated. 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 383 
 
 'sional Conformists " as like a workman who builds 
 with one hand and pulls down with the other ; like a 
 fisherman, who catches fish with one hand and 
 throws them into the sea with the other ; like every- 
 thing which signifies nothing. To say a man can be 
 of two religions is a contradiction, unless there be 
 two gods to worship or he has two souls to save. . . . 
 There is in religion no neuter gender, no ambiguous 
 article — God or Baal — mediums are impossible.'' A 
 zealot, on the other side, quotes these views with 
 admiration ;^ and thus it is that in every communion 
 and in every age the advocates of bigotry meet one 
 another with open arms. Yet those who know any- 
 thing of Kentish diocesan history in later times would 
 know how important an element of spiritual life was 
 this "Occasional Conformity" then so greatly dreaded. 
 At the very darkest periods of Church of England 
 preaching, the doctrinal influences which the fatal 
 Act of 1662 had forced out of our Church reacted 
 upon it through the teaching of men who still loved 
 her, and even joined in her communion at stated 
 intervals ; and thus a spirit of union and charity was 
 preserved among the rival, but not then hostile 
 systems, which has left a legacy of peace to the 
 spiritually-minded of every denomination. The asser- 
 tion of a Nonconformist of that earlier day, so little 
 admitted by the Church party then, would meet with 
 no denial from those of any party now : " A Dissenter 
 that is sound in all the articles of faith and orders 
 
 ^ For God or Baal, or no Neutrality in Religion." Sermon 
 by Philip Stubs, M.A., preached at St. Alphage, London, 
 October 4, 1702, p. 10. 
 
 2 C 2 
 
384 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 his conversation accordingly, is incomparably more 
 of the Church of England than the most exquisite 
 formalist that hath learnt all his gaits and postures, 
 but is neither sound in his head nor in his heart. 
 The intolerant views of the clergy were a fatal result 
 of the loss of influence experienced by the primates 
 from their long non-residence in the diocese. In all 
 the painful controversies since the Revolution the 
 bishops had almost invariably advocated the cause 
 of toleration, while the parochial and dignified clergy 
 had as systematically opposed it both in the Convo- 
 cation and in their spheres of local influence. The 
 attempt to make Episcopacy of divine right was 
 carried by the Lower House of Convocation, but the 
 fatal dowry was wisely declined by the bishops them- 
 selves. In vain did the learned Dr. Isham preach 
 charity to the Convocation of 1701, and remind it 
 of the claims of the foreign reformed Churches upon 
 the affections of the Church of England, notwith- 
 standing their failure in this feature of Church govern- 
 ment. The majority of the clergy seemed to hold 
 that the Church was created for the bishops, as 
 blindly as the Roman Catholics assume that the 
 Church exists for the sake of Peter, and the noble 
 and tolerant efforts of Tillotson and Tenison were 
 met with contumely and contempt. It would have 
 been well therefore if the primates had lived more 
 among their clergy at this critical time. Personal 
 intercourse would have tended greatly to remove 
 
 ^ Notes on the Bishop of Salisbury's Discourses to his 
 Clergy London, 1695, P- 28. 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 385 
 
 these dangerous illusions. As it was, however, Til- 
 lotson must have been better known even in Kent 
 by his published sermons than by any personal in- 
 tercourse between himself and his clergy; and his 
 excellent successor, Tenison, rather from the active 
 part he took in the great literary movement against 
 the Roman aggression, and the admirable founda- 
 tion in London which goes by his name, than for 
 any act which connects his name with the diocese. 
 Lambeth and Croydon, the favourite residences of 
 the primates, were also the recipients of their bene- 
 factions ; though of Juxon and Tenison it may be 
 said that the claims of the poorer clergy of the dio- 
 cese were not unremembered by them. The chari- 
 ties included in the will of Archbishop Tenison 
 were of an extensive and munificent character, among 
 which was the gift of ;^i,ooo for the augmentation 
 of the smaller livings in his diocese. His successor, 
 Archbishop Wake, whose life also was spent between 
 Lambeth and Croydon, had been conspicuous in its 
 earlier period in the great controversy with Rome, 
 and especially in the refutation of the specious 
 writings of Bossuet and his celebrated Exposition." 
 It is said that Clement XL was heard to declare that 
 it was a pity that so profound a writer was not a 
 member of his Church. The same kind of compli- 
 ment had been paid to Hooker and to the learned 
 Whitaker, — to the latter, by as great a controver- 
 sialist as Bellarmine himself. The efforts which 
 Wake made to devise a plan of reunion between the 
 Churches of France and England have a special and 
 almost affecting interest to those who yearn after 
 
386 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 the restoration of the unity of the Catholic Church, 
 and are ready to exclaim almost in despair, " Alas ! 
 who shall live when God doeth this It is for Him 
 alone to reply, who uttered those words of profound 
 meaning, " This generation shall not pass away until 
 all these things be fulfilled. Archbishop Wake held 
 the primacy somewhat more than ten years, during 
 which time he amassed a large fortune, besides the 
 great bequests he made to Christ Church, Oxford, 
 and the large sums he spent upon the palaces of 
 Lambeth and Croydon. Through the marriage of 
 his daughter with Dean Lynch, of Canterbury, he is 
 now represented by the ancient Kentish family of 
 the Brockmans, of Beachborough, whose benefactions 
 to Church purposes in East and West Kent have 
 repaired in a later day the failure of the archbishop 
 to make some provision for the needs of his diocese. 
 Archbishop Potter, who succeeded him, was well 
 qualified both by his learning and piety for so im- 
 portant a charge. At the age of nineteen he pub- 
 lished a treatise of such learning as gave promise of 
 his future powers. He is said to have devoted him- 
 self during the ten years of his primacy more exclu- 
 sively than most of his predecessors to the spiritual 
 duties of his high office. His recognition of the 
 bishops and clergy of the Moravian Church, and of 
 the great work of Count Zinzendorf, show how deeply 
 he had at heart the interests of vital and spiritual 
 Christianity wherever its real fruits were seen ; and 
 there can be little doubt that had he lived to see the 
 great awakening of religious life in the preaching of 
 Wesley and Whitefield, he would have at least 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 387 
 
 endeavoured to keep within the Church those earnest 
 men whom the coldness and formalism of his suc- 
 cessors so fatally detached from its ranks. Arch- 
 bishop Potter was succeeded by the Bishop of 
 Bangor, Thomas Herring, whose primacy filled 
 another decennial period, a period of spiritual dead- 
 ness and darkness both in the diocese and in the 
 Church, which almost recalls the picture of the 
 Church in the tenth century as it is drawn for us by 
 Baronius. 
 
 The primacy of Archbishop Herring witnessed the 
 origin of the greatest religious movement which has 
 ever affected the Church in Kent, and which up to 
 this day has retained its influence over large masses 
 of the population both of the eastern and western 
 divisions of the county. 
 
 Never were the words of Mordecai to Esther more 
 strangely illustrated than in that great deliverance 
 from spiritual deadness and almost death which was 
 opened at this time : " If thou altogether hold thy 
 peace at such a time, then shall there enlargement 
 and deliverance arise to the Jews from another 
 place/' But the rulers of the Church in that day did 
 not know that they were " come to the kingdom for 
 such a time as this," and fell back upon the old 
 remedy of obsolete Acts of Parliament and magiste- 
 rial influence to resist the pressure of a movement 
 they might themselves have guided. The rector of 
 a neighbouring parish to that in which these lines 
 were written was threatened with committal by the 
 magistrates of the district, on account of his en- 
 couragement of meetings for religious purposes. His 
 
388 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 message in reply was, ^' Tell them, that if they commit 
 me, they will only commit themselves." 
 
 It was in an age of formalism and coldness such 
 as this that the great upheaving of the spiritual life 
 of the Church under Wesley, Whitefield, Fletcher, 
 Romaine, and countless other eminent and pious men 
 began. 
 
 In order to estimate fully and impartially 
 this great revival of spiritual life, which in the 
 end so unfortunately separated, but can hardly be 
 said to have alienated, so large a body of 
 earnest and religious men from the Church of 
 England, it is necessary that we should calmly and 
 fearlessly view the state of utter secularity and dead- 
 ness of religious sentiment and conduct, which 
 brought about this great reaction. It is scarcely too 
 much to say that at this period our Church had 
 forgotten her divine origin, and was contented to be 
 considered a mere department of State. The bishops 
 were little more than great officers of the Court ; the 
 clergy separated from them by an almost impassable 
 gulf, were mixed up with secular plans and occupa- 
 tions which destroyed their influence with the poorer 
 classes of their parishioners, and lowered their posi- 
 tion among the higher members of their congrega- 
 tions. A remarkable letter, written by ''A Country 
 Clergyman " (probably of his own diocese) to Arch- 
 bishop Herring, in the year 1754, gives a picture of 
 the state of the Church by an eye-witness, so truthful 
 and vivid that we cannot but exhibit it here, as giving 
 at once the reason and the apology for that vigorous 
 spiritual reaction to which it refers. 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 389 
 
 The occasion of it appears to have been the utter 
 and ominous silence of the Episcopate on the great 
 controversies upon the doctrine of the Trinity which 
 were then convulsing the public mind, and enlisting 
 all but those who were expected to be the most 
 deeply interested in them, in the work of explanation 
 or of defence. The writer, in an almost despairing 
 tone, entreats the archbishop to contemplate the 
 miserable and helpless state in which the clergy were 
 left in the face of an almost infidel but educated 
 laity, and the evils w^hich they were experiencing 
 through the neglect and indifference of those to 
 whom they looked for advice and support. His 
 complaints point with sad significance to the igno- 
 rance and incompetency which prevailed so generally 
 among the clergy, and of which an appeal of this 
 kind, ad 7nisericordiam^ to the bishops gave so humi- 
 liating a proof. 
 
