I90i: ''"-'^^ ^ewes, ,S24- 
 History Of 
 
 ""^ Church 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/historyofchurchoOOcutt 
 
HISTORY OF 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
I 
 
2;e;rf;Q0ooft6 of (j^eftgtouB ^^Bttuction 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. EDWARD L. CUTTS, D.D. 
 
 EDITOR OF THE SERIES 
 AUTHOR OF "turning POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY," 
 ETC. ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 AND LONDON 
 l89S 
 
 AU rights reserved. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. I'AGE 
 
 I. THE PRELIMINARY HISTORY I 
 
 II. THE PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN BRITANNIA . 5 
 
 III. THE TEUTONIC INVASION l6 
 
 IV. THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 21 
 
 V. THE ITALIAN MISSION IN NORTHUIMBRIA . . . 3I 
 
 VI. THE CELTIC MISSION 37 
 
 VII. THE HEPTARCHIC CHURCHES UNITED INTO THE 
 
 CHURCH OF ENGLAND 49 
 
 VIII. FROM THE DANISH INVASIONS TO THE NORMAN 
 
 CONQUEST ... . . 60 
 IX. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PAPAL SUPREMACY OVER 
 
 THE ENGLISH CHURCH 72 
 
 X. THE CONFLICT OF JURISDICTIONS— THE CONSTITU- 
 TIONS OF CLARENDON 88 
 
 XL THE PAPAL SUPREMACY 98 
 
 XII. THE REACTION AGAINST ROME II3 
 
 XIII. THE LOLLARDS . II7 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PACE 
 
 XIV. THE REFORMING COUNCILS 122 
 
 XV. A SUMMARY OF THE MEDI/EVAL PERIOD . I2S 
 
 XVI. THE REFORMATION 137 
 
 XVII. THE REFORMATION — ITS OSCILLATIONS . . . 159 
 
 XVIII. THE SETTLEMEN r OF THE REFORMATION . . 164 
 
 XIX. THE TRIUMPH OF THE PURITANS . . . . 180 
 
 XX. THE RESTORATION I9O 
 
 XXI. THE REVOLUTION 195 
 
 XXII. THE HANOVERIAN PERIOD 207 
 
 XXIII. THE MODERN PERIOD 215 
 
 INDEX 223 
 
HISTORY OF 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PRELIMINARY HISTORY 
 
 The Church of England is a portion of that Corporate 
 Organisation of Christianity which our Lord Jesus 
 Christ founded, which His Apostles built up, which was 
 gradually extended by them and their successors from 
 city to city and from land to land, and which has lived 
 in unbroken continuity to the present time. At what 
 time, by what channels, this Divine Organisation was 
 extended to this land, is the subject of this first chapter. 
 
 Britain before the Roman Conquest. 
 
 Some previous knowledge of the general history of 
 the country is necessary to a right appreciation of the 
 introduction of this new element into its life. 
 
 About 330 B.C. one Pytheas was sent by the merchants 
 of the Greek colony at Marseilles to explore northern 
 Europe in the interests of their commerce. He paid 
 two visits to the island, probably to the south-eastern 
 part of it, and reported that the people had plenty of 
 corn, which they threshed in barns, and made bread 
 
2 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 and ale. Three centuries later another Greek, Posidonius 
 (with whom Cicero studied at Rhodes), extended his 
 travels to the island, probably visiting its south-western 
 peninsula, since he describes the way in which the 
 people worked their tin. It is supposed to be on his 
 authority that Diodorus Siculus states that the Britons 
 grew corn, cutting off the ears and storing them in 
 underground receptacles, whence they were fetched daily 
 and dressed for consumption, and that they lived in 
 mean dwellings made of reeds and wood. Numismatists 
 have collected, mostly in the southern parts of England, 
 specimens of a native coinage in both gold and silver, 
 which extends back to a century and a half or two 
 centuries before the Christian era ; it is copied from the 
 Gallic coinage, which in its turn was copied from the 
 Stater of Philip of Macedon. 
 
 Julius Caesar, after his conquest of Gaul, contemplated 
 the extension of Roman dominion to this island. In 
 the autumn of 55 B.C. he made a recognisance in force, 
 which was followed in the next summer by a more 
 serious invasion. He won several battles and reduced 
 his opponents to sue for peace and to promise tribute ; 
 but he probably found the resistance more obstinate 
 than he had anticipated, and concluded that the ac- 
 quisition of the island was not worth what it would cost 
 in men, money, and time; before winter he withdrew from 
 the island, and made no further attempt at its conquest. 
 
 At this time the great majority of the inliabitants 
 were Celts of two families of the race, Gaels and Britons, 
 one represented to us by the modern Highlanders, the 
 other by the Welsh ; there may have been some remnants 
 of an earlier Iberian race surviving here and there 
 among the Gaels. Later immigrants' of Belgic race 
 occupied the south-east of the country, who were in 
 
THE PRELIMINARY HISTORY 3 
 
 the condition of civilisation indicated by extensive 
 corn-lands, mechanical arts (war-chariots), roads, and a 
 coinage. 
 
 Of the Religion of the Britons much has been con- 
 jectured by modern antiquaries, but little is certainly 
 known. They had deities whom Caesar, after the 
 manner of his age, identifies with certain of the Roman 
 deities, an extensive nature-worship, and numerous 
 superstitions. They practised human sacrifice. An 
 order of Druids served both as ministers of religion and 
 judges, and were regarded with great veneration. It is 
 from Pliny (Nat. Hist. xvi. 95) that we get the picturesque 
 story of their cultus of the mistletoe. 
 
 After the abandonment of the island by Julius, no 
 further attempt was made against the independence 
 of Britain for the next hundred years. During those 
 hundred years Gaul was being rapidly and thoroughly 
 Romanised ; and by means of the social and commercial 
 intercourse between Gaul and Britain, Roman civilisation 
 was being introduced into this island. 
 
 Britannia. 
 
 In the year 43 a.d. Claudius undertook the conquest 
 of Britain. A great battle at Camulodunum (Colchester), 
 at which the Emperor was present in person, gave him 
 possession of the south-eastern portion of the island, 
 several of the native kings submitting and being con- 
 tinued in their princedoms. The conquest was gradu- 
 ally extended by the imperial generals westward and 
 northward, until by the year 84 a.d. the whole of the 
 island as far as the line between the Firth of Forth 
 and the Firth of Clyde had been subdued ; here the 
 Roman advance was arrested, and the north of the 
 island retained its independence. The Romans pursued 
 
4 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 their habitual policy in proceeding at once to Romanise 
 their new conquest. They made roads, built numerous 
 cities, cultivated the lands, and encouraged commerce. 
 The better classes of the native inhabitants adopted the 
 Roman language and manners. It was perhaps the 
 most remote and rude of the provinces, but for nearly 
 400 years Southern Britain was an integral part of the 
 Roman Empire. 
 
CHAPTER 11 
 
 THE PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN 
 BRITANNIA 
 
 The inquiry, when was the Church planted in this 
 country? introduces us first to a number of legendary 
 stories, which, though rejected as unhistorical, should 
 be known by the student, since they enter into the 
 national literature. 
 
 The Glastonbury Legend is that Joseph of Arimathea, 
 accompanied by Lazarus and his sisters Martha and 
 Mary and others, soon after our Lord's Ascension left 
 the Holy Land, and after a stay in Gaul came to 
 Britain, bringing with him the Holy Grail ; i that he 
 preached in the Isle of Avalon, and confirmed the 
 truth of his teaching by a miracle — he struck his staff 
 of thorn into the ground, which at once burst into leaf 
 and blossom, like Aaron's rod, and took root and grew 
 into a tree ; and that on the spot he founded the church 
 of Glastonbury. A remarkable fact has kept the story 
 alive in the memories, if not in the belief, of many 
 people to this day. It is said that it was at Christmas 
 time that the miraculous thorn blossomed; and there 
 are still thorn-trees at Glastonbury, and others scattered 
 about the country, said to be its offshoots, which do bear 
 leaves, and sometimes buds if not blossoms, at Christraas- 
 
 ' The vessel in wliich our Lord consecrated the Eucharist. 
 
6 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 time. Glastonbury is undoubtedly a British foundation, 
 which lived through the West Saxon conquest, and 
 the story is no doubt founded on British legends; but 
 William of Malmesbury is the earliest (about a.d. 1135) 
 written authority for it, and the historian pronounces it 
 to be purely mythical. 
 
 The Legend of Bran the Blessed.— The Welsh Triads 
 (collected in the thirteenth century, but conveying the 
 traditions of an earlier time) assert that Braji, the father 
 of Caractacus, having been detained by Claudius for 
 seven years in Rome as a hostage for his son, was there 
 with some companions converted by St. Paul, and on 
 his release carried the faith back to Britain and planted 
 the Church here. The fact that St. Paul's first im- 
 prisonment in Rome coincides with the last two years 
 of the residence there of the father of Caractacus gives 
 a certain plausibility to the story ; but it cannot be ac- 
 cepted as historical ; it rests solely on the testimony of 
 the Welsh legend, and is inconsistent with the narratives 
 of the historians Tacitus and Dio Cassius. 
 
 There seems at first sight more solid foundation for 
 the statement that Lucius, king of the Britons, having 
 heard of Christianity, sent an embassy to Eleutherius, 
 Bishop of Rome, asking to have the Gospel sent to him, 
 and that his ambassadors, having been instructed and 
 ordained, returned and founded the Church in Wales. 
 The Catalogus Pontificum Romanorum contains an entry 
 under the name of Eleutherius, that in his time (177-190 
 A.D.) " Lucius, king of Britain, was converted ; " the 
 Book of Llandaff gives the names of Lucius's ambas- 
 sadors and claims them as the founders of the Welsh 
 Sees. But when we examine the story, we find that the 
 notice in the Caialogus is one of many additional notes 
 which were interpolated into it in the year 530 a.d. 
 
PLANTING OF CHURCH IN BRITANNIA 7 
 
 The Book of Llandaff is a compilation of the twelfth 
 century, though much of its legendary matter is of 
 earlier date. Gildas (sixth century), the great authority 
 for the history of the British Church, makes no mention 
 of Lucius. Bede accepted the note in the Catalogue of 
 Pontiffs and introduced it into his " Ecclesiastical His- 
 tory." Nennius in the ninth century expanded it into 
 the conversion of the whole of Britain. Between that 
 time and the twelfth century it came to be connected 
 with North Wales. The whole story rests upon the 
 note interpolated 300 years after the supposed event in 
 the Catalogue of Roman Pontiffs, and cannot be accepted 
 as historical. 
 
 If some controversialists have reason for encouraging 
 the belief that the Church of Britain is an offshoot of 
 the Church of Rome, their opponents have equal motive 
 for trying to show that the island owes its Christianity to 
 St. Paul. 
 
 During St. Paul's first imprisonment at Rome, they 
 point out, the apostle expressed an intention of travelling 
 into Spain.i There are five years after his liberation 
 during which we have no history of his labours ; and 
 during that time he may very possibly have visited the 
 West, but there is no evidence that he did. The notices 
 of early writers are tantalisingly vague. St. Clement of 
 Rome says that the apostle extended his labours to the 
 " utmost bounds of the west ; " this is a phrase which, 
 in writers of the time, often included Britain, but it 
 does not necessarily do so, and St. Clement's statement 
 would be true if St. Paul had done no more than fulfil 
 his intention of travelling into Spain. Other vague ex- 
 pressions of a similar inconclusive kind occur. Eusebius 
 
 ' Romans xv. 28. 
 
8 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 (325 A.D.), after speaking of the spreading of the Gos- 
 pel among the Romans, Persians, Armenians, Parthians, 
 Indians, and Scythians, adds : " Some passed over the 
 ocean to those which are called the British Isles ; " but 
 this statement is a summary of the progress of Chris- 
 tianity in early times which would be quite consistent 
 with its introduction into Britain a century or so before 
 the time of writing ; in fact, Armenia, which is in- 
 cluded in the summary, was not converted till the end 
 of the third century. Venantius Fortunatus (560 a.d.) 
 and Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem (560 A.D.), are 
 usually quoted as the first who expressly state that St. 
 Paul visited Britain in person ; but what Fortunatus says 
 is only that the teaching of St. Paul (s/ylus ilk) spread 
 to Britain and Ultima Thule ; and though Sophronius is 
 quoted by the Magdeburg centuriators as bringing St 
 Paul to Britain, there is nothing to that effect in the 
 printed fragments of his writings, and if there were, his 
 authority would be of no value. There are no traces 
 in our ancient ecclesiastical history, legends, or antiquities 
 of any special veneration fox St. Paul. On the whole, 
 there is absolutely no authority whatever for the theory 
 that St. Paul visited Britain. 
 
 Having got these legends out of the way, the next 
 step is to look for trustworthy evidence cf the first 
 planting of the Church in this country. The only 
 regular intercourse between Britain and the rest of the 
 world at this period was through Gaul ; and it is likely 
 that the Church, in passing from country to country, 
 would come to Britain through Gaul. 
 
 The Church was not planted in Gaul till the middle 
 of the second century. Its existence at that date at 
 Vienne and Lugdunum (Lyons) is known to us through 
 a letter which the Church of Lyons addressed to the 
 
PLANTING OF CHURCH IN BRITANNIA 
 
 9 
 
 Churches of Asia and Phrygia, giving a detailed account 
 of a persecution which it had lately suffered. Vienna 
 was an ancient Roman colony, Lugdunum was a more 
 recent town, founded by merchants from Asia Minor as 
 an emporium of commerce at the junction of the great 
 rivers Saone and Rhone. It looks as if these Asian 
 merchants, being Christians, had requested that a church 
 should be founded among them ; the whole narrative 
 shows that it had only recently been planted ; Pothinus 
 was its first bishop, Irenseus, the pupil of St. Polycarp, 
 the pupil of the apostle St. John, was its priest, and 
 Sanctus its deacon. 
 
 There is no reason to suppose that any missionaries 
 had previously passed through Gaul, without leaving any 
 trace of their passage, to found the Church in Britain. 
 It has been suggested that some fugitives from the per- 
 secution at Lyons may have fled to Britain, but the 
 whole narrative makes it highly improbable. Seme 
 other churches were founded in Central Gaul soon after- 
 wards, but none farther north than Lyons. 
 
 About a century later, a fiesh outburst of missionary 
 zeal led to the planting of some churches in Northern 
 Gaul ; and it is possible that the unexhausted force of 
 this wave of progress crossed the Channel and planted 
 the Church in Britain. On a general survey of the con- 
 dition of the world at the period, and of the way in 
 which the Church was propagated in these western 
 countries, it is most likely that the Church came to 
 Britain by way of Gaul, very unlikely that it should be 
 planted here before it was planted in Northern Gaul, and 
 probable that it was actually planted here about the middle 
 of the third century, as a result of the missionary move- 
 ment in Northern Gaul at that date ; this would give time 
 for an extension in harmony with the subsequent history. 
 
lo HISTORY OP THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 We have the testimony of the contemporary historians, 
 Eusebius and Lactantius, for the fact that there were 
 Christians and Christian temples in Britain at the time 
 of the Diocletian persecution (303 a.d.), and that some 
 of the officers of the Caesar Constantius were Christians. 
 Bede records the tradition of martyrdoms at Verulam, 
 Chester, and several other places, although Constantius 
 disliked and discountenanced the persecution. 
 
 When Constantine caused a Council of the Western 
 Churches to be assembled at Aries in the year 314 a.d., 
 there were present three British bishops, attended by 
 a priest and deacon. The bishops were Eborius of 
 York, Restitutus of London, and Adelfius of (probably) 
 Caerleon. These were the principal cities of the dis- 
 tricts into which the province of Britain was then sub- 
 divided, so that these bishops may have been the chiefs 
 and representatives of a more numerous episcopate 
 spread over the province. The fact is evidence that 
 the Church was established in Britain as far north as 
 York and as far west as Caerleon ; that it had a 
 Diocesan Episcopate, and the three orders of the 
 clergy ; that it was in full communion with the other 
 churches of the Empire ; and of sufficient importance 
 to be summoned to a General Council. 
 
 Of the history of the Church in the province of 
 Britannia we have only a few isolated incidents. The 
 first of these is the martyrdom of Alban in the first 
 year of the Diocletian persecution (303 A.D.). Alban was 
 a citizen of Verulam and a heathen ; but his kindness 
 of disposition led him to give shelter to a priest whose 
 life was sought ; and from hearing the conversation and 
 seeing the devotion of his guest Alban became a Chris- 
 tiaa When the persecutors at length discovered the 
 priest's place of refuge and came to seize him, Alban 
 
PLANTING OF CHURCH IN BRITANNIA ii 
 
 put on the priest's dress, and allowed himself to be 
 taken in his stead. When brought before the magis- 
 trate and commanded to sacrifice to the gods, Alban 
 refused, declared himself a Christian, and was ordered 
 to execution. The place of execution was a little hill 
 outside the city, divided from it by a river. The in- 
 habitants flocked out in such numbers to witness the 
 martyrdom that the bridge over the river was blocked 
 by the crowd ; whereupon Alban, impatient for the 
 crown of martyrdom, walked to the river bank, and — 
 so says the ancient legend — the waters opened like those 
 of Jordan before Elijah and Elisha, and made a dry road 
 for the party to pass over. The executioner, seeing 
 this, threw down his sword, and declared himself a 
 convert to the Christian faith. Arrived at the summit of 
 the hill, one of the soldiers struck off the victim's head, 
 and the converted executioner shared his fate. When 
 the Church made peace under Constantine, the faithful 
 of Verulam hastened to do honour to their martyr by 
 erecting a church on the site of the martyrdom. The 
 local features of the story are little changed. The 
 ruined Roman walls of Verulam may still be traced on 
 the side of a hill, which slopes down to a little rivulet. 
 On the summit of the opposite slope is the Abbey 
 Church of St. Alban ; it is partly built of Roman bricks 
 from the neighbouring ruin, it incorporates moulded 
 balusters of Saxon date ; it is of all subsequent dates and 
 styles of architecture from Norman to Victorian ; and is 
 the most ancient monument of our native Christianity. 
 
 It has already been noted that British bishops took 
 part in the Council of Aries (314 a.d.). At the great 
 Council of Nicaea (325 a.d.) there were few represen- 
 tatives of the churches of the West, and no record 
 of any of the British province ; but the decisions of 
 
12 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 the Council were accepted here. 'I here were British 
 bishops at the Council of Sardica (347 a.d.). British 
 bishops were present at the Council of Rimini (359 
 A.D.), and there is this special information about them: 
 the Emperor had ordered that all the expenses of the 
 bishops attending the Council should be paid out of the 
 imperial funds ; but Sulpicius Severus says " three only 
 of those from Britain, on account of poverty, made use 
 of the public gift, rejecting the contributions offered by 
 the other bishops (because they thought it more proper 
 to burden the treasury than individuals)." This seems 
 to indicate that some of the British bishops were excep- 
 lionally poor, and therefore the bis'iops of poor churches. 
 
 In the early part of the fifth century, the Romans 
 abandoned Britain. It had long been a source of trouble 
 and weakness to the Imperial Government. Frequently 
 it had set up rival Emperors who had harassed the 
 Continent of Europe with civil war ; as frequently the 
 Government had been obliged to send troops into the 
 province to repel the incursions of the Northern bar- 
 barians and the invasions of the Saxon pirates. In the 
 reign of Honoriu?, the Imperial Government, harassed 
 by the Barbarian invasions of Italy, left the Gallic pro- 
 vinces very much to their own devices, and at length 
 resolved to lessen its responsibilities by the abandonment 
 of the outlying British province. Accordingly, in 410 
 A.D., Honorius addressed a letter to the Cities of Brit.iin 
 exhorting them to provide for their own safety ; and the 
 Imperial officials and troops were withdrawn. 
 
 The history of the period is very obscure, but it may 
 be gathered that the inhabitants of the deserted province 
 organised a government for themselves on the existing 
 lines, and that for half a century or thereabout this 
 independent government was able to maintain the old 
 
PLANTING OF CHURCH IN BRITANNIA 13 
 
 Roman order, and to repel the incursions of its foreign 
 foes; but that after a while rivalries among the great 
 officials weakened the government, which ultimately 
 broke down under the Barbarian invasions. 
 
 In the meantime, between the withdrawal of the 
 imperial rule and the break-up of the native govern- 
 ment, occurs a chapter of ecclesiastical history, the best 
 authenticated and most clearly detailed of the whole 
 period. The narrative shows that while the country was 
 harassed by incursions of the Northern Picts and the 
 Saxons from beyond sea, of the old predatory kind, the 
 peace and order of the country were not so much dis- 
 turbed as to prevent religious questions from occupying 
 a prominent place in the public mind. The heresy of 
 Pelagius was troubling Western Christendom at that 
 time. Pelagius is the Grecised form of Morgan (sea- 
 born), and it is probable that its bearer was a native either 
 of Britain or Armorica. But the heresy does not appear 
 to have originated here, for Bede says that it was brought 
 over into Britain by Agricola, the son of Severianus, a 
 Pelagian bishop. The heresy was a reaction against 
 exaggerated notions of the utter inability of man in his 
 present condition to choose and do the right. The 
 reaction, as is usual, went too far in the opposite direc- 
 tion, and seemed to deny the doctrine that " man was 
 very far gone from original righteousness," and needed 
 the "grace of God preventing him that he might have a 
 good will " before he could turn to what was right. St. 
 Augustine was the great opponent of the heresy, and his 
 writings on the subject of grace and free will, which arose 
 out of the controversy, are the principal source of his 
 reputation and influence as a theologian in the Western 
 Church. The opinions of Pelagius were favourably 
 received in Britain, and the native bishops, unable to 
 
14 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 deal with them in controversy, sought aid from the 
 Church of Gaul. A synod of Gallican prelates sent two 
 of their greatest men, Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, and 
 Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, who preached "not only in 
 the churches, but in the streets and fields, so that the 
 Catholics were everywhere confirmed and those who had 
 gone astray corrected." At length a public disputation 
 was held, to which tlie partisans of Pelagius came, "con- 
 spicuous for riches, glittering in apparel ; " but they were 
 defeated in argument, and confessed their errors amid the 
 acclamations of the people. The Conference was probably 
 held at St. Alban's (429 a.d.). After it was over, Germanus 
 visited the church built over the scene of Alban's martyr- 
 dom ; deposited in the church some relics of other saints, 
 and took away some of the dust from the martyr's tomb. 
 The heretical opinions having soon revived, Germanus 
 again, fifteen years afterwards, visited the island with 
 Severus, afterwards Bishop of Treves (Lupus being dead), 
 and the preaching of the two again corrected the errors, 
 "so that the faith in those parts continued long after 
 pure and untainted." ^ 
 
 This intercourse of the British Church with that of 
 Gaul in the middle of the fifth century is enough to 
 assure us of its general agreement with the Western 
 Church, but it had some peculiarities of more or less 
 interest and importance. There are indications that, like 
 Gaul and Spain, it had a Liturgy of the Ephesine family, 
 but differing in some small particulars from the Gallic 
 and Mosarabic ; that it had a Latin version of the Bible 
 founded on the Old Latin, and different from the Vulgate, 
 peculiar to itself. It had some little variations from the 
 Continental usage in rites and ceremonies ; one in the 
 
 * The quotations are from Bede, Eccl. Hist. xvii. and xxi. 
 
PLANTING OF CHURCH IN BRITANNIA 15 
 
 consecration of bishops perhaps consisted in the anoint- 
 ing of the hands ; a peculiarity in baptism, which was 
 probably single instead of trine immersion ; a custom of 
 dedicating churches not in the name of some departed 
 saint, but in that of the living founder. Two other peculi- 
 arities really of less importance, but which became points 
 of controversy afterwards, were the shape of the clerical 
 tonsure and the term of keeping Easter. The origin of the 
 tonsure was probably the desire to distinguish the clergy 
 from the laity, and perhaps to give them an appearance of 
 the venerableness of age. In the usual Western tonsure, 
 the top of the head was shaven, leaving a sort of crown 
 of hair round it. But the British clergy had a tonsure of 
 their own ; whence they got it, and even in what it con- 
 sisted, is not certainly known. The Bishop of Edinburgh 
 has recently suggested that the head was shaven away 
 in front of a line drawn across the head from ear to ear, 
 but leaving a partial crown or fringe of hair in front, so 
 that in the front view it looked like the usual tonsure, and 
 in the back view no tonsure at all was visible. Their 
 mode of computing Easter was only an adherence to a 
 cycle called by the name of Sulpicius Severus, a disciple 
 of St. Martin of Tours, which had been used by all the 
 Western churches, and which the British churches con- 
 tinued to use after the churches of the Continent had 
 adopted the more correct cycle of Victorius Aquitanus; 
 just as the East now clings to the " old style," while the 
 Western nations have adopted a reformed calendar. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE TEUTONIC INVASION 
 
 The Barbarian tribes beyond the Danube and the 
 Rhine — Goths, Burgundians, Franks — were falling upon 
 the decaying Empire like wolves upon a dying aurochs.^ 
 
 The Saxons, Jutes, and Angles, inhabitants of the coast 
 about the mouth of the Elbe, were unable to get at the 
 prey for the Franks, who occupied the whole frontier of 
 the Rhine from Strasburg to the sea, so they crossed the 
 sea in their long ships, and fell upon the abandoned 
 province of Britain, and there found their share of the 
 spoil of the old world, and helped to build up the new 
 world of modern Europe. 
 
 The English conquest was not the result of one 
 great battle, as when Clovis in the battle of Soissons 
 broke the power of the Prefect Syagrius and found 
 no one left even to attempt to rally the scattered forces 
 of Gaul against him ; neither was it the achievement 
 of one power gradually extending its conquest over 
 the country, as in the Roman conquest of the island : 
 it was the work of separate bands of adventurers 
 acting independently of one another, at different places 
 and times. They landed on different parts of the 
 eastern and southern coasts or rowed up the rivers into 
 the interior of the country. The circumstance of the 
 
 ' The European bison, now almost extinct. 
 
THE TEUTONIC INVASION i7 
 
 Barbarian conquest of Britain differed greatly from those 
 of the contemporary conquests of Italy, Spain, and Gaul. 
 On the Continent of Europe the Barbarian conquerors 
 were content with the submission of the native people 
 and settled down peacefully among them ; they allowed 
 the towns to capitulate and to continue their old life, 
 their religion, language, and laws, under their old muni- 
 cipal institutions, like so many Latin republics, amidst 
 the Teutonic sea which surrounded them. But Goths, 
 Burgundians, and Franks had long been in contact with 
 Roman civilisation and had learnt to respect it, and the 
 two former were Christians before they began their wars 
 of conquest; the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, who had 
 been shut out from direct intercourse with the Empire 
 by intervening tribes, were in a less advanced state of 
 progress, and were too ignorant and barbarous to under- 
 stand the value to themselves of the civilisation which 
 they destroyed. With two or three probable exceptions, 
 the towns of the conquered part of the British province 
 seem to have been stormed, sacked, depopulated, and 
 left in ruins. How far the native inhabitants of the 
 country districts were also massacred or driven before 
 the invaders is a difficult question still under discussion. 
 Mr. E. A. Freeman held that the Teutonic conquerors, at 
 least in the earlier period of their conquests, permitted 
 few of the conquered race to remain on the lands on 
 which they settled, and then only in the condition of 
 hewers of wood and drawers of water.^ 
 
 Circumstances determined the territorial organisation 
 
 ' As an indication that a larger part of the British population 
 than is usually supposed remained in their native seats, the Rev. E. 
 M'Clure (see S.P.C.K.) points out that not only the names of great 
 natural feature, as rivers and hills, retain their Celtic names, but that 
 in many of the place names to which the terminations Aam and ion 
 
 S. T. B 
 
18 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 of the newcomers. In some cases a powerful chief took 
 possession of a great tract of country, and allotted 
 portions of it among the tribe of followers who had 
 assisted in its conquest. In others a band of equal 
 adventurers divided the district which they had seized 
 in shares among themselves. The several bands of 
 invaders pushed forward their conquests until they met. 
 Then the conquerors began to organise themselves into 
 kingdoms. The chief under whose banner his tribe had 
 won a portion of the country was led to assume the 
 authority and title of king. When two or three rival 
 chiefs had occupied neighbouring territory, war some- 
 times determined the supremacy of one of them. In 
 other cases the colonies of free adventurers put them- 
 selves under the protection of the most considerable 
 chief of the neighbourhood for the sake of protection. 
 
 At the end of this first period of conquest the invaders 
 had won the eastern half of the former Roman province, 
 and had organised themselves into seven (or eight) 
 independent kingdoms. It will be convenient to give 
 the results of the English conquest in one view. The 
 Jutes {c. 449) had established themselves in Kent, and 
 subsequently possessed themselves of the Isle of Wight 
 and the nearest portion of the mainland. The setting 
 up of the kingdom of the Southern Saxons is ascribed to 
 the year 477 a.d. In 495 the kingdom of Wessex was 
 founded in what we now call Hampshire, and rapidly 
 
 give an English appearance, the former part of the compound word 
 is Celtic ; that is, the places retained their Celtic names ; and the 
 inference is that some of their Celtic inhabitants continued to live 
 in them. For example, Lymington on the Lym ; Leamington on 
 the Learn ; Tafingstock (Ta\'istock) on the Taf ; Ermington on the 
 Earme ; Mycel-defer (Micheldever) ; Compton and Ashcombe (from 
 comb = cwm) ; Penard, Pencrik, Cadbury ; Havant and Funtamel 
 (from foiu). 
 
THE TEUTONIC INVASION 
 
 enlarged itself. Some lime in the sixth century the king- 
 dom of Essex was founded between the Thames and the 
 Stour, and the kingdom of the East Angles between the 
 Stour and the Wash. An Anglian kingdom (Nortliumbria) 
 was early founded on the coast between the Humber 
 and the Forth, and slowly extended inland. Other 
 Angles seized on the coast between the Humber and 
 the Wash (the Lindiswara). Some late comers of various 
 tribes made their way up the Trent into the heart of the 
 midland counties, and these at length were united into 
 the kingdom of Mercia, which took in the Anglian settle- 
 ments on the coast, the West Saxon conquests north of 
 the Thames, and most of the regions covered by the 
 midland counties of modern England. 
 
 The second meridian west from Greenwich, which 
 passes from the mouth of the Tweed to that of the 
 Hampshire Avon, roughly defines the limit of the original 
 Anglo-Saxon conquests. The native inhabitants of the 
 western part of the old province had organised them- 
 selves into three kingdoms, Cumbria or Strathclyde, 
 Wales, and West Wales or Damnonia. In 597 the king- 
 dom of Strathclyde or Cumbria extended from the Solway 
 Firth to the Mersey, and eastward beyond Leeds and 
 nearly as far as York (Elmete and Loidis) ; Wales had 
 the Severn for its eastern boundary ; West Wales in- 
 cluded Somerset, and sent up a tongue to Bradford and 
 Malmesbury. 
 