 " In this situation, we naturally look tow^ards our 
 superiors for such aids and instructions as men of 
 inferior talents and limited provinces do from time 
 to time require. . . . And yet, alas ! so it is that very 
 little of this instruction is to be had in proportion 
 to our necessities. Our bishops' and archdeacons' 
 charges when we are favoured with them, which is 
 but seldom, are commonly short and general, con- 
 sisting chiefly of declamatory adulations on our own 
 system, and reflections on the principles of the ad- 
 versary ; of political observations which we under- 
 stand not, and allusions to facts we never heard of; 
 with, perhaps, some few gentle directions concerning 
 our conduct, which, if they had the least experience 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 of the condition, abilities, commerce and connec- 
 tions of the inferior clergy, their lordships would 
 know to be impracticable. What reception at his 
 bishop's palace a poor clergyman would meet with 
 who should desire more explicit rules for his beha- 
 viour, on these critical occasions, I cannot guess, 
 never having heard of any who applied for such 
 rules, though I have known some who have earnestly 
 desired and very much wanted them. Their lord- 
 ships are not easy of access, nor fond of being inter- 
 rupted by business which cannot be despatched by 
 their officers. We have heard, indeed, that when 
 their lordships think proper to open themselves to 
 particular friends, it is generally in such maxims as 
 these, — * That we ought to acquiesce in the wisdom 
 of our superiors, to take no notice of petulant objec- 
 tors, unless it be to refer them to the ancient 
 worthies of the Church, who have on former occasions 
 answered all cavils that can be brought against her 
 to the satisfaction of all reasonable men.' I am 
 afraid their lordships do not sufficiently consider the 
 times we live in. The laity are grown more know- 
 ing, and consequently more inquisitive than hereto- 
 fore. New books have afforded new lights. The 
 circumstances that made these old answers go down 
 with our ancestors are changed. The answers are 
 found upon examination to be trifling and insuffi- 
 cient." But if the shortcomings of the bishops are 
 boldly stated in this fearless letter, the state of the 
 clergy is revealed with a still more unflinching cour- 
 age. The collective body of the clergy," he 
 proceeds, " excepting a very inconsiderable number, 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 39 1 
 
 consists of men whose lives and ordinary occupations 
 are most foreign to their profession. We find among 
 them all sorts of secular characters — courtiers, poli- 
 ticians, lawyers, merchants, usurers, civil magistrates, 
 sportsmen, musicians, stewards of country squires . . . 
 not to mention the ignorant herd of poor curates, to 
 whom the instruction of our common people is com- 
 mitted, who are accordingly, in religious matters, the 
 most ignorant common people that are in any Pro- 
 testant, if not in any Christian society upon the face 
 of the earth. There are to be found among the 
 clergy of our Church geniuses who are fit for almost 
 anything but the particular character and function 
 they have undertaken, or rather into which they have 
 been driven ; and I am much mistaken if a college 
 of the Apostles would not find a large majority of us 
 much fitter for something else." The prevailing non- 
 residence of the clergy is dwelt upon as rendering 
 the regular ministry of the Church utterly fruitless, 
 and being in effect a contradiction of their office ; 
 while the spiritual courts are alleged to be the 
 "curse of the poor, the jest of the rich, and the 
 abhorrence of the wise and good even among the 
 clergy themselves." The writer then puts the sig- 
 nificant question, Is it astonishing that such a set 
 of men as the Methodists should arise and attempt 
 to awaken the drowsy heads and alarm the stupefied 
 hearts of our people, immersed as they are in all the 
 secular security into which the doctrines and ex- 
 amples of their own pastors may with too much 
 probability be supposed to have thrown them?" 
 These are not the words of an enemy of the Church, 
 
392 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 but of a zealous Churchman who deplored the state 
 of spiritual ruin into which it had fallen, and who 
 earnestly entreats the primate to begin that great 
 work of reformation, which (like that of an earlier 
 day) would be forced upon him from without unless 
 initiated by him from within. But the appeal was 
 made in vain. The hot fit of enthusiasm which had 
 been the disease of the age of an almost antinomian 
 spiritualism, had been succeeded since the Revolution 
 by a cold fit of paralyzing apathy. The very idea 
 that the Church was a divine institution, independent 
 of any earthly head, would have been deemed in that 
 day to savour of enthusiasm ; and the sermons of the 
 age rather represent a half-Christianized philosophy 
 than a dogmatic religion divinely revealed and autho- 
 ritatively promulgated. The great work of AVesley and 
 Whitefield shook this mere temporal structure to its 
 very foundation ; and first from their place within the 
 Church, and then unhappily from without the pale, 
 inaugurated a revival which but for the fatal resist- 
 ance of those in power would have restored Avithout 
 dividing the Church, and left in the diocese of Can- 
 terbury a single temple and a single altar. 
 
 No Church-reformer, from the time of Huss and 
 Luther downwards, has ever predicted that the work 
 which he began in the midst of the Church and 
 under the influence of all its associations, would find 
 him at its close far beyond its pale with new in- 
 fluences surrounding him and a new system of his 
 own creation preventing him from re-entering the 
 Church which he designed to reform, but never to 
 desert. The sermon of Wesley on the laying the 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 393 
 
 foundation-stone of the Chapel in the City-road is a 
 singular illustration of this often-experienced truth. 
 Never was a more energetic determination more 
 energetically expressed of adherence to the Church of 
 England in all her sins and sorrows. But the organi- 
 zation which he was introducing among his people 
 was utterly incompatible with the maintenance of 
 their position within a Church whose ancient and un- 
 changeable constitution could admit of no such 
 empirical development. This he believed to be 
 essential to the spiritual life of his followers, and 
 his natural and constantly asserted devotion to the 
 Church of England, weakened too naturally by the 
 bigotry and indifference which almost closed every 
 avenue of return against him., yielded to what 
 appeared to him a paramount and inevitable obliga- 
 tion. But we should greatly err if we regarded the 
 religious awakening in England in the middle of the 
 last century as an influence standing alone and apart, 
 and not rather a result of that great spiritual revival 
 which was felt by Germany in the pietistic movement 
 under Spener, by which the cold dogmatism of 
 orthodox Lutheranism was broken down, and in the 
 far more extended and more lasting wave of rehgious 
 thought and conduct which passed over the Roman 
 Catholic world in Jansenism, which, although it was 
 crushed out by a persecution such as no power but 
 the Court of Rome could have devised or carried 
 out, has left results upon that Church w^hich can 
 never be effaced. The Cardinal de Cusa in the 
 fifteenth century strangely enough predicted an 
 eclipse of faith such as it had never before ex- 
 
394 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 perienced, as coming over the Church in the first years 
 of the eighteenth century, that pope and bishop alike 
 would fall under the fatal influence of the universal 
 darkness, and the Word of God and its preachers 
 should fail. The state of Christianity throughout 
 Europe in the former half of the century seemed 
 everywhere to verify this prediction, which was 
 published at Rome itself in 1452. A great reaction 
 everywhere was the necessary result or rather the 
 Providential remedy for this general defection, and 
 the return of spiritual life, both in the Church and 
 beyond its pale in England, was worthy of the great 
 part which our country had filled from the earliest 
 period in the religious life of Europe. This pro- 
 found re-awakening may be truly said to have begun 
 in the very bosom of the Church, and among those 
 who, like Wesley, were eminently the high-church- 
 men of the day. The two great leaders in the move- 
 ment represented at once the Calvinism of Grindal 
 and Abbot, and the Arminianism of Laud and 
 Sancroft ; and in this twofold reflection of the 
 religious mind of England lay the secret of its won- 
 derful success. Instead of awakening a bitter con- 
 troversy, such as that which had convulsed the nation 
 in an earlier day, these conflicting doctrines, having 
 as their sole aim the spiritual life of the masses of the 
 population, rather fell into a practical co-operation, 
 meeting and confronting one another, especially in 
 Kent, without any appearance even of rivalry, far less 
 of hostility. These remarks will serve to introduce 
 us to the following narrative of the introduction and 
 progress of Methodism in the diocese of Canterbury. 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 395 
 
 The writer is indebted for it to the learned and pious 
 Dr. Osborn, the Principal of the Wesleyan College at 
 Richmond, a divine as highly honoured in our own 
 Church as in that of which he forms so distinguished 
 an ornament. Through the kind intervention of a 
 common friend, Dr. Rigg, the Principal of the 
 Wesleyan Training College at Westminster, and late 
 President of the Conference, he was enabled to 
 obtain from Dr. Osborn the following account of the 
 rise and progress of Wesleyanism in the diocese, of 
 whose religious life it now forms so remarkable an 
 element. He cannot but avail himself of the op- 
 portunity of expressing his obligation for this favour, 
 enhanced as it is by the fact that Dr. Osborn's health 
 was seriously tried at the moment he so kindly 
 penned the following sketch. 
 
 The history of the rise and progress of Methodism 
 in Kent has not been attempted, so far as I can learn, 
 in any separate publication. But on examining the 
 journals of Wesley and other contemporary docu- 
 ments we may find materials for a brief sketch, and 
 trace some of the steps by which it has gained its 
 present position. 
 
 Returning from Georgia, whither he had gone as a 
 Missionary of the Society for the Promotion of 
 Christian Knowledge, he landed at Deal. After a 
 night's rest and morning prayer, said at his inn, he set 
 out for London, and reached Feversham the same 
 night, where he read evening prayers and expounded 
 the Second Lesson to a people as savage as any he had 
 seen on the other side of the Atlantic. From the 
 date of his arrival, Feb. 3, 1738, until June of the 
 
39^ 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 same year, when he went into Germany, he spent 
 much of his time in London, and it was here, at the 
 season of Whitsuntide, that he and his brother passed 
 through that great spiritual change of which he has 
 given so full an account in his journal, and which left 
 its stamp upon his whole future life. An earnest, 
 zealous, and laborious preacher he had been for many 
 years previous. But after May 24, 1738, he under- 
 stood the duty and privilege of endeavouring " to 
 spread abroad the glad tidings of reconciliation by 
 Christ/' and "to seek for the sheep of Christ dis- 
 persed in this naughty world " in a different sense ; 
 and for the fifty-two years that followed he travelled 
 and preached incessantly, often averaging a thousand 
 sermons a year. 
 
 Kent being always a part of his home circuit," 
 even when it had a separate organization of its own, 
 neither his arrangements nor his actual movements 
 are traced as fully with regard to it as to some more 
 distant places. But we find him preaching at 
 Deptford in 1739. Here he speaks of finding "a 
 society not unlikely one of Dr. Woodward's. 
 
 At Lewisham he had a friend to whom and to 
 whose family both he and his brother Charles were 
 much attached. Here, too, he preached frequently, 
 and especially in those seasons when he retired for a 
 week or more from the pressing duties of his London 
 life, to read, write, or examine in privacy some par- 
 ticular question. The country house and grounds of 
 Mr. Richard Blackwell, a banker in Lombard-street, 
 were understood to be at his disposal for this purpose. 
 To preach morning and evening and write all day was 
 his method of resting. 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 397 
 
 Possibly from this point Methodism proceeded to 
 Greenwich, where if not actually introduced it was 
 long sustained, and spread by the labours of a school- 
 master, named Bakewell, who, without abandoning 
 his home or profession, preached continuously for 
 more than seventy years, and died in a good old age 
 full of honour. His memory will be preserved by a 
 hymn which has found a place in many collections 
 and is sometimes ascribed to Toplady, — Hail ! thou 
 once-despised Jesus." In the year 1796, chapels 
 were built both at Greenwich and Woolwich, each of 
 which has since been replaced by a much more capa- 
 cious building. 
 
 Deptford and these adjacent places w^ere formally 
 separated from London, and organized as a distinct 
 circuit in 18 18 (a circuit, it should be here observed, 
 once for all, being a group of preaching places ar- 
 ranged with a view to convenience of supply, as a 
 district is a group of circuits arranged for economical 
 and disciplinary purposes). From that period to the 
 present many changes have passed over the neigh- 
 bourhood, and the condition of some societies has 
 fluctuated greatly. Sweet rural villages have become 
 large towns, and all traces of the country are disap- 
 pearing fast. In Methodistical buildings a corre- 
 sponding change is observable. Small, obscure, and 
 unsightly places of worship are now but few in 
 number ; while several, which cannot be described by 
 any of these epithets, have either taken the place 
 of others, as at Greenwich, Lewisham, Blackheath, 
 Sydenham, and Chislehurst, or as at Plumstead, 
 Bromley, New Cross and Brockley, contribute some- 
 2 D 
 
393 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 thing towards the needs of rapidly-increasing popu- 
 lations. 
 
 The aggregate cost of these chapels has not fallen 
 far short of ;^4o,ooo. 
 
 Another notable place in the early history of 
 Methodism in Kent is Bexley. The Rev. Henry 
 Piers, vicar of that parish, invited Wesley and White- 
 field to preach in his church, and gave all possible 
 countenance to their labours. So great was the in- 
 terest excited in this quiet parish that it is said that 
 on one occasion more than six hundred attended at 
 the Lord's Supper. 
 
 In 1742, Piers was appointed to preach a Visitation 
 sermon at Sevenoaks, the visitation being held by the 
 Dean of Arches, who had jurisdiction over the pecu- 
 liar of the Deanery of Shoreham. The discourse 
 turned on the duties and qualifications of the Christian 
 ministry, and the preacher was careful to substantiate 
 what he advanced by large citations from the formu- 
 laries of the Church. But the patience of his hearers 
 was soon exhausted. Twice the principal official sent 
 a message desiring the preacher to desist, and when 
 he still went on the great man walked out, followed 
 by most of the clergy, and left the preacher to finish 
 alone ! 
 
 How far the preacher's reputation as a Methodist 
 had preceded him and conduced to such a result we 
 have no means of knowing. But two years after this 
 Piers introduced the Wesleys to the Vicar of Shore- 
 ham. John Wesley was not slow to perceive what 
 sort of person he had been made acquainted with, 
 and writes in his journal, Aug. 14, 1744, — " I hope to 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 399 
 
 have cause of blessing God for ever for the acquaint- 
 ance begun this day ! " 
 
 The scholar and the gentleman would, of course, be 
 at once appreciated, and the spiritual sympathies of 
 the vicar were before long fully developed. He wel- 
 comed the Wesleys to his house and to his pulpit, 
 opened a room on his premises for society purposes, 
 and was always ready to assist with his advice and 
 prayers those whom he believed to be labouring for 
 the spiritual benefit of his parishioners and neighbours. 
 For many years all labour appeared to be lost (or 
 nearly lost) upon them, but about 1772 a great re- 
 formation took place, and the old man's heart was 
 cheered by seeing some of the seed spring up, and 
 even two out of the three public-houses in the 
 place admitted visitors for religious conversation and 
 prayer. 
 
 The Perronetts had property in and about Canter- 
 bury, and it seems highly probable that the first visit 
 of Wesley to that city grew out of this connection. 
 Here, as in most other places, the beginnings were 
 small and discouragements many. Sometimes the 
 mob was triumphant, sometimes friends were un- 
 faithful, and even perverse ; but after sixteen years of 
 trial and fluctuation, ground was obtained and a chapel 
 built in 1764. For two years afterwards Canterbury 
 appears on the " Minutes of Conference " as the name 
 of a circuit ; but it was felt that the designation was 
 scarcely appropriate, and Kent was substituted, under 
 which all the " work'' in what are now known as the 
 Mid and West portions of the county were comprised. 
 This designation continued in use as long as Wesley 
 2 D 2 
 
400 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 lived, and though not strictly accurate is sufficient for 
 our purpose. 
 
 An account of all the societies composing the Kent 
 circuit in 1773-4 has been preserved. Taking no 
 notice of places visited in the itinerant's round, 
 merely for preaching purposes, it shows societies 
 gathered as follows : — 
 
 Canterbury 57 Faversham 16 Chatham ... 68 
 Sheerness... 46 Margate... 34 Sittingbourne 8 
 Dover ... 34 Sandwich... 8 Ashford ... 11 
 
 At each of these places Wesley had preached be- 
 fore this time, at some of them frequently, e.g.^ at 
 Dover in 1756, where he had gathered a small 
 society, but found the practice of smuggling most 
 prejudicial to its spiritual welfare ; at Sheerness in 
 1767, at Margate in 1765, at Ramsgate in 1767, at 
 Gravesend in 1771, thus opening out many chief 
 places to the labours of his associates and suc- 
 cessors. 
 
 At Chatham he began sooner than at any other 
 place in the list, excepting Canterbury, preaching at 
 Brompton in 1753. Many vicissitudes were observ- 
 able here also. A room in a private house was occu- 
 pied, and closed by the owner's removal, another by 
 death ; a room in the barracks was first allowed, occu- 
 pied, and then refused, and various other places were 
 borrowed or hired until, in 1767, when the society 
 consisted of twenty members, they resolved upon 
 attempting to build, and three years afterwards 
 opened the new chapel. Their faith and patience, 
 long tried, were fully rewarded, and the society con- 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 4OI 
 
 tinued to grow morally and numerically until, in 
 18 10, a new and much larger chapel was joyfully 
 occupied. At Brompton, too, a good chapel, to ac- 
 commodate more than 300 hearers, was opened by 
 Mr. Wesley in 1789. From these have sprung many 
 smaller chapels in the neighbouring towns and vil- 
 lages, as Frindsbury, Gillingham, New Brompton, 
 Rainham, Hoo, and others. 
 
 Several preachers in the Methodist connection have 
 been reared and trained in this neighbourhood, the 
 most memorable of whom was John Baxter. Origin- 
 ally a shipwright in the Chatham dockyard, he 
 received, in 1779, an appointment to the dockyard 
 in Antigua, and found on his arrival a small com- 
 pany of pious negroes, gathered together by the bene- 
 volent care of Mr. N. Gilbert, the Speaker of the 
 House of Assembly, who had become a Methodist in 
 England several years previously. Baxter's labours 
 were so welcome and so useful that he ultimately 
 resigned his situation in the dockyard and employed 
 himself wholly in teaching and preaching. In 1786, 
 help was sent them from England, and thus the Me- 
 thodist missions in the West Indies were commenced. 
 Mr. Baxter's strength appears to have been most 
 unusual. While at Chatham he is reported to have 
 frequently walked more than twenty miles, after 
 preaching thrice on Sunday, that he might present 
 himself at six o'clock on Monday morning in the 
 dockyard. 
 