 Besides, in the fastnesses of the conquered country, in 
 the forests, amid the marshes, among the hills, remnants 
 of the native population found a refuge, where they main- 
 tained themselves until they were peaceably absorbed 
 into the general population. 
 
 It will be convenient to continue here the history 
 down to the permanent territorial settlement of the two 
 
20 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 races. The conversion of the Teutonic kingdoms to 
 Christianity did not arrest the progress of the forcible 
 extension of their territory at the expense of the Celts, 
 but the war assumed a milder form ; in the later acquisi- 
 tions the lives, and to some extent the property, of the 
 native people were respected. 
 
 I" S77> Ceawlin, king of Wessex, by the great battle of 
 Deorham, in which three Welsh princes were slain, gained 
 possession of the cities of Bath, Gloucester, and Ciren- 
 cester, and the country round about them, and thus 
 cut off West Wales (Damnonia) from the rest of in- 
 dependent Britain. In 613, ^'Ethelfrith, kmg of Nor- 
 thumbria, by the battle of Chester won the tract of 
 country between the Dee and the Mersey, and inter- 
 vened between Wales and Strathclyde. These three 
 divisions of independent Britain were subject to further 
 encroachment. Offa, king of the Mercians (755-794), 
 encroached upon Wales to a line drawn from the 
 mouth of the Wye to the estuary of the Dee, along 
 which line he constructed an earthwork called Offa's 
 Dyke. Harassed by the Northumbrian Angles and the 
 Picts, the Cumbrians ceased to have kings of their own 
 race in the early part of the tenih century. In the 
 south-western peninsula, the South Saxon rule was 
 continually being pressed farther and farther west, till 
 the conquests of Athelstan (925-920) finally extinguished 
 its independence. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 
 
 The conversion of these new inhabitants of the eastern 
 half of the land is the next subject for consideration, 
 and there are reasons which will appear in a later part 
 of the history for treating it with careful accuracy and in 
 some detail. In the latter part of the sixth century, the 
 kingdom of Kent, the first settled of the new Teutonic 
 kingdoms, and in most direct intercourse with the Con- 
 tinent, seems to have been the most powerful of the 
 Enghsh kingdoms and the furthest advanced in civi- 
 lisation. The king had obtained a recognised autho- 
 rity (indicated by the title Bretwalda) over the other 
 kingdoms south of the Humber. This king, Ethelbert, 
 sought a wife from the family of Clevis, the French con- 
 queror of Gaul, and was allowed to carry away Bertha, 
 a daughter of Charibert, king of Paris (one of the four 
 grandsons among whom the heritage of Clovis was now 
 divided), on condition that she should be allowed to 
 retain her religion and the means of exercising it. 
 Accordingly, she was attended to Kent by Bishop Liud- 
 hard ; and Ethelbert repaired and restored for her use 
 one of the deserted churches of the Britons, which still 
 remained standing at Canterbury. The present church 
 of St. Martin is probably on the same site, and partly 
 built out of the material of the old Romano- British 
 
22 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 church, since it includes bricks of undoubted Roman 
 make. It is obvious that this event would probably 
 before long have led to the conversion of Kent by the 
 Galilean Church; but in the meantime the work was 
 undertaken from another quarter, viz., from Rome. 
 
 The Roman Mission. 
 
 Rome in the fifth century was at the lowest ebb of its 
 fortunes. On the death of Gallienus (268 a.d.), the 
 able Illyrian emperors who rescued the Empire from 
 its dangers had made the camp their residence, and 
 several of them never even visited the ancient capital. 
 Diocletian (284-305 a.d.) had permanently fixed his 
 court at Nicomedia, as the most convenient centre of 
 affairs, and when he divided the Empire, had made 
 Milan the capital of the West. Honorius had removed 
 the court to Ravenna (404 a.d.). Though no longer 
 the residence of the court and the seat of Empire, 
 Rome continued to be a great and wealthy city. But 
 the Goths had sacked it under Alaric in 410 a.d., 
 and the Vandals under Genseric in 455 a.d., and had 
 destroyed or driven into exile the great families, and 
 left the city half ruined and half depopulated. The 
 Western Empire had ended with the abdication of 
 Augustulus (475 A.D.). Theodoric the Goth made 
 himself master of Italy (489 a.d.). Justinian's great 
 generals Belisarius (536 a.d.) and Narses reconquered 
 it and made it an appanage of the Eastern Empire. 
 Then came the invasion of the Lombards (568-570). 
 At the time at which the history has arrived, Rome 
 and a small territory around it was an outlying depen- 
 dency of the Eastern Empire, almost isolated amidst 
 the Lombard conquests, governed by a Prefect, whose 
 
THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 
 
 23 
 
 superior was the Exarch of Ravenna, who was the re- 
 presentative of the Emperor of the East. The Emperor 
 was able to do Httle or nothing to aid the city, and it 
 had to depend chiefly on its own forces and its own 
 diplomacy for its safety from the Lombards. In these 
 circumstances it exercised a large amount of self- 
 government, and bore uneasily the interference of its 
 distant master. 
 
 The Church of Rome had shared the decaying fortunes 
 of the city. Barbarian kings and Byzantine generals 
 had made and unmade its bishops ; Theodoric had sent 
 one Pope to Constantinople as his ambassador, Justinian 
 had summoned another to Constantinople to give an 
 account of himself, and both sovereigns had treated 
 the Bishop of Rome with scanty consideration. The 
 ecclesiastical reputation of the See for orthodoxy had 
 been sullied by the vacillations of Vigilius, and its 
 honorary primacy of the Church was challenged by the 
 Patriarch of Constantinople, who argued that since the 
 primacy of the Bishop of Rome had been derived from 
 the fact that Rome was the capital of the Empire, that 
 primacy now belonged to the Bishop of Constantinople 
 by the same title. Gregory was now its bishop. 
 
 Gregory was said to be descended from one of the 
 greatest of the old families — the Anician ; his birth, his 
 wealth, his ability had made him one of the most con- 
 siderable persons in Rome. He had held the office of 
 Prsetor of the city. Then at the age of thirty-seven he 
 had adopted the ascetic life, had turned the great house 
 of his family on the Cselian hill into a monastery dedi- 
 cated to St. Andrew, and had devoted his wealth to the 
 founding of six other monasteries in Sicily. His high 
 character and great ability made him as conspicuous in 
 the Church as he had been in the State. The bishop 
 
24 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 
 
 sent him to Constantinople as his official representative 
 at the Emperor's court, where he remained for ten 
 years. On his return to Rome, the bishop made him 
 his secretary and archdeacon ; and on the death of the 
 bishop, six years afterwards, Gregory was elected by the 
 Senate, clergy, and people to fill the vacant chair 
 (590 A.D.). 
 
 Gregory's interest in the barbarous people who had 
 wrecked the abandoned province of Britannia was due 
 to what men call an accident. One day (about 586 or 
 587 A.D.), while still archdeacon, as he was crossing the 
 Forum, a group of young people exposed for sale as 
 slaves attracted his attention by their large stature, fair 
 complexions, yellow hair, and blue eyes, which formed 
 a striking contrast with the smaller stature and dark 
 complexions of the Italians around them. The arch- 
 deacon stopped to make inquiry about them. He asked 
 of what race they were? "Angli." " Non Angli sed 
 Ange/i," he replied. "And from what country did they 
 come?" "Deira." "Such a race ought to be rescued 
 de ira Dei. And their king's name ? " " ^lla." " A/ie- 
 luia" he exclaimed, " the praise of God must be sung in 
 those parts." The incident made a great impression on 
 Gregory's mind, and he resolved to go as a missionary 
 to convert these Angles. But when he had actually set 
 out on his journey, a popular outcry arose against the 
 loss to Rome of so important a man, and the bishop 
 was induced to recall him. 
 
 Six years after Gregory's accession (596 a.d.) he took 
 up again his old idea of a mission to the Angles. He 
 laid his plans on a great scale. For his agents he looked 
 to his own monastery of St. -Andrew, and committed the 
 task to its Prior Augustine and a large body of its monks ; 
 including the clerks, and those who accompanied them. 
 
THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 25 
 
 the mission party numbered nearly forty men. They 
 started from Rome probably in the early part of the year 
 596. Somewhere in the south of Gaul, frightened by 
 what they heard of the hardships, difficulties, and dangers 
 which awaited them, they halted, and induced Augustine 
 to return to Rome and beg Gregory to abandon the 
 undertaking. Gregory would not hear of it. He sent 
 Augustine back with a letter of encouragement to the 
 missionaries, and with other letters addressed to the 
 Frank kings, commending his monks to the royal 
 protection, and other letters to the principal bishops 
 along their route, bespeaking their good offices. 
 
 The mission party, when Augustine rejoined them, 
 proceeded northwards through Gaul ; but the informa- 
 tion which they received in Gaul about the condition 
 of the country to which they were sent, and especially 
 that Christianity had already obtained a footing in the 
 island, led them to modify their plans, and, instead of 
 making Deira (Yorkshire) their goal, to take advantage 
 of the providential opening which offered itself in Kent. 
 Perhaps Augustine's return had been partly in order to 
 obtain Gregory's permission to make this alteration in 
 his plans. 
 
 In the autumn of 596 a.d., Augustine landed at Ebbes- 
 fleet, in the Isle of Thanet, the usual port of entry, and 
 sent a message to Ethelbert announcing his arrival from 
 Rome with a message of high and joyful import. The 
 king bade them stay where they were, ordering that their 
 wants should be provided for. After a few days he went 
 to the island, and sitting in the open air surrounded by 
 his attendants, gave audience to the Italian strangers. 
 They approached in procession with a silver cross borne 
 before them, and a picture of our Lord painted on a 
 panel by way of banner, and singing a litany. Augustine 
 
26 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 at the king's desire sat down beside him, and preached 
 to him the word of life. The king received them favour- 
 ably, assigned them a residence in Canterbury, pro- 
 vided for their sustenance, and gave them liberty to 
 preach and to win as many as they could to their 
 religion. They resumed their journey, and ended it by 
 entering the city in procession with cross and banner, 
 singing their litany. Shortly afterwards the king gave 
 them another ruined British church in the city, and a 
 settled residence, with such possessions of different kinds 
 as were necessary to their subsistence. Many of the 
 people were converted and baptized, and before long 
 Ethelbert himself embraced the faith ; and his conver- 
 sion was followed by that of still greater numbers of the 
 people. Having thus obtained a secure footing, Augus- 
 tine returned to Aries, where, by the desire of Gregory, 
 the Bishop of Aries, the Metropolitan of Southern Gaul, 
 consecrated Augustine as Bishop of the English. A 
 ,'^few years afterwards (60 1) Gregory sent to Augustine a 
 reinforcement of able men — Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, 
 and Rufinianus — with the honour of the pall for Augustine, 
 and a supply of sacred vessels for the altars, ornaments 
 for the churches, vestments for the priests and clerks, 
 relics of apostles and martyrs, and many books. 
 Gregory directed that the church of the English should 
 be divided into twelve bishoprics with two centres, at 
 London and York, and gave Augustine jurisdiction over 
 them all, and over the British bishops also. These 
 plans of the good bishop, made in ignorance of the local 
 conditions, were not carried out. Gregory also gave 
 directions not to desiroy the idol temples of the English, 
 but if they were well built to turn them into churches ; 
 but it is very doubtful whether any such idol temples 
 existed. Augustine established his See in Canterbury in 
 
THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 27 
 
 a church "which he was informed had been built by 
 the ancient Roman Christians, and which he consecrated 
 as Christ Church, and there established a residence for 
 himself and his successors. He also founded a monas- 
 tery outside the city, where the king built a church 
 dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul, but afterwards called 
 St. Augustine's. The monks were placed in this monas- 
 tery, but Augustine lived with his priests and clerks in 
 the city." 
 
 It was probably in 602 or 603 a.d. that Augustine 
 took steps to come to an understanding with the ancient 
 British Church. With the assistance of King Ethelbert 
 he arranged a meeting at a place which Bede says was 
 known in his time as Augustine's Ac, i.e., Augustine's 
 Oak, and which he describes as being on the borders of 
 the Wicii and West Saxons. The locality is disputed, 
 but our best authorities place it at Aust, where in Roman 
 times was the ordinary ferry across the Severn. At a 
 first interview, when the Britons persistently declined to 
 alter the customs of their church at "the entreaties, exhor- 
 tations, and rebukes of Augustine and his companions," 
 an attempt was ma'ie to overawe them by a miracle. A 
 blind man of the English race was brought " who found 
 no benefit or cure from the ministry of the Britons," but 
 on the prayer of Augustine received sight. Still the 
 British deputies declared their inability to yield without 
 the consent of their people, and arranged for a second 
 interview at which more of their number would be 
 present. 
 
 At the second interview, seven British bishops were 
 present, and many very learned men, particularly from 
 their most noble monastery of Bangor Iscoed (under the 
 wood), which was twelve miles from Chester, on the east 
 of the Dee. The question turned on their being willing 
 
28 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 or not to accept Augustine as their archbishop ; and that 
 by the advice of a holy hermit was made to depend on 
 the way in which he should treat them at this interview. 
 He received them sitting in his chair, and did not rise at 
 their approach ; whereupon they declined to accept him 
 as their archbishop or to make the changes which he 
 desired ; for, they said among themselves, " if he would 
 not rise up to us now, how much more will he contemn 
 us as of no worth if we shall put ourselves in subjection 
 to him." It is to be noted that the two churches were 
 not divided by any question of principle; all that 
 Augustine asked was that the Britons would keep Easter 
 by the Roman computation, use the same form of baptism 
 which Rome used (probably by trine immersion), and 
 help to convert the English. Augustine had no objec- 
 tion to make to their orders or the like ; and did not 
 demand their obedience in the name of the divine 
 right of Rome, but as a matter of expediency invited it ; 
 he did not excommunicate them for their refusal. The 
 Britons for their part had made up their minds to yield 
 on all the minor questions, and only refused to accept 
 Augustine's supremacy from fear that it would be 
 abused. 
 
 In 604 A.D. Ethelbert aided Augustine with his influ- 
 ence as Bretwalda to spread the Church into the neigh- 
 bouring kingdoms. A church was built at Rochester, 
 and Justus was consecrated its bishop. Probably 
 Rochester was the chief city of a semi-independent 
 sub-tribe planted in the north-west corner of the Kentish 
 kingdom. Its bishop was always in a special sense a 
 suffragan of the bishops of Canterbury, for he was 
 nominated by them, and acted as their cross-bearer. 
 At the same time a church was built in London, the 
 principal city of the East Saxons. Sebert, their king, 
 
THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 29 
 
 a nephew of Ethelbert, received baptism, and Mellitus 
 was consecrated as their bishop. Apparently at the 
 same time Redwaid, king of the East Angles, was 
 baptized at Canterbury, and returned with some mis- 
 sionary priest in his train, but the new religion was 
 opposed by his queen, and was not well received by 
 his people. Redwaid himself was only half-hearted, for 
 "in the same temple he had an altar to sacrifice to 
 Christ, and another small one to otTer victims to devils." 
 Augustine died 605, and was succeeded by Laurentius. 
 
 Ethelbert died in 616 a.d., and Sebert shordy after- 
 wards. It is an evidence of the personal greatness of 
 Ethelbert that his death was followed by a crisis both 
 in Church and State. The authority of Bretwalda passed 
 to the king of East Anglia. His son and successor, 
 Eadbald, married his widowed stepmother, and perhaps 
 this was the cause of his rejection of Christianity and 
 his quarrel with Laurentius. The men of Rochester 
 drove their bishop out of the city; the sons of 
 Sebert, it now appears, had never been baptized, and 
 freed from their father's authority and that of Ethel- 
 bert, they openly reverted to paganism. Mellitus fled 
 to Canterbury, and thence he and Justus fled to Gaul, 
 and Laurentius was about to follow, when Eadbald re- 
 pented, and the fugitive bishops were recalled. Justus 
 resumed his place at Rochester, but the Londoners 
 would not receive Mellitus again. Perhaps the loss of 
 the authority of Bretwalda by the kings of Kent had some- 
 thing to do with the fact that the successors of Augus- 
 tine — Laurentius, Justus, Honorius, Deusdedit — do not 
 seem to have taken any action beyond their own diocese. 
 They accepted the position of bishops of Kent, and 
 the claim to be archbishops of the English fell into 
 obscurity. 
 
30 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 
 
 The work of evangelisation in Kent was done chiefly 
 on monastic lines. The great monastery of St. Peter 
 and St. Paul, founded by Augustine outside the walls of 
 Canterbury, was followed in 6x6 by the foundation of 
 the monastery of Dover, in 630 by the double monastery 
 at Folkestone, which King Eadbald founded for his 
 daughter ^answitha, who became its first abbess ; in 
 633 of the double house of Lyminge,i founded for 
 Ethelburga, the widowed queen of Edwin of Nor- 
 thumbria ; towards the close of the century of Minster 
 in Sheppy, the foundation of Sexburga, the wife of King 
 Earcombert, and a little later of Minster in Thanet, 
 founded by Earmenburga, the grand-niece of Ethelburga. 
 The monastery at Reculver in 669 completed the founda- 
 tions of the descendants of Ethelbert. The monasteries 
 founded churches upon their estates, and did much to- 
 wards clearing the forest which covered the western 
 portion of the kingdom, and reclaiming the marshes on 
 the southern coast. 
 
 At the end of twenty-eight years fiom the arrival of 
 Augustine, the Church was still limited to Kent. Then 
 an accident, so to call it, quite apart from any action of 
 the bishop, led to its further extension. Again it was a 
 royal marriage which opened the way for the introduction 
 of the Gospel into Northumbria. 
 
 ' The foundations of the church have been excavated in the present 
 generation. It had a western as well as an eastern apse, like ihe 
 ancient Christ Church of Canterbury. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE ITALIAN MISSION IN NORTHUMBRIA 
 
 The interest of the story passes now from Kent to 
 Northumbria. Edwin, the ab'e and enterprising king 
 of the northern kingdom, and the Bretwalda, sought 
 Ethelburga of Kent, the daughter of Ethelbert and 
 Bertha, in marriage. It was arranged, as in the case of 
 her mother, that the princess and all who accompanied 
 her should have leave to follow their faith and worship ; 
 Paulinus was consecrated bishop, July 625, to go with 
 her to her northern home. Edwin was induced to listen 
 to Paulinus' preaching, and at length to lay before a 
 Gemote of his thanes and counsellors the question of 
 abandoning their old heathenism and embracing Chris- 
 tianity. Bede's narrative of the proceedings of the 
 council gives an interesting suggestion of the various 
 motives which influenced men's minds then in weighing 
 the claims of the new religion. When the king asked 
 their opinion of the new religion, Coifi, the pagan high 
 priest, spoke first. He declared that the religion which 
 they had hitherto held had no virtue in it, for no one 
 more diligently worshipped the gods than he, and yet 
 there were others who were much more prosperous : 
 whereas, if the gods were good for anything, they would 
 have shown special favour to him. After the worldly high 
 priest, one of the king's thanes spoke. "The present 
 
32 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 life of man, O king, seems to me in comparison with 
 that which is unknown to us, like the swift flight of a 
 sparrow through the hall where you sit in winter at 
 supper with your commanders and ministers, and a good 
 fire within, while storms of rain and snow prevail with- 
 out ; the sparrow flies in at one door and immediately 
 out at another; whilst he is within he is safe from the 
 wintry storm, but after a short space in the light and 
 warmth of the hall, he vanishes out of sight into the 
 dark and storm from which he came. So this life of 
 man appears here for a short space, but of what went 
 before or what is to follow we are utterly ignorant. If 
 this new doctrine can tell us something more certain it 
 deserves lo be followed." 
 
 The result of the consultation was the acceptance 
 of Christianity as the religion of Northumbria. The 
 baptism of the king took place at York, and seems to 
 have been made a great public function, as it deserved 
 to be. While the catechumens were being instructed, 
 an oratory of timber was erected over a spring for the 
 baptistery ; and no doubt a number of the thanes and 
 others were baptized at the same time as the king. A 
 church of stone was immediately afterwards begun, en- 
 closing this oratory, and remained unfinished for many 
 years until Oswy completed it. The present Cathedral 
 of York represents this early church, and the high altar 
 stood over the spring in which Edwin was baptized 
 until the present century. 
 
 The work of Paulinus in Northumbria was conducted 
 under peculiar conditions which need a little considera- 
 tion. Passing straight from reading of the work of 
 the Church in Kent, where there was a numerous band 
 of missionaries, we are in danger of overlooking the fact 
 that throughout the reign of Edwin, so far as we see. 
 
THE ITALIAN MISSION IN NORTHUMBRIA 33 
 
 Paulinus was the only priest in Northumbria. To do 
 honour to his royal patroness and to give him prestige 
 at the court of Edwin, he had been consecrated bishop ; 
 but he was practically Queen Bertha's chaplain. James 
 the Deacon appears upon the scene of Bede's history 
 subsequently without any account of his antecedents ; 
 but it seems highly probable that he accompanied 
 Paulinus from Kent. It was not perhaps so indispensable 
 as it is in the East, but it was highly expedient in the 
 circumstances, that Paulinus should have a deacon to 
 assist him in the celebration of the Eucharist, and to 
 give him general help in his office about the queen and 
 the Christian female attendants, who, it is reasonable 
 to suppose, accompanied her to the North. The chief 
 duty of Paulinus, then, was to be always with the queen 
 and to maintain divine service unintermittingly on her 
 account. He was by no means at liberty to wander 
 through the country at will as a missionary; such 
 wandering would have been a neglect of the special 
 duty which had been committed to him. His mis- 
 sionary work had therefore to be done at the court 
 of the king. But since the king and his court 
 passed from one royal ville to another, staying for a 
 time at each ; and wherever the king resided there 
 would be a great resort of the neighbouring thanes and 
 people, Paulinus could hardly have devised a better 
 plan of missionary work, at least in its earlier time, 
 than to take advantage of the opportunities which these 
 royal progresses and residences offered him. Thus 
 he could preach to the thanes and people of succes- 
 sive neighbourhoods under the present countenance 
 of the Christian king and queen. Bede gives an 
 account of his doings at Adgefrin (Yeaverin, parish of 
 Kirk Newton, in Glendale), no doubt as a sample of the 
 s. T. c 
 
34 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 
 
 evangelising work done on these occasions. " So great," 
 he says, "was the fervour of the faith and the desire 
 of the washing of salvation among the nation of the 
 Northumbrians, that Paulinus at a certain time, coming 
 with the king and queen to the royal seat which is 
 called Adgefrin, stayed there with them thirty-six days, 
 fully occupied in catechising and baptizing; during 
 which days from morning to night he did nothing else 
 but instruct the people resorting from all villages and 
 places, in Christ's saving word, and when instructed he 
 washed them with the water of absolution in the river 
 Glen which is close by." Bede adds that "in Deira 
 also, where he was wont often to be with the king, he 
 baptized in the river Swale, which runs by the village of 
 Cataract (near Richmond), for as yet oratories or fonts 
 could not be made in the early infancy of the church 
 in those parts." At another of the royal villes at Cam- 
 podunum (Doncaster?), Paulinus built another church, 
 which was burned by the pagan Caedwalla when he 
 overran Northumbria in 633 a.d. The church was 
 probably of wood, since only the stone altar escaped 
 destruction.! 
 
 The way in which the work of Paulinus depended 
 upon the movements of the king and queen is shown in 
 another interesting passage of the history. The province 
 of Lindsey (in Lincolnshire), long in dispute between 
 Northumbria and Mercia, was at that time under the 
 power of Edwin, and it is most likely that it was in 
 accompanying the king and the court on a long visit to 
 this province that Paulinus found the opportunity to do 
 some good missionary work, the results of which have 
 lasted to the present day. He preached at Lincoln, 
 
 » Eccl. Hist., ii. i^. 
 
THE ITALIAN MISSION IN NORTHUMBRIA 35 
 
 where he converted Blecca, the governor (Prefect) of the 
 city, with all his family, and built " a stone church of 
 beautiful workmanship," probably the predecessor of the 
 present St. Paul's (? Paulinus') church, which stands in 
 the middle of the ancient Colonia Lindum. Paulinus 
 also preached and baptized in the presence of the king 
 a great number of people at Zeovulfingaceaster (South- 
 well, in Notts). The fact that the bishops of York had a 
 residence at Southwell, and held it as a peculiar of their 
 See, with certain rights over all the parish churches of 
 Nottinghamshire, throughout the Middle Ages, seems to 
 indicate some royal grant to the See of York on this 
 occasion. It was one of the men baptized here whose 
 interesting description of St. Paulinus has been preserved 
 by Bede : " He was wont to describe him as tall of 
 stature, a little stooping, his hair black, his visage 
 meagre, his nose slender and aquiline, his aspect both 
 venerable and majestic." ^ It is a masterly pen and ink 
 sketch, and brings the man vividly before us. 
 
 Edwin had ruled over Northumbria for seventeen 
 prosperous years, six years of which he had been a 
 Christian, when there came a terrible reverse. The 
 princes of the Britons united their forces under Cred- 
 walla, in whom they recognised some sort of overlord- 
 ship, and Caedwalla entered into an alliance with Penda, 
 the powerful king of the Mercians, and their united forces 
 invaded Northumbria, and defeate d and slew Edwin in 
 a great battle at Heathfield (Hatfield, near Doncaster) 
 in 633. Caedwalla ravaged Northumbria with great 
 cruelty, "resolving to cut ofT the race of the English 
 within the borders of Britain ; nor did he pay any respect 
 to the Christian religion which had newly taken root 
 
 ' Bede, Eccl. Hist., ii. 16. 
 
36 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 among them."i From Bede's point of view Caed walla 
 was an oppressor of the English ; but from the opposite 
 point of view he was the last great hero of the British 
 race, the victor in forty battles, the conqueror of five 
 kings; and his conquest of Northumberland is to be 
 noted as the last great attempt of the Britons to drive 
 back the Teutonic invasion. Paulinus fled with Ethel- 
 burga and her children, and returned by sea to Kent 
 after eight years' absence ; he took back with him a gold 
 cross and gold chalice, which were long after preserved 
 in the church at Canterbury. Paulinus was afterwards 
 Bishop of Rochester, and the widowed queen became 
 the first abbess of the double monastery of Lyminge, as 
 has been already said. 
 
 1 Bede, Eccl. Hist. , ii. 20. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE CELTIC MISSION 
 
 So far the Italian mission was the only one in the field. 
 The British Church had declined to join with Augustine 
 in the conversion of the barbarians. It was perhaps 
 hardly to be expected. Augustine was an Italian, work- 
 ing among the men of Kent, who had been in peaceful 
 possession of their country for a hundred years ; but in 
 the West the strife between the two races still raged ; if 
 the Britons had shown the superhuman charity to offer 
 their evangelising ministrations to their ferocious enemy, 
 it is not likely that the Saxons would have listened 
 to the teaching of a race which they despised. We 
 have now to turn to the history of a new mission, to 
 which in the long run Teutonic England owed the 
 greater part of its evangelisation, and which did in- 
 directly bring the influence of the British Church to bear 
 upon the English and Saxon peoples. 
 
 The Welsh Church of the sixth century, in spite of 
 the troubles of the period, possessed several men famous 
 for their learning and sanctity, and the Irish saints of 
 the time are represented in their legendary lives as going 
 to Britain, and especially to St. David, for their religious 
 training. Finan, one of these Irish saints, after spend- 
 ing thirty years in Britain, chiefly in the monastery of 
 St, David, and having also had the instructions of St. 
 
 37 
 
38 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 Caradoc and Gildas (the historian), at length returned 
 to Ireland " with several of the religious Britons," whom 
 legendary story calls " the Twelve Apostles of Ireland," 
 and there they founded the great monastery of Clonard in 
 Meath. In the middle of the sixth century, Columba, a 
 monk of Clonard, with twelve companions, settled in the 
 little island of Hi (latinised into lona), off the coast of 
 Galloway, and founded a monastery there, which became 
 a centre of missions to the neighbouring countries. 
 
 The kingdom of Northumbria was divided into two 
 sub-kingdoms, Deira ( = Yorkshire) and Bernicia ( = Nor- 
 thumberland and Durham), ruled by two branches of 
 the house of Ida, the conqueror. There was a constant 
 rivalry between these two families, and sometimes one, 
 sometimes the other obtained the upper hand, and 
 for a time united the two sub-kingdoms in one hand. 
 Edwin of Bernicia, whose conversion we have recorded, 
 had made himself king of united Northumbria by a 
 successful battle with Ethelfrid,i of the rival royal house 
 of Deira. The two young sons of Ethelfrid, with a 
 train of young nobles, had fled and sought safety among 
 the Scots, and had embraced Christianity at the hands 
 of the fathers of lona. 
 
 In 63s A.D. the banished Oswald, son of Ethelfrid 
 of the royal family of Deira, set himself to reconquer 
 Northumbria from Cffidwalla. Returning with the com- 
 panions of his exile, he was joined by some of his fellow- 
 countrymen, and on the approach of the British king, 
 he awaited battle at the place subsequently called Heven- 
 felt, in the neighbourhood of Hexham, under the shadow 
 of the Roman wall. Before the engagement began, 
 
 1 The king who had extended Northumbria westward and won 
 the battle of Chester in 613. See p. 20. 
 
THE CELTIC MISSION 
 
 39 
 
 Oswald with his own hands set up a cross of wood, and 
 with his little army knelt before it and prayed for victory. 
 From Bede's statement that before this cross " there 
 was no sign of the Christian faith, no church, no altar, 
 erected throughout all the nation of the Bernicians," 
 it may be inferred that the missionary labours of 
 Paulinus had not made much impression upon this 
 northern portion of Northumbria. The result of the 
 battle was that Csedwalla was defeated and slain, and 
 Oswald recovered the throne of united Northumbria 
 to himself and his descendants. This was one of the 
 decisive battles of the Anglo-Saxon conquest, for it put 
 an end to the last endeavour of the Britons to recover 
 the land which they had lost. 
 