 No very remarkable circumstances are recorded as 
 attending the rise and growth of Methodism in the 
 other places given in the list, except in connection 
 
402 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 with Feversham, where, finding a people disposed to 
 be riotous, and magistrates not active in keeping the 
 peace, Wesley was compelled to threaten them with 
 legal proceedings if they failed in their duty any 
 further. The Httle society held on their way, and in 
 1806 were able to open a chapel, which has since 
 given place to one more in accordance wdth the 
 needs of the town. We read of Wesley visiting 
 Sevenoaks and Tunbridge, but cannot now trace the 
 connection between his labours and the formation of 
 societies there. Maidstone, though the county town, 
 was never visited by him ; and though a society was 
 formed, and a chapel built before his decease, the 
 place continued to be organically connected with 
 Sevenoaks until 18 14. The chapel erected in 1788 
 was replaced by a much larger one in 1823. Seven- 
 oaks (1774), Tunbridge (1780), have both in like 
 manner ceased to be occupied because larger and 
 better structures have recently arisen, and Tunbridge 
 Wells also. 
 
 And thus the advance of time has witnessed both 
 material and numerical progress from one end of the 
 county to the other. 
 
 The Kent members of the Society amount in the 
 current year to 8,817. 
 
 On our return from this necessary digression to the 
 path of our diocesan history, we may observe that the 
 period included between the primacies of Wake and 
 Herring is generally and justly regarded as the darkest 
 and most lifeless age of all the history of our Church. 
 A late writer has remarked, " Between contests for 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 403 
 
 power, thirst for riches, and inordinate love of plea- 
 sure, the nation sank down into corruption, and the 
 Church erected a feeble barrier against the fashion- 
 able pursuits. All its great preferments were bestowed 
 to secure friends to the Administration j whatever 
 prime minister prevailed, the prelatical bench looked 
 up to their creator with devotion and assiduous atten- 
 tion."^ This extremely low state of religion led the 
 Dissenters to make extraordinary efforts 'for its re- 
 vival, and to extend their influence by church-build- 
 ing, religious publications, and every other means. 
 The exertions of Matthew Henry, Dr. Watts, Dr. 
 Doddridge, and numerous excellent men, have told 
 with incalculable benefit, not only on their own 
 religious communities, but also upon the Church 
 itself in her hour of darkness and spiritual trial. The 
 establishment of seminaries by them for the instruc- 
 tion of young men for the ministry dates from this 
 period. These efforts had their crowning success in 
 that great impulse which has been already described, 
 by which one of the most energetic religious bodies 
 in the world was called into existence. From the 
 sympathizers with these great religious movements 
 within the Church, the Fletchers, the Romaines, the 
 Cecils, and a host of spiritually-minded men, sprang 
 up that great Evangelical" party within our pale whose 
 too limited views and imperfect learning led on to that 
 great counteracting force originating at Oxford which 
 is still fresh in the memory of the older readers of 
 these lines. We feel conscious that we are treading 
 
 ^ Haweis' Impartial Church History," vol. iii. p. 228. 
 
404 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 on difficult, and very delicate ground when we enter 
 upon the diocesan history of the close of the last 
 century, or even of the opening of that in which we 
 live. A series of archbishops, excellent in private 
 life, and of piety and learning unimpeached, pass 
 before our eye, who were as absolutely unable to 
 guide the spiritual life of their distant diocese as the 
 late Duke of York was to direct that of his secularized 
 bishopric of Osnaburg. Some idea of the infinite 
 distance between the archbishops and their clergy 
 may be formed by the panegyric which Hasted be- 
 stows upon Archbishop Cornwallis, in these terms : 
 At his first residence at Lambeth he abolished that 
 disagreeable distinction of his chaplains dining at a 
 separate table, for however the parade and state of 
 the archbishop's household, as well as the manners 
 of the former times, might have made it consistent for 
 them to sit at table with his upper domestics, yet the 
 change of manners and the alteration of the times 
 had long made it odious, and complained of by 
 every one ; and it remained for an archbishop of Dr. 
 Cornwallis's noble birth to declare that they should 
 be seated at the same table with himself. The noblesse 
 oblige of the archbishop is somewhat a reflection, 
 however unintentional; upon his less dignified prede- 
 cessors. But we are led to ask, if the chaplains sat 
 with the higher domestics, where a curate could 
 have his place but in his Grace's kitchen ? There 
 could be little sympathy where there was this great 
 distance, or even while the slightest memory of it 
 
 Hasted's " Kent," vol. xii. p. 513. 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 405 
 
 remained. In those days of slow and perilous travel- 
 ling, Lambeth was almost as difficult to reach as the 
 Vatican, and even a chaplain as hard of access as a 
 cardinal. When the archbishops travelled into Kent 
 it was in a semi-regal style, and their courtly equipage 
 was generally met by the mayor and corporation at 
 Harbledown, a scene which is within the memory of 
 persons still living. The attendants on the arch- 
 bishop when he entered the cathedral were girt with 
 swords, w^hich might perhaps be intended to secure 
 him from the fate of Becket.^ The clergy who 
 assembled at the visitations exhibited a still more 
 suggestive contrast. The late Registrar of tlie diocese, 
 Mr. Cullen, who, were he now living, would be more 
 than a centenarian, remembered how at the early 
 archidiaconal visitations the clergy sat down after the 
 dinner smoking long white pipes, after the fashion of 
 a farmer's gathering, and doubtless discussing the 
 temporalities of their parishes far more than their 
 spiritual incidents. Railway travelling and railway 
 legislation, in the shape of successive inroads of the 
 Ecclesiastical Commissioners upon the see of Can- 
 terbury, — realizing the remark of Thucydides, that the 
 richest countries are always the most exposed to in- 
 vasion, — have changed the state of the archbishopric 
 and of the diocese to an extent which would in earUer 
 days have been deemed revolutionary. Even the 
 ancient diocese has been dealt with as a conquered 
 country by the same autocratic power ; its ancient 
 
 ^ The writer is indebted for these recollections to his friend 
 John Starr, Esq., whose family had an almost hereditary con- 
 nection with the chapter of Canterbury. 
 
4o6 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 limits having been extended, its deaneries multiplied, 
 its peculiars destroyed, and almost all its earlier land- 
 marks effaced. It has been the misfortune of the 
 Church of England to be afflicted with periodical 
 fears that the Church is in danger, and the corrup- 
 tions which abounded in its beneficiary system in the 
 early part of the century awakened the too natural 
 apprehension of some of its most devoted members 
 that the searching reforms which had been already 
 applied to the State would presently be extended to 
 the Church, in a destructive rather than a conserva- 
 tive form. Hence, the fearless and eloquent letter of 
 Lord Henley to the king, which was the first impulse 
 in the movement which resulted in the Ecclesiastical 
 Commission. The Church in her panic forgot, and 
 surrendered entirely, her grand legal position of a 
 combination or congeries of corporations rather than 
 a single corporation, which was capable of being 
 dealt with as a whole, and the result was a surrender 
 by bishops, deans, chapters, and incumbents, repre- 
 senting a vast number of corporate bodies, collective 
 or sole, into the hands of the Commissioners appointed 
 under the new Act, who thenceforth dealt with the 
 whole of the enormous property which fell into their 
 hands, first, as a twofold, then as a single fund, leaving 
 the bishops (until a recent enactment) mere stipen- 
 diaries, and the chapters absolutely dependent upon 
 the same precarious support. The fatal surrender 
 once made could never be cancelled, and the diocese 
 of Canterbury has probably suffered more than any 
 other by the merging into the common fund of a large 
 portion of its ancient inheritance. It is not to be 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 407 
 
 denied that much benefit has accrued to many of the 
 smaller benefices in the diocese by this great change. 
 But the cathedral has suffered more, probably, than 
 any similar body in the kingdom. Its twelve pre- 
 bendaries have given place to four residentiary canons, 
 the two archdeaconries being added as a kind of sup- 
 plement j forming six in all. The commutation of the 
 estates having been made with more financial skill 
 on the part of the Commissioners than on that of the 
 Chapter, the " great church " has been less fortunate 
 than her suffragan churches, and has probably con- 
 tributed more in proportion to the common fund 
 than any other. The days of Archbishops Moore 
 and Manners-Sutton were days of great sinecures and 
 of pluralities worthy of the mediaeval period ; those of 
 the good Archbishop Howley formed the transition 
 period between the new and old regime^ and closed 
 the princely days of the Archbishopric ; while the 
 simple and almost Apostolic features of the rule of 
 Archbishop Sumner form the graceful link between a 
 past which can hardly be regretted and a present 
 which may well awaken the most sanguine hopes and 
 recall the most pleasing remembrances. One of the 
 last links of a past which is fast fading from memory 
 falls within the recollection of the writer, and is here 
 gratefully recorded. The late Archdeacon Croft, the 
 son-in-law of Archbishop Manners-Sutton, however 
 he may have fallen short of a spiritual standard which 
 was unknown in his time, was conspicuous for that 
 kindliness of heart and graceful hospitality which com- 
 mended and " magnified his office " so greatly to the 
 clergy with whom he was connected. He had sur- 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 vived long enough to be the colleague of Archbishop 
 Sumner, whose singularly beautiful character has left 
 an image never to be effaced in the memory of 
 all who witnessed it, and that character seemed 
 to have made an impression on his later life. 
 Few will fail to remember the energy and devotion 
 with which up to the very last the archbishop entered 
 upon all the duties which the care of the diocese 
 devolved upon him. Up to his latest years he carried 
 on his progresses in the diocese, every part of which 
 was personally known to him ; and when he was 
 urged to intermit in some degree this active oversight, 
 he was accustomed to say that the time would come 
 when he might be unequal to it, but till then he was 
 anxious to continue his personal knowledge of his 
 diocese. Travelling in the simplest manner with a 
 single servant, and only distinguished by that graceful 
 dignity which was ever conspicuous in him, he is 
 remembered everywhere as realizing that ideal of the 
 Apostolic ministry which he had traced in his earliest 
 and most popular work. Nor is his successor remem- 
 bered with less affection, though in many respects so 
 different from him. In him the title of " Father in 
 God seemed less a conventional term than a picture 
 of that paternal character which was read even in his 
 countenance, and exemplified to all his clergy so 
 affectionately and so invariably. Of his successor, 
 who still has been spared to the diocese after a series 
 of afflictions which are too fresh in the memory of all 
 his clergy to permit the writer to do more than 
 allude to them here, it would be unbecoming to 
 speak in this place. One only remark may here be 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 409 
 