 Oswald was a man of earnest piety, " a most Christian 
 king" Bede calls him, and as soon as he was established 
 on the throne he took steps for the conversion of his 
 people. " Jacob the Deacon " now appears on the scene. 
 He had apparently remained behind when Paulinus 
 returned to Kent in charge of the widowed Ethelburga 
 and her children. Oswald did not invite Jacob to send*^ 
 to Canterbury for other missionaries to continue the 
 interrupted work of Paulinus, but sent to lona to invite^ 
 the abbot to send him a bishop {antistes). The first" 
 who was sent soon returned and reported to the com- 
 munity that the Northumbrians were a stubborn and 
 impracticable people with whom nothing could be done. 
 One of the brethren present commented on the state- 
 ment. "Brother," said Aidan, "it seems to me that you 
 have been unduly hard upon these untaught hearers, and 
 have not given them first, according to the Apostle's 
 precept, the milk of less solid doctrine, until, gradually 
 nurtured on the word of God, they should have strength 
 enough to digest the more perfect lessons." He who 
 
40 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 had given the wise counsel seemed to be the man best 
 fitted to carry it out ; and Aidan was forthwith " or- 
 dained" bishop and sent to Oswald. ^ 
 
 Aidan was accompanied by several of the brethren of 
 lona, and other Celtic monks came to him from day to 
 day. The Columban monks preferred an island near 
 the mainland for the site of their principal houses ; the 
 new mission was accordingly established in the small 
 island of Lindisfarne on the Northumbrian coast, under 
 the shadow of the king's rock-seated residence at Bam- 
 borough. The island was flat and unproductive, but it 
 afforded the seclusion which the monks desired, while 
 the ebb tide left a passage across the sands twice a day 
 from the mainland, so that it was sufficiently accessible 
 for the resort of people who had business with the island. 
 Of the buildings which were erected on the Holy Isle 
 there is no description, but they would probably be in 
 imitation of those of lona, where the church and larger 
 apartments were of great timbers and planks, and the 
 smaller rooms of wattle, after the Celtic fashion of building. 
 The church built at Lindisfarne by Finan, the successor 
 of Aidan, was "not of stone, but of hewn oak covered 
 with reeds." The existing Saxon church at Greenstead in 
 Essex shows that the " hewn oak " means trunks of trees 
 split in two and placed side by side, with their flat sides 
 inward. Eadbert, a later bishop, took off the thatch 
 and covered both roof and walls with plates of lead. 
 
 Here the Scottish colony established itself as a 
 monastery following the Columban rule ; but the monas- 
 tery was not so much a place of religious retirement as 
 a centre of missionary work ; its abbot was the Bishop 
 
 1 There are forty-eight years between the beginning of Augustine's 
 work and that of Aidan. 
 
THE CELTIC MISSION 
 
 41 
 
 of the Northumbrians, its brethren were missionaries. 
 Education formed an important feature of the work. 
 Aidan at once took permanent charge of twelve EngHsh 
 youths as disciples — among them were the future bishops 
 Eata, Cedd, Chad, and Wilfrid — and thus a native clergy 
 was speedily taught and trained. This sacred spot was 
 the seat of sixteen bishops in succession before the 
 Danes destroyed the house ; and from it went forth the 
 Englishmen who planted the Church in the north and 
 midland and part of the east of England. 
 
 We are able, by bringing together the scattered 
 notices in Bede's history of the time, to see how the 
 Church was gradually planted in Northumbria. As 
 Paulinus was usually in attendance on the court 
 wherever it went, so Aidan was frequently with the 
 king in his progresses through the country and his stay 
 at the different royal villes, and Bede relates how the 
 king would sometimes interpret the Celtic bishop's ad- 
 dresses to the Northumbrian hearers. 
 
 " He was wont to traverse both town and country on 
 foot, never on horseback unless compelled by some 
 urgent necessity." "All those who bore him company, 
 whether they were monks or laymen, were employed in 
 meditation, that is, either in reading the Scriptures or in 
 learning psalms. This was the daily employment of 
 himself and all that were with liim, wherever they went." 
 " He never gave presents of money to the powerful 
 when he happened to entertain them, and whatever 
 gifts of money he received from the rich he either dis- 
 tributed to the poor, or bestowed them in ransoming such 
 as had been wrongfully sold for slaves, many of whom, 
 after having taught and instructed them, he advanced to 
 the order of the priesthood." 
 
 Aidan was a man who for his great work and saintly 
 
42 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 character deserves a place in a reformed Calendar of 
 the English Church.^ "He was," says Bede, "a man of 
 singular meekness, piety, and zeal." " It was the highest 
 commendation of his doctrine that he taught no other- 
 wise than he and his followers lived." "He was be- 
 loved and venerated by all, even by the bishops of 
 the Italian school, Honorius of Canterbury and Felix 
 of the East Angles." 
 
 In 642 A.D., after a short reign of eight years, Oswald 
 was slain in battle at Maserfield (? Oswestry = Oswald's 
 tree) with his old enemy Penda. His dying words, 
 a prayer for his people, passed into a proverb, " O God 
 have mercy on their souls, said Oswald as he fell." In 
 those eight years he had laid the solid foundations of 
 the Church in Northumbria, whence it spread rapidly 
 into several other of the Heptarchic kingdoms. His 
 brother and successor, Oswy, during his long reign of 
 twenty-seven years, was hardly inferior to Oswald in his 
 friendship for Aidan and his zeal for the maintenance 
 and extension of the faith. 
 
 Before the battle near Leeds (655) in which he de- 
 feated and slew Penda of Mercia, he made a vow that in 
 the event of his winning back the kingdom he would 
 found twelve monasteries, six in Bernicia and six in Deira. 
 What this means was that the king gave so many tracts 
 of land, each cultivated by ten families, in each of these 
 places, and two or three of Aidan's monks were setded 
 upon each, who gathered lay brethren about them, and 
 set up Divine worship and opened schools ; and thus 
 each became a new centre of Christian teaching and 
 influence. Other thanes and landholders followed the 
 king's example ; and men sometimes dedicated their own 
 
 ' His day would be August 31. 
 
THE CELTIC MISSIOM 43 
 
 patrimony to the Church, and became the first abbots. It 
 will be convenient to give here a summary of the rest of 
 the English conversions, without entering into details. 
 
 Conversion of the West Saxons. — Oswald, on his 
 establishment in his kingdom, sought a bride of the 
 royal family of the West Saxons. At the court of 
 Kynegils he found an Italian, Birinus, who had been 
 consecrated bishop at Genoa with a view to his under- 
 taking the conversion of some heathen country. Oswald 
 no doubt added his influence to the preaching of 
 Birinus, with the happy result that Kynegils accepted 
 Christianity, Oswald taking the position of sponsor to 
 his father-in-law. ]>irinus became the first bishop of the 
 West Saxons (a.d. 635). 
 
 The Conversion of Mercia. — Peada, the son of Penda 
 the fierce heathen king of Mercia, had been made by 
 his father sub-king of the district of the Middle Angles. 
 In the year 652 a.d. he sought a daughter of Oswy of 
 Northumbria for his wife. Alchfrid, the son of Oswy, 
 was already married to the sister of Peada. The objec- 
 tion to giving a Christian princess in marriage to a 
 heathen was happily removed by Peada's conversion : 
 " When he had heard the preaching of the truth, the 
 promises of the heavenly kingdom, and tlie hope of 
 resurrection, he declared that he would willingly become 
 a Christian, though he should be refused the maiden." 
 " So he was baptized, together with the earls and soldiers 
 and servants who had accompanied him." When he 
 returned home, he took Chadd and three other Nor- 
 thumbrian priests with him, who established the Church 
 among the Middle Angles. 
 
 Conversion of the East Saxons. — Sigebert, king of 
 the East Saxons, coming on a visit to Oswy in the year 
 (653 A.D.) after Penda's visit, was converted, with the 
 
44 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 thanes who accompanied him. On his return he took 
 with him two Northumbrian priests, Cedd, the brother of 
 Chadd, and another, to convert liis people. Cedd estab- 
 Hshed two mission centres in Essex, one at Tilabery 
 (East Tilbury), where a ford from Kent crossed the 
 Thames, and the other at Ythanacester (Bradwell), on the 
 site of the Roman fortress Othoiia, on the east coast; 
 and from these centres Essex was evangelised. 
 
 Conversion of the East Angles. — There had been two 
 previous failures to establish the faith among the in- 
 habitants of this peninsula. Redwald had been baptized 
 at the court of Ethelbert, but the Gospel did not spread 
 among his family or people. His son Eorpwald was in- 
 duced by Edwin of Northumbria to abandon his old 
 religion with his whole province (627 a.d.) and receive 
 the faith and sacraments of Christ, but shortly after- 
 wards he was slain, and the province relapsed. Three 
 years afterwards his brother Sigebert, who had been 
 living in exile in Burgundy, was recalled to take posses- 
 sion of the kingdom. He had embraced the faith in 
 his exile and was "a most Christian and learned man," 
 and was most desirous of introducing among his people 
 the good institutions which he had seen in France. In 
 this he was assisted by Bishop Felix, a Burgundian, who 
 settled as bishop of the East Angles at Dunwich, and 
 introduced masters and teachers after the French 
 manner. Shortly afterwards a learned monk of noble 
 Scottish blood named Furzey came from Ireland with 
 five companions, and founded a monastery within the 
 area of the old Roman station at Burgh Castle, near the 
 northern coast, and from these two centres the country 
 was evangelised. 
 
 Conversion of the South Saxons. — The kingdom of 
 the South Saxons, though so near Kent, was the last of 
 
THE CELTIC MISSION 
 
 the English kingdoms to be converted. In the middle 
 of the century, Ethelwealh, the king, had married a 
 Christian wife, Ebba, daughter of Eanfrid, sub-king of 
 the Wiccii, and apparently had received baptism as a 
 condition of the marriage (66i a.d.). A little company 
 of five or six Irish monks lived in a little monastery 
 near Bosham, but no one, Bede says, cared to imitate 
 their life or listen to their preaching. At this time it 
 happened that Wilfrid of York, when banished from 
 Northumbria (as will be seen in the subsequent narrative), 
 found his way to Sussex (68 1 a.d.), and was welcomed 
 by Ethelwealh, who gave him a tract of land at Selsey. 
 Wilfrid enfranchised and baptized 2 50 slaves whom he 
 found on his estate, built a church, and made a good 
 beginning of the South Saxon conversion. ^1 
 
 To sum up the history of the English conversion, 
 Kent owes its Christianity to the Roman mission of 
 Gregory ; Northumbria, Mercia, and Essex, to the Celtic 
 mission at Lindisfarne ; East Anglia to Burgundian Felix 
 and Scottish Furzey ; Wessex to Genevan Birinus and 
 the French Agilbert ; and the South Saxons to Nor- 
 thumbrian Wilfrid. The English conquests began 550 
 A.D. ; the evangelisation of the conquerors in Kent began 
 with Augustine in 597 (long before the strife between 
 the two races had come to an end in the West), and 
 the conversion of the South Saxons in 681 completed 
 the banishment of paganism out of the soutli of the 
 island. So that within the space of a century, by a 
 course of peaceful missionary work, unchecked by any 
 persecution on the part of the heathens, unaided by 
 any enforced conversions on the part of the Christians, 
 the faith had been established in all the Heptarchic 
 kingdoms. 
 
 It is ungracious to seem to minimise the gratitude we 
 
46 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAXD 
 
 owe to Gregory the Great for his noble mission to our 
 English forefathers, but when we find Rome putting 
 forward a claim to the obedience of the Church of 
 England on the ground that we owe our Christianity 
 to her, and that our Church is an offshoot of the Roman 
 Church, it becomes necessary to point out that the 
 British Church, which came originally from the East, had 
 existed for more than three and a half centuries before 
 Augustine came, and continued to exist quite indepen- 
 dent of him in the western half of the countr)' ; that 
 in the eastern half of the country only the church of 
 Kent traces its origin to Augustine. That Augustine 
 laid the first stone of the Church of the English race 
 entitles him to special honour; but we are not willing 
 to forget that Aidan and his disciples also laid great 
 foundation-stones, and that the others whose labours 
 we have so briefly alluded to, completed the foundations 
 upon which is being built the mighty structure of the 
 Church of the English-speaking peoples. 
 
 The Christianising and civilising influence of the 
 Church was brought to bear upon England at a favour- 
 able time. The rude Teutonic tribes had settled down 
 on their new lands, and were multiplying and prosper- 
 ing, and needing the development of the institutions 
 of civilisation. They had outgrown their old religion. 
 A religion which taught that those who fell in combat 
 were the favoured sons of Odin, and that in Valhalla 
 the heroes enjoyed all day the fierce delight of battle 
 and spent the night in feasting on swine's flesh and 
 drinking ale with the gods, might satisfy their piratical 
 forefathers, but was not calculated to meet the aspira- 
 tions of homely Englishmen devoted to the cultivation 
 of their glebe and the well-being of their flocks and 
 herds. Most of their Teutonic kinsmen, Burgundians and 
 
THE CELTIC MISSION 
 
 47 
 
 Goths, who had won for themselves kingdoms in 
 Europe, were Christians before their conquests began ; 
 their nearest neighbours, the Franks, had embraced 
 Christianity soon after they had settled themselves in 
 Gaul. The old heathenism was a part of the old bar- 
 barism, and Christianity was the religion of the civilised 
 world. It was no doubt this condition of things which 
 influenced the course of the English conversions. The 
 kings and their counsellors understood that progress 
 in civilisation involved, in the circumstances, the adop- 
 tion of Christianity ; when the question was proposed to 
 the folk-mote, the people were willing to follow their 
 chiefs ; and so nation after nation entered bodily into 
 the fold of Christ. 
 
 Such wholesale conversions could not be other than 
 shallow, and hence the early apostasies of which we 
 have read in several of the kingdoms. But on the 
 whole the people put themselves into the hands of their 
 new teachers with little reluctance. And the teaching 
 fell on good ground. The race must have been one of 
 great natural qualities. It is surprising to find among 
 the very first disciples of Aidan in rude Northumbria 
 men of sufficient learning and character to be intrusted 
 with the duty of laying the foundations of new churches 
 like Chadd and Cedd, men of the intellectual eminence 
 and culture of Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop. Kent also 
 had native bishops in the second generation, for Ithamar 
 of Rochester was a Kentish man, and Deusdedit of 
 Canterbury was a Wessex man notwithstanding his Latin 
 name. Indeed the new religion was embraced with great 
 earnestness among all classes of the people. 
 
 The monastic institution was in great favour at this 
 time ; the monasteries were spiritual fortresses, schools 
 of learning, centres of evangelisation ; and the gradual 
 
48 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 conversion of the country was carried on largely on 
 these monastic lines. Kings and ealdormen and 
 thanes gave lands, and the missionaries planted small 
 communities upon them ; landowners turned their own 
 houses into monasteries and became themselves the 
 first abbots and abbesses; sometimes they gave them to 
 the Church, sometimes kept them as hereditary bene- 
 fices. The part which women of royal and noble 
 families took in the early history of the English Church 
 is very remarkable, and without a parallel in Church 
 history. It recalls to mind what Tacitus said centuries 
 before of the character and influence of the women 
 of their Teutonic ancestry. At first, before there were 
 monasteries for women in England, they went to foreign 
 houses, to Farmoustier, Chelles, Andelye, and Brie. 
 But nunneries were very early founded, as we have seen, 
 in Kent. In Northumbria Aidan encouraged Hieu to 
 organise a small house at Hartlepool, which was after- 
 wards removed to Whitby, and became famous under 
 Abbess Hilda. The most remarkable thing was that 
 many of these houses were double bouses for monks 
 and nuns living in adjoining buildings, worshipping in 
 the same church, all under the rule of the abbess. Thus 
 in addition to the Kentish houses already mentioned 
 (p. 30), Whitby, Barking, Coldingham, Ely, Wenlock, 
 Repandun, Wigorn, Wimborne, were all double houses.^ 
 About ICQ religious houses are known to us as founded 
 before the Norman Conquest. 
 
 ' At Beverley, a monastery of monks, a college of canons, and 
 a convent of nuns obeyed the same abbot. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE HEPTARCHIC CHURCHES UNITED INTO 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 It has already been mentioned that there were some 
 differences between the churches of the Celtic foundation 
 and those founded by missionaries from the Continent. 
 These differences were only on some unimportant matters 
 of custom and ritual, and there was nothing like a schism 
 between the two schools, but there was some jealous 
 feeling, and when they came into contact a certain 
 amount of friction. Matters came to a crisis in Nor- 
 thumbria, where the two schools existed side by side. 
 The prevailing use of Northumbria was that of Lindis- 
 farne, and this was followed by Oswy the king. But 
 the queen, Eanfleda, was one of the children with whom 
 the widowed Ethelburga, on the defeat and death of 
 Edwin, had fled to her native Kent ; she had been 
 brought up in the Kentish customs, and had continued 
 them in Northumbria under the influence of Romanus, 
 the chaplain who had accompanied her from Kent ; for 
 it seems to have been the custom for a Christian queen 
 to take a chaplain of her own country with her to her 
 husband's court, as her adviser and the governor of her 
 family. Besides the cases of Bertha and Ethelburga and 
 this of Eanfleda, there is also that of Etheldrid, who, 
 
so HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 when she left East AngHa to be the wife of King Wulf- 
 here of Mercia, was accompanied by the monk Owini as 
 "her prime minister and the governor of her family." 
 (Bede, Eccl. Hist. iv. 3.) Besides the queen there were 
 other adherents of the Continental customs. Jacob the 
 Deacon had kept up an influence. Wilfrid and Benedict 
 Biscop, and perhaps a few others, had travelled on the 
 Continent, and had recognised the superior learning of 
 the Continental churches and embraced their customs. 
 Alchfred, the king's son, was the friend of Wilfrid, and 
 had given him a monastery at Ripon, into which Wilfrid 
 had introduced the Continental customs. The court 
 itself, therefore, was divided between the two parties ; and 
 though it might not really matter much whether Easter 
 was kept by the computation of one school or of the 
 other, it was practically inconvenient, and somewhat of 
 a scandal, that while the king and his men and the 
 people generally were keeping the great Easter festival, 
 the queen and her women and an influential knot of 
 adherents should be still amidst the austerities of Holy 
 Week. 
 
 It happened that Agilbert, the Gallic bishop who had 
 just resigned the West Saxon see, came (664 a.d., 22nd 
 year of Oswy) on a long visit to the court of Nor- 
 thumbria with a priest, Agatho, in his train, and their 
 comments on the difference of customs led to the calling 
 of a synod, which was held at Hilda's monasteiy of 
 Whitby, to consider the matter. Cedd, Bishop of the 
 East Saxons, happened also to be present (664 a.d.). 
 The account of the opening of the synod by Oswy, and 
 of the discussion between Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne 
 on the one side, and Wilfrid, the chief speaker on the 
 other, is given at length by Bede (iii. 25). The result 
 was that the king and the majority decided to accept the 
 
THE HBPTARCHIC CHURCHES Jt 
 
 Continental customs. Colman resigned his see, and, 
 with those of his monks who agreed with him, retired 
 from Northumbria.^ 
 
 When Colman retired from Lindisfarne, Tuda was 
 put in his place, and on his death within a few months, 
 Wilfrid was chosen. He went abroad to seek consecra- 
 tion from his friend Agilbert of Paris ; but he stayed 
 away so long, that people got tired of waiting for his 
 return, and Chadd was nominated and consecrated (in 
 the vacancy of Canterbury) by Wini, Bishop of the 
 West Saxons, assisted by "two bishops of the British 
 nation who kept Easter in the canonical manner," pro- 
 bably bishops of the independent churches of West 
 Wales (Devon and Cornwall). Wilfrid, on his return 
 in 665 or 666 a.d., found his seat occupied, and retired to 
 his monastery of Ripon. We anticipate the chrono- 
 logical order of the history to say that when Theodore 
 visited the North in the year after his arrival (669), he 
 deposed Chadd, partly on account of some unexplained 
 irregularity in his consecration, but chiefly on the 
 ground that he had usurped a see which was not 
 vacant, and reinstated Wilfrid. Chadd submitted with 
 characteristic humility, and retired to the monastery 
 which he had founded on his property at Lestingham ; 
 but soon afterwards, on the death of Jaruman, he was 
 made Bishop of Mercia, and fixed his see at Lich- 
 field. 
 
 In the year after the Synod of Whitby, Deusdedit, 
 
 ' The other Celtic churches voluntarily adopted the Continent;il 
 customs one after another in the course of the eiglith century : the 
 Southern I'icts of Galloway in 710 ; the .Southern tribes of Ireland 
 in the first half of the seventh century ; the Northern tribes in 701 ; 
 lona in 715 ; the Britons in Wessex in 692 ; in North Wales soon 
 after, 750 ; in South Wales in 777. 
 
52 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 
 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, died (665 a.d.). Oswy of Nor- 
 thumbria and Egbert of Kent, having consulted together, 
 took steps to put the English churches into harmony 
 with one another and with the Continental churches. 
 With this end in view they determined, with the consent 
 of the churches, to send Wighard, one of Deusdedifs 
 clergy, to Rome, to study the usages of the church at 
 that great centre of the ecclesiastical learning of the 
 West, to obtain consecration there, and on his return to 
 be acknowledged as archbishop, and to regulate the 
 affairs of the English church. Wighard unhappily died 
 at Rome with several of his companions ; whereupon 
 the English agreed not to incur the delay and danger of 
 another journey to Rome and back, but to ask the Bishop 
 of Rome to select a suitable man and consecrate him. 
 Vitalian, who was then Bishop of Rome, chose Hadrian, 
 an African, abbot of a monastery near Naples, who ex- 
 cused himself, but recommended Theodore, a native of 
 Tarsus in Cilicia, a monk of learning, piety, and ability, 
 who had come to Rome lately in the train of the 
 Emperor. Theodore was not well known to Vitalian, 
 who at first had doubts of his orthodoxy, and at last only 
 consented to send him to England on condition that 
 Hadrian would accompany him. Both Theodore and 
 Hadrian were skilled in sacred and secular learning; 
 disciples flocked to them from the southern kingdoms, 
 and Bede testifies that in his time there were some 
 of their scholars still living, as well versed in the Greek 
 and Latin tongues as in that in which they were 
 born. 
 
 The Organisation of the Church of England— Synod of 
 Hertford (673 a.d.). — In 673 Theodore assembled a synod 
 of bishops and others at Hertford : there were present 
 Theodore of Kent; Bisi, Bishop of the East Angles; 
 
THE HEPTARCHIC CHURCHES 53 
 
 the proxies of Wilfrid of Northumbria, Putta of Rochester, 
 Eleutherius of the West Saxons, and Winfrid of the 
 Mercians. These all agreed to accept certain canons, 
 which Bede gives at length (iv. 5), the effect of which was 
 to unite the national churches into an ecclesiastical 
 province. "This," says Bede, "was the first archbishop 
 whom all the English churchesobeyed." Thus the Church 
 of England is older than the Englisli monarchy, older 
 than English law, older than English literature, older 
 even than the English nation ; for there was a united 
 Church of England, embracing the whole population. 
 Jute, Angle, and Saxon, a hundred years before the king- 
 doms were united under the sceptre of Egbert. The 
 kingdoms continued more or less independent of one 
 another, and wars between them were still frequent ; but 
 the church councils, which brought together not only 
 the bishops and clergy of all the kingdoms, but also the 
 kings, and their thanes and ministers, as members of 
 one church, consulting and acting together for the highest 
 interests of the whole, must have promoted concord and 
 tended to unity. 
 
 At Heathfield (Bishops Hatfield), seven years after- 
 wards (680 A.D.), a synod formally declared its acceptance 
 of " the true and orthodox faith as our Lord Jesus Christ 
 in the flesh delivered the same to His disciples, and as 
 it is delivered in the Creed of the Holy Fathers (Nicene), 
 and of all holy and universal synods in general, and by 
 the consent of all approved doctors of the Catholic Church, 
 and more particularly, "we have received the five holy 
 and general councils," &c., viz., the five general councils 
 which had been held up to that date, Nicjea, 325 ; 
 Constantinople, 381; Ephesus, 431; Chalcedon, 451; 
 Constantinople, 553 ; — the sixth council was held at 
 Constantinople that same year, 680-1. 
 
54 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 Theodore's great work, next to that of organising the 
 churches into an ecclesiastical province — uniting them 
 intothe Church of England — was subdividingthe dioceses. 
 One king, one bishop, was an idea to which some of 
 the old bishops clung; but Theodore's practical mind 
 saw that the duties of the episcopate could not be ful- 
 filled by one man in such dioceses as the Northumbrian 
 and Mercian kingdoms constituted. At the Council of 
 Hertford (673) above mentioned, Bisi, Bishop of the East 
 Angles, being disabled by infirmity, Theodore took the 
 opportunity to divide that kingdom into two sees, of 
 which the first was situated at Dunwich, and the second 
 was placed at Elmham. At the same time it was agreed, 
 with the concurrence of Ethelred, king of Mercia, and 
 Othere, the sub-king of the Wiccii, that the latter people 
 should have a bishop of their own ; and probably that 
 the recently acquired territory on the Severn, which is 
 now the county of Hereford, should be erected into a 
 separate diocese. Winfrid, Bishop of Lichfield, opposed 
 the scheme, but was deposed in 675, and in 680 the 
 partition of the diocese was completed by the Council of 
 Hatfield. At this latter council it was also resolved to 
 subdivide the great Northumbrian diocese, making 
 York the see of Deira, and Lindisfarne the see of 
 Bernicia, besides ordaining a bishop for the province 
 of Lindsey. Wilfrid was not consulted, probably be- 
 cause his determined opposition was foreseen. Three 
 years later a further subdivision was determined upon, 
 making Hexham a see, and severing Whitherne from 
 the Pictish province subject to Northumbria. Against 
 this subdivision of his great diocese Wilfrid protested 
 in vain, and went off to Rome to seek the intervention 
 of its Bishop. It is the earliest example in our history 
 
THE HEPTARCHIC CHURCHES 55 
 
 of an appeal to Rome as to a higher court of juris- 
 diction. 
 
 Thrown by a storm on the coast of Frisia, Wilfrid 
 showed the better side of his character by employing 
 the winter in the conversion of the king and his chief 
 men, which carried with it the conversion of the whole 
 people. 
 
 At Rome he obtained from Pope Agatho and a local 
 synod a judgment that the subdivision of his diocese 
 without his concurrence was wrong, and a decree that 
 Wilfrid should be reinstated and the intruded bishops 
 removed ; but that it was right that the huge diocese 
 should be divided, and that Wilfrid, assisted by a council, 
 should choose new bishops, and Theodore should conse- 
 crate them. But when Wilfrid returned to Northumbria 
 with this decision, the Pope's bull was contemptuously 
 tossed aside, and Wilfrid was imprisoned for his dis- 
 loyalty to church and crown. After a time he was set 
 at liberty but driven into exile. 
 
 Again a storm at sea cast him on the coast at Selsey, 
 and here again his missionary zeal exhibited itself in 
 the conversion of the peoj^le, and the planting of the 
 church in the kingdom of the South Saxons, among 
 whom he spent five years. Then Theodore sought a 
 reconciliation with him, and at his intercession he was 
 restored to the bishopric of Hexham, and on the death 
 of Cuthbert he obtained Lindisfarne also. 
 
 But again he quarrelled with the king and the church, 
 and again appealed to Rome. Pope John VI. pronounced 
 in his favour, but again the English Church refused to 
 listen to the decision of- Rome. After a while, however, 
 a synod offered to restore Wilfrid to Ripon and Hexham, 
 and, broken in health and tamed in spirit, he accepted a 
 refuge where he could end his active, contentious, brilliant 
 
56 HISTORY OP THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 life in peace. He died in 709 a.d. It was lamentable 
 that, through the blunder of Theodore and Ecgfrid, and 
 the impracticable temper of Wilfrid, the best years of the 
 greatest genius the English Church had produced should 
 have been lost to his native country. 
 
 Besides the subdivision of dioceses, Theodore is said 
 to have promoted the settlement of parishes, by encourag- 
 ing the landowners to build churches and appropriate 
 the tithes of their own estates to the maintenance of 
 their own priest. This accounts for the irregular size 
 and endowment of parishes, and for the lay patronage 
 of parochial benefices. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon dioceses are conveniently shown 
 in the following table :— 
 
 East Saxons 
 East Angles 
 
 South Saxons 
 Northumbria 
 
 founded about 909. 
 
 Sees. 
 Canterbury. 
 Rochester. 
 London. 
 Dunwich. 
 Elanham. 
 Winchester. 
 Sherborne. 
 Crediton ^ 
 Wells I J 
 Ramsbury l 
 Cornwall .' 
 Lichfield. 
 Hereford. 
 Worcester. 
 
 Lindsey (Lidnacester). 
 I Leicester, removed to Dorchester 
 ' about 870. 
 
 Selsey. 
 
 York. 
 
 Lindisfarne. 
 
 Hexham. 
 
 Witherae. 
 
ERRATUM. 
 Page 57, line 15, /f?' "Egfrid" read "Egbert.'' 
 
THE HEPTARCHIC CHURCHES 57 
 
 In the eighth century the Northumhrian Church was 
 foremost in the introduction and cultivation of the 
 learning and fine arts which formed part of the Christian 
 civihsation of the Continent. Benedict Biscop, a young 
 man of noble birth and considerable wealth, brought 
 masons from France to build for him a monastery at 
 Wearmouth, and afterwards built a second monastery at 
 Jarrow, on the Continental model, and made several 
 journeys to France and Italy as far as Rome, collecting 
 both paintings and works of art for the enrichment of 
 his foundations. The monasteries of Wilfrid at Ripon 
 and Hexham were similar centres of religious learning 
 and art. 
 
 At Jarrow Bede gathered the learning which gave him 
 a European reputation. A little later, Egfrid, a man 
 of royal birth, when made Bishop of York (732 a.d.), 
 gathered learned men around him, and accumulated 
 what was for the time a great library, and made the 
 schools of York famous throughout Europe. Alcuin, the 
 master of this school, was induced by Charles the Great 
 to undertake the duty of elevating the learning of his 
 empire. York continued to be a great centre of religion 
 and learning till the invasion of the Danes at the close 
 of the century. 
 
 At the same time Aldhelm, a scion of the royal family 
 of Wessex, and a pupil of Theodore and Hadrian, made 
 Bishop of Sherborne in 705 a.d., raised up a school of 
 learned men in Wessex, and made it for the first half of 
 the century the rival of the school of York. From one 
 of the monasteries of his foundation, at Nutscelle in 
 Hampshire, went forth Winifrid, afterwards known as 
 Boniface, with a company of monks to be the Apostle 
 of Germany. At Bradford-on-Avon has recently been 
 
58 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 brought to liglit a very interesting Romanesque church, 
 perfect and unaltered, which is probably the original 
 church of the abbey founded there by Aldhelm in 
 705 A.D. 
 