 made on his primacy, which, as it less conveys an 
 eulogy than a fact, can hardly be held to violate that 
 reserve which is justly required of an historian of his 
 own time. It is, that without compromising his own 
 religious opinions the present primate has conciliated 
 the respect and affection of the representatives of every 
 school of religious thought and sentiment in his 
 diocese ; a result to which the long history of the 
 primacy, which is here so briefly sketched, can hardly 
 present a parallel. 
 
 In closing this faint and hurried retrospect of a 
 history extending over nearly fourteen centuries, we 
 cannot but turn our eyes towards that future which 
 may yet be reserved for the diocese of Canterbury in 
 the life of our National Church. It is obvious, from 
 the very position which it occupies on the map of 
 England, that it can never, even apart from its metro- 
 political character and venerable historical claims, fail 
 to take a leading part in the future history of our 
 Church. Standing as it does on the great highway 
 to the Continent, filled with towns of considerable 
 size and importance, whose increase has been more 
 rapid and remarkable than that of any other, except 
 those in the great manufacturing and mining districts, 
 it cannot but take a very conspicuous place in the 
 future history of our country. We may well rejoice 
 to recognise a consciousness of this great destiny in 
 the active and zealous labours of both clergy and 
 laity in church-building, church-restoration, national 
 education, and in every plan of spiritual advancement 
 and influence which this age of religious activity has 
 everywhere developed. 
 
CANTERBURY. 
 
 Perhaps the most important of these labours has 
 been that in the direction of the education of the 
 labouring population, in which the voluntary efforts 
 of the inhabitants of the diocese have been so ener- 
 getic, as to have rendered the intrusion of Board- 
 schools less frequent than in many other places. 
 How long the unequal struggle can continue is a 
 problem yet unsolved ; but it may be safely conjec- 
 tured, that between the great Church of England and 
 Wesleyan influences in Kent, the attempt to bring 
 about a mere secular education will be a more signal 
 failure here than in any other county in England. 
 
 The great religious movements which gave such 
 varied and often conflicting influences to the spiritual 
 life of our Church through the rise of the Evangelical 
 party and the counteracting force of the great Oxford 
 school, have perhaps less affected the diocese of 
 Canterbury than many others. The traditions of the 
 diocese had been from the period of the Revolution 
 of a strongly Protestant character, yet blended with a 
 political conservatism which gave it ever a tendency 
 towards what would be called moderate high-church 
 doctrine and practice. The cathedral city itself has 
 for generations been distinguished by an Evangelical 
 tone of preaching and sentiment, which was the 
 natural result of the vigorous element of foreign 
 Protestantism which was so early engrafted upon 
 the native stock. The numerous surnames of purely 
 French origin which there meet the eye in every 
 direction and may be found in every directory, prove 
 that a large proportion of the inhabitants of the city 
 are the descendants of the settlers from France and 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 41I 
 
 Flanders in the time of Edward VI., and some of the 
 most eminent of the prebendaries of the cathedral 
 have had a similar foreign origin. ^ 
 
 Within the present century and notably in the last 
 forty years, which witnessed the great revival of church 
 architecture, not only the cathedral but also most of 
 the parish churches of the diocese have undergone 
 restorations of various degrees and kinds, from the 
 work of actual rebuilding, which was in too many 
 cases necessary through the prolonged neglect and 
 failures of the previous century, down to that of a 
 reverent and conservative preservation of the failing, 
 structure, the best and truest of all restorations. Of 
 this latter work the precious and unique Church of 
 Barfrestone presents a laudable instance ; while that of 
 Minster, in Thanet, exhibits an excess of reproduc- 
 tive power, detracting materially from the impressive 
 effect which it produced on the observer in an earlier 
 day. The Diocesan Society for Church-building, 
 originated by Archbishop Longley, has been a most 
 important agent in this work of architectural progress. 
 
 Church extension in the larger towns, as in Maid- 
 stone, Ashford, Folkestone, Dover, and other in- 
 creasing towns, has been carried on with an energy 
 and success which is too well-known to their nume- 
 rous visitors to need here any special description. 
 In all the larger communities there are churches and 
 ritual forms suited to every spiritual need or religious 
 
 ^ As Isaac and Meric Casaubon, Adrian Saravia, Peter du 
 Moulin, and his son of the same name, Bernardinus Ochinus, 
 Gerard Vossius, and others whose names are evidently French 
 or Italian. 
 
412 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 taste ; and though the breaking-up of the iron uni- 
 formity of an earher age has left an excess of 
 variety which might well give a pretext to some future 
 Bossuet to write a history of the variations of the 
 Protestant Churches in ritual as well as doctrine, we 
 may yet entertain the hope that the prudence of 
 those who are most tempted to exceed the hmits of 
 a wise moderation may be enabled to prove that 
 " though every piece of the building cannot be of one 
 form, .... its perfection consists in this, that out of 
 many moderate varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes 
 that are not vastly disproportional, arises the goodly 
 and graceful symmetry that commends the whole 
 pile and structure.'^ The diocese of Canterbury as 
 filling the place in regard to our English primacy 
 which the " suburbicary churches did to the great 
 Roman patriarchate, ought to maintain its vantage- 
 ground among the dioceses of England, and to prove 
 itself not unworthy of its ancient name and glory. 
 It cannot afford to live upon the memories of the 
 past, or to remain inactive and unprogressive at a 
 period when every power and influence in Church 
 and State is moving on so rapidly, and with an 
 almost irresistible impulse. Without attempting to 
 reopen those efforts after a union with distant 
 Churches in which so much of the zeal of Archbishop 
 Wake was wasted and lost; without entering into 
 vain endeavours after a reunion with the Churches 
 which have sprung from herself, and should rather 
 constitute the subject of her deepest thanksgivings 
 than the object of her fruitless regrets, our Church 
 ought to address herself to that first principle of all 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 413 
 
 real unity, an ardent faith and an active charity. 
 For though there may be no immediate hope of 
 the reunion of Churches or sects, we ought to look 
 to the future and sow such useful seeds as may pro- 
 duce fruit in the end ; and if we merely succeed in 
 diminishing hatred among Christians, and in render- 
 ing them more social in their intercourse, we shall be 
 amply rewarded for all our troubles and disquie- 
 tudes." Then ''we may safely leave to the provi- 
 dence of God the work of bringing them into a 
 nearer and more perfect union through the confes- 
 sion of the same faith, when the moment determined 
 in the secret counsels of Him who overrules all 
 things shall have arrived. The assembly of the 
 Anglican bishops from every part of the world at 
 Canterbury on the occasion of the recent Conference 
 at Lambeth, set forth with a touching and inspiring 
 force the increasing union between the members of 
 that world - wide communion which looks towards 
 Canterbury, as Canterbury once looked towards 
 Rome, and recognises her as still the faithful depo- 
 sitory of those truths which the great St. Gregory 
 proclaimed to his Saxon converts. To this great 
 tradition we may still fearlessly appeal. That abso- 
 lute devotion to the Scriptures, and vindication of 
 the study of them by the laity which involves the 
 distinctive principle of the Reformation, as it was 
 inculcated in the teaching of St. Gregory, so finds 
 still its fullest development among ourselves. It was 
 left for the Gregorys and the Clements of a much 
 
 * Tabaraud, De la reunion des Communions Chretiennes," 
 pp. 314, 528. 
 
 2 E 
 
414 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 later and degenerate age to denounce the reading 
 of the Scriptures, in the bull Unigenitus," and 
 in periodical maledictions pronounced on those 
 noble societies whose object is to spread every- 
 where that great "Epistle of the Heavenly Em- 
 peror" as Gregory the Great termed them in his 
 entreaty to the layman Theodore to read them with 
 unintermitting diligence.^ " Study, I entreat you," 
 are the words of the great teacher of the Anglo-Saxon 
 Church, "and daily meditate upon the words of 
 your Creator. Learn the heart of God from the 
 words of God."^ May the Church of England and 
 the diocese of Canterbury ever hold fast to this first 
 principle of her ancient teacher, and illustrate their 
 truth by such an exercise of faith and charity as 
 may make her a light and an example to those many 
 and distant Churches which have been now brought, 
 through the influence of our two last archbishops, 
 into so close an intercommunion with one another 
 through the bond of their union with herself We 
 have traced in these brief pages the outline of the 
 Church of England as she was in the days of her 
 union with Rome — perplexed between many obe- 
 
 ^ On the strength of the denunciations of the Bull 
 * * Unigenitus " a priest in the diocese of Arezzo, threatened to 
 refuse absolution to a lady whose custom it was to read the 
 Scriptures constantly. The Bishop, Mgr. Marcacci, a worthy 
 successor of the great Gregory, from whose doctrine Clement 
 XI. had so fatally apostatized, appealed at once to the noble 
 words of our English apostle and rebuked the follower of his 
 degenerate successor. — (**Atti dell' Assemblea tenuta in 
 Firenze, 1787," torn. iv. p. 661.) 
 
 * Reg. Epp. 1. iv. Ind. xiii. Ep. xi. 
 
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT DAY. 4I 5 
 
 diences, cumbered with much serving, plundered 
 like the traveller from Jerusalem to Jericho, and in 
 the days preceding her reformation in such a state 
 as to be half-dead, like him. We have seen her 
 revival in the season of the Reformation, its partial 
 eclipse, the return of her liberty and strength, and 
 the afflictions which followed when she leaned upon 
 the arm of flesh, and sought for support rather in 
 the idea that she was a national institution than a 
 Divine incorporation. Few who read these pages 
 can ever believe that she will be led to return to 
 that obedience " which her stern stepmother im- 
 posed upon her in an earlier day, or that she will 
 ever again make Rome the centre of all her hopes 
 and all her fears, and the pole-star to which all her 
 teaching points. Fortunately, she has a better 
 centre both for her hopes and fears, and may rest her 
 eye upon a more sure word of prophecy than any 
 which can be inspired by the illusive dream of in- 
 fallibihty, taking heed unto it as unto a light that 
 shineth in a dark place " until the judgment of all 
 that exalts itself against the true and only Head of 
 the Church shall be proclaimed amid the joys and 
 terrors of the " great and terrible day of the Lord.'' 
 
 ^ Roma ch' e il centre di tutti i loro timori e di tutte le loro 
 speranze e la Stella polare che gli dirige. " — The Abate Tanzini, 
 in his sketch of the degraded state of the Tuscan clergy in 
 1787. — Istoria dell' Assemblea," pref. p. viii. 
 
 2 E 2 
 
( 417 ) 
 
 SUCCESSION OF THE ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY, 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 CONSECRATION OF ST. AUGUSTINE. 
 
 "With a few exceptions, it may be considered that the date of 
 the death of an Archbishop is contemporary with the date of 
 the accession of his successor. 
 
 
 Year 
 
 Acc 
 
 Names of Archbishops. 
 
 of 
 
 or 
 
 
 Consecr. 
 
 Trans. 
 
 
 A. D. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 A 
 
 597 
 
 597 
 
 2 Laurentius 
 
 604. 
 
 604 
 
 3 Mellitus . . . 
 
 
 6IQ 
 
 
 
 624 
 
 
 
 627 
 
 
 655 
 
 655 
 
 
 668 
 
 668 
 
 8 Berhtwald 
 
 693 
 
 693 
 
 
 731 
 
 731 
 
 
 735 
 
 735 
 
 II Cuthbert 
 
 736 
 
 741 
 
 
 759 
 
 759 
 
 
 766 
 
 766 
 
 
 793 
 
 793 
 
 15 Wlfred 
 
 805 
 
 805 
 
 
 832 
 
 832 
 
 
 833 
 
 833 
 
 1 8 Ethelred 
 
 870 
 
 870 
 
 
 890 
 
 890 
 
 20 Athelm 
 
 909 
 
 914 
 
 
 914 
 
 923 
 
 
 926 
 
 942 
 
 
 951 
 
 959 
 
 
 957 
 
 960 
 
 
 980 
 
 988 
 
4i8 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Names of Archbishops. 
 
 Year 
 of 
 
 Consecr. 
 
 Acc. 
 
 or 
 Trans. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 
 990 
 
 990 
 
 995 
 
 984 
 
 1005 
 
 999 
 
 IOI3 
 
 1020 
 
 1020 
 
 1035 
 
 1038 
 
 1044 
 
 IO51 
 
 1043 
 
 1052 
 
 1070 
 
 1070 
 
 1093 
 
 1093 
 
 1 108 
 
 III4 
 
 1123 
 
 II23 
 
 1139 
 
 II39 
 
 1 162 
 
 1 162 
 
 1174 
 
 1 174 
 
 1 180 
 
 I185 
 
 1 189 
 
 1 193 
 
 1207 
 
 1207 
 
 1229 
 
 1229 
 
 1234 
 
 1234 
 
 1245 
 
 1245 
 
 1273 
 
 1273 
 
 1279 
 
 1279 
 
 1294 
 
 1294 
 
 1308 
 
 I313 
 
 1328 
 
 1328 
 
 1323 
 
 1333 
 
 1349 
 
 1349 
 
 1349 
 
 1346 
 
 1366 
 
 1369 
 
 
 1368 
 
 1362 
 
 1375 
 
 1370 
 
 I381 
 
 1374 
 
 1396 
 
 1408 
 
 I414 
 
 1425 
 
 1443 
 
 1419 
 
 1452 
 
 1435 
 
 1454 
 
 1479 
 
 i486 
 
 1496 
 
 1502 
 
 1502 
 
 1503 
 
 26 Sigeric 
 
 27 Elfric 
 
 28 Elphege 
 
 29 Living 
 
 30 Ethelnoth 
 
 31 Eadsi 
 
 32 Robert 
 
 33 Stigand {dep, 1070) ... 
 
 34 Lan franc 
 
 35 Anselm 
 
 36 Ralph d'Escures 
 
 37 William de Corbeuil... 
 
 38 Theobald 
 
 39 Thomas Becket 
 
 40 Richard 
 
 41 Baldwin 
 
 42 Hubert Fitz Walter ... 
 
 43 Stephen Langton 
 
 44 Richard Grant 
 
 45 Edmund Rich 
 
 46 Boniface 
 
 47 Robert Kilwardby 
 
 48 John Peckham 
 
 49 Robert Winchelsey ... 
 
 50 Walter Reynolds 
 
 51 Simon Meopham 
 
 52 John Stratford 
 
 53 Thomas Bradwardine 
 
 54 Simon Islip 
 
 55 Simon Langham 
 
 56 William Whittlesey .. 
 
 57 Simon Sudbury , 
 
 50 William Courtenay .. 
 
 59 Thomas Arundel , 
 
 60 Henry Chicheley 
 
 61 John Stafford 
 
 62 John Kemp 
 
 63 Thomas Bourgchier ... 
 
 64 John Morton 
 
 65 Henry Dene 
 
 66 William Warham ...... 
 
ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. 
 
 419 
 
 Names of Archbishops. 
 
 Year 
 
 Acc. 
 
 of 
 
 or 
 
 Consecr. 
 
 Trans. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1533 
 
 1533 
 
 1556 
 
 1556 
 
 1559 
 
 1559 
 
 1559 
 
 1575 
 
 1577 
 
 1583 
 
 
 1604 
 
 1609 
 
 161O 
 
 162I 
 
 1633 
 
 1633 
 
 1660 
 
 1669 
 
 1663 
 
 1678 
 
 1677 
 
 169I 
 
 169I 
 
 1692 
 
 1695 
 
 1705 
 
 I715 
 
 I715 
 
 1736 
 
 1738 
 
 1747 
 
 1743 
 
 1757 
 
 1735 
 
 1758 
 
 1750 
 
 1768 
 
 1775 
 
 1783 
 
 1792 
 
 1805 
 
 1813 
 
 1828 
 
 1828 
 
 1848 
 
 1836 
 
 1862 
 
 1856 
 
 1868 
 
 67 Thomas Cranmer 
 
 68 Reginald Pole 
 
 69 Matthew Parker 
 
 70 Edmund Grindal , 
 
 71 John Whitgift 
 
 72 Richard Bancroft 
 
 73 George Abbott 
 
 74 William Laud 
 
 75 William Juxon 
 
 76 Gilbert Sheldon 
 
 77 William Bancroft 
 
 [deprived in 1690) 
 
 78 John Tillotson 
 
 79 Thomas Tenison 
 
 80 William Wake 
 
 81 John Potter , 
 
 82 Thomas Herring 
 
 83 Matthew Hutton 
 
 84 Thomas Seeker 
 
 85 Frederick Cornwallis 
 
 86 John Moore 
 
 87 Charles Manners Sutton 
 
 88 William Howley 
 
 89 John Bird Sumner 
 
 90 Charles Thomas Longley , 
 
 91 Archibald Campbell Tait 
 
( 420 ) 
 
 DEANS AND PRIORS OF CANTERBURY. 
 
 BEFORE ARCHBISHOP LANFRANC. 
 
 Names. 
 
 Date of 
 Installation. 
 
 Date of 
 Death. 
 