 In the eighth century the political power of Mercia 
 grew under three bold and enterprising kings, ^thelbald, 
 Offa, and Cenwulf (716-819). Offa pushed back the 
 Welsh within the limit marked by "OfTa's dyke," and 
 brought all the smaller kingdoms of the south, Sussex, 
 Kent, Essex, and East Anglia, more or less completely 
 under his power. 
 
 He seems to have thought it became his dignity to 
 follow the example set by Northumbria, and to obtain 
 for his kingdom the dignity of being a separate eccle- 
 siastical province, and applied to the Bishop of Rome 
 for the honour of the pall for his chief bishop. The 
 Archbishop of Canterbury was too much in his power to 
 offer any resistance. A council was held at Cealchythe, 
 783 A.D., attended by two legates from Rome, who, how- 
 ever, took no ostensible part in the proceedings, the 
 council consented to the arrangement desired by the king, 
 and the dioceses of Mercia were constituted a separate 
 province with Lichfield for its metropolitan see. After 
 Offa's death, however, a council at Cloveshoe, 803 a.d., 
 restored the ancient arrangement without opposition 
 from the Mercian bishops. 
 
 In the ninth century Wessex obtained the supremacy 
 over the other kingdoms. Ecgbert returned from exile 
 (802 A.D.), having learned the arts of war and govern- 
 ment at the court of Charles the Great. Before he died 
 in 839 A.D., he had made himself overlord of all the 
 other kingdoms ; over Kent, Sussex, and Essex he 
 had appointed sub-kings of his own family; Mercia, 
 
THE HEPTARCHIC CHURCHES 59 
 
 Northumbria, and East Anglia retained their native 
 princes, but subject to the supreme authority of Ecgbert. 
 This authority was so firmly established that it descended 
 to his successors, so that Ecgbert is rightly accounted 
 the first king of England, 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 FROM THE DANISH INVASIONS TO THE 
 NORMAN CONQUEST 
 
 About the end of the eighth century history partially 
 repeated itself in a new series of barbarian invasions, in 
 which for a century the English suffered at the hands 
 of the Danes the miseries which their ancestors had 
 inflicted upon the Romano-Britons. At first armies of 
 the Danes, landing upon various parts of the coast, 
 marched inland, harried the country, and retired with 
 their booty ; then they began to make permanent settle- 
 ments. They seized East Anglia, separated from the 
 rest of the country by rivers and fens, and made it a 
 Danish colony ; they made themselves masters of the 
 towns of the midlands, and from them ruled the country 
 round about ; at length the victories of Guthrum in 
 Wessex left no English opponents of the Danish rule 
 in the field. 
 
 No sentiment of religion restrained the heathen in- 
 vaders from assailing the Church, and the wealth of the 
 monasteries and great churches made them special objects 
 of attack. The monasteries of Northumbria, Lindis- 
 farne, Whitby, Coldingham, Wearmouth, and Jarrow, 
 Ripon, Hexham, and York, the great religious houses 
 of the Fen country, Peterborough, Crowland, Ramsey, 
 Thorney, and Ely, were plundered and left in ruins. 
 
DANISH INVASIONS TO NORMAN CONQUEST 61 
 
 Learning died out from among the oppressed people. 
 It seemed as if the English rule was about to pass away 
 as the Roman had done, and Scandinavian rule to take 
 its place, and the old heathendom to revive. 
 
 It is the glory of Alfred (871-901 a.d.) that he 
 rescued the English monarchy from extinction and the 
 English race from its misery. Issuing from his retreat 
 amidst the marshes of the Parret, he inflicted a great 
 defeat uponGuthrum at Ethandun (Edington, 878 A.D.), 
 and dictated peace on the conditions that he and his 
 Danes should receive baptism, and should retire from 
 Wessex and its dependencies, Sussex, Kent, and the 
 western half of Mercia, holding the rest of England in 
 (nominal) subjection to Alfred. The work which yElfred 
 the Great had begun was continued by a succession of 
 able kings, his son and grandsons, Eadward the Un- 
 conquered, ^thelstan the Illustrious, Eadmund the 
 Magnificent, Eadred the Excellent, and Eadgar the 
 Peaceful ; by the middle of the tenth century the whole 
 country had been won back under English rule and 
 the Danish settlers thoroughly amalgamated with the 
 native English, so that the distinction between the men 
 of kindred races soon disappeared. 
 
 As soon as Alfred had won peace he proceeded at once 
 to revive learning and religion. His own account of 
 the condition to which the country had been brought 
 is as follows : "There was a time when foreigners sought 
 wisdom and learning in this island, now we are com- 
 pelled to seek them in foreign lands." " Few on this 
 side Humber, and I dare say not many on the other, 
 could understand the service in English or translate 
 a Latin epistle into tlieir own language. So few were 
 they, that I do not recollect a single individual to the 
 south of Thames who was able to do it when I ascended 
 
62 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 the throne." When Alfred founded a monastery at 
 Athelney in thanksgiving for his victory there, he had 
 to bring monks from France to fill it ; none of his own 
 subjects were, or were wiUing to become, monks ; from 
 the destruction of the monasteries by the Danes till 
 their revival in the time of Dunstan, nobody observed 
 monastic rule ; those who had the vocation went to 
 foreign monasteries, or lived as hermits in the ruins of 
 the old monasteries. The revival of convents of women 
 was more successful. Alfred founded Shaftesbury and 
 placed it under his daughter Ethelgeove, and in the 
 succeeding reigns others were founded. 
 
 The king sought for learned men in other countries. 
 Presbyter John and Provost Grimbald from France, 
 Asser from St. Davids, helped the king to found a 
 Palatine school at his court, to which he intrusted his son, 
 and he wished his thanes to do the same, and "added 
 a number of children from the lower classes." But 
 the school does not seem to have survived him ; war 
 engaged men's energies ; education languished till, under 
 Eadger, it received a new impulse from Dunstan and his 
 colleagues. 
 
 Eadger (959-975 a.d.) was an able and powerful 
 king, and Dunstan was the king's closest friend and 
 chief adviser. When Dunstan was made Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, he consecrated ^Ifstan to London and 
 Oswald to Worcester. These three prelates were the 
 great movers in the revival of religion, learning, and the 
 arts which distinguished the reign of Eadger. They 
 adopted the policy of restoring the discipline and 
 vitality of the monasteries, as the best agencies for 
 recovering the country from the ignorance and irre- 
 ligion which had been brought upon it by the Danish 
 wars. They rebuilt and restored the great monasteries 
 
DANISH INVASIONS TO NORMAN CONQUEST 63 
 
 of the east — Peterborough, Ely, Ramsey, and Thorney; 
 they restored the other monasteries up and down the 
 south and midland districts, establishing in them the 
 Benedictine rule. These reforms caused a great out- 
 cry, and very likely many cases of hardship occurred 
 in the replacement of married abbots and clerks and 
 monks, and the enforcement of the strict Benedictine 
 discipline. ^4ithelwold especially seems to have acted 
 arbitrarily in turning out the secular canons from his 
 cathedral of Winchester to replace them by monks. 
 Oswald contented himself with leaving the secular 
 canons in possession of Worcester Cathedral and 
 transferring his episcopal chair to the neighbouring 
 monastery. Dunstan made no change at Canterbury (it 
 was ^Ifric in 1003 who introduced the monks into that 
 cathedral); all the other cathedrals remained in the pos- 
 session of secular canons till the end of the Anglo-Saxon 
 period. Dunstan is the first English example of the 
 great ecclesiastic called to fulfil the duties of a great 
 minister, which was so common in after ages. And the 
 reigns in which Dunstan was the royal adviser were suc- 
 cessful reigns ; the country had peace and grew in pros- 
 perity ; religion revived, and learning and the arts began 
 to be successfully cultivated in the monastic schools. 
 The misrule and misery which followed after his death 
 helped by contrast to bring into greater prominence the 
 prosperity of the thirty years of Dunstan's influence, 
 and to make him the popular saint of the mother 
 church of Canterbury, till his memory was eclipsed by 
 the more tragic interest which made St. Thomas illus- 
 trious as the martyr-defender of the immunities of the 
 Church. 
 
 Eadger died leaving two boys. Edward the Martyr 
 was murdered after a reign of four years, and was sue- 
 
64 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH 'OF ENGLAND 
 
 ceeded by ^thelred the Unready (without counsel). 
 Early in his reign new swarms of Danes and Norwegians 
 began to make descents upon the country. In 1012 
 they murdered ^Iphea (St. Alphage), now Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, on his refusal to burden his people with 
 the price of the ransom demanded of him. In 1013 
 Sweyn came with a great army, the country submitted 
 to him, and ^thelred fled to Normandy. On the death 
 of the two kings, their sons, Canute and Edmund Iron- 
 side, succeeded to their father's claims, and, after much 
 fighting, agreed to divide the kingdom for their lifetime, 
 with succession to the survivor. Edmund died in 1016, 
 and Canute the Dane remained king of Denmark and of 
 England. He ruled justly and wisely, and endeavoured 
 to promote the prosperity and revive the religion of 
 England ; he restored ail the holy places which had 
 in any way suffered during his own and his father's wars, 
 from Glastonbury to St. Edmundsbury, founded new 
 churches, and was a munificent benefactor to the 
 Church. In 1027 (?) he made the pilgrimage to Rome. 
 On his death his son Horthacanute brought over a force 
 of Danes and began to rule England as a conquered 
 land ; on his death in 1042, the English invited Eadward, 
 the son of .^thelred, the representative of their old kings, 
 to resume the throne of his fathers. 
 
 The Saxons were skilful in some of the arts ; their 
 MSS. were magnificent specimens of writing in large, 
 bold, perfectly formed letters, ornamented in a peculiar 
 style of interlaced ribbon-work, which probably came 
 from the East, since there are examples of it in Syria, 
 Greece, and Italy, but it is found in its greatest profusion 
 and perfection in the MSS. and stone monuments of the 
 Celtic and Northumbrian schools ; their embroidery was 
 famous beyond the bounds of the island ; they seem to 
 
DANISH INVASIONS TO NORMAN CONQUEST 65 
 
 have practised the art of enamelling before it was used 
 in the other European countries ; but in all their early 
 works, the attempts at representing the human figure are 
 childishly ignorant and rude. The revival of learning 
 under Dunstan and his colleagues was accompanied by 
 a revival of art. Dunstan himself was famous for his 
 artistic skill. The Benedictional of St. Ethelwold, in 
 the library of the Duke of Devonshire, is a magnificent 
 example of the illuminator's work, and the numerous 
 figures of saints and angels show the influence of the 
 finest Byzantine art ; the Psalter of ^thelstan, of a little 
 later date, shows the growing influence of a classical 
 revival. Of their architecture we know little. The re- 
 cently discovered church at Bradwell is of hewn stone 
 in Romanesque style, very interesting archseologically, 
 but not a fine example of design. Not a single Saxon 
 cathedral remains, and the fact that the first Norman 
 bishops everywhere without exception built new ones 
 seems to indicate that there was nothing of them worth 
 preserving. (The East Anglian cathedral at Elmham 
 was of timber.) 
 
 For a long time past England had had little inter- 
 course of any kind with the Continent of Europe, and 
 its intellectual and religious life had not been much 
 affected by the currents of Continental thought and feel- 
 ing ; neither had it developed any novelties of its own. 
 It had maintained its constitution in Church and State; 
 in doctrine, discipline, and ritual the Enghsh Church had 
 retained the traditions of its seventh-century founders. It 
 was credulous about miracles and dreams and visions, 
 and superstitious about relics; it believed in the pur- 
 gatory of which Gregory the Great had been the first 
 great exponent; but the theory of transubstantiation, 
 by which the schoolmen had recently tried to explain 
 
 s. T. E 
 
66 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 the mystery of the Sacrament in terms of a philosophy 
 which is now exploded, had not reached the English 
 mind ; and there had been no attempt as yet to extend 
 to England the Papal supremacy, which was rapidly 
 reducing the Continental churches to the Roman 
 obedience. 
 
 With the reign of Edward the Confessor begins a new 
 period in the history of the Church of England. His 
 father, Ethelred, had married Emma, sister of Richard 
 Duke of Normandy, and Edward had been brought up 
 at the Norman court, and, when called to the throne of 
 England in 1042 at the age of forty, he brought with him 
 his Norman ideas. England, so long depressed by the 
 Danish wars, was behind Normandy in civilisation, and 
 Edward was no doubt influenced by the highest politic 
 motives as well as by his personal predilections in filling 
 his court with Normans and placing them in high 
 offices. 
 
 In order to understand the change in the relations of 
 the Church of England to the See of Rome which began 
 under Edward the Confessor, it is necessary to introduce 
 here a digression on the recent history of the Roman 
 Church. 
 
 The peaceful revolution which placed Pepin and his 
 descendants on the throne of the Franks in place of 
 the effete Merovingian dynasty, owed something of its 
 success, and the new dynasty owed much of its prestige, 
 to the moral sanction which the Pope of the time gave 
 to the transaction. Very shortly after the new king of 
 the Franks made a royal payment for the service which 
 Zacharias had done him by driving the Lombards out 
 of the Exarchate of Ravenna and bestowing it upon the 
 See of Rome (755 a.d.). This was the beginning of 
 the Temporal Power of the Popes. For a time they 
 
DANISH INVASIONS TO NORMAN CONQUEST 67 
 
 held the new acquisition as a fief of the Fraiikish 
 crown, but when the great feudatories of the Empire 
 took advantage of the weakness of Charles's successors 
 to assume independent sovereignty, the Popes also got 
 rid of their subjection and ruled as sovereign princes. 
 This aggrandisement of the See carried with it its dis- 
 advantages. 
 
 In tiie ninth and tenth centuries, owing to the growth 
 of population, the cultivation of wild lands, and the con- 
 sequent increase of wealth, many of the great European 
 Sees had become very wealthy, and the feudal rights of 
 bishops and abbots over their own domains had raised 
 them to the dignity of great feudal lords. The result was 
 that where princes nominated to these great benefices, 
 they often conferred them upon their own relations, or 
 bestowed them as rewards of service or gifts of favour, 
 or sold them to the highest bidder ; where these great 
 benefices were the subject of election, they became the 
 objects of intrigue and bribery, and often a great family 
 in the neighbourhood studied to obtain such a prepon- 
 derating influence with the electoral body as would place 
 the benefice at their disposal. 
 
 The men thus appointed to the great benefices of 
 the Church had often no true vocation for holy orders, 
 and neglected the duties of their ofiice ; their neglect 
 and bad example affected the character of the lower 
 clergy and of the laity; learning grew scarce and dis- 
 cipline lax among the clergy; the laity grew up ignorant 
 and irreligious. 
 
 The Roman See was the greatest prize of the Church, 
 and its jiossession was the great object of rival factions 
 of the Italian nobles. Its history during this period 
 affords the most horrible example of the corruption into 
 which the Church had fallen. Baronius, one of the 
 
68 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 great Papal historians, is obliged to admit that during 
 this period fifty Popes succeeded one another " of whom 
 many secured possession of the See by fraud or money, or 
 by worse expedients," i.e., by murder ; and many of them 
 lived lives of open and extreme profligacy. This con- 
 dition of the Church had caused great discontent and 
 not a little disaffection among the people. At the end 
 of the tenth century there was a desire for a reform of 
 abuses, and any movement in this direction was sure 
 of strong popular sympathy. This movement sprang up 
 in Rome itself. Hildebrand, an Italian monk of the 
 new order of Clugny, was tiie soul of it, and a series 
 of Popes were the chief agents of a great reformation. 
 Hildebrand had come into contact with Pope Leo IX. 
 at the very beginning of his reign, obtained his con- 
 fidence and became his trusted adviser, not only his, 
 but that of his four successors, and he himself succeeded 
 after them, so that Hildebrand was the soul of the Papacy 
 during six reigns, from 1049 to io8S- Hildebrand's 
 theory was that the Bishop of Rome was a kmd of 
 spiritual emperor, and all baptized Christians his sub- 
 jects, and that he had by divine right supreme authority 
 not only over prelates, but over princes. 
 
 Leo adopted the novel method of making a personal 
 visitation of the churches, holding councils at important 
 centres for the correction of abuses. In Italy no one 
 objected to his authority; in Germany he had the sup- 
 port of the Emperor, his cousin ; iiis visitation of France 
 was an invasion of the rights of the French king and 
 Church, but public opinion was strongly on the side of 
 the reforming Pope ; the king did not venture to oppose 
 him, and the clergy submitted to him. This bold 
 measure gave a great impulse to the work of reform, 
 and greatly increased the prestige of the Papal See ; for 
 
DANISH INVASIONS TO NORMAN CONQUEST 69 
 
 the general submission established the claim of the Pope 
 to be the corrector of abuses in the churches and the 
 censor of morals of the whole body of the faithful. Primi- 
 tive discipline was restored in the monastic orders ; new 
 orders with a stricter rule were founded. As sees and 
 benefices fell vacant, many of them were refilled with 
 men of the new school, and a very general revival of 
 religion was in progress throughout the Continent of 
 Europe. 
 
 England was outside the sphere of the Popes' re- 
 forms, and its isolation put it almost beyond the reach 
 of their influence ; indeed, the domestic troubles in 
 which the country had been so long involved had saved 
 it from the worst abuses which have been described. 
 
 King Edward was of somewhat feeble character, 
 whose principal trait was a piety entirely in harmony 
 with the new school, and carried to fanatical extremes. 
 He was a vowed celibate notwithstanding his politic 
 marriage of Earl Godwin's daughter ; he thought that 
 he saw visions and received miraculous intimations ; 
 he believed that his touch cured the " king's evil ; " 
 he vowed a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and built 
 Westminster Abbey as the price of absolution from his 
 vow. He recognised tiie backwardness of the English 
 Church, and thought that the best way to improve it 
 was by introducing eminent foreigners of the new 
 school into its higher offices as ojjpoitunity should 
 occur. Accordingly, on the vacancy of the See of 
 London in 1044 a.d., Edward nominated Robert of 
 Jumieges, who obtained great influence over the king's 
 mind. In the next year, 1045, he nominated Herman 
 of Lotharingia to Ramsbury ; Ulf, a Norman, to Dor- 
 chester in 1049 ; Leofric to Exeter in 1050 ; and in 105 1, 
 
70 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 refusing the Saxon priest preferred by the Witan, the 
 king promoted Robert of Jumieges to the See of Can- 
 terbury, and passed over another Saxon nominated to 
 London in favour of William, a Norman ; and in 1061 he 
 nominated Giso, a Lorrainer, to Wells. But the king's 
 fondness for foreigners was offensive to the popular 
 patriotism, it threatened to undermine the political 
 power which Earl Godwin and his family had ob- 
 tained in the country, and led to a revolt before which 
 the Norman favourites fled. Godwin and his family 
 were banished for their share in this revolt, but re- 
 turned in a few months, and the king found himself 
 unable to resist their reinstatement. The same Witan 
 which restored Godwin declared Robert of Canterbury 
 and Ulf of Dorchester outlawed, but allowed William 
 to retain the See of London on account of his good 
 character; the same Witan promoted Stigand, the 
 ecclesiastical adviser of Cnut and Godwin, to the See 
 of Canterbury. Stigand's position was, however, a 
 doubtful one even in the estimation of his friends. 
 Robert of Jumieges still claimed the See and filled the 
 courts of Europe with the story of his wrongs. There 
 were at the time two claimants of the Papal See, and 
 Stigand continued six years without seeking the recogni- 
 tion of either of them, wearing, it was said, the pall of 
 his predecessor, until at last he received his pall irom 
 Honorius, the Anti-Pope. Some of the new bishops 
 elected in his time, viz., Giso of Wells and Walter of 
 Hereford, declined to receive consecration from him, and 
 went to Rome and were consecrated by the Pope. So 
 that the influence of the new school of religious thought 
 was being introduced into England by King Edward 
 and his foreign bishops. The English Church was 
 
DANISH INVASIONS TO NORMAN CONQUEST 71 
 
 entering into an intercourse with the Continental Church 
 greater than at any period since Romano-British times, 
 and the way was being prepared for the inclusion of the 
 Church of England within the patriarchate of the Roman 
 See, which William formally carried into effect. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PAPAL SUPREMACY 
 OVER THE ENGLISH CHURCH 
 
 It is not necessary even to summarise here a portion 
 of English history so familiar as the Norman Conquest; 
 its effect upon the Church of England is what this 
 history is especially concerned with. 
 
 Normandy was within the patriarchate of Rome. 
 William had submitted to the Pope's censure of his 
 marriage within the forbidden degrees, and had built 
 two abbeys at Caen as the price of the Papal dispensa- 
 tion. He was under especial obligation to the Roman 
 See, for the Pope had sanctioned his invasion of England 
 as a holy war, and the battle of Senlac was fought under 
 a banner which the Pope had blessed. 
 
 The Conquest brought England for the first time into 
 the family of the European nations, and the Conqueror 
 would take its inclusion into the Western Patriarchate 
 as a necessary consequence. He had occasion to seek 
 at once for the Pope's intervention in the affairs of the 
 English Church. The position of Archbishop Stigand, 
 as has been stated, was one of doubtful legality, and 
 was likely to lead to great difficulties. Besides, both 
 King and Pope had their own reasons for desiring to 
 be rid of him. That Stigand had recognised the Anti- 
 Pope Honorius, and received his pall from him, was 
 
ESTABLISHMENT OF PAPAL SUPREMACY 73 
 
 to the Pope sufficient reason for disliking and excuse 
 for deposing him. The king had still better reasons. 
 Stigand had been for many years the chaplain of 
 Godwin, the partisan of his house, and one of the chief 
 leaders of the anti-Norman party. It was by the influ- 
 ence of the house of Godwin that he had been made 
 archbishop ; and he had crowned Harold. His prompt 
 submission after the battle of Senlac, and the service 
 he had rendered in inducing the English to accept the 
 Conqueror as their king, did not save him. But what 
 native tribunal could try the archbishop ? It was pre- 
 cisely the kind of extraordinary case which might justify, 
 if anything could, an appeal to a foreign authority, and 
 William invited the Pope to send two legates to deal with 
 it. It was not the king's policy, however, to bring back 
 Robert of Jumieges, so the charges against Stigand 
 omitted the question of the validity of Stigand's appoint- 
 ment while Robert was still living, and rested upon the 
 rather inadequate charges of having recognised the Anti- 
 Pope and received his pall from him, and of having held 
 the See of Winchester in commendam with that of 
 Canterbury. On these grounds a synod held at Win- 
 chester (1070) under the presidency of the two legates 
 deposed the archbishop, and he was committed to 
 prison, in which soon afterwards he miserably perished. 
 His deposition involved that of his brother, ^thelmar, 
 Bishop of Elmham, and of ^thelric. Bishop of Selsey, 
 on the ground that their consecration by Stigand was 
 invalid. Circumstances favoured the desire of the king 
 to have the sees occupied by men who would be loyal 
 to himself The Bishop of Durham had incurred the 
 penalties of treason ; York and Lichfield were vacant by 
 death ; London, Hereford, Wells, Ramsbury, Exeter 
 had been filled up by foreigners of the Confessor's 
 
74 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 appointment ; the Norman Remigius had been ap- 
 pointed to Dorchester since the battle of Senlac. The 
 vacancies were filled by the Conqueror ; the two remain- 
 in,' sees, Worcester and Rochester, were allowed to 
 retain their native bishops. Many of the greater abbots 
 were deprived and Normans put in their places. It is 
 right to say that William's nominees to the sees were all 
 able men, some of them learned and pious. For though 
 the Conqueror was ambitious, stern, relentless, there 
 was a strain of righteousness in his character; he was 
 not only a great captain, but a great statesman, and he 
 desired the welfare of the country of which he had 
 made himself king ; and though he made no great pro- 
 fessions of religion, his ecclesiastical policy was directed 
 to the promotion of learning and religion. 
 
 The minister of his ecclesiastical policy was Lan- 
 FRANC, late abbot of William's monastery at Caen, 
 whom he nominated to the See of Canterbury. It 
 was a good appointment both for the king and the 
 Church. The new archbishop had obtained his reputa- 
 tion as a scholar and theologian, but he was also a man 
 of strong sense and practical ability, such as the office 
 and the time required. Prepared to accept the visita- 
 torial office of the See of Rome over the English Church, 
 but equally resolute not to admit any undue exercise 
 of the power, he did not go in person to Rome for 
 the pall; when Gregory VII. invited him to visit Rome 
 as an act of deference to the See, he declined, and when 
 the Pope finally summoned him with threats, he ignored 
 the summons. 
 
 In settling the relations between the English Church 
 and the See of Rome, William took up a clear and firm 
 position. While bringing the English Church into the 
 organised ecclesiastical system of the Western Patri- 
 
ESTABLISHMENT OF PAPAL SUPREMACY 75 
 
 archate, and recognising the general visitatorial autho- 
 rity of the Roman See, he stringently safeguarded the 
 rights of the English crown and Church. He laid it 
 down that no legate should visit England or any bull 
 be received into the country without the license of the 
 crown ; on the other hand, that no appeal should 
 be made from England to the Roman See without his 
 leave ; so that the interference of the Pope was limited 
 to emergencies worthy of so great an authority, and of 
 what constituted such an emergency the crown was the 
 judge in each particular case. 
 
 In regulating the affairs of England, the king also 
 made an alteration in the relations which had hitherto 
 existed between the Church and the State. The rela- 
 tions between the Church and the State in Saxon times 
 had grown up out of the facts of the case. The mission 
 bishops who converted the Saxons were most of them 
 men of a superior type of civilisation to the rude people 
 among whom they lived, and introduced among them 
 higher ideas of law and administration and the arts of 
 life, as well as of learning and religion. The first codes 
 of law of some of the kingdoms, if not of all of them, were 
 made under the advice of their bishops. The bishops 
 and chief clergy sat habitually in the witenagemots ; 
 they assisted also in the administration of affairs, 
 the bishop sitting with shire-reeve and ealdorman in 
 the shire-moot to do justice in all cases, secular and 
 ecclesiastical, which came before them ; and the parish 
 priests presided in the meetings of the township for the 
 regulation of its local affairs. The relations of Church 
 and State were very intimate ; no attempt had been made 
 to discriminate their several spheres ; it was enough that 
 they worked satisfactorily. No doubt this old constitu- 
 tion was rude and unscientific, and the king undertook 
 
76 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 to amend it. By a charter (probably of 1086 a.d.) he 
 decreed that the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions 
 should be divided, and that henceforth no bishop or 
 archdeacon should hold pleas concerning ecclesiastical 
 matters in the hundred court, and that no cause re- 
 lating to the cure of souls should be brought before a 
 secular judge ; but that every person summoned in an 
 ecclesiastical cause or charge should appear before the 
 bishop wherever he should appoint, and there answer, 
 not according to the hundred law, but according to the 
 canons and ecclesiastical laws ; and if any should refuse 
 to appear or to obey the bishop's judgment, the sherifif 
 of the county should bring him to reason ; but that no 
 sheriff, magistrate, or king's ofificer should meddle with 
 laws belonging to the bishop. The king also decreed 
 that the clergy in their synods, no longer attended by 
 king and nobles, should make no new laws without the 
 king's assent ; and that sentence of excommunication 
 should not be passed upon tenants in capite without the 
 king's license. 
 
 The necessary consequence was the organisation of 
 ecclesiastical courts. Every bishop had to make 
 arrangements for dealing with the cases which were thus 
 brought before him. The bishop could not devote 
 sufficient time to it, and was obliged to commission 
 officials to represent and act for him. Persons learned 
 in ecclesiastical law were needed to conduct the causes 
 of those who came before these courts, and, in short, 
 all the machinery of a system for the administration 
 of this new judicature had to be created. The eccle- 
 siastical courts had jurisdiction over all the clergy, 
 and the various orders of the clergy included a very 
 large number of persons, nearly all persons of any 
 education ; so that, till a very recent period, the fact of 
 
ESTABLISHMENT OF PAPAL SUPREMACY 77 
 
 being able to read was accepted as evidence that a man 
 belonged to the clergy, and entitled him to the privilege 
 of clergy, that is, exempted him from the jurisdiction 
 of the civil courts. The ecclesiastical courts took 
 cognisance of all that belonged to the clergy in their 
 daily life and conduct as well as in their ministry. The 
 jurisdiction comprised all causes relating to the faith 
 and morals of the laity; all questions arising about 
 marriages, legitimacy, wills, administration of intestates' 
 estates, fiduciary and pledging contracts, promises and 
 keeping of oaths. The result of all this was to make the 
 clergy a privileged class, governed by their own officers 
 according to their own laws, and to give the bishops 
 authority over wide spheres of the social life and business 
 of the whole people. 
 
 A very useful reform made at the Synod of London 
 (1075) was the removal of some of the Sees from villages 
 to the principal cities within their jurisdiction; thus 
 Sherborne was transferred to Old Sarum (afterwards to 
 Salisbury in 1218); Selsey to Chichester; Lichfield to 
 Chester (afterwards to Coventry in 1095); Elmham to 
 Thetford (removed again to Norwich in 1094) ; and 
 subsequently, in 1095, Dorchester to Lincoln. 
 
 The Normans were great builders; every bishop 
 rebuilt his cathedral church. The new religious orders 
 were in the full blaze of their reputation and usefulness, 
 and it was the fashion for a great baron to found a 
 monastery, just as it had been for a Saxon lord of a 
 manor to build a church on his estate. 
 
 Lanfranc survived the Conqueror by seventeen years, 
 and during that time his powerful influence controlled 
 the conduct of Rufus and kept the affairs of the Church 
 and kingdom in order. On Lanfranc's death (1090), 
 the king at once entered upon other courses. He kept 
 
78 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 the See of Canterbury vacant for three years; it was 
 part of a new device of keeping sees and abbacies vacant, 
 and appropriating ihe revenues to the royal exchequer. 
 At length, in 1093, Rufus was taken with an illness which 
 threatened his life, and then he consented, among otlier 
 acts of tardy repentance, to fill the vacant archbishopric. 
 
 Anselm, who had succeeded Lanfranc at Caen, 
 happened to be in England at the time; his great 
 reputation for learning and sanctity led the bishops and 
 nobles to press him upon the king as the right man 
 for the archbishopric. Anselm recognised the diffi- 
 culties of the position and his unfitness to cope with 
 them. " You would yoke an old sheep," he said, " with 
 a fiery steed to draw the plough of England ; " but the 
 office was forced upon him. 
 
 Anselm was not only the most famous theologian of 
 his day, but one of the great theologians of the Middle 
 Ages ; his work, Cur Deus homo — Why God became 
 man — is still a work of authority. He was, besides, 
 of saintly character ; but he was a failure as archbishop. 
 For one thing, he was wholly in favour of the lofty views 
 whicti had lately been put forward as to the Papal 
 supremacy, and would have entirely surrendered the 
 liberties of the English crown and Church had he been 
 allowed ; and for another thing, he had not the practical 
 statesmanlike ability which his office required, and which 
 the difficulties of the time made exceptionally needful ; 
 the greater part of his episcopate during the reign of 
 Rufus was spent in exile, while the ecclesiastical affairs 
 of the kingdom were running into worse confusion. 
 
 The king recovered from his sickness, and occasion of 
 disagreement arose at once between him and the new 
 archbishop. It was the custom for a newly appointed 
 prelate to made a present to the king. Anselm offered 
 
ESTABLISHMENT OF PAPAL SUPREMACY 79 
 
 ;^5oo;* the king refused it. Anselm declared that he 
 could not give more without oppressing the tenants of 
 the See, and when the king still refused to accept it, he 
 gave it in alms to the poor. 
 
 Then Anselm requested permission to go to Rome to 
 receive his pall. This raised two difficulties. First, the 
 question of going to Rome in person for the pall. In 
 earlier times the pall had been a merely complimentary 
 decoration ; Gregory the Great had begun the practice 
 of limiting it to archbishops. In the course of the 
 constantly growing claims of the Roman See, Nicholas 
 I. (a.d. 866) had started the theory that a new arch- 
 bishop could not legitimately enter upon the duties of 
 his office till he had received the pall, i.e., till he had 
 received the Papal recognition, which had the effect of 
 giving the Pope a power of intervention in the appoint- 
 ment of archbishops. A little later it was claimed that 
 the confirmation by the Pope of an archbishop's election 
 was necessary to the validity of his consecration, and 
 that the pall was the token of this confirmation. Lastly, 
 the Hildebrandine Popes had begun to require a new 
 archbishop to go to Rome in person to solicit the pall, 
 and the opportunity was taken to require from him 
 homage and oaths of fealty to the Roman See. The 
 effect of it was to put a check upon the right of nomina- 
 tion, and to diminish the royal authority over some of 
 its most powerful subjects. So far as it was the object 
 of the Hildebrandine party to hinder princes from 
 making bad appointments, we may sympathise with 
 them; but inasmuch as it was also the object of the 
 Popes to make the bishops of the Church everywhere 
 the ministers of their ecclesiastical monarchy, directly 
 
 * Equivalent to ^Sooo to 10,000 of our present money. 
 
8o HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 
 
 dependent upon themselves and under their command, 
 we must object to this invasion of the Hberties of 
 National Churches. The king opposed the encroach- 
 ment upon the long-established custom under which the 
 crown had exercised the right of nomination to sees 
 and great abbacies, and had received homage and oaths 
 of fealty on induction. What had grown into a custom 
 in the latter portion of the Saxon period, William the 
 Conqueror had established as part of the royal preroga- 
 tive. The son of the Conqueror and the pupil of 
 Lanfranc was not ignorant of policy or likely to yield 
 any of his royal right. Therefoie the proposal of the 
 new archbishop to go to Rome to receive the pall in 
 person from the Pope was not likely to meet with a 
 ready assent. 
 
 But there was another difficulty. There were two 
 rival Popes in the field. Gregory VII. had supported 
 Rudolf in the attempt to oust Henry IV. from his 
 place as Emperor of Germany, and Henry had retorted 
 by promoting the election (Whitsuntide 1080) of a rival 
 Pope under the title of Clement III. On the death of 
 Gregory (1085), his party had, after many difficulties 
 and in an irregular manner, elected Urban II. (March 
 1088). The Conqueror had expressly claimed for the 
 crown the right to decide between rival claimants to the 
 Papacy, and hitherto the king had made no decision 
 in this case, and the Church of England was not 
 committed to either Pope. When Anselm asked leave 
 to seek his pall from the Pope, the king asked, 
 "Which Pope?" and Anselm replied, "Urban." "But 
 I have not acknowledged him ; " and he accused Anselm 
 of a breach of his oath of fealty in taking upon himself 
 to recognise Urban. 
 
 It seems probable that the king had made up his 
 
ESTABLISHMENT OF PAPAL SUPREMACY 8i 
 
 mind to recognise Urban, but that he desired to obtain 
 some concessions as the price of his recognition of the 
 Pope's title, and the subsequent proceedings make it 
 seem hkely that one of these concessions was the right 
 of giving the pall to his own archbishops. The king at 
 once sent agents to Rome, who seem to have proposed 
 some such compromise. They returned accompanied 
 by a legate from Urban, and the legate brought the pall 
 with him. Then the king proclaimed Urban as Pope 
 without consultation with his archbishop. The Pope 
 had obtained the recognition of England, and the king 
 on his side had obtained that his archbishop should 
 not be required to go to Rome to fetch his pall. But 
 now the Pope put in practice one of those clever com- 
 promises by which the subtlety of the Italian See has 
 so often evaded its difficulties. The Pope did not 
 send the pall direct to Anselm ; neither did he give 
 it to the king that he might bestow it ; the legate 
 laid it on the altar of Canterbury Cathedral, and the 
 archbishop took it from the altar and endued himself 
 with it. 
 
 The peace between the violent king and the inflexible 
 prelate did not last long. The king soon after took 
 steps to bring the archbishop to trial on the charge 
 that the troops he had furnished for the Welsh war 
 were insufficient in number and equipment; no doubt 
 intending to harass him into submission. Anselm asked 
 leave to go to Rome to consult the Pope ; the king 
 refused, and threatened him that if he went without 
 leave he would seize the archbishopric and never suffer 
 him to return. The inflexible prelate nevertheless went, 
 and the violent king fulfilled his threats. 
 
 Anselm's exile gave him leisure to write the book Ct/r 
 Detis homo already mentioned, and to take an important 
 
82 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 part in the Council at Barii (1098) which anathema- 
 tised the Greek Church for its view on the Procession 
 of the Holy Ghost, and created the breach which has 
 ever since existed between the Churches of the East and 
 West. He also attended a synod at Rome (the first 
 time an Archbishop of Canterbury had appeared at a 
 Roman synod), at which a canon was passed declaring 
 excommunicate all laymen who gave investiture for 
 cathedrals or abbeys, and those also who received investi- 
 ture from lay hands or came under the tenure of homage 
 for such promotions. 
 
 On the death of William H. and the accession of 
 Henry (iioo a.d.), the new king hastened to invite 
 Anselm to return to his See. On his arrival, the arch- 
 bishop was required to receive reinvestiture, which was 
 the formal confirmation of his status, and to do homage 
 to the new king, as was usual at the beginning of a new 
 reign. Anselm refused to comply, pleading the canon 
 recently made at Rome. 
 
 When Anselm pleaded the recent canon, the king 
 exclaimed, "What have I to do with a Roman 
 canon ? " and the king was right. Roman canons 
 never had been received (and it may be added never 
 afterwards were received) as of any authority in Eng- 
 land; the English Church makes its own canons, and 
 is governed by no other. Anselm declared roundly 
 that unless the king thought fit to comply with the 
 See of Rome, he would not stay in the country. 
 Henry showed great moderation and discretion. He 
 probably saw that with the Pope the new encroach- 
 ment on the rights of princes was a matter of policy, 
 
 ' It was at this council that the Pope seated the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury on his right hand, and made use of the complimentary 
 phrase that he was Pa/a ulterioris orbis. 
 
ESTABLISHMENT OF PAPAL SUPREMACY 83 
 
 to be insisted upon or withdrawn or moderated as cir- 
 cumstances might make it expedient, while Anselm 
 made it a matter of conscience to obey the Pope ; so 
 he proposed that the question should rest till Easter 
 following, an interval of about eight months, during 
 which both sides should send agents to Rome to in- 
 duce the Pope to dispense with the canon, and in the 
 meantime Anselm was to be restored to the profits and 
 jurisdiction of his See. The negotiations were greatly 
 protracted, but at last the two parties agreed upon a com- 
 promise. The chapters were to have freedom of election ; 
 the consecration was committed to the metropolitan and 
 com-provincial bishops; the bestowal of the temporal 
 estates and jurisdiction was recognised as belonging 
 to the crown, but the king was not to give investiture 
 with staif and ring, which had the appearance of giving 
 the bishops and abbots their spiritual character and 
 authority, but the bishops and abbots were to do homage 
 to the king, and swear fealty for their temporalities. 
 The decision was formally settled at a meeting of bishops 
 and nobles held in London a.d. 1107. The crown soon 
 began to evade the conditions of the compromise, and, at 
 first by exercising indirect influence on the chapters, and 
 before long by sending a "letter-missive" together with 
 the {:onge d'elire, it retained the actual nomination.^ 
 
 One great motive of the crown for retaining the 
 patronage of the Sees was that the kings had already 
 adopted the policy of paying the ministers of their civil 
 administration — secretaries of state, ambassadors, judges, 
 and such like — not out of the revenues of the crown, nor 
 out of the taxes of the people, but out of the benefices 
 
 ^ The quarrel of investitures a little later raged between the 
 Emperor and the Pope, and was settled by a similar compromise. 
 
4 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 of the Church ; so that the history of England during 
 the Middle Ages contains a constant succession of names 
 of statesmen-bishops. But it is necessary to discrimi- 
 nate between them. Some were bishops first and states- 
 men afterwards — bishops whose force of character and 
 genius, joined to their high position, gave them influence 
 in affairs of State, like Lanfranc, Langton, and others down 
 to Laud ; others were statesmen first, who had all along 
 been paid for their services by church benefices, and at 
 length attained to the rank and revenues of a bishopric 
 as to one of the highest prizes in the civil service, as 
 Corbeuil, Peter des Roches, Becket while chancellor, 
 Wykeham, Arundel, and many others down to Bishop 
 Williams, the Lord Keeper of the reigns of James and 
 Charles, who was the last of them. These latter per- 
 formed their ecclesiastical duties by deputy, and in 
 most cases their dioceses must have suffered by their 
 absence; but it must be admitted that some of them 
 were equal to the double task, and were eminent for 
 their services to the Church as well as to the State. 
 
 The " freedom of election " (which was nominally con- 
 ceded by Henry IL, which was guaranteed in the first 
 clause of Magna Charta, which was formally given in 
 each case by the co;ige d'e/ire, and which was practically 
 violated by the letter-missive nominating a particular 
 person to be elected), was the right of the Church to 
 .elect bishops who would do its work, and not to have 
 men thrust into its highest offices by the king as pay- 
 ment for doing the king's work. 
 
 On the death of Henry, Stephen of Blois, the nephew 
 of the late king and grandson of the Conqueror, was 
 elected king, largely through the support of Henry's 
 statesmen-bishops, and of Henry, Bishop of Winchester, 
 Stephen's brother. The hereditary claims of Matilda, 
 
ESTABLISHMENT OF PAPAL SUPREMACY S5 
 
 the daughter of Henry, were, however, ably supported 
 by her illegitimate half-brother, Robert, Earl of Salis- 
 bury, and a civil war followed, which soon degenerated 
 into anarchy. Every man who could do it built a castle 
 to protect himself from his neighbours ; the barons 
 waged war one against another ; robber knights from 
 their fortresses oppressed their defenceless neighbours, 
 so that many fled from their houses for fear, and left 
 whole tracts of country waste and uninhabited. It 
 would seem at first sight as if this must have been a bad 
 time for religion ; but, perhaps owing in some measure 
 to the very insecurity and misery in which people lived, 
 there was a great and general revival of religious feeling, 
 which extended to men of all ranks and classes in town 
 and country. One feature of this religious revival was 
 tlie foundation of new monasteries and the introduction 
 of new orders of monks. It is not, perhaps, to be 
 wondered at that 1115 new castles were built in this 
 reign, but it is amazing to find that there were more 
 monasteries built in it than in any other reign, in number 
 more than a hundred. The power of the clergy was 
 great in this reign ; in the beginning of it, it had placed 
 Stephen on the throne ; in the latter part of it, it inter- 
 posed to put an end to the civil strife. The bishops re- 
 fused Stephen's desire to have his son Eustace crowned 
 in his own lifetime as his successor, and when Henry 
 Fitz- Empress appeared in arms to support his own 
 claims, the bishops intervened between the hostile 
 forces, and brought both rulers to accept a compromise, 
 by which Stephen was to retain the throne for life, and 
 Henry to inherit after him. 
 
 The Normans built great and strong castles, stately 
 cathedrals, noble abbeys. No one can see Ely or Peter- 
 borough or Durham, or a dozen other churches which 
 
86 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 might be mentioned, without being impressed with a 
 sense of the grand conceptions and mastery of a noble 
 style of architecture of the men who planned and built 
 them. The proportions of the buildings are often fine, 
 and the introduction of the cross ground plan for the 
 great churches with central and western towers, gave a 
 picturesqueness of grouping which was lacking in the 
 exterior design of the earlier basilicas ; the zigzag and 
 other characteristic mouldings are rich but bizarre, and 
 animal forms are introduced into the mouldings with a 
 feeling approaching the grotesque ; the attempts at the 
 human figure are rude. In the latter part of the style 
 the wall spaces were often covered with surface carving, 
 which gave great richness of effect. 
 
 The monastic institution had just before the Norman 
 Conquest experienced a grand revival, which had led to 
 the reform of the Benedictine houses and the foundation 
 of new orders based upon the Benedictine rule. The 
 Norman nobles were great patrons of the institution, and 
 it became a kind of fashion for every great noble to found 
 a monastery on his estates, just as in earlier times it was 
 the custom for a Saxon landowner to provide a parish 
 priest. Of the new orders of the Benedictine family, the 
 chief were the Clugniac, Cistercian, Carthusian. The new 
 houses were often founded in wild parts of the country, 
 and their first endowment consisted of a large tract of un- 
 reclaimed land. The skilful industry of the monks gradu- 
 ally brought the land under cultivation, and the houses 
 became wealthy. At first they spent their wealth chiefly in 
 noble churches with dignified cloister buildings attached. 
 For some centuries the influence of the monasteries was 
 great and beneficial. They were strongholds of religion 
 and learning, pioneers of progress in civilisation, good and 
 considerate landlords and kind to the poor ; their abbots 
 
ESTABLISHMENT OF PAPAL SUPREMACY 87 
 
 mingled as equals with the territorial aristocracy, and 
 helped to mould its opinions and customs. There were 
 something less than a hundred monasteries at the Con- 
 quest ; William and his two successors added upwards of 
 300 ; many others were subsequently founded ; so that, 
 by the end of the thirteeenth century, great and wealthy 
 abbeys, and still more numerous priories of smaller im- 
 portance, were scattered everywhere over the country. 
 After 1360 A.D. only some half-dozen new houses were 
 built. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE CONFLICT OF JURISDICTIONS— THE CON- 
 STITUTIONS OF CLARENDON 
 
 The accession of Henry II. introduces an important 
 chapter of Church history. He was only twenty-one when 
 he came to the throne, a young man of powerful physique 
 and great force of character, of boundless ambition and 
 restless energy, with enough of the soldier to serve his 
 purpose, but more of a statesman than a soldier. His 
 paternal inheritance added Anjou, and his marriage 
 further added Aquitaine, to his maternal inheritance of 
 England and Normandy. Thus the young king was 
 the most powerful sovereign in Europe. He made no 
 attempt at further conquests, but set himself to re- 
 duce his various dominions into order. In England 
 his policy was to reduce the power of the great barons 
 and establish the royal authority over the whole king- 
 dom, and to reorganise and complete the adminis- 
 trative machinery which his grandfather Henry I. had 
 created. 
 
 At the beginning of his reign. Archbishop Theodore 
 had recommended Thomas Becket to his service. 
 Thomas was the son of Gilbert Becket, a Norman mer- 
 chant in Cheapside, London. He was educated in the 
 house of the Canons of Merton and at the universities 
 
 88 
 
THE CONFLICT OF JURISDICTIONS 89 
 
 of Paris and Bologna, and was taken into the service 
 of Archbishop Theobald, who employed him as his 
 agent at the Papal court. His patron had provided for 
 him, according to the custom of the time, by giving him 
 church benefices, the chief of which was the Arch- 
 deaconry of Canterbury, a position of great dignity and 
 wealth. The king made Thomas his chancellor, and 
 soon discovering his qualities, committed the affairs 
 of England very greatly to his hands. The new chan- 
 cellor, only thirty-eight years of age, was not only an 
 able statesman but a pleasant companion, handsome 
 in person, cultivated in mind, gay and cheerful in dis- 
 position, magnificent in his tastes ; so that the young 
 king entertained a personal friendship for him and 
 treated him with familiarity. The chancellor took part 
 in the war of Thoulouse in full armour at the head 
 of 700 knights from his own estates, besides 1200 men- 
 at-arms in his pay and 4000 footmen. When peace 
 was made, the chancellor was sent as ambassador to 
 France, with such a magnificent train that the beholders 
 said, "If such was the chancellor, what was the king?" 
 By the terms of the treaty the baby princess, Margaret 
 of France, was betrothed to the infant son of Henry, 
 and the two royal children were confided to the tutor- 
 ship of the chancellor. 
 
 On his accession Henry had found the country in 
 great disorder after the anarchy of the reign of Stephen. 
 Every petty baron had built himself a castle, and did 
 what he pleased on his own estates, and made war with 
 his neighbours like an independent prince. Henry dis- 
 mantled the castles which had been built without royal 
 license. By commuting his claim upon his feudal 
 vassals, of forty days' military service in every year, for 
 a fixed payment (scutage), he was enabled to maintain 
 
90 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 
 
 a large force dependent entirely upon himself, while 
 indirectly discouraging the maintenance of the military 
 following of the barons. At the same time he re- 
 organised the ancient popular force of the fjyrd, or 
 militia, under the sheriffs of the counties, to secure 
 order at home. He revived the importance of the Great 
 Council and increased the number of its members. He 
 strengthened the Curia Regis, and established a regular 
 system of judges of assize and judges in eyre ; his aim 
 being to abolish feudal jurisdictions and to establish a 
 system of equal law and justice for all men over the 
 whole kingdom. In all this Becket was the king's right 
 hand, and the wise policy and vigorous action of the 
 king and his chancellor succeeded in establishing the 
 royal authority over the secular jurisdictions. There 
 remained one very important exception to the uni- 
 versality of the new system, to which the king next 
 turned his attention. 
 
 The separation of the civil and ecclesiastical courts 
 of the Conqueror had, as has been seen (see p. 76), 
 resulted in the establishment of a separate ecclesiastical 
 jurisdiction all over the country, which claimed the 
 clergy of all orders and ranks down to the parish clerk 
 as its subjects to be judged in all causes by itself alone, 
 and claimed authority over the whole world of laymen 
 in certain causes, as doctrine and morals, marriages, 
 wills, &c. The ecclesiastical courts had their own law, 
 judges, processes, prisons, and penalties. In practice 
 the ecclesiastical courts were more severe in dealing 
 with moral offences and less severe in dealing with 
 crime than the secular courts. As a glaring instance 
 of the inequality which not infrequently occurred, a 
 clerk who had committed a crime could not be tried 
 
TttE CONFLICT OP jfURISDICTIONS 91 
 
 and punished by the king's court, but must be handed 
 over to the ecclesiastical court, and often when found 
 guilty of a crime for which the civil law would have 
 hanged him without mercy, he got off with a term of 
 imprisonment. 
 
 The king desired to do away with this separate 
 jurisdiction of the bishops and abbots, as he had done 
 with that of the barons and others, and to establish 
 one law for all his subjects alike. On the death of 
 Archbishop Theodore, it seemed to the king that the 
 time had come to add this reform to the others which 
 he had successfully accomplished ; and it occurred to 
 him as a master-stroke of policy to put into the position 
 of archbishop the man who had been his counsellor 
 and minister in the previous measures, and who would, 
 he supposed, be in favour of this completion of the 
 system. 
 
 Becket, when the king broached the subject to him, 
 tried to turn it with a jest : " Fine clothes these are," 
 pointing to his own handsome dress, " for an arch- 
 bishop." When the king pressed the matter, Becket 
 seriously warned him, " If you do as you say, my lord, 
 you will soon hate me as much as you love me now ; 
 for you assume an authority in church affairs to which 
 I should not consent ; and there will be plenty of 
 persons to stir up strife between us." The king per- 
 sisted, and on Whitsunday Becket the chancellor was 
 ordained priest, and on the following Sunday was con- 
 secrated bishop (and appointed the latter day to be 
 thereafter observed as the festival of the Holy Trinity). 
 The archbishop at once resigned the chancellorship, 
 and began to lead an ascetic life, and to devote himself 
 to the duties of his new ofifice. He had been in 
 
92 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 the service of the good Archbishop Theodore till 
 the age of thirty-six; eight years of the king's service 
 had not so changed him that he could not fall back 
 easily into the ideas and habits in which he had been 
 brought up. 
 
 Occasion of disagreement between the king and the 
 archbishop soon arose. The archbishop excommuni- 
 cated one who was the king's tenant t'n capite without 
 the king's leave \ on the other hand, the king demanded 
 that a clerk who had committed murder should be 
 handed over to the king's justice and Becket refused. 
 The king then demanded that the archbishop should 
 promise to obey the customs of the realm. The clergy 
 and the king sent agents to the Pope to engage his 
 influence. The Pope acted with the usual tortuous 
 policy of the Roman Curia ; temporised, gave ambigu- 
 ous replies, said enough to encourage the archbishop 
 without breaking with the king; did not sanction the 
 king's proposals, but recommended the bishops not to 
 quarrel with him. 
 
 Becket seems to have tried to follow this temporising 
 policy. At length the king brought the matter to a 
 head by summoning a Great Council to meet at Clarendon 
 (1164 A.D.), directing the justiciar, with the help of 
 some of the oldest barons, to put down in writing the 
 customs observed in his grandfather's time, and requiring 
 the clergy formally to accept them. These customs 
 were drawn up under sixteen heads, known as the Con- 
 stitutions of Clarendon. The most important of them 
 declared that beneficed clergy should not leave the 
 kingdom without the king's leave ; that no tenant in 
 chief should be excommunicated without the king's 
 knowledge ; that no villein should be ordained without 
 his lord's consent; that a criminous clerk should be 
 
THE CONFLICT OF JURISDICTIONS 93 
 
 tried in the king's court, and that after he had been 
 convicted or had pleaded guilty, the Church should not 
 protect him from the punishment sentenced by the lay 
 court. On the other hand, the clergy were to retain 
 their jurisdiction, subject to the right of the Curia 
 Jiegis to determine what matters were properly to be 
 decided by them. Moreover, no appeal was to be 
 made to Rome without the permission of the Curia 
 Jiegis. 
 
 At first sight, from our nineteenth-century point of 
 view, the demands of the king seem reasonable. On 
 the other hand, it must be remembered that the clergy 
 were asked voluntarily to surrender rights and immuni- 
 ties which they actually enjoyed by the grant of former 
 kings. The king's law and the king's courts mean 
 to us equal justice between man and man, and even 
 between the subject and the crown ; but in those days 
 they meant tyranny and injustice where the king's in- 
 terests were concerned, and uncertain justice and cruel 
 sentences even where it was no great man's interest to 
 weight the scale. What the clergy had to determine was 
 whether it was expedient to surrender the protection 
 from arbitrary treatment and from a semi-barbarous 
 jurisdiction which their own more scientific system of 
 law and their own purer administration of it afforded. 
 When the bishops were disposed to give way, the arch- 
 bishop had to determine whether he would betray the 
 interests of the vast number of persons who enjoyed 
 these immunities for which his firmness was their sole 
 security. 
 
 Behind these considerations lay another which had 
 great weight with all parties. It was not merely a 
 question of more or less equal justice to the individual, 
 or the symmetry of a national system of jurisprudence ; 
 
94 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 it was also a question of the rivalry between the spiritual 
 and the secular power, which the Hildebrandine Popes 
 had started, and which had not yet attained its climax. 
 The surrender by any national church of the privileges 
 and immunities which it had acquired would have been 
 like the capitulation of an army cori'S in the middle of a 
 great campaign. Thomas was too much of a churchman 
 by training and conviction not to be largely influenced 
 by the latter consideration. 
 
 After some temporising and vacillation, Becket finally 
 refused to accept the proposed Constitutions. Henry 
 proceeded at once to take measures which would compel 
 him to yield or crush him. An action was brought 
 against the archbishop in the king's court, and on his 
 refusal to appear in person he was condemned to for- 
 feiture of all his personal property. Next an accusation 
 was brought against him of malversation in his office of 
 chancellor, notwithstanding that a formal discharge had 
 been given him on his quitting office, and the council 
 declared him a traitor. A scene of the highest dramatic 
 interest took place in the ante-chamber of the council 
 room when Becket, cross in hand, forbade the justiciar 
 to announce to him the sentence of the council, re- 
 plied with fierce contempt to the insults of the barons, 
 and quitted the chamber, no man offering to lay hand 
 upon him. But he recognised his danger, quitted the 
 court in disguise, and fled. After hiding in the houses of 
 the new Sempringham Order until pursuit was baffled, he 
 at length reached the coast, crossed to the Continent, 
 and for the next six years resided chiefly at the Cistercian 
 monastery of Pontigny near Sens. 
 
 The king confiscated the revenues of the See, plun- 
 dered Becket's relations and banished them, making 
 them swear to go and present themselves in their ruin 
 
THE CONFLICT OF JURISDICTIONS 95 
 
 and misery to the archbishop. After six years, the king 
 desiring to secure the succession of the throne to his son 
 Henry, had him recognised and crowned (1170 a.d.) by 
 Roger, Archbishop of York. But on the day before the 
 coronation Roger received notice that Becket had ex- 
 communicated all bishops who should take part in the 
 coronation, in disregard of the rights which belonged to 
 the See of Canterbury, and that the Pope had ratified 
 the sentence. It was possible that the coronation by an 
 excommunicated bishop might give rise to difficulties, 
 and the validity of the whole transaction might be 
 challenged. 
 
 To obviate this danger, Henry made overtures to 
 Becket, had an interview with him in Normandy, in which 
 a reconciliation was patched up, and the king invited 
 the archbishop to return to England on the condition 
 that the past should be forgotten on both sides. The 
 king even proposed to put the administration of his affairs 
 in England again into Becket's hands. Becket at once 
 returned, and was received with great demonstrations of 
 joy by the people. But he had prepared fresh trouble 
 by sending before him a refusal to release from excom- 
 munication the bishops who had crowned young Henry 
 unless they made satisfaction to the See of Canterbury. 
 The bishops at once crossed the sea to Normandy to lay 
 their complaint before Henry. " What would you have 
 me do?" said the king. "Your barons must advise 
 you," said one of the bishops, " but as long as Thomas 
 lives you will never be at peace." " A curse on all the 
 false varlets I have maintained," said the king, "who 
 have left me so long subject to the insolence of a 
 priest." 
 
 Four of his knights had heard the rash words. They 
 started in haste for Canterbury and sought out the arch- 
 
96 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 bishop. His servants persuaded him to retire to the 
 church, but he would not allow the doors to be secured. 
 The knights rushed in exclaiming, "Where is the traitor? 
 where is the archbishop ? " " Behold me," said Thomas, 
 " no traitor, but a priest of God." One laid hold of him 
 to drag him away from the altar at which he stood, but 
 the archbishop cast him off. Then they attacked him 
 with their swords ; his cross-bearer, trying to ward off the 
 first blow, was wounded ; then another blow struck the 
 archbishop on the head, inflicting a mortal wound; 
 other blows followed, and they left him dead upon the 
 spot. 
 
 The sympathies of the English people had been with 
 the archbishop ; the news of his murder excited general 
 indignation not only in England but throughout Europe. 
 The cause of the Church against the princes gained 
 immense prestige through the "martyrdom," as it was 
 called, of Becket. Henry found it necessary to bend to 
 the storm. In 1 172 a.d. he met the Pope's legates at 
 Avranches, swore that he was innocent of the death of 
 Thomas, and renounced the Constitutions of Clarendon. 
 He had his son crowned over again to satisfy the 
 scruples of King Louis about the former coronation. 
 On his next visit to England he passed through Canter- 
 bur}^, spent the night before the shrine of the mattyred 
 archbishop, and was scourged by the monks in token of 
 penitence. 
 
 In the subsequent part of his reign, however, Henry 
 filled the Sees with the high officials of his government, 
 and quietly made good most of the claims which had 
 been put forth in the Constitutions of Clarendon. 
 
 The great ecclesiastical event of the reign of EichardL 
 was the brilliant episode of the second Crusade. Hubert 
 Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, one of the states- 
 
THE CONFLICT OF JURISDICTIONS 97 
 
 men of Henry II., administered the kingdom in his 
 absence. One minor incident, which, however, affected 
 every parish, was the seizure of all the church plate of 
 the kingdom to make up the ransom of the captive 
 king. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE PAPAL SUPREMACY 
 
 The earlier years of John's reign were controlled by 
 the regular government of the great ofificers of State 
 organised by Henry II. and consolidated by the ten 
 years' absence of Richard, at the head of which was 
 Archbishop Hubert Walter, who had been the virtual 
 viceroy of the absent king. 
 
 On the death of Archbishop Hubert in 1205 a.d., 
 some of the younger monks of Christ Church, Canter- 
 bury, anxious to assert the right of free election by 
 anticipating the king's conge d'elire and letter-missive, 
 met on the very night of the archbishop's death, elected 
 Reginald the sub-prior, enthroned him, and sent him 
 off at once to Rome to obtain the Pope's confirmation 
 before the matter should become known. But as soon 
 as Reginald arrived in Flanders, his vanity led him to 
 boast of his position, and the news soon came back to 
 England. The king ignored the irregular proceeding 
 and issued his conge d'elire, but to prevent objections, 
 contented himself with intimating privately his wish for 
 the election of John de Grey, Bishop of Norwich, and 
 Grey was elected without a contradictory voice; the 
 party of Reginald, ashamed of his conduct, and possibly 
 afraid of the consequences of their intrigue, concurring 
 in the election. John also then sent twelve of the monks 
 98 
 
THE PAPAL SUPREMACY 99 
 
 to Rome to obtain the Pope's confirmation. But both 
 parties had infringed the rights of the bishops of the 
 province by neglecting to secure their assent, and the 
 bishops also sent an agent to Rome to represent their 
 grievance. 
 