 1 Aegelwine 
 
 2 Chilnoth 
 
 3 Alfric 
 
 4 Kinsyn 
 
 5 Maurice 
 
 6 Alsine 
 
 7 Aelfwine 
 
 8 Athelsine 
 
 9 Aelfwine II 
 
 10 Athelsine II 
 
 1 1 ^gelnoth or Ethelnoth 
 
 12 Godrich 
 
 PRIORS. 
 
 1 Henry 
 
 2 Ernulphus or Arnulphus 
 
 3 Conrad 
 
 4 Gosfridus or Gofifride 
 
 5 Elmerus 
 
 6 Jeremiah (deposed) 
 
 7 Walter, surnamed Burdens 
 
 8 Walter (Parvus) deposed 
 
 9 Wybert 
 
 10 [Oliver] 
 
 11 Richard 
 
 12 Odo 
 
 13 Benedict 
 
 14 Harlewine 
 
 (resigned) 
 
 15 Alanus 
 
 1096 
 
 1123 
 1 143 
 
 1153 
 
 1175 
 
 1177 
 1179 
 1179 
 
 A.D. 
 
 "870 
 
 1008 
 
 1 102 
 I 123-4 
 II27 
 II54 
 II37 
 
 II61 
 
 1 167 
 
 1 199 
 1 194 
 
DEANS AND PRIORS OF CANTERBURY. 42 1 
 
 Names. — Priors continued. 
 
 Date of 
 
 Date of 
 
 Installation. 
 
 Death. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 A. D. 
 
 1186-7 
 
 1 188 
 
 1 189 
 
 
 1 190 
 
 
 II9I 
 
 1205-6 
 
 1206 
 
 1222 
 
 1234 
 
 1232 
 
 1244 
 
 1244 
 
 1289 
 
 1258 
 
 1263 
 
 
 1274 
 
 1274 
 
 
 1285 
 
 I33I 
 
 I33I 
 
 1338 
 
 
 1370 
 
 
 1376 
 
 1376 
 
 1377 
 
 1377 
 
 I39I 
 
 I39I 
 
 I4II 
 
 I4II 
 
 1427 
 
 1428 
 
 1437 
 
 1437 
 
 1445 
 
 1446 
 
 1448 
 
 1449 
 
 1468 
 
 1/j.UO 
 
 I47I 
 
 I47I 
 
 I47I 
 
 1472 
 
 1494 
 
 
 I517 
 
 16 Honorius 
 
 17 Roger Norris 
 
 18 Osbern de Bristo 
 
 19 Galfridus 
 
 20 John de Chatham 
 
 21 Walter III 
 
 22 John II. (de Sittingburn) 
 
 23 Roger de la I>ee 
 
 24 Nicholas de Sandwich 
 
 25 Roger de St. Elphege 
 
 26 Adam de Chillenden 
 
 27 Thomas Ryngmere 
 
 # 28 Henry de Estria 
 
 29 Richard de Oxinden 
 
 30 Robert Hathbrand 
 
 31 Richard Gillingham 
 
 32 Stephen Mongeham 
 
 33 John Finch (Winch) of Winchilsea. 
 
 34 Thomas Chillenden 
 
 35 John Woodnesborough 
 
 36 WiUiam Molash 
 
 37 John Salisbury 
 
 38 John Elham 
 
 39 Thomas Goldston I - 
 
 40 John Oxney or Oxne 
 
 41 William Petham 
 
 42 William Sellynge 
 
 43 Thomas Goldston II 
 
 44 Thomas Goldwell (resigned) 
 
 DEAisrs. 
 
 1 Nicholas Wootton 
 
 2 Thomas Goodwin 
 
 3 Richard Rogers 
 
 4 Thomas Nevil 
 
 5 Charles Fotherby 
 
 6 John Boys 
 
 7 Isaac Bargrave 
 
 8 George Aglionby 
 
 9 Thomas Turner 
 
 10 John Tillotson 
 
 1541 
 1567 
 1584 
 1597 
 1615 
 1619 
 1625 
 
 1660 
 1672 
 
422 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Names. — Deans continued. 
 
 Date of 
 Installation. 
 
 Date of 
 Death. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1689 
 
 I714 
 
 169I 
 
 172I 
 
 1704 
 
 1728 
 
 1728 
 
 1733 
 
 1734 
 
 1760 
 
 1760 
 
 1766 
 
 1766 
 
 1770 
 
 1770 
 
 
 I77I 
 
 1805 
 
 1775 
 
 
 I 781 
 
 1792 
 
 1790 
 
 
 1793 
 
 
 1797 
 
 ...... 
 
 1809 
 
 1825 
 
 1825 
 
 1857 
 
 1827 
 
 1854 
 
 1845 
 
 1857 
 
 1857 
 
 1871 
 
 187I 
 
 
 11 John Sharp , 
 
 12 George Hooper 
 
 13 George Stanhope 
 
 14 Ellas Sydall 
 
 15 John Lynch 
 
 16 William Friend 
 
 17 John Potter 
 
 18 Hon. Brownlow North 
 
 19 John Moore 
 
 20 Hon. James Cornwallls 
 
 21 George Horne ... 
 
 22 William Buller 
 
 23 Folliot Herbert Walker Cornewall 
 
 24 Thomas Fowls 
 
 25 Gerard Andrews 
 
 26 Hon. Hugh Percy 
 
 27 Hon. Richard Bagot , 
 
 28 William Rowe Lyall 
 
 29 Henry Alford 
 
 30 Robert Payne Smith 
 
( 423 ) 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ^THELBERHT, his Conversion page 24 
 
 ^thelburga, her foundation at Lyminge 40 
 
 Albi (Petrus de), the great pluralist 153 
 
 Albinus (Abbot of St. Augustine's) 26 
 
 Aldington Manor ... ... ... ... ... 36 
 
 vision of Lanfranc there ... 167 
 
 surrender of ... 267 
 
 Andred Poorest 26 
 
 Anselm (Archbishop) succeeds Lanfranc ... 104 
 
 his writings ... ... ... ... ... ... 109 
 
 contributes to building of Cathedral ... ... ... no 
 
 Archbishops of Canterbury, succession of, from the consecra- 
 tion of St. Augustine ... ... ... ... ... ... 417 
 
 Archbishops — 
 
 Laurentius ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 66 
 
 Mellitus, Justus, Honorius, Deusdedit, Theodore ... 66, 67 
 Brihtwald, Tatwyn, Nothelm, Cuthberht, Bregwyn, Janberht, 
 Athelard, Wilfrid, Ceolnoth, .^thelred, Plegmund, Athelm, 
 
 Wlfelm, Odo, Elsin ... 
 
 
 
 67, 68 
 
 Dunstan page 
 
 69 
 
 Wethershede 
 
 ... 148 
 
 Lanfranc 
 
 91 
 
 Edmund (St.) 
 
 ... 148 
 
 Anselm 
 
 104 
 
 Boniface 
 
 ... 153 
 
 Radulfus de Turbine ... 
 
 112 
 
 Kilwardby ... 
 
 ... 155 
 
 Corboil ... 
 
 112 
 
 Peckham 
 
 ... 168 
 
 Theobald 
 
 114 
 
 Winchelsey... 
 
 ... 179 
 
 Becket 
 
 119 
 
 Reynolds ... 
 
 ... 182 
 
 Richard ... 
 
 132 
 
 Meopham ... 
 
 . ... 185 
 
 Baldwin ... 
 
 133 
 
 Stratford 
 
 . ... 187 
 
 Walter ... 
 
 138 
 
 Bradwardine 
 
 ... ib 
 
 Langton 
 
 142 
 
 Islep 
 
 ... 188 
 
424 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Archbishops [contimud] — 
 
 Langham 
 
 page 189 
 
 Parker 
 
 ... page 293 
 
 Whittlesey- 
 
 ... 190 
 
 Grindal 
 
 304-311 
 
 Sudbury 
 
 ... 191 
 
 Whitgift ... 
 
 ... 316-326 
 
 Courtenay 
 
 ... 196 
 
 Bancroft 
 
 322 
 
 Arundel ... 
 
 ... 200 
 
 Laud 
 
 326 
 
 Chicheley 
 
 ... 204 
 
 Sheldon 
 
 367 
 
 Staftbrd 
 
 ... 206 
 
 Sancroft 
 
 376 
 
 Kempe 
 
 ... 207 
 
 Tillotson 
 
 378 
 
 Bourchier 
 
 ... ib. 
 
 Tenison 
 
 380 
 
 Morton 
 
 ... 208 
 
 Wake 
 
 385 
 
 Dene 
 
 ... 208 
 
 Potter 
 
 387 
 
 Warham ... 
 
 ... ib. 
 
 Herring 
 
 ib^ 
 
 Cranmer ... 
 
 ... 253 
 
 Cornwallis ... 
 
 404 
 
 Pole (Cardinal) .. 
 
 ... 270 
 
 
 
 Aries (Council of) 
 Augustine (St.) 
 
 Augustine's (St.) Monastery 
 
 Barton (Elizabeth), Holy Maid of Kent " 
 
 ■ her execution 
 Becket, his life, by Canon Robertson 
 
 his arbitrary conduct ... 
 