 Innocent III., the greatest of all the Popes, was then 
 the occupant of the Roman See. The disinterested 
 zeal of earlier Popes to rescue the presentation to 
 bishoprics out of the hands of princes had taken the 
 ambitious turn of seeking to obtain the right of nomina- 
 tion for the Papacy, and Innocent embraced this oppor- 
 tunity of interference in the disposal of the greatest 
 dignity of the English Church. He pronounced that 
 the election of Reginald was irregular and invalid, but 
 that it ought to have been declared invalid by the 
 Roman court before the second election was proceeded 
 with, and on that ground he declared that the election 
 of De Grey was also uncanonical. Then, instead of 
 leaving a new election to take place in due course, he 
 summoned to his presence the monks of Christ Church 
 who had been sent to Rome about the business, and 
 bade them proceed to a new election in his presence, 
 and to elect Stephen Langion. He put aside all their 
 representations as to their incompetence ; when they 
 pleaded that they had taken an oath not to accept any 
 but De Grey, he absolved them from their oath ; finally, 
 he threatened to excommunicate them if they refused to 
 obey him, and so coerced them into compliance; they 
 elected, and the Pope consecrated, Stephen Langton 
 as Archbishop (June 1207). It is only doing justice to 
 the Pope and to Langton to say that the Pope was not 
 putting forward an unworthy creature of his own, for 
 Langton was an Englishman of the highest character 
 and reputation. The Pope was practically enforcing the 
 
loo HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 
 
 doctrine that the Archbishopric of Canterbury ought to 
 be occupied by a prelate chosen by the Church in the 
 interests of religion, and not given by the king as the 
 payment of his minister. But the Pope's nomination 
 was an innovation, an invasion of the rights and dignity 
 of the English crown and Church, and not to be sub- 
 mitted to. 
 
 The king was enraged ; he drove the monks of Christ 
 Church out of the kingdom, wrote to the Pope insisting 
 upon his confirmation of Grey's election, and declared 
 that Langton should never set foot in the kingdom. 
 Innocent made some concession, pressing the king to 
 accept Langton, but promising that the present trans- 
 action should not be drawn into a precedent; but the 
 king refused to yield, and the Pope proceeded to use 
 the weapons with which the superstitions of the time 
 supplied him ; in order to coerce the king, he put the 
 nation under interdict (1208 a.d.). 
 
 The effect of this sentence was to deprive the people 
 of the ordinary ministrations of the Church ; the clergy 
 were permitted to baptize the newly born and to admi- 
 nister the last sacraments to the dying, but the churches 
 were closed and all regular services suspended, and the 
 people were required to observe the discipline of Lent ; 
 the land lay under the ban of the Church for the wicked- 
 ness of its king. 
 
 Two bishops in the king's interest, Peter des Roches, 
 the Poitevin Bishop of Winchester, and John de Grey 
 of Norwich, disregarded the interdict, while the other 
 bishops left the kingdom ; the clergy generally obeyed 
 the sentence, except those of Winchester and Norwich, 
 and a few scattered parishes elsewhere. The Cistercian 
 monasteries, which had the privilege of exemption from 
 a general sentence of interdict, continued their services. 
 
THE PAPAL SUPREMACY loi 
 
 but with closed doors. John retaliated by seizing the 
 property of the bishops and clergy who obeyed the 
 interdict and threatened to banish them, and he com- 
 manded the monks to keep within their cloisters. 
 Shortly, however, he allowed the clergy a scanty main- 
 tenance out of their estates and confiscated the rest of 
 their income. 
 
 Finding that the misery of the kingdom did not 
 subdue the king's resistance, tlie Pope proceeded, in 
 1209 A.D., to excommunicate the king. The effect of 
 this sentence was to cut off the subject of it from the 
 Church, and to cause all Christians to avoid intercourse 
 wkh him. But neither did this reduce the king to 
 obedience; and in 121 1 the Pope proceeded to issue 
 a bull of deposition against John, and to charge King 
 Philip of France to execute the sentence, with suc- 
 cession to the forfeited throne. Philip began to muster 
 forces for the invasion of England ; John wrung money 
 out of the Jews and the abbeys and raised an army ; 
 but he could not trust it, for he had incurred the hatred 
 of all classes of his subjects, and stood in fear of 
 deposition and death. 
 
 But John was not without a certain kind of states- 
 manship, and he extricated himself from his dangerous 
 position at a stroke by making friends with his greatest 
 enemy. In 12 13 he made entire submission to the 
 Pope, swore to admit Langton as archbishop, to restore 
 their rights to the banished, to give back the money 
 wrongfully exacted, and over and above all this to 
 surrender his crown to the Pope and receive it back as 
 the Pope's liegeman, and pay him a tribute of a thousand 
 marks a year. 
 
 The archbishop thus forced upon the Church and 
 nation turned out to be a model prelate, and played 
 
102 HISTORY OP THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 a part which has made his one of ihc great names in 
 our history. He was an Englishman by birth, holding 
 a prebend in the cathedral church of York, though he 
 had long been absent from his native country. A man 
 of piety, learning, and ability, he had lately been the 
 head of the University of Paris, then the greatest theo- 
 logical school of Europe. There he had been the 
 intimate friend of Innocent; and when Innocent was 
 elected to the Papal See, he had invited Langton to 
 Rome, placed him in high office, and had lately made 
 him a cardinal. In nominating him to the Archbishopric 
 of Canterbury, Innocent seems to have chosen a man 
 whose character would justify the Pope's high-handed 
 interposition and compel all men to recognise the differ- 
 ence between the man the Pope had chosen as arch- 
 bishop and the serviceable creature whom the king 
 would have put into that position in order to paralyse 
 the opposition of the Church to the royal tyranny. 
 
 The course of events very soon gave Langton oppor- 
 tunity to show the nation what manner of man he was. 
 When the king sought to take advantage of his re- 
 covered authority to raise the national forces to wage 
 war for the recovery of Anjou and Normandy, his barons 
 refused to follow him on the ground that they had 
 already fulfilled the obligation of their feudal service. 
 John would have waged war against his barons, but the 
 archbishop threatened with excommunication every cne 
 who took up arms against them in an unjust civil strife. 
 Some of them consented to aid the king, but the ex- 
 pedition was unsuccessful. On his return, the king 
 sought revenge upon all who had remained at home 
 by demanding an exorbitant scutage from them. The 
 barons met at Bury St. Edmunds, and resolved upon 
 armed resistance. The king tried to detach the Church 
 
THE PAPAL SUPREMACY 103 
 
 from the movement by promising freedom of election 
 to sees and abbacies; he persuaded the Pope to 
 threaten the barons with excommunication, and he 
 brought over a large force of foreign mercenary soldiers. 
 The archbishop put himself at the head of the national 
 movement. He prevented the Pope's sentence of ex- 
 communication ; he put the demands of the barons in 
 writing ; on John's refusal to grant them, armed forces 
 were collected, under the title of "the army of God and 
 Holy Church," to force their acceptance upon the king. 
 London admitted the barons' army within its walls ; the 
 trading classes united with the barons and the Church 
 in the national movement. John was deserted by all 
 but the great officials of the government and a few of 
 the barons especially connected with the royal family, 
 who sought to save it from ruin. John found himself 
 compelled to swear to and sign the Great Charter at 
 Runnimede (15th June 12 15), with the secret determi- 
 nation to repudiate his oath and signature at the first 
 opportunity. The first clause of the charter declared 
 that the Church was to be free, its privileges to be 
 respected, and its right to free elections not to be in- 
 fringed. The remaining clauses guarded the freedom 
 and rights not only of the barons, but of the com- 
 monalty. All classes were secured against arbitrary 
 power ; the king was only to demand supplies with the 
 consent of the Great Council ; no man was to be pro- 
 ceeded against except by the judgment of his peers 
 or the law of the land ; the king was to dismiss his 
 mercenary troops ; and a council of twenty-five was ap- 
 pointed to watch over the fulfilment of the conditions of 
 the charter. In form the Great Charter was a royal grant, 
 in fact it was a treaty between the king and his people. 
 John, relieved from the immediate pressure of force, 
 
I04 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 at once took steps to break the treaty. The Pope pro- 
 tected his vassal by declaring the barons to be rebels 
 and releasing the king from his oath. John, instead of 
 dismissing his mercenaries, hired large reinforcements. 
 The barons mustered their forces and were defeated by 
 John's mercenaries. Then the barons took the extreme 
 step of inviting the French king to their aid, offering 
 the crown to Louis the Dauphin. The Pope excom- 
 municated Louis and placed London under interdict, 
 but the Londoners took no heed of the Pope's fulmina- 
 tions. In the midst of the civil war John died (1216^ 
 and his death opened a door for the reconciliation of 
 the crown with the people. The eldest son of John 
 was only nine years old at his father's death, but he was 
 at once recognised as king by his father's friends. Louis 
 and the barons who adhered to him were defeated at 
 Lincoln, and the nation rallied to the side of the young 
 king. The Great Charter was renewed, and the govern- 
 ment was placed in the hands of a Regency. 
 
 The Papal power reached its climax in England in 
 the reign of Henry III. During the minority of the 
 king the Papal legate — first Gualo and then Pandulph — 
 was one of his guardians, and William Marshal, Earl of 
 Pembroke, was the other; and these two, with Hubert 
 de Burgh, the justiciar, formed the Regency. In 1227 
 Henry declared himself of age (he was twenty years old), 
 and put the Poitevin Peter de Roches, Bishop of Win- 
 chester, at the head of affairs. The king was amiable 
 and accomplished, but feeble and vacillating, and always 
 in the hands of foreign favourites, on whom he lavished 
 offices, honours, and estates. Partly in recognition of 
 the relation in which his father had placed the kingdom 
 and the Papal See, partly because he needed the support 
 of the Pope against his own nobles, Henry allowed the 
 
THE PAPAL SUPREMACY 105 
 
 Pope to make great inroads upon the rights and liberties 
 of the Church of England. The Popes had recently 
 started the theory that, as sovereigns of the Church, all 
 church benefices were rightly at their disposal, in entire 
 disregard of the rights of patrons, and that all the 
 clergy were their subjects. They used to issue mandates 
 requiring a bishop to find a benefice for the person re- 
 commended ; they nominated persons to the reversion 
 of particular benefices by what were called "letters of 
 provision." They carried these pretensions to a great 
 extent in England. Foreigners were intruded into the 
 best benefices. In 1240 the legate obtained a promise 
 from the king to present 300 Italian priests to benefices 
 before he presented a single Englishman. Mansel, the 
 king's chaplain, was said to hold 700 church benefices 
 at the same time. On one occasion three strangers 
 walked into York Minster and proceeded to the choir, 
 where two of them installed the third as Dean, acting 
 under the authority of a Papal bull ; when the arch- 
 bishop refused to recognise the appointment, he was 
 excommunicated and an interdict was laid on the 
 diocese. Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, was suspended 
 for refusing to institute a foreigner into a benefice ; which 
 did not prevent him at a later period from writing a 
 famous letter to the Pope, refusing to obey a letter of 
 provision, and remonstrating with him on the wicked- 
 ness of his policy. 
 
 On the theory that the benefices were at the Pope's dis- 
 posal, the Popes demanded a regular revenue from them ; 
 a twentieth of all ecclesiastical revenues whatever, a third 
 of such as exceeded 100 marks, a half of such as were 
 possessed by non-residents, and the entire revenues of 
 all benefices during their vacancy. Moreover, the Popes 
 assumed the right to demand extraordinary taxes and 
 
lo6 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 aids from the clergy as other sovereigns did from their 
 subjects. Thus in 1229 the Pope demanded and ob- 
 tained a tenth of all ecclesiastical benefices; in 1240 the 
 legate Otho dealt with the bishops and abbots indivi- 
 dually, demanding benevolences to aid the Pope in his 
 war with the Emperor, and it was said carried more 
 money out of the kingdom than remained in it. In 
 1244 again an agent of the Pope, Martin by name, re- 
 peated these exactions with equal success. In 1256, for 
 the first time, Pope Alexander IV. demanded a grant 
 of the first-fruits of new incumbents for five years, and 
 first-fruits soon became established as a regular part of 
 the Papal revenue from the country. 
 
 The popular indignation showed itself in the formation 
 of secret associations in many places up and down the 
 country, which organised a violent opposition to the 
 Italian clergy, wasted their fields, emptied their barns 
 and gave the contents to the poor, and insulted their 
 persons ; it was rumoured that these proceedings were 
 encouraged by people in high positions. 
 
 When Innocent IV. summoned a Council at Lyons 
 (1255 A.D.) to e.xcommunicate the Emperor Frederick, 
 the English king and nobility sent representatives to 
 complain before the council of the avarice of the Roman 
 Church. They represented, among many other griev- 
 ances, that the benefices held by Italian clergy in England 
 had been estimated, and found to amount to 60,000 
 marks a year, a sum which exceeded the revenue of the 
 crown. When mention was made before the council of 
 the feudal subjection of England to the See of Rome, 
 Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, and the other English 
 agents, challenged the claim, and insisted that John had 
 no right or power, without the consent of the barons, 
 to subject the kingdom to any such servitude. 
 
THE PAPAL SUPREMACY ic? 
 
 At length Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, the 
 king's brother-in-law, put himself at the head of a 
 movement of resistance against the manifold abuses of 
 the government. The Church again, as in the time 
 of John, put itself in the forefront in defence of the 
 national liberties and rights. Edmund Rich, the saintly 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, did not shrink from the 
 political action which his place as the foremost subject 
 of the realm demanded of him. Grosseteste, the learned 
 and ascetic Bishop of Lincoln, the personal friend and 
 adviser of De Montfort, took an active part in the 
 constitutional opposition to both king and Pope. In 
 1258 the barons, summoned to a Parliament at West- 
 minster, appeared in arms and demanded the expul- 
 sion of foreigners and the establishment of a committee 
 of twenty-four to reform the realm. When the king 
 violated the conditions, the barons were joined by the 
 citizens in arms. The king and his supporters were 
 defeated at Lewes (1264 a.d.) and a regency appointed. 
 In the following year the barons were defeated in turn 
 at Evesham. In a Parliament in 1267 a statute was 
 enacted which granted most of the reforms demanded. 
 Henry allowed his son Edward to be the real head of 
 the government, and the country entered upon a new era. 
 
 The combined resistance of the barons, the Church, 
 and the citizens during this and the previous reigns 
 helped to weld England into a nation and a national 
 Church, jealous of foreign influences in Church and 
 State. Edward sympathised with the national aspira- 
 tions, and set himself to embody them in permanent 
 institutions. From his accession to the throne in 1272 
 we may date the beginning of the recovery of the 
 liberties of the English Church from the usurpations of 
 the Roman See. 
 
io8 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 
 
 Beneath the political troubles of the reigns of John 
 and Henry III., which lie on the surface of the history 
 of the country, and specially attract the attention of the 
 student, there was going on an immense movement and 
 growth of the national life. The political troubles were 
 indeed one of its symptoms ; they were the outward 
 phenomena of the struggle of the nation to secure its 
 liberties and rights by effectual constitutional guarantees. 
 The barons of the Norman Conquest had been largely 
 replaced by a new race of nobles sprung from the great 
 ministerial families; the secular clergy were recovering 
 from the injury done to their revenues and their spiritual 
 influence by the popularity of the monastic institution ; 
 the middle class was rising into wealth and importance ; 
 the tyranny of John and the faults of Henry's reign had 
 stirred up the people to resistance, and had helped to 
 weld all ranks and classes, nobles, clergy, and commons, 
 into a united people. It was the nation which rose in 
 arms against John and Henry, and wrested from them 
 the principles of constitutional government. Edward re- 
 cognised these principles as right, and organised Parlia- 
 ment, and initiated the system of legislation which has 
 continued ever since. 
 
 The architectural monuments afford a striking illus- 
 tration of the character of the time. The Normans 
 were great builders, and filled the land with castles, cathe- 
 drals, and abbeys ; but the architectural activity of the 
 thirteenth century exceeded that of any other previous 
 century in history.^ 
 
 There were no castles built in it, and very few monas- 
 teries. On the other hand, nearly all the cathedrals, 
 so lately built, were added to or partly rebuilt on a 
 
 Fergusson, " History of Architecture." 
 
THE PAPAL SUPREMACY 109 
 
 grander scale ; numerous churches were built in the 
 towns and all over the country. It was the great age 
 of the growth of civic institutions, and the cathedrals 
 and churches are a symptom of the gradual recovery 
 by the parochial clergy of their position as the active 
 ministers of religion among the people. 
 
 A less tangible but very important indication of the 
 spirit of the time is afforded by the style of these new 
 buildings. The appearance of a new style in art is 
 a very rare phenomenon, and the certain indication of 
 the rising of an exceptional intellectual vigour express- 
 ing new ideas and new conditions of life. The new 
 style of architecture used in the great buildings of the 
 period which almost coincides with the reigns of John 
 and Henry III., introduced new constructive principles; 
 new ideas of design, in its ground-plan which everywhere 
 replaced the short round-ended apse with a long square- 
 ended chancel, in length of perspective and soaring 
 height ; new conceptions of beauty, in its pointed arches, 
 in the elaborate light and shade of its moulded pillars 
 and arches, and in its sculptured foliage of strong leafage 
 slowly unfolding with the vigour of the life of spring. 
 It is remarkable that while nearly every cathedral was 
 enlarged, notwithstanding the building fury of the time 
 and the attraction of a new style, the early English buil- 
 ders recognised the grandeur of the Norman work, and 
 retained much of it. Salisbury is the only entirely Early- 
 Pointed cathedral, and that was the natural consequence 
 of the removal of the cathedral city from the picturesque 
 but too limited site afforded by the venerable mound 
 of Old Sarum to a new site in the adjoining meadows 
 by the river-side. Salisbury was early in the style ; 
 the presbytery of Lincoln Cathedral may serve as an 
 example of its complete development, and there is 
 
no HISTORY OP THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 perhaps nothing in the history of architecture more re- 
 markable in its combination of engineering skill, noble 
 architectural design, and beauty of detail. 
 
 It may be well to explain the statement above that 
 the secular clergy were recovering from the injury done 
 to their revenues and influence by the monastic insti- 
 tution, and a note on the foundation of vicarages will 
 afford the explanation. This was the correction of an 
 abuse which had grown up in the previous century. 
 The Norman founders of the new monasteries had very 
 largely adopted the custom of endowing their monasteries 
 with the rectories in their patronage ; no doubt, in the 
 belief that the monks would make better provision for 
 the spiritual welfare of the parishioners than the secular 
 rectors, and that the surplus revenues would be better 
 employed in the service of religion in the hands of these 
 great religious institutions. But it was found after a 
 while that the monasteries considered that they fulfilled 
 their obligations by sending a clerk to conduct divine 
 service and do the necessary routine spiritual work, or 
 by putting a priest in charge of the parish at a small 
 stipend. The bishops raised a protest against this state 
 of things, and obtained authority to insist that a proper 
 provision should be made in "appropriate" parishes 
 (/>., parishes of which the religious houses were rectors) 
 for the maintenance of a permanent parish priest, a 
 vicar, a representative of the rector. The usual previ- 
 sion was a house and portion of glebe, the small tithes, 
 and the fees and offerings. It is a very important in- 
 dication of the revival of the influence of the secular 
 clergy that in the course of the century this re-settle- 
 ment of the appropriate parishes was very generally 
 secured 
 
 The thirteenth century was also the great age of the 
 
THE PAPAL SUPREMACY iil 
 
 Friars. The central idea of the institution of the Friars 
 was different from that of the monks. The idea of 
 monachism was seclusion from the world with a view to 
 the cultivation of the spiritual Ufe of the individual ; that 
 of the new institution was the abandonment of the world 
 for the sake of entire devotion to religious and charitable 
 ministrations to others. Dominic founded an order of 
 Preaching Brothers to combat ignorance and heresy; 
 Francis an order of men to minister to the poor and 
 sick and afflicted. Both orders had the same organisa- 
 tion : a general of the order in Rome, provincials ruling 
 the order in the various countries, wardens over the dis- 
 tricts into which the country was divided, and a head of 
 each house. Both adopted the principle that the order 
 should possess no property, but should live by the alms 
 of the people. The Friars multiplied rapidly, spread 
 over Europe, and effected a great religious revival, which 
 may be compared with that produced by the labours 
 of Wesley and Whitfield at a later date. There were 
 two other orders, the Carmelite and Augustinian, which 
 were less numerous and important Houses of Friars 
 were founded in the suburbs of most of the great towns 
 of England. The Friars cultivated learning with such 
 success that their teachers became famous in all the 
 universities of Europe ; and for two centuries played a 
 great part in the religious life of the times. 
 
 The thirteenth century was the great age of the School- 
 men. Their system was based upon the philosophy of 
 Aristotle, and sought to prove the truth of Christian doc- 
 trine by the syllogistic method of reasoning. Alexander 
 Hales, an Englishman, was the leader of the schoolmen 
 (died 1245). Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar (died 
 1274), the author of the Summa Theologica, the greatest 
 of the works of its day, and of the Catena Aurea and 
 
112 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 other works, was assigned tlie next place as a theologian 
 after the four great doctors of the West ; and Bonaventura, 
 a Franciscan, the eighth place. Roger Bacon, an English 
 Franciscan friar (died 1292), was the father of physical 
 science. John Duns Scotus, an Enghshman (died 1308), 
 was the great theologian of the Franciscan order. 
 
CHAPTER ;XII 
 
 THE REACTION AGAINST ROME 
 
 The Papal pretensions reached their greatest height in the 
 time of Boniface VIII. (1294-1303), but the Papal power 
 had already begun to decline. The authority of the 
 Roman See had originally grown up on the sympathy felt 
 by the churches and peoples of Europe with the endeavour 
 of a succession of Popes to control the arbitrary acts of 
 princes. But when Hildebrand's grand idea of a supreme 
 spiritual authority which was to regulate the religious 
 affairs of Christendom had degenerated into an endeavour 
 to make the Papacy a feudal sovereignty, with the clergy 
 as its ministers and with church property as its domain, 
 both clergy and people began to murmur at the usur- 
 pation. Very shortly the worldly ambitions which the 
 Papacy developed, the abuses which the Popes intro- 
 duced, the rapacity with which they seized upon the 
 revenues of the churches and spent them upon personal 
 objects, and the scandalous use of spiritual censures (ex- 
 communications and interdicts) in support of temporal 
 quarrels, alienated the popular sympathy, and taught all 
 men that Popes were no more to be trusted with arbi- 
 trary power tban princes. Towards the close of the 
 thirteenth century, princes were able to defy the pre- 
 tensions of Popes to exercise any control over them ; 
 and the national churches, supported by the princes, were 
 
ii4 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 able to assert their liberties against the claim of the See 
 to treat them as subject provinces of an Italian ecclesias- 
 tical empire. Boniface was the last of the Popes who 
 exercised authority over the temporal jurisdiction of 
 princes. With the decline of the power of Henry III. the 
 exercise of Papal authority over the crown of England 
 came to an end.^ Simon de Montfort had set the 
 example of a peremptory resistance to the Roman claims ; 
 Edward took up the policy of a firm constitutional 
 maintenance of the rights of the crown and the national 
 Church as against the Pope, and the rights of the crown 
 as against the national Church. When Boniface, after 
 the battle of Falkirk in 1300, intervened at the request 
 of the Scots, and exhorted Edward to desist from his 
 attempts to conquer Scotland, quoting evidence of its 
 ancient independence of England, and claiming to be 
 himself its liege lord, the king brought the matter before 
 a Parliament at London ; that body, after answering the 
 Pope's arguments, concluded by saying, that while they 
 had justified their cause before him, they did not receive 
 him for their judge ; the crown of England was free 
 and sovereign ; they had sworn to maintain all its royal 
 prerogatives, and would never permit the king himself, 
 even were he willing, to relinquish its independence. 
 
 Throughout the fourteenth century the resistance to 
 Rome was steadily kept up, and its encroachments 
 were gradually thrust back, almost to the limits which 
 the Conqueror had originally assigned to the Papal inter- 
 vention in the affairs of England. In 132 1, in the 
 reign of Edward II., a statute was passed forbidding in 
 general terms the appealing to foreign courts for pleas 
 which might be determined at home, an indirect blow 
 
 * No legates were admitted into England after his reign. 
 
THE REACTION AGAINST ROME 115 
 
 at appeals to Rome. In the Parliament of 17 Ed. III., 
 1344 A.D., the Commons petitioned the king and nobles 
 to find some remedy for the Papal abuses, " for that they 
 neither could nor would any longer bear these strange 
 oppressions, or else to help them to expel the Pope's 
 power out of the realm by force." The king issued a 
 proclamation against Provisors, but it did not put a stop 
 to them. In 1351 a Statute of Provisors was passed, 
 which made it penal to procure any presentation to 
 benefices from the court of Rome, and effectually secured 
 the rights of patrons. From the time that Edward III. 
 attained his majority he ceased for forty years to pay 
 the annual tribute of 1000 marks which King John had 
 engaged for himself and his successors to pay ; and when 
 the Pope threatened to summon him to Rome to answer 
 for his default, the king laid the matter before Parliament 
 (1367 A.D.), which unanimously replied that John had no 
 power to bring the kingdom under such servitude and 
 subjection without the consent of Parliament; that if 
 the Pope should attempt anything against the king, 
 the king and all his subjects would resist with all their 
 force and power. In 1376 the Parliament of the 
 Jubilee year of Edward III.'s reign drew up and sent 
 to the Pope a bitter complaint of the injuries which 
 the kingdom suffered at the hands of the Papal court, 
 and declared that the Pope's innovations, usurpations, 
 and provisors were the cause of all the plagues, injuries, 
 famine, and poverty of the realm ; were more destructive 
 to it than all the wars ; that the taxes levied by the Pope 
 exceeded five times those paid to the king ; that every- 
 thing was venal in that sinful city of Rome, and that 
 English lay patrons had learned simony and covetousness 
 of the Pope. 
 
 Though this may be exaggerated language, it indicates 
 
ri6 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 the bitter feeling of the nation against the Papal " inno- 
 vations and usurpations;" and the frequency of the 
 allusions to them shows the persistency of the feeling. 
 The index to Cotton's Abridgment of the Tower Records 
 gives sixty- two such references from i8 Edward III. to 
 39 Henry VI. 
 
 The Statute of Mortmain checked the further acquisi- 
 tion of landed property by the Church without the royal 
 assent. In 1353 the Statute of Premunire, which forbade 
 any Papal bulls to be introduced into England without 
 the royal assent, under pain of outlawry, confiscation, and 
 banishment, effectually curbed the interference of Rome. 
 
 The minority of Richard II., the feebleness of his 
 rule, and the usurped sovereignty of Henry IV., gave 
 opportunity for the formation of political parties and 
 the growth of constitutional government. The Royal 
 Council corresponded to some extent to a modern 
 Cabinet. Parliament exercised a certain control over 
 the Council. The party of the barons striving to main- 
 tain their feudal privileges against the crown, and 
 jealous of the power of the Church, allied itself with 
 the anti-Church feeling which was rising among the 
 people. The number of men of noble family in the 
 Episcopate, and the great part which they took in 
 politics, is a remarkable feature of the time. 
 
 In 137 1, Parliament, during a temporary political 
 success of the Baronial party, aimed a blow at the 
 Church party by declaring prelates unfit to hold offices 
 of State. William of VVykeham, Bishop of Winchester, 
 who was chancellor, and others, were in consequence 
 dismissed for a short time ; it was the only period from 
 the Saxon conversion to the seventeenth century that 
 some of the principal offices of State were not held by 
 clerics. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE LOLLARDS 
 
 The Continental nations had been troubled since the 
 beginning of the eleventh century by heresies mixed up 
 with political opinions subversive of all order in Church 
 and State, held by organised bodies of men ready to break 
 out into open rebellion. The Cathari in Italy and France 
 at the close of the twelfth century, and the Waldenses 
 and Albigenses in the early part of the thirteenth, had 
 caused great popular commotions. This sporadic fanati- 
 cism broke out in England in the fourteenth century 
 under the name of Lollardism. A™o"g the doctrines 
 which the Lollards maintained and taught were such 
 fanatical extravagances as these : that the Church is the 
 synagogue of Satan, and that its baptism put a child in 
 a worse condition than before ; they denied the necessity 
 for episcopal ordination, and ordained ministers for them- 
 selves, maintaining that every Christian man and woman, 
 being without sin, is entitled to consecrate the Eucharist ; 
 they maintained that cohabitation by mutual consent 
 constituted a lawful marriage without the forms of the 
 Church ; that all ought to marry, or to have an intention 
 to marry, if they desired to be saved, for otherwise they 
 are guilty of murder by preventing the holy posterity 
 which should people the New Jerusalem ; they held that 
 neither the Lord's day nor any other of the Church's 
 117 
 
ii8 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 festivals should be kept holy. With these religious 
 extravagances were combined opinions on civil govern- 
 ment which, if carried out, would have ended in anarchy ; 
 as that all authorities in Church and State hold their 
 authority on the tenure of grace, so that if they fall 
 from grace they forfeit their title to be obeyed ; this left 
 it open to any one who chose to fancy that his superior 
 had " fallen from grace " to refuse any longer to obey 
 him, child to obey parent, servant master, subject sove- 
 reign, Christian his priest or bishop. 
 
 The general discontent with arbitrary rule and with the 
 manifold corruptions of the Church led many to extend a 
 general sympathy and countenance to the Lollards who 
 were far from holding their extreme views. The party 
 of the nobles sought the political support of this wide- 
 spread feeling by the expression of a general sympathy 
 with the new reformers. 
 
 The most remarkable for twenty years among the 
 leaders of these new opinions was John Wiclif, a Cam- 
 bridge divine of considerable reputation for ability and 
 learning. About 1369 he published a work Z>e Dovihiio 
 Divino, which contained the doctrine that "dominion 
 depends on grace," noticed above. He denounced the 
 Pope as Anti-Christ, attacked the wealth and pomp of 
 the prelates, the claims of the clergy to exemption from 
 secular jurisdiction, their ignorance, self-indulgence, and 
 neglect of preaching. He advocated the resumption by 
 the temporal lords of the church endowments, which were 
 abused. And all this he did not only in learned volumes 
 in Latin, but by circulating among the middle class tracts 
 written in a popular and striking style in vigorous English. 
 
 He adopted another mode of spreading his opinions 
 by the agency of a kind of order of itinerant preachers. 
 He sought out suitable men, whom he taught and trained 
 
THE LOLLARDS 
 
 19 
 
 so far as to enable them to preach the great truths of 
 rehgion, and the peculiar views which he himself held, in 
 a homely and popular style. His "Poor Priests" seem 
 at first to have been ordained men. He provided in 
 some way for their maintenance, and forbade them to 
 imitate the mendicancy of the Friars. He sent them 
 forth clad in a long russet robe, with staff in hand and a 
 copy of the Gospels at their girdle, to teach and preach 
 through town and country, as the avowed rivals and 
 opponents of the Friars. They were never numerous, 
 and did not long continue their work, being condemned 
 and silenced by the London Council of 1382 a.d. It 
 was a very interesting experiment, worthy of study in 
 these days when we are trying to organise new missionary 
 agencies. 
 
 His greatest work, which largely occupied the later 
 years of his life, and has kept his name in honourable 
 memory, was his translation of the Bible from the 
 Vulgate into English. It is a popular error that the 
 Bible was previously a sealed book. In earlier times 
 those who could read at all could read Latin, it was the 
 common tongue of all learning, and the Vulgate was 
 accessible to them. Portions of the Bible most useful 
 for popular edification. Gospels, Psalms, abridgments of 
 the Bible history, had been translated into English 
 centuries before. English was just now becoming a 
 literary language. Poets like Langland, Gower, and 
 Chaucer were writing in it. In 1362 it was substituted 
 for French in the law courts, and the king's opening 
 speech to Parliament was delivered in English. In short, 
 the time had come for a translation of the Bible, and 
 Wiclif has the merit of having been, with the aid of col- 
 laborators, the first to accomplish the great work. 
 
 In the reign of Henry IV. the Lollards continued to 
 
120 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 give great cause for anxiety to the government They 
 were very numerous among the people, and were strongly 
 represented in the House of Commons. In order to 
 overawe them, an Act de heretico comburendo — for the 
 burning of heretics — was passed in 1400-1 a.d., and 
 Sawtree, a London priest, who was one of their most 
 conspicuous leaders, was condemned and executed under 
 it the following year. In 1404 a.d., in answer to a 
 demand for supplies for the prosecution of the French 
 war, the Commons proposed to the king to confiscate 
 the revenues of the Church, which were sufficient, they 
 alleged, to support 15 earls, 1500 knights, 6200 esquires, 
 to maintain 100 hospitals, and to leave a handsome sum 
 to the king's exchequer. It was said that 100,000 
 Lollards were ready to rise in insurrection. Sir John 
 Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, who was regarded as their 
 leader, tried in 1415 a.d. to excite a rebellion, and 
 being captured, was executed under the recent Act de 
 heretico, in 141 7. Whether he is to be regarded as a 
 traitor or as a martyr was and is still disputed. " Per- 
 haps we shall most safely conclude from the tenor of 
 history that his doctrinal creed was far sounder than 
 the principles which guided either his moral or his 
 political conduct." ^ 
 
 The French wars, reopened by Henry V., and after 
 his reign the Wars of the Roses, absorbed the national 
 interest ; the doctrines of Lollardism lingered among 
 the people, but the power of the Lollards as a political 
 party vanished away. 
 
 In the fourteenth century the kingdom advanced 
 rapidly in wealth and in luxury. Art developed from 
 the vigorous but severe Early English style into the 
 
 ' Const. Hist, of England, iii. 87, Bishop (Stubbs) of Oxford. 
 
THE LOLLARDS 
 
 121 
 
 elegant luxuriance of the Decorated. Many of the 
 cathedrals were added to, and many churches built 
 in a style which is easily recognised by the flowing 
 tracery of its windows, the geometrical outline of its 
 mouldings, and the luxuriance of its sculptured foliage, 
 in which the stiff acanthus foliage of the thirteenth 
 century has unfolded into summer leafage of all kinds 
 copied from nature. A school of sculpture had arisen 
 which gave the human figure with a certain conven- 
 tionality of manner, but with a creditable knowledge of 
 anatomy, elegance of pose, skilful drapery, and force and 
 beauty in the heads. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE REFORMING COUNCILS 
 
 In the fifteenth century there was a great absence of 
 original thought and of religious zeal. Its most marked 
 feature, perhaps, was the growing impatience under the 
 prevalence of ecclesiastical abuses — there was not much 
 question about doctrines — and the great events of eccle- 
 siastical history are the attempts to obtain a general 
 reform of them, at the three Councils of Pisa (1409), 
 Constance (1414), and Basle (143 1). 
 
 The Council of Pisa was summoned to deliver the 
 Church from the schism and scandal occasioned by the 
 existence of the two rival lines of Popes, which had 
 existed since 1378, one seated at Rome, the other at 
 Avignon, one supported by about one half of Europe, 
 the other by the other half The Council deposed both 
 Popes and elected a third ; but the deposed Popes con- 
 tinued their pretensions and still found supporters ; so 
 that the result of the action of the Council was to add a 
 third line of Popes, and all three continued till 1414. 
 In 1410 the third Pope (Alexander V.) died, and his 
 successor, John XXIII., reluctantly summoned another 
 Council to meet at Constance. 
 
 The Council of Constance had been carefully planned, 
 so as to be independent of Roman influences ; it was to 
 meet out of Italy ; as many learned doctors as prelates 
 
THE REFORMING COUNCILS 123 
 
 were summoned ; the Emperor presided over it ; and it 
 voted by nations, so as to neutralise the disproportionate 
 number of Itahan Monsignori. The first act of the 
 Council was to depose all the Popes and make a clear 
 field. But instead of proceeding at once to settle reforms, 
 as the English and German nations desired, the Council 
 made the blunder of conceding to the Italian wish to give 
 precedence to the election of a Pope. The new Pope, 
 Martin V., acted as had been anticipated. He used all 
 his power and influence to evade any real reformation ; 
 played off the nations one against another ; made separate 
 concordats with them, and concluded the Council as 
 soon as possible. One thing, however, the Council did 
 which is of permanent importance — it passed a unani- 
 mous decree, to which Pope Martin gave his adhesion, 
 that a Council is above tlie Pope : " Every lawfully con- 
 voked CEcumenical Council representing the Church de- 
 rives its authority immediately from Christ : and every 
 one, the Pope included, is subject to it in matters of 
 faith, in the heaUng of schism, and in the reformation 
 of the Church." The legates of Eugenius IV. (the 
 successor of Martin) also swore to this decree before 
 they were admitted to preside in his name over the next 
 Council at Basle. 
 
 The Council of Basle sat for three and a half years, 
 and drew up schemes of reform, but at the end of that 
 time it split in two. Part of it met under the Pope at 
 Ferrara, the remainder refused to remove, and continued 
 its sittings at Basle ; and the Council came to nothing. 
 
 On this failure the Christian sovereigns took the 
 question of reform into their own hands. The King 
 of France summoned a great assembly of the nobility, 
 clergy, and others, which agreed to continue to recog- 
 nise the Pope, but to put in force the reforming decrees 
 
124 HISTORY OP THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 
 
 of the late Council. Thus originated what is known as 
 the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, the charter of the 
 Gallican liberties. The Emperor of Germany and the 
 Imperial Diet took a very similar course. But the 
 Popes astutely negotiated with the sovereigns separately, 
 and before very long regained many of the advantages 
 which they had lost. On the whole, the Church re- 
 lapsed into its old condition. In Rome especially, 
 from 1464 to 1503, a succession of Popes — Paul II., 
 Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII., and Alexander VI. — shocked 
 Christendom by the scandal of their vicious lives. 
 
 The style of architecture in the fifteenth century was in 
 its main features the same as in the fourteenth, but with 
 some alterations in the proportions of the buildings and 
 in the ornamental details. The architects seem to have 
 aimed at producing a light, spacious, unencumbered in- 
 terior ; the columns are sometimes very thin, the windows 
 are large, and, when filled with painted glass, were the 
 principal decoration ; the flowing tracery of the previous 
 style is abandoned, and rigid perpendicular mullions 
 divide the window from top to bottom, the upper part 
 being again subdivided into arched compartments, all 
 finished with arched and cusped heads. The prevalence 
 of strong vertical lines gives the style its distinctive name 
 of Perpendicular. In later examples the roofs are often 
 of low pitch, elaborately framed, richly moulded and 
 carved, and covered with lead; where the roofs are 
 groined, it is often with fan-tracery. The arches are 
 comparatively low and often four-centred, the mouldings 
 broad and shallow. It is the age of noble towers. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 A SUMMARY OF THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD 
 
 We have seen how much the Church had done to 
 form and mould our national life. It gave to our rude 
 English forefathers not only the inestimable blessing of 
 Christianity, but it also introduced among them the 
 law, literature, art, and arts of life, of a more advanced 
 social condition. In a word, it trained them up into 
 Christian civilisation. It prepared the way for the union 
 of the Heptarchic princedoms into the kingdom of 
 England. The Church grew and prospered with the 
 growth and prosperity of the nation, and was an impor- 
 tant factor in that growth. In ages of arbitrary kings 
 and unlettered barons, the Church took the place of a 
 cultured middle class, and it was the national champion 
 of the commonalty. Throughout the Middle Ages the 
 Church still supplied the nation with its ministers of 
 State, ambassadors, and judges ; its schools and univer- 
 sities ; its lawyers, physicians, men of science ; its philo- 
 sophers, historians, and poets ; its systematic relief of 
 the poor, its hospitals for the sick, its alms-houses for 
 the helpless. The Church was among the foremost in 
 those national movements which wrung the principles 
 of constitutional government from the crown, and 
 alone in defending the poor from oppression, and de- 
 manding for them the consideration due to a common 
 
126 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 brotherhood in Christ Jesus. The Church was the only 
 ladder by which the poor man of natural ability might 
 rise to be the equal of princes. 
 
 The organisation of the Churcli in Saxon times had 
 been modelled on the actual civil condition of the 
 people. Each of the Heptarchic kingdoms formed a 
 diocese, and when the dioceses were subdivided, the 
 partition followed the lines of the great tribal subdivi- 
 sions; the rectories were the estates of the landlords, 
 or the townships of the freeholders, and when the manors 
 were subdivided, as population increased and waste 
 lands were brought into cultivation, new manors became 
 new parishes. The formation of parishes was probably 
 complete by the time of the Conquest, at which epoch 
 there were about twenty dioceses, including the Welsh 
 Sees, and about 8000 parishes. The wisdom of these 
 primitive arrangements is shown by the fact that they 
 lasted without change through all the political, ecclesias- 
 tical, and social revolutions of about a thousand years. 
 
 The constructive work of the ages, from the Conquest 
 to the Reformation, was the addition of supplementary 
 agencies. The number of the monastic houses was greatly 
 increased by the Normans of the Conquest. It was the 
 fashion of that time for a great noble to found a monas- 
 tery, usually in some wild remote district of his new 
 possessions, just as in earlier times it was the custom for 
 the Saxon Thane to build a church on his manor. The 
 earlier monasteries were religious colonies scattered over 
 the country, which helped largely in civilising and chris- 
 tianising it. The wealth of the monasteries grew not 
 so much from subsequent donations — pious benevolence 
 soon turned into other channels — as from the agricul- 
 tural skill of the monks in cuhivating the wild districts 
 originally bestowed upon them. In the three later 
 
A SUMMARY OF THE MEDIMVAL PERIOD 127 
 
 centuries of their existence, they were religious corpora- 
 tions learned, wealthy and powerful, who acted as a 
 counterpoise to the power of the secular barons, and 
 helped largely to maintain learning and culture, and the 
 dignity and influence of religion. 
 
 The Friars were a considerable, and probably on the 
 whole a valuable, addition to the former agencies. 
 Nearly all the great towns of mediaeval England had 
 one or more convents of Friars. The Dominicans 
 often built a large church, specially arranged for preach- 
 ing, and attracted large congregations ; the Franciscans 
 ministered especially to the poor and afflicted. The 
 Friars went on circuit also, by two and two, at regular 
 intervals round the neighbouring villages, preaching in 
 the village churches or churchyards, and visiting the 
 people of all classes. The two great faults in their con- 
 stitution were (i) their independence of Episcopal con- 
 trol, which left the Friars to be the rivals of the parish 
 priests, instead of a co-ordinated agency ; and (2) their 
 dependence for maintenance on the alms of the people 
 to whom they ministered, which drove them to practise 
 the arts of popularity-hunting, by which a man loses both 
 self-respect and the respect of those whose favour he 
 courts. 
 
 To complete the view of the ecclesiastical machinery 
 of the country districts, there must be added a number 
 of free chapels intended for the use of groups of popu- 
 lation at a distance from the parish churches. It is 
 probable that these were technically chantry chapels. 
 There were great legal difiSculties in the way of the 
 building of a new parish church, and there is hardly an 
 instance of it for centuries, but nothing more than the 
 bishop's license was needed for the building of a chantry 
 chapel j and under this name not only hamlet chapels, 
 
128 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 but chapels of ease for important new groups of popula- 
 tion were easily provided. 
 
 A remarkable feature of the mediaeval ecclesiastical 
 organisation was the great number of the parishes into 
 which the towns were divided, each with its more or 
 less large and handsome parish church. This is illus- 
 trated by all and each of our old towns, from London to 
 York, from Norwich to Bristol. Each of them to the 
 approaching traveller in those days presented a pic- 
 turesque architectural group of walls and gates rising 
 out of the green meadows which grew up to the edge 
 of the moat, and, rising above the walls, a grove of 
 towers and spires. Colchester, for example, had its io8 
 acres within the old Roman walls divided into eight 
 parishes, and for the whole population of about 2000 
 souls within the borough and liberties there were by the 
 early part of the fourteenth century no less than sixteen 
 churches and parish priests provided. Besides there 
 were within the walls the castle chapel, a Franciscan 
 friary, a hospital worked by Critched friars, and a leper 
 hospital, a guild chapel, and ten chantries distributed 
 among the churches ; just outside the walls a great 
 Benedictine abbey, an Augustinian priory with a great 
 church adjoining the south gate, and a hermitage and 
 chapel at a little distance out of the town. 
 
 Every great castle had its chapel and its chaplains. 
 Some of the great nobles had a considerable chapel 
 establishment of dean and chaplains and singing men 
 and boys, of which St George's Chapel, Windsor, is 
 almost the only one remaining ; and after the example 
 of the royal chapel the nobleman's chaplains assisted in 
 the administration of such of the lord's business as re- 
 quired clerkly attainments. Later, every great manor- 
 house had its chapel, where the household attended for 
 
A SUMMARY OF THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD 129 
 
 daily prayers, and a chaplain who ministered to them ; 
 only they all went to the parish church on certain great 
 festivals. By the close of the fifteenth century, knights 
 and gentlemen, and even wealthy yeomen and traders, 
 had their domestic chaplain. 
 
 About the beginning of the fifteenth century devotional 
 munificence began to show itself in the foundation of 
 chantries for one or more priests to say prayers daily 
 for the welfare of the members, living and departed, 
 of a particular family. The chantry chapel was usually 
 formed within the existing church, e.g., at the east end 
 of an aisle parclosed off with traceried wooden screens, 
 or was an addition to the existing church, and opened 
 into it. 
 
 The Guilds, which were so universal in those ages, 
 were all organised on a religious basis, and frequently 
 had a chantry and a chantry priest to pray for the welfare 
 of the members. By these means pious people endea- 
 voured to remedy the discrepancy between the number of 
 parish priests and the increasing number of parishioners 
 under their charge, and to obtain greater and peculiar 
 pastoral care, by engaging the services of a clergyman 
 specially bound to them. 
 
 This vast machinery appears the more remarkable 
 when it is compared with the population of the country. 
 At the time of the Conquest the people numbered little 
 more than two millions, and in the time of Henry "VIII. 
 they had not reached five millions. What was left of 
 this ecclesiastical machinery by the spoliations of the 
 Reformation period was made to do duty down to the 
 beginning of the present century, when the population 
 had grown to fourteen millions. 
 
 Under this great organisation, in the midst of the 
 great events of Church history which have been re- 
 
 s. T, I 
 
I30 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 corded, what was the actual religious condition of the 
 people ? 
 
 The systematic religious instruction of the people 
 was not neglected. If, in the depressed condition of the 
 parochial clergy of the twelfth century, there was any 
 slackness in teaching, there was certainly no lack of 
 zeal on their part in the thirteenth century, and the new 
 Orders of Friars both stimulated and supplemented the 
 diligence of the parish priests. In 1281 a.d., Archbishop 
 Peccham issued the celebrated Constitutions of the Synod 
 of Oxford which are called by his name. The loth canon 
 says, "We order that every priest having the charge of a 
 flock do four times in each year {i.e., once each quarter), 
 on one or more solemn feast-days, instruct the people in 
 the vulgar tongue, simply and without any subtle distinc- 
 tions, on the Creed, Ten Commandments, Evangelical 
 Precepts, seven works of mercy, seven deadly sins with 
 their offshoots, seven principal virtues, and seven sacra- 
 ments," and sets forth in considerable detail the points 
 on which the people are to be instructed. These Con- 
 stitutions are referred to constantly in the fourteenth 
 and fifteenth centuries as the foundation of the existing 
 practice in the Church, and similar decrees were repeated 
 in Diocesan Synods. Archbishop Thoresby of York, 
 in 1357 A.D., commissioned a monk to draw out in 
 English an exposition of the Creed, Commandments, 
 seven deadly sins, &c., to be sent to each of his priests. 
 Many manuals of the kind were published for the use 
 of the clergy: the Fars Occuli Sacerdotis, c. 1350 a.d. ; 
 very like it the Pupillus Occuli, 1385 a.d. ; the Occulus 
 Sacerdotis ; numerous MSS. of these still exist, and there 
 were early printed editions. The Speculum Christiani of 
 John Walton, fourteenth century, has the peculiarity of 
 prefacing each division of the work with a rhyming motto 
 
A SUMMARY OF THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD 131 
 
 giving the chief points to be remembered. The book 
 was Englished by John Bird, fifteenth century, and there 
 are several printed editions of it. 
 
 There are numerous tracts on the art of preaching 
 of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and courses 
 of sermons for the use of preachers, as by Grosseteste, 
 Bishop of Lincoln, in the thirteenth, and Fitzralph, Arch- 
 bishop of Armagh, in the fourteentli century ; and by 
 John Felton in the middle of the fifteenth century, fifty- 
 eight in number, of which there are many MSS. The 
 Zil>er Festivalis, a course of sermons for Sundays and 
 holy-days, by John Mirk, is of about the same date. A 
 Liber Festivalis founded upon Mirk's book was printed 
 twice by each of the first great printers, Caxton, Wynkyn 
 de Worde, and Pynson. Preachers' helps were already 
 known, as the Summa Predicantium of F"riar J. Brom- 
 yard, about the beginning of the fifteenth century ; 
 a similar work by Alan of Lynn, a Carmelite Friar, 
 and several other similar works. Concordances and 
 subject indexes were multiplied in the beginning of the 
 fourteenth century. 
 
 That instructions were actually given and sermons 
 preached, was ascertained by the inquiries concerning 
 every parish at the bishop's visitation; e.g., in the first 
 fifteen years of the fourteenth century, in the register of 
 Bishop Stapledon of Exeter. 
 
 The people must have been made familiar with the 
 great facts of religion by their pictorial representation 
 on church walls and windows and in block books, by 
 miracle plays and popular customs, and in other ways. 
 
 In trying to estimate the moral condition of the people, 
 it must not be forgotten that the Mediaeval Church main- 
 tained a system of discipline which took account of 
 men's regular observance of the external duties of religion, 
 
J 32 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 and which visited scandalous vice with penalties. In 
 times when men recognised its authority, respected its 
 admonicions, and submitted to its corrections, the result 
 must have been favourable to the well-being of the 
 people. It went further than that ; it cultivated con- 
 fidential pastoral relations between the man who had 
 the care of souls and the souls under his care which 
 tended to growth in holiness. Church discipline is a 
 by-word with us, but the effect of the paternal discipline 
 of a wise father over his houseiiold may afford a standard 
 by which it is possible to estimate the effect of the spiri- 
 tual discipline of the earlier Church. On the whole, 
 then, the number of clergymen engaged in pastoral 
 ministration was very large ; their ministrations were 
 fairly efficient ; and it is probable that a much larger 
 proportion of the people knew the truths of religion, 
 acknowledged its obligations, and made some endeavour 
 to live accordingly, than at the present time. 
 
 There are a considerable number of popular works 
 on morals, adapted to lead people to cure their faults 
 and cultivate virtues. A French book on " Virtues and 
 Vices," written in 1279, was translated in numerous ver- 
 sions, both poetical and prose, in the subsequent cen- 
 tury ; the Ayenbite of Inwit (Remorse of Conscience) and 
 Richard of Hampole's Prick of Conscience represent it ; 
 Chaucer's " Poore Parson's Tale " is a free adaptation 
 of portions of it, and his use of it helps to show the popu- 
 larity of this kind of teaching. A considerable number 
 of " Manuals of the Duties of a Parish Priest " existed, 
 and indicate, just as the number of similar works pub- 
 lished during the last half century do, that it was a time 
 in which the parochial clergy were interested in their 
 duties. One of these in English verse, probably of the 
 first half of the fourteenth century, translated from a 
 
A SUMMARY OF THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD 133 
 
 Latin original by John Mirk, Canon of Lilleshall, pub- 
 lished by the Early English Text Society, is a very 
 sensible, and, for its time, useful book. 
 
 The disadvantage of the use of Latin in the services 
 of the Church vvas not overlooked ; books of private 
 devotion, called Prymers, were extensively used, some 
 partly in Latin, pardy in English, others entirely in 
 English. The earliest known Prymer entirely in English 
 is of the date 1410. These Prymers contained trans- 
 lations of matins and evensong, the Creed, Lord's 
 Prayer, and Ten Commandments, the Penitential Psalms, 
 the Litany, and other devotions and prayers. The 
 Epistles and Gospels at Mass were read in English, 
 and there were little books which contained the Latin 
 of that service with translations of portions of it, to help 
 the devout to follow and join in the worship. 
 
 It is convenient to gather together here a brief 
 summary of some of the chief errors of the Mediaeval 
 Church which were abandoned at the Reformation. 
 The Papal claims are so involved in the history, that 
 they have been dealt with already in various places 
 (see pp. 74, 113-116). 
 
 The Cultus of the Blessed Virgin Mary.— The as- 
 sumption of the Virgin Mary to heaven at her death is first 
 found mentioned by Sophronius in the fifth century as 
 a doubtful tradition. It was not till the twelfth century 
 that some canons of Lyons, during a vacancy of the See, 
 instituted a festival in honour of her Conception. St. 
 Bernard wrote against it as a "novelty," an "error," 
 and a " superstition," arguing that only our Blessed Lord 
 was conceived without sin ; but from that time the 
 opinion of the Immaculate Conception began to be 
 entertained. Duns Scotus in the fourteenth century 
 
134 HISTORY OP THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 argued in favour of it as a scholastic proposition ; 
 Thomas Aquinas opposed it. Scotus was a Franciscan, 
 Aquinas a Dominican ; the two orders took up the con- 
 troversy, and the whole Church was ranged on one side 
 or the other. The Council of London in 1328 ordered 
 the festival to be observed. Pope Pms IX. first declared 
 the doctrine to be de fide in 1854 a.d. Throughout the 
 thirteenth and following centuries an excessive venera- 
 tion was paid to the Virgin, prayers were offered to her, 
 she was regarded as the mediatrix between man and her 
 Divine Son. 
 
 Transubstantiation. — The early Church believed in a 
 presence of Christ in the Sacrament without defining the 
 mode of the presence. The Scholastic Philosophy, 
 attempting to define mysteries and commend them to 
 the reason, began the controversy as to the mode of the 
 presence in the early half of the ninth century, and 
 gradually elaborated a theory in harmony with the current 
 philosopliy, which distinguished the accideiiis of a thing, 
 as its density, colour, taste, &c., from the substance wiiich 
 underlies all its accidents. It was not till the fourth 
 Lateran Council, 12 15 a.d., that the doctrine was autho- 
 ritatively sanctioned that the bread and wine, "while 
 retaining all the accidents of bread and wine, have their 
 substance transubstantiated into the body and blood of 
 Christ." 
 
 Communion in one kind. — In the eleventh ceniury 
 the custom began of dipping the bread into the wine, 
 and so administering the Sacrament. The Council of 
 Claremont in 1095, and Pope Paschal in mo, forbade 
 the practice except in special cases. The practice was 
 forbidden in England by the Council of London, 1175. 
 Anselm was the first to afifirm that the whole Christ was 
 taken under either species, and Robert PuUeyn ( 1 1 20 a.d. ) 
 
A SUMMARY OF THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD 135 
 
 gives the injunction tliat " the flesh of Christ alone should 
 be distributed to laymen." Not till the thirteenth century 
 did this doctrine come into common use. Thomas 
 Aquinas argued in favour of it ; Bonaventura urged it out 
 of reverence, for fear of spilling the wine. It was not 
 authoritatively sanctioned till the Council of Constance 
 (1415); but the Council of Basle, in the treaty of peace 
 with the Bohemians known as the Compactata, allowed 
 the communion to be administered in both kinds to such 
 of their adults as should desire it (1433). 
 
 Purgatory. — Speculations about the condition of the 
 good and wicked in the intermediate state began to 
 assume prominence in the teaching of Gregory the Great. 
 ■\^'e find abundant traces of tliem in the Saxon Church 
 in Bede and other writers. Otto Frisingensis in 1146 
 says, "Some affirm that there is in the unseen state a 
 place of purgatory, in which those who are to be saved 
 are either troubled with darkness only, or are refined 
 by the fire of expiation." It was first put forth autho- 
 ritatively as a doctrine by the Council of Florence (1438). 
 The Primitive Church prayed for the samts departed, 
 "for their increase of rest and felicity;" so it came to 
 be held that prayer could benefit those who were in 
 purgatory to procure a mitigation or shortening of their 
 pains ; then, since the Eucharist is the most effectual 
 way of pleading with God, the priests were asked for 
 their Eucharistic intercessions, and were paid for special 
 Eucharistic services with this view ; and so came the 
 abuse of masses for the dead to deliver them out of 
 purgatory. 
 
 Saint-worsliip. — The Primitive Church felt strongly 
 the reality of the life after death, and believed that saints 
 departed must still take an interest in those whom they 
 have loved on earth, and that they must therefore still 
 
136 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 pray to God for them. This led in time to asking the 
 saints for their intercessions. It was thought that such 
 petitions to the saints were most Hkely to be heard 
 and to be effectual if offered at the burial-place of 
 the saint or in the presence of any relic of him ; and 
 so grew the abuses of saint-worship, relic-worship, and 
 pilgrimages. 
 
 Indulgences. — This originally meant the relaxation by 
 the bishop, for sufficient reason, of the penance inflicted 
 upon any one. The Mediaeval theory on the subject 
 was, that after the remission of the guilt and eternal 
 penalty of sin there remains a certain amount of punish- 
 ment to be endured either in this world or the next ; that 
 the merits of the saints, over and above the holiness 
 necessary to their own salvation, constitute a treasury 
 of merit ; that the Church by its bishops has the power 
 to apply to sinners out of this treasury of the merits 
 of the saints to atone for their shortcomings ; and this 
 application of so many days' or years' remission of pain 
 is called an indulgence. The sale of indulgences on a 
 great scale, as a means of raising funds for the rebuild- 
 ing of St. Peter's at Rome, and the coarse superstitions 
 taught by Tetzel, one of the agents for their sale, in 
 pressing his wares upon the people in Gennany, was 
 one of the immediate causes which stirred up Luther to 
 the opposition to Rome which led to the great reform 
 movements of the sixteenth century. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE REFORMATION 
 
 TEMP. HENRY VIII. 
 
 The attempts which Europe had made in the fifteenth 
 century to obtain a reformation of the Church by the 
 agency of General Councils had been frustrated by the 
 diplomacy of Rome ; the subsequent endeavours of the 
 sovereigns to reform the National Churches had been 
 only partially successful ; the Church had relapsed into 
 most of the old abuses, and the prospect appeared hope- 
 less. For a long period there was a remarkable absence 
 of original thought ; religion was stagnant ; but at length 
 Western Europe was aroused by a movement which 
 brought the Mediaeval era to a close and began a new 
 order of things. 
 
 The Causes of the Reformation. 
 
 In dealing with the details of the subject it will be 
 convenient to assume the reader's knowledge of the 
 general history of the period, and to arrange the prin- 
 cipal features of the reformation of the Church in the 
 way in which they will be most easily apprehended and 
 remembered. 
 
 The New Learning. — The fall of Constantinople, and 
 of the Greek Empire with it, before the army of Mahomet 
 II. in 1453 A.D., had for one result the scattering of 
 137 
 
138 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 learned Greeks as refugees over Europe. European 
 scholars eagerly embraced the opportunity to make 
 themselves acquainted with the Greek language and with 
 the treasures of learning enshrined in it. Princes and 
 prelates became the patrons of the New Learning ; the 
 educated classes followed the fashion, and a powerful 
 impulse and new direction were given to the intellect of 
 the age. A reaction set in against the worn-out Medieval 
 civilisation, and an enthusiastic admiration of the classical 
 literature, philosophy, and art. This current of free and 
 vigorous thought was the great factor in the reform of 
 religion. It broke the bonds of old authority and 
 brought everything to the bar of free criticism. It 
 was no longer a question merely of correcting adminis- 
 trative abuses, but of a searching examination into 
 the bases of all existing institutions and accepted 
 beliefs. 
 
 The Art of Printing, which coincided with the be- 
 ginning of the New Learning, helped greatly to spread it 
 among the people, by making books accessible to the 
 large numbers whose desire for knowledge had been 
 stimulated by the new spirit of inquiry. 
 
 Ecclesiasticalism dominated society; the new Classi- 
 calism was its very opposite. It was natural that the new 
 spirit should attack the old; it was almost inevitable 
 that it should at first run into extremes ; and as a result, 
 in Italy, and in the court of Rome itself, the literati 
 were more of pagan philosophers than Christian believers. 
 The classical renaissance was long in arriving in England, 
 and never went to the same extremes here. It is a 
 testimony to the truth of Christianity that in this, as in 
 other great periods when a new philosophy or science 
 has brought men to inquire in no friendly spirit into 
 the bases of revealed religion, the result has been that 
 
THE REFORMATION 
 
 religion has issued from the searching examination purified 
 from the accretions of ages, and more firmly established 
 than ever. 
 
 The Policy of Henry VIII.— It is not true that Henry 
 VIII. was the author of the English Reformation, but it 
 is true that if he had opposed it, it might have taken a 
 different course. It is very probable that the question 
 of his divorce from Katherine of Arragon had great 
 influence in determining the king to throw himself on 
 the side of the reform. For political reasons both Henry 
 and Francis of France had lately held out to the Pope 
 the threat of withdrawing their obedience from Rome 
 and establishing a new patriarchate including the two 
 kingdoms. The circumstances of the divorce case 
 were calculated to bring home to Henry the intolerable 
 evils of the submission to the corrupt court of Rome 
 as a final court of appeal, and may well have been the 
 "last straw" which led him to fulfil the threat, so often 
 made from the time of Henry I., to resume the ancient 
 independence of the English Church. 
 