 ' exile ... ... 
 
 effects of his death on Canterbury 
 
 translation of his relics 
 
 Bells, at Otford, Maidstone, and Canterbury 
 Bishop, of the same order as Priest in Saxon times 
 
 residence of, imperative... 
 
 military character of in feudal period 
 
 Blean Wood 
 
 Boucher (Joane), her alleged heresies and death 
 Brockhull, its ancient chapel 
 Cajetan (Cardinal) on public prayers 
 Calais added to Canterbury diocese 
 Canons, their origin and office ... 
 Canterbury, its earliest state 
 \ plan of first 
 
INDEX. 425 
 
 Canterbury Cathedral, endowment of ... page 35 
 
 description of ... ... ... ... no 
 
 • destruction of, by fire ... ... ... 128 
 
 rebuilt 130 
 
 its new constitution ... ... ... 297 
 
 Carder, martyr at Tenterden 247 
 
 Cartwright, his Puritan scheme ... •••317 
 
 Celibacy of clergy enforced by Anselm ... 106 
 
 Chalcedon, Council of ... ... ... ... ... ... 6 
 
 Chalices, enlarged at Reformation ... ... 258 
 
 Charibert, king of Paris ... ... ... ... ... ... 24 
 
 Churches, four kinds of . . . ... ... 85 
 
 Churches, their number in Kent in Domesday , ... 86 
 
 Church-building in the thirteenth century ... ... ... 162 
 
 Church of England, its state at the Reformation ... ... 220 
 
 , at the Revolution •••371 
 
 in middle of eighteenth century 410 
 
 Clare (Gilbert de. Earl of Gloucester), his homage ... ... 171 
 
 Contarini (Cardinal), friend of Cardinal Pole, his agreement 
 
 with the Church of England on Justification... ... ... 274 
 
 Court-at-Street, its chapel and votaries ... ... ... ... 250 
 
 Communion tables, railed in by Laud 342 
 
 Cranmer, his election ... ... ... ... ... ... 253 
 
 — his surrenders of manors to the king... ... ... 266 
 
 (Edmund, the Archdeacon), his pluralities ... ... 269 
 
 Croydon Manor surrendered ... ... ... ... ... 267 
 
 Danes, their ravages in Kent ... ... ... ... ... 45. 
 
 Deans and Priors of Canterbury 420 
 
 Deism, its origin and growth in England 357 
 
 Dering (Edward), chaplain to Queen Elizabeth ... ... 305 
 
 Dering (Sir Edward), his MSS. at Surrenden ... ... ... 332 
 
 (Sir Edward, of Long Parliament) defends Puritans 
 
 against Laud 335 
 
 Diocese, its ancient meaning I 
 
 Domesday, churches mentioned in 70> 73 
 
 Domesday, ecclesiastical manors described in 82, 83 
 
 Dover, Monastery of 38 
 
426 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Eanswitha, Abbess of Folkestone ... page 39 
 
 Early English style, its comparative rarity in Kent ... ... 162 
 
 Eastern controversy unknown in Kent ... ... ... ... 22 
 
 Edward the Black Prince, his directions for his burial ... 193 
 
 Elizabeth (Queen), her visits to Parker ... ... ... ... 314 
 
 Endowment of churches ... ,.. ... ... ... ... 14 
 
 Families (Ancient) of Kent, three classes of 211 
 
 extinction of the two first classes ... ... ... 212 
 
 Feudal system, its origin and nature ... ... ... ... 78 
 
 Feudatories in Kent in Domesday Survey ... ... ... 83 
 
 Foreigh Churches in Kent ... ... ... ... ... 350 
 
 Furley (his History of the Weald of Kent) ... 72 
 
 Gaucelinus de Ossa (Cardinal), his pluralities in Kent ... 183 
 Gildas, his history ... ... ... ... ... - ... ... 9 
 
 Grebil (Agnes), her martyrdom 248 
 
 Gregory the Great ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 7 
 
 Gregory of Tours ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 11 
 
 Hackington, Baldwin's work there destroyed ... .. 137 
 
 Hallam (Bishop), his appeal at Constance ... ... ... 55 
 
 Harpsfeld (Archdeacon of Cardinal Pole) ... ... ... 298 
 
 Hampton Court Conference ; its failure... ... ... ... 323 
 
 Hawkhurst (Church accounts of) 259 
 
 Heads of Agreement " between Nonconformists . . ... 386 
 
 Ingoberga (Queen of Charibert) 25 
 
 Interdict, its effects ... 142 
 
 Investiture, controversy upon ... ... ... ... ... 107 
 
 Jacomellis (Bishop), his evidence on Justification at Trent 275 
 
 John (King), his excommunication 145 
 
 Kent, its earliest state and features 26 
 
 . petition of the County to the Long Parliament ... 337 
 
 Knole, its purchase for the see by Bourchier ... ... ... 207 
 
 Kilwardby (Cardinal) takes the Church Registers to Rome ... 156 
 Lan FRANC, his election and works ... ... ... ... 91 
 
 his theological writings ... ... ... ... 97 
 
 Church festivals of his day ... ... ... ... 103 
 
 Laon, pilgrimage of its clergy to Canterbury 116 
 
 Lollards, their doctrines and per^ecutioij^ 194 
 
INDEX. 
 
 427 
 
 Lyminge (Monastery and Nunnery of) page 40 
 
 (iManor of) surrendered ... 267 
 
 Lyndwode, his will... ... ... ... ... ... ... 206 
 
 Lymne, tower of church probably built by Anselm 105 
 
 Maitland publishes Warham's Visitation ... ... ... 220 
 
 Manors (Archbishop's), their ancient taxation ... 184 
 
 Mildred (St.), controversy on her relics ... 95 
 
 Monasteries visited by Warham 221-223 
 
 suppressed 264 
 
 Monastic system, its origin and orders ... ... 30 
 
 Nonconformists ejected 360 
 
 OsNEY (Synod of) .. . ... 147 
 
 Ospringe Church tow^er ... ... ... ... ... ... 47 
 
 Otho (Cardinal), his legation 153 
 
 Otford (Warham's great outlay at) .. ... ... ... 244 
 
 Parochia, its original meaning ... ... ... ... ... 2 
 
 Parish priests have ordinary jurisdiction, and are not mere 
 
 vicars of bishops ... ... ... ... 89 
 
 Parishes, their origin ... ... ... ... ... .. 57 
 
 Parker (Archbishop), his Visitations ... ... ... ... 21 
 
 Parker (J. H.), his views on Lanfranc's w^ork at Canterbury 95, n. 
 Parker (Carmelite of Doncaster) on church of fifteenth century 218 
 
 on the motives of church-builders ... ... ... 238 
 
 Patronage (public and private) in Kent ... ... 216, 
 
 Perpendicular style introduced 216 
 
 Pedigree of Kentish kings ... ... ... ... ... 19 
 
 Pluralities (dispensations for) 1 81-189 
 
 Pole (Cardinal) holds the English doctrine of Justification ... 274 
 
 his character given by Priuli ... ... ... 279 
 
 his tomb in the Cathedral 281 
 
 his Diocesan Visitation ... ... ... ... 282 
 
 Poland, its national synod the precedent of our own ... ... 254 
 
 Pontigny, the retreat of Becket and Edmund 152 
 
 Prsebendae, their origin 17 
 
 Presbyterian system odious to the Independents 355 
 
 Prior of Canterbury Cathedral (ceremonial of election of ) ... 185 
 Puritans, their origin 302 
 
428 
 
 CANTERBURY. 
 
 Radulfus (Archbishop), his gift to Harbledown Hospital page 1 12 
 
 Reculver Monastery, its foundation ... ... ... ... 42 
 
 Registers of Canterbury, attempts to recover them 156 
 
 Reformation in Kent, reasons of its success 241 
 
 Rome (Court of), its ruinous exactions in England ... 186-201 
 
 Romanus (the Presbyter) 41 
 
 Romney Marsh, its earlier name ... ... ... ... 42, 
 
 Salt WOOD, its Castle built by Courtenay 196 
 
 Manor of, surrendered .. ... ... ... 267 
 
 Sexburga, her foundation in Sheppey ... ... ... ... 42 
 
 Socinianism, its growth in the Church, and Dissent 390 
 
 Suffolk (Duke of), directions of his will ... , 207 
 
 Templars (Knights), their suppression 185 
 
 Tertullian, his description of British Christianity qualified ... 8 
 
 Thanet (St. Mildred's Nunnery in) 42 
 
 Theobald (Archbishop), his controversies with King Stephen 1 14 
 
 Thorneton (Bishop Suffragan of Dover) 221 
 
 Tithes, their origin and history ... ... ... :.. ... 61 
 
 Tonstal (Cuthbert) at Warham*s Visitation 221 
 
 Trent (Council of), its twofold character 257 
 
 not represent the English Church ... 258 
 
 Ufford (Archbishop), his few days' primacy 188, ^. 
 
 Use (Liturgical), no special one in Canterbury 53 
 
 that of S arum probably in use there ... ... ... 182 
 
 Vicarages (perpetual), their origin and foundation 158 
 
 Vitriaco (Jacobus di), his description of the Church in the 
 
 twelfth century ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 121 
 
 Warham (Archbishop), his portrait by Erasmus 236 
 
 Wesley anism, its history in Kent ... ... 400 
 
 Wolsey nearly elected to the Papacy 245 
 
 Wyatt (Sir Thomas), his rebellion ... 271 
 
 Wycliff displaced from Canterbury College, Oxford, by 
 
 Langham... .. ... ... ... ... ... ... 189 
 
 his doctrines not to be confounded with simple 
 
 LoUardism 194 
 
 WYMAN AND SONS, PRINTERS, GREAT QUEEN STREET, LONDON. 
 
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