 But though his personal grievance may have led Henry 
 to come to the determination to break with Rome, he 
 went into the matter with grave political motives. The 
 king was not a mere sensual tyrant ; he was an able 
 statesman ; and in this matter he pursued a great and 
 far-reaching policy. The Wars of the Roses had broken 
 the power of the feudal nobles ; the only power which 
 remained capable of controlling the power of the crown 
 was the Church, with its great wealth and its ancient 
 privileges. The king saw the opportunity which the 
 times offered of accomplishing the design in which 
 Henry II. had failed, of bringing the Church under the 
 power of the crown. Henry had very little sympathy 
 with the doctrinal side of the Reformation. To free the 
 
140 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 crown and nation from all foreign authority, and then 
 to reduce the Church under the rule of the crown, 
 this, in short, was Henry's reform policy; and it may 
 be admitted that it was a statesmanlike policy, and one 
 which, if carried out with wisdom and moderation, was 
 for the welfare of the Church and nation. It is remark- 
 able that the king carried out every step of this revolu- 
 tion with careful observance of constitutional and legal 
 forms. Wolsey had governed without Parliaments ; but 
 a Parliament was summoned (and packed) for the pur- 
 pose of legalising the contemplated changes, which sat 
 from 1529 to 1536, and is known as the Reformation 
 Parliament. Convocation was summoned at the same 
 time, and took its constitutional part in discussing and 
 consenting to every step which was afterwards dealt with 
 by Parliament and the crown. 
 
 The King's Divorce. — It is necessary to know some- 
 thing about a matter which exercised so large a practical 
 influence upon the history of the reform movement as 
 the case of the king's divorce. 
 
 The politic Henry VII., in obtaining the daughter 
 of Ferdinand and Isabella in marriage for his son Arthur, 
 cemented the alliance with Spain and obtained a large 
 dower. When Arthur died, the king sought to retain 
 these advantages by the simple device of putting Henry 
 in Arthur's place. There was some wonder at the fact 
 of the marriage of the young prince with his brother's 
 widow, and Archbishop Warham made some remon- 
 strance; but the king willed it, and the Pope gave a 
 dispensation for it. They were married and lived 
 together for fifteen years, and the wonder had long 
 since died away. But at the end of those fifteen 
 years, in 1526, when a treaty was on foot for the 
 marriage of the Princess Mary to the Duke of 
 
THE REFORMATION 
 
 [41 
 
 Orleans, the French king's ambassador raised the 
 question whether Henry's marriage was not illegal, 
 and the offspring of that marriage in consequence 
 illegitimate. 
 
 Very probably the king was startled by the formal 
 challenge of his daughter's legitimacy, and the possibility 
 which it suggested of a disputed succession on the plea 
 of the illegitimacy of his children. The successive 
 deaths of six of his children, leaving him without a male 
 heir, may have impressed him. Besides, he was tired of 
 Katherine, who was fading into middle age (forty-three), 
 while he himself was in the prime of manhood (thirty-five), 
 and he had fixed his fancy upon one of the ladies of the 
 queen's court. The effect of these mixed motives was 
 the determination to seek for a divorce, and negotiations 
 were opened with Rome. 
 
 The Pope was in a great difficulty. To grant a divorce 
 on the ground that the marriage was illegal was to 
 declare his predecessor's dispensation erroneous and in-^ 
 valid. Moreover, to grant the divorce was to make an 
 enemy of the Emperor, who was the queen's nephew and 
 who warmly espoused her cause. The Pope therefore 
 interposed delays, clearly hoping that something would 
 happen to relieve him of the necessity of giving any 
 decision at all, and so the divorce case dragged on for 
 six weary years. On May 31, 1529, Cardinals Wolsey 
 and Campeius opened their legatine court in London, 
 and the scene took place which Cavendish has described 
 and Shakespeare dramatised, when the queen made her 
 appeal to the king's heart and conscience, denied the 
 validity of the court, and appealed to Rome. The 
 Pope thereupon annulled his commission to the cardinals 
 and recalled the case to Rome. 
 
 Then the king took up a new course, which it is said 
 
142 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 was first suggested by Cranmer; this was to obtain the 
 opinion of the universities and canonists of Europe on 
 the question " whether marriage with a brother's widow 
 is forbidden by the law of God, and whether the Pope 
 has authority to give a dispensation for such a marriage ;" 
 and if their opinion was in the affirmative on the first 
 clause and in the negative on the second, to treat the 
 marriage as null and void from tlie beginning, and 
 himself therefore an unmarried man, at liberty to marry 
 whom and when he pleased. 
 
 Warham died early in 1533, and Cranmer was conse- 
 crated March 30, 1533. The Act for the restraint of 
 appeals to Rome had been passed which made the 
 archbishop's court the final court of appeal, and the new 
 archbishop brought the cause to an end. He opened 
 his court at Dunstable on the loth of May; the queen 
 did not appear and was pronounced contumacious ; 
 the court pronounced that the marriage of Henry and 
 Katherine had been null and void from the beginning. 
 On March 24, 1534, the Pope, thus driven to extremities, 
 gave sentence on the contrary that the marriage was 
 valid. 
 
 Anne Boleyn had for some time past lived in the 
 king's palace and gone about with him, and it is charitable 
 to suppose that they were privately married. On the 
 declaration of the archbishop's sentence it was proclaimed 
 that they had been married for some time, and .Anne was 
 crowned in May. 
 
 The Withdrawal of Obedience from Rome. 
 
 The Church of England did not look upon its entry, 
 after the Conquest, into strictly conditioned relations 
 with Rome as the acknowledgment of a right jure divino 
 
THE REFORMATION 
 
 143 
 
 of the Papal See to supremacy. The idea of reces- 
 sion from the arrangement was habitually in the mind 
 of the Church, and was threatened from time to time, 
 from the reign of Henry I., in the generation after it 
 had been entered into, down to the reign of Henry 
 VHI. (see pp. 74, 115). 
 
 The Pope had received various warnings. The king's 
 ambassadors more than once pointed out that their 
 failure to move the Pope might lead the king to dis- 
 claim his authority ; a petition to the Pope was signed 
 by a number of members of the Houses of Lords and 
 Commons (viz., 2 archbishops, 4 bishops, 2 dukes, 2 
 marquises, 13 earls, and 24 barons, and 22 abbots, 11 
 commoners and divines), threatening that if he further 
 delayed to give sentence in the divorce case, they would 
 take it to mean that they were left to take care of 
 themselves and would seek their remedy elsewhere 
 (Collier, ix. 86). 
 
 So early as 1531, the bishops and clergy in Convoca- 
 tion took the first formal step in the direction of 
 resuming the independence of the English Church. 
 Convocation petitioned the king complaining of the pay- 
 ment of annates to Rome, showing cause against their 
 payment, and asking the king to procure an Act of 
 Parliament putting an end to the exaction ; and sug- 
 gested that if the Pope should take any proceedings to 
 enforce the payment, or withhold the usual Papal con- 
 firmation of episcopal appointinents, the king and Parlia- 
 ment should concur in withdrawing the obedience of 
 England from the See of Rome. In consequence of 
 this petition an Act against the payment of annates 
 (23 Henry VHI. c. 20) was passed, enacting that all 
 such payments should cease, but that a payment of 
 five per cent, on one year's value should be offered as 
 
144 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 fees for the bulls usual at the consecration of a bishop, 
 and that if the Pope did not accept the arrangement, 
 bishops should be made and consecrated as heretofore 
 in ancient time ^ by sundry the king's most noble pro- 
 genitors. A final clause put this weapon into the king's 
 hand to strengthen his negotiation with the Pope, with 
 power to promulgate it if the negotiation should fail. 
 
 When the negotiation failed the Act was proclaimed 
 in 1553. It was strengthened by an additional Act 
 (25 Henry VIII. c. 20) reciting and confirming the 
 former Act, and proceeding to define the way in which 
 bishops were to be made and consecrated in future. It 
 was substantially a continuance of the former customs 
 and formalities : it retained the license to the chapter to 
 elect, accompanied by a letter-missive containing the 
 name of the person whom they should elect. It enacted 
 that if the chapter should delay to elect above twelve 
 days, the king may nominate and the archbishop and 
 bishops shall proceed to consecrate ; if the chapter re- 
 fuse to elect or the bishops to consecrate, they incur the 
 pains and penalties of the statute of premunire. This 
 is the statute under which bishops are still appointed. 
 
 By the original decree of William I. no appeal was 
 to be made to Rome, and no Papal document of any kind 
 was to be received without the royal assent, and the 
 Act of Premunire had strengthened that original decree ; 
 so that it was within the constitutional right of the crown 
 to declare that there should be no more such appeals. 
 This was done by an Act for restraining appeals 
 (24 Henry VIII. c. 12). The ancient constitution 
 
 ' During the Papal schism England did not recognise either of 
 the rival Popes, and Henry V. ordered that bishops elect should 
 be confirmed by their metropolitans (Collier, Eccl. Hist., ii. 
 viii.). 
 
THE REFORMATION 
 
 145 
 
 of England in Church and State, and the intention 
 to continue it through the reforms of Henry VIII., 
 are well set forth in the preamble to this Act. It 
 begins by stating, " Whereas by divers sundry old 
 authentic histories and chronicles it is manifestly de- 
 clared and expressed that this realm of England is 
 an empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, 
 governed by one supreme head and king, having the 
 dignity and royal estate of the imperial crown of the 
 same; unto whom as a body politic, composed of all 
 sorts and degrees of people, divided in terms and by 
 names of Spirituality and TemporaUty, been bounden 
 and owen to bear, next to God, a natural and humble 
 obedience . . . the body spiritual whereof having power 
 when any cause of the law divine happened to come 
 in question, or of spiritual learning, then it was declared, 
 interpreted, and showed by that part of the body politic 
 called the Spirituality, now being usually called the 
 English Church, which always hath been reputed and 
 also found of that sort that, both for knowledge and 
 integrity and sufficiency of number, it hath been always 
 thought, and is also at this hour sufficient and meet 
 of itself, without the intermeddling of any exterior 
 person or persons, to declare and determine all such 
 doubts and to administer all such offices and duties as 
 to their rooms spiritual doth appertain ; for the due 
 administration whereof and to keep them from corrup- 
 tion and sinister affection, the king's most noble pro- 
 genitors and the antecessors of the nobles of this realm 
 have sufficiently endowed the said Church both with 
 honour and possessions. . . . The laws temporal for 
 trials of property, of lands and goods, and for the conser- 
 vation of the people of the realm in unity and peace, 
 without rapine or spoil, was and yet is administered, 
 s. r. K 
 
146 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 adjudged, and executed by sundry judges and ministers 
 of the other part of the said body politic called the 
 Temporality; and both these authorities and jurisdic- 
 tions do conjoin together in the due administration of 
 justice, the one to help the other." 
 
 The continuity of the Church is set forth in a further 
 section of the same Act, which declares that "all the 
 spiritual prelates, pastors, ministers, and curates within 
 the realm and the dominions of the same shall and 
 may use, minister, execute, and do, or cause to be used, 
 ministered, executed, and done, all sacraments, sacra- 
 mentals, divine services, and all other things within the 
 said realm and dominions, unto all the subjects of the 
 same as Christian men owen to do." In the Act of 
 Submission (25 Henry VIII. c. 19) it was added, that 
 an appeal should lie from the archbishop to the Court of 
 Chancery, which was to issue a commission under the 
 great seal for delegates to be named by the crown to 
 re-hear the cause. 
 
 Another Act concerning Peter's Pence and Dispensa- 
 tions (25 Henry VIII. c. 21), in 1533-34, sweeps away all 
 remaining payments of any kind to the See of Rome, 
 and authorises the Archbishop 01 Canterbury to grant 
 all such dispensations, faculties, &c., not being contrary 
 to the law of God, as were formerly granted by the 
 Bishop of Rome. 
 
 The Relations of Church and State. 
 
 In the prosecution of his designs against the ancient 
 constitutional liberties of the Church, Henry took a very 
 strange course. In 1523 the king had allowed Wolsey 
 to obtain a Papal bull empowering him to introduce 
 some reforms in the Church. Wolsey had summoned 
 
THE REFORMATION 
 
 147 
 
 a national synod with that view; but when the clergy 
 came togellier, they were not minded to put the matter 
 into the cardinal's hands, and raised such obstacles that 
 the design failed. It would seem that Wolsey had 
 acted on the king's verbal permission, and had not 
 taken the precaution to obtain a formal license under his 
 hand and seal, and was therefore technically guilty of a 
 breach of the Act of Premunire. The king now started 
 the monstrous fiction that the clergy, in obeying Wolsey's 
 summons to the synod of 1523, had acted under the 
 Papal bull, and so involved themselves also in the 
 penalties of the premunire ; and lastly, the whole body 
 of the laity were included in the charge as "main- 
 tainers, abettors, and fautors." The king's attorney for- 
 mally commenced a suit in the King's Bench against the 
 clergy and laity of England on this charge. The laity 
 were graciously pardoned on a petition from the House 
 of Commons ; but the clergy were given to understand 
 that the sentence of the court would leave them at the 
 king's mercy, and that in order to ransom themselves 
 they must consent to pay a fine to the king of ;^ioo,ooo 
 from the clergy of Canterbury and 0,000 from 
 those of York, equal to almost p^i, 500,000 of modern 
 money, and to acknowledge the royal supremacy. The 
 money was voted by the Convocations ; the recognition 
 of the supremacy was a more difficult matter. The 
 general acknowledgment was introduced into the pre- 
 amble of the Act of Convocation voting the fine. It 
 was at first proposed by the king's advisers to insert 
 there the words, " of the English Church and clergy, of 
 which the king alone is protector and supreme head." 
 The blasphemous interpretation to which this phrase 
 was liable being pointed out to the king, he agreed 
 to the insertion of the words "after God" — Cujus pro- 
 
148 HISTORY OP THE CHURCH OF ENGLAXD 
 
 tector et supremum caput post Detan is solus est. But 
 it was held by the clergy that the phrase was still 
 capable of being interpreted to contain a recognition 
 of spiritual authority in the crown, and they refused to 
 agree to it. The king sent for the bishops and other 
 leading clergymen, and pledged himself not to exercise 
 any other powers or jurisdiction than had been exercised 
 by preceding sovereigns; but the clergy still objected. 
 They suggested the words, "of the Enghsh Church and 
 clergy, whereof we recognise his Majesty as the sole 
 protector, the only supreme governor, and even, so 
 far as the law of Christ will allow, the supreme head," — 
 quantum per Chfisti legem licet. The king raged and 
 blustered according to his wont, " he would have no 
 quanturns and tantums ; " but the clergy refused to give 
 way, and the king had to accept the clause. In the 
 Convocation of York, Tunstal, Bishop of Durham, pre- 
 siding in the vacancy of the See of York, protested on 
 the ground that the clause was still liable to miscon- 
 struction. "That we may not give scandal to weaker 
 brethren, I conceive that this acknowledgment of the 
 supreme headship should be so carefully expressed as to 
 point wholly upon civil and secular jurisdiction. And 
 with this explanation the English clergy, and particularly 
 myself, are willing to go the utmost length in the recog- 
 nition. But since the clause is not at present thus 
 guarded and explained, I must declare my dissent, and 
 desire my protestation may be entered upon the journal 
 of Convocation." The clergy generally, however, seem to 
 have thought that the meaning of the clause was suf- 
 ficiently defined by what had been said on both sides 
 in the course of its discussion. 
 
 In 1534 the Act of Supremacy (26 Henry VIII. c. i) 
 gave a parliamentary sanction to the royal supremacy as 
 
THE REFORMATION 
 
 149 
 
 then acknowledged by the clergy in Convocation : " Be it 
 enacted that the king, his heirs and successors, shall be 
 taken, accepted, and reputed as the only supreme head on 
 earth of the Church of England, called Anglicana Ecclesia^^ 
 and "shall have full power and authority to visit, repress, 
 redress, reform, order, correct, restrain and amend," "all 
 errors, heresies, abuses, contempts, and enormities-" 
 
 In the following year, this surrender by the Church of 
 the liberties and immunities it had enjoyed since the 
 Conquest was practically carried out. The House of 
 Commons, probably at the instigation of the king, pre- 
 sented a petition to the crown against the abuses of the 
 ecclesiastical courts and other abuses, the principal being 
 that the Convocation made canons without the consent 
 of the king and laity, and that church discipline was 
 harshly enforced. Convocation replied to the petition, 
 but the reply was not considered satisfactory; and the 
 king dictated to the clergy the terms on which in future 
 the canons of the Church should be recognised by the law 
 and enforced by the aid of the civil authority. These 
 were accepted by Convocation and embodied in an Act of 
 Parliament for the submission of the clergy (25 Henry 
 Vin. c. 19): (i) That Convocation should assemble 
 only with the royal permission ; (2) that it should make 
 no canons without the royal license ; (3) that when made, 
 they should have no force till they had received the 
 royal sanction ; (4) that even then they should have no 
 force if found to be opposed to the laws of the realm or 
 the rights of the crown ; (5) that a reform of the canon 
 law should be undertaken by a commission of bishops 
 and others ; (6) that the ancient laws of the Church, not 
 inconsistent with the laws of the realm and the king's 
 prerogative, should continue in force until further legis- 
 lation abolished them. 
 
I50 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 The power to appoint this commission was renewed 
 in 1535, and again in 1544, but was not acted upon. In 
 the reign of Edward VI. (in 1551) commissioners were 
 appointed, and drew up the Reformalio Legum Ecclesi- 
 asiicartim, but this was not legalised. The question was 
 revived after the Restoration, but there was an indis- 
 position to give a new edge to the sword of ecclesiastical 
 discipline, and the old weapons, formidable looking but 
 clumsy and obsolete, were allowed to remain. Thus 
 the "further legislation" never took place, and con- 
 sequently the ancient canon law of the Church of 
 England still holds good where it is not contrary to 
 the statute law and does not interfere with the rights 
 of the crown. 
 
 The year 1534 may be conveniently taken as the 
 critical year of the Reformation. In that year the 
 Convocations formally declared that the Bishop of Rome 
 hath no greater jurisdiction conferred on him by God 
 in this kingdom of England than any other bishop, and 
 this was signed by the clergy, and by the monks generally. 
 In that year the Annates Act was published, and the Act 
 for restraining appeals was passed, which legally threw 
 off the authority of Rome ; and in that year the Act for 
 the submission of the clergy was passed, which abolished 
 the ancient constitutional privileges of the Church. In 
 the same year the Act of Succession was passed, which 
 declared Anne's marriage lawful and Elizabeth heir to 
 the throne, and required all subjects to take an oath 
 of approval of this declaration. Fisher, Bishop of 
 Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, who had resigned 
 his chancellorship two years before, and the monks of 
 the London Charterhouse, were imprisoned for refusing 
 the oath. 
 
 The Treason Act of the same year (26 Henry VIII. 
 
THE REFORMATION 151 
 
 c. 13) made it high treason to practise or wish harm to 
 the king, queen, or heir-apparent, to use words denying 
 their titles, or to call the king a heretic, schismatic, 
 tyrant, infidel, or usurper of the crown. Since the Act 
 was repealed in the next reign, we are at liberty to 
 express an opinion as to its tyrannical character. In 
 this same year the venerable Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, 
 and the eminent ex-Chancellor More were dealt with by 
 attainder, and suffered death upon the scaffold. 
 
 The Spoliation of the Church. 
 
 In pursuance of the king's design to lessen the power 
 of the Church, he procured an Act of Parliament (27 
 Henry VIII. c. 28) in 1535-36 for the suppression of 
 the smaller religious houses, viz., those whose income 
 was less than ;^2oo a year. He had previously issued a 
 commission to inquire into their condition. The busi- 
 ness of the commissioners was to make out a case against 
 the smaller houses, and they did it ; reporting many 
 abuses, whicli possibly existed, and trying to deprive 
 them of popular sympathy by bringing monstrous 
 charges, which nobody now believes. The measure 
 was unpopular, and the Commons were unwilling to pass 
 the bill. But Sir H. Spelman relates that "when the 
 bill had stuck long in the Lower House, and could get 
 no passage, the king commanded the Commons to attend 
 him in his galler_\', where he let them wait till late in 
 the afternoon, and then coming out of his chamber, 
 walking a turn or two amongst them, and looking angrily 
 at them, first on one side and then on the other, at last, 
 ' I hear,' saith he, ' that my bill will not pass ; but I 
 will have it pass, or I will have some of your heads,' 
 and without other rhetoric or persuasion returned to his 
 
152 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 chamber. Enough was said ; the bill was passed, and 
 all was given to him as he desired." 
 
 The king's object was twofold ; it was not merely to 
 seize the property of these foundations ; it was also to 
 get rid of the Friars. Their organisation placed them 
 entirely under the orders of the Roman court, and they 
 were necessarily determined advocates of the Papal 
 claims ; and, spread over the country as they were, and 
 having the ear of the common people, ihey were for- 
 midable opponents of the king's measures. These 
 Mendicant Orders, having no income and no property 
 beyond their churches and convents, came under the 
 Act. The Friars were summarily suppressed, unfrocked, 
 and turned out of doors. Some of the inhabitants of 
 the small monasteries sought refuge in the larger houses 
 of the same order. 
 
 The Surrender of the Great Houses. — The com- 
 missioners who reported against the small houses bore 
 witness that " in the great solemn monasteries of this 
 realm (thanks be to God) religion is right well kept 
 and observed." But this did not save them. 
 
 The monasteries, largely through their own cultivation 
 and good management of the waste lands originally 
 given to them, had become wealthy, and their noble 
 churches and cloister buildings, distributed three or 
 four or half-a-dozen in each county, were an ornament 
 to the land. It may be admitted that they had ceaied 
 to be of so much direct use to the country as they were 
 in earlier times, and some reform of them would have 
 been a wise measure ; they afforded a source from which 
 new bishoprics and colleges might have been founded, 
 and the number of parochial clergy increased and their 
 stipends improved ; while some of them might very well 
 have been left, under revised conditions, to their ancient 
 
THE REFORMATION 
 
 153 
 
 uses as places of learning and prayer. It was under 
 some such pretext that the king sought to reconcile the 
 people to the measures which he proceeded to take 
 against them. 
 
 The mode of procedure is characteristic of the mind 
 which attacked the secular clergy under the Statute 
 of Premunire. No bill was asked from Parliament, 
 following the precedent of the smaller houses, to put 
 the great houses into the king's hand. The abbots 
 were numerous in Parliament, many of the monks were 
 the younger sons of noble and powerful families, and 
 the monasteries were venerable in the eyes of the 
 people; it would probably have been difficult, even 
 by threats, to get such a bill through the two Houses. 
 So the attack was made in a different way. First, 
 commissioners were sent round to make out a case 
 against the houses. Then the legal fiction was intro- 
 duced that these ancient foundations were the property 
 in fee of the abbot and monks who happened to be 
 the present life-tenants. Then, instead of attacking 
 them in a body, they were diplomatically dealt with 
 one by one. The communities were simply invited 
 to surrender their houses to the king. Some were 
 bribed by the promise of other preferment, others were 
 threatened with criminal proceedings on one charge 
 or another. Sometimes an abbot, who could not in 
 conscience surrender his house, was induced to resign 
 his office, and another man was made abbot for the 
 moment, to complete the business. In a few cases an 
 abbot who could neither be bribed nor frightened was 
 got rid of by trumping up some charge against him and 
 hanging him. The venerable Abbot of Glastonbury 
 and the Abbots of Reading and Colchester were thus 
 dealt with. Thus the whole body of monks was sup- 
 
154 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 pressed, as the Friars had been four years before. The 
 king, still scrupulously observant of legal forms, pro- 
 ceeded to get a parliamentary title to the property which 
 he had thus seized. To pave the way for it, he first got 
 an Act (31 Henry VIII. c. 9) empowering the king to 
 create new bishoprics — he talked of creating eighteen — 
 then he brought forward another Act (31 Henry VIII. 
 c. 13) whose preamble states that "sundry abbots, 
 priors, abbesses, prioresses, and other ecclesiastical 
 governors and governesses of divers monasteries ... of 
 their own free and voluntary minds and good wills and 
 assents, without constraint, co-action, or compulsion of 
 any manner of person or persons, have resigned and 
 granted to the king all their houses, estates, and privi- 
 leges, and therefore it is enacted that the king shall 
 have, hold, possess, and enjoy them to himself and his 
 successors for ever." The ruin of the monasteries and 
 the disturbance of the devotional feelings of the people 
 stirred up a strong feeling against the government which 
 went the length of armed rebellion. A rising in Lin- 
 colnshire in the autumn of 1536, easily put down, 
 broke out again in Yorkshire under the picturesque 
 name of the Pilgrimage of Grace. It was so formid- 
 able that the king temporised, issued a general pardon, 
 and promised redress of grievances. Early in the follow- 
 ing year, however, he took the occasion of some new 
 disturbances to strike terror into the opponents of his 
 measures by wholesale executions of all ranks and classes 
 of the disaffected. 
 
 Out of the monastic property the king founded five 
 new bishoprics, viz., Bristol, Chester, Gloucester, Ox- 
 ford, and Peterborough. Some of the houses were 
 given by the king to the representatives of their original 
 founders ; with others he endowed a new race of nobles 
 
THE REFORMATION 
 
 155 
 
 and landed gentry ; a considerable number of people, 
 by gift or purchase of manors and lands, became 
 sharers in the spoil. Finally, in 1545-46 an Act of 
 Parliament (37 Henry VIII. c. 4) placed the endow- 
 ments of the Universities, of all colleges of priests, 
 and of all chantries and guilds, at the mercy of the 
 king, and commissioners were appointed to visit them ; 
 but the king's death, January 28, 1547 (in the 56th year 
 of his age and the 38th of his reign), arrested their 
 action. 
 
 The Doctrinal Reform. 
 
 The idea of the principal actors in the reforming 
 movement of the first period, i.e., the reign of Henry 
 VIII., was to bring the Church back to the doctrine, 
 organisation, discipline, and customs of the early 
 ages of the Church. The formal withdrawal from the 
 obedience to Rome, the assertion of the supremacy of 
 the crown over all its subjects, were defended on the 
 ground that they were a return to the model of earlier 
 times ; and similarly the doctrinal reforms were under- 
 taken with the clear avowal that ihey were the sweeping 
 away of mediaeval accretions and a return to the primitive 
 standards of the faith, viz., the Holy Scriptures, the three 
 Creeds, the General Councils, and the ancient Fathers. 
 
 The work of doctrinal reformation was effected by 
 the revision of the service books, and the formulation 
 of articles of religion binding upon the clergy, and by 
 the publication of translations of the Bible, of authorita- 
 tive expositions of doctrine from time to time, and the 
 issue of popular devotional books. The getting rid of 
 superstitious practices was effected largely by the bishops 
 in the visitation of their dioceses. It will be sufficient 
 to note the principal steps. 
 
156 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 Tyndale's translation of the New Testament (1525) was 
 not permitted by the authorities to be introduced into 
 England, but it was brought in secretly and circulated 
 among the more zealous Reformers. It was an admirable 
 translation, and the basis of the present authorised 
 version. 
 
 Coverdale's translation of the Bible was published in 
 1535, and is probably that which was ordered in 1536 
 to be set up in the churches, Matthews' Bible was 
 published in 1537 ; it was mainly Tyndale's translation 
 (1525) with prefiices and notes. Cranmer's great Bible 
 was published in 1539. 
 
 The Breviary was expurgated from all mention of the 
 Bishop of Rome and of saints not mentioned in the 
 Bible as early as 15 16, in the time of Wolsey and 
 Warham, and in 1533 the Missal was reformed on the 
 same principles. In 1542 Convocation appointed a 
 committee to consider a more thorough revision of the 
 service books. In the following year it published a 
 translation and revision of the Litany, a service which, 
 by its simplicity and directness, and its picturesque 
 accessories of procession and music, was very popular. 
 In the same year was published a revised edition of the 
 popular book of devotion, the English Prymsr, which 
 contained translations of matins, evensong, and compline, 
 the Creed and Ten Commandments, certain psalms and 
 prayers ior various occasions, &c. 
 
 In 1547 Convocation approved, and an Act ol Par- 
 liament legalised, the use of a Communion Service, which 
 Cranmer had drawn up in obedience to the king's in- 
 junction to "pen a form for the alteration of the mass 
 into a Communion." It took the old service (expurgated 
 in 1542) and added the exhortation beginning "Dearly 
 beloved in the Lord," the invitation, " Ye that do truly," 
 
THE REFORMATION 
 
 157 
 
 &c., the confession, absolution, comfortable words, and 
 prayer of humble access, "We do not presume," &c., as 
 we still have them, and the first half of the words of 
 administration, "The body of our Lord," &c., "The 
 blood of our Lord," &c., and the first half of the con- 
 cluding benediction, "The peace of God," &c. 
 
 In 1536 Convocation agreed upon Ten Articles of 
 Religioa They set forth the Holy Scriptures and the 
 three Creeds as the canons of the faith, and declare all 
 contrary opinions, as condemned by the first four holy 
 Councils, to be condemned. Five of these related to 
 matters of the faith, baptism, penance, the Eucharist, 
 and justification ; the other five to laudable ceremonies 
 used in the church, viz., images, the honour to be 
 given to saints, prayers to saints, rites and ceremonies, 
 purgatory. This was followed up by a book drawn up 
 by a commission of bishops and other divines, entitled 
 The Institution (i.e., instruction) of a Christian Man, a 
 very able and even eloquent exposition of the Creed, 
 Commandments, and Sacraments, and an explanation of 
 the usual religious ceremonies. The work may be re- 
 garded as the great popular exposition of the doctrines 
 of this first period of the Reformation. 
 
 Here the progress of doctrinal reform halted, and for 
 a moment there was a reaction. Foreign refugees. 
 Anabaptists and others, had introduced wild opinions, 
 political and religious, which were taken up by the more 
 fanatical of the people ; the danger which must always 
 exist when ignorant men are encouraged to form and 
 act upon their own crude notions of politics and religion 
 became so evident that the authorities took alarm, and 
 made a stand against further innovations. In 1539 
 Six Articles of Religion were issued, in which (i) tran- 
 substantiation was aftirmed ; (2) communion in both 
 
138 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 kinds declared nut necessary ; (3) priests not to marry ; 
 (4) vows of celibacy to be kept ; (5) private masses 
 approved ; (6) auricular confession necessary. The Act 
 of Parliament which legalised these articles contained 
 a penal clause enacting that offenders against the 
 first clause should be adjudged to be heretics and 
 should be burned, and offenders against the other 
 clauses should be subject to the penalties of felony. 
 Historians assure us that few if any suffered under this 
 dreadful Act. 
 
 The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of a Christian 
 Man, published in 1543, was a revised edition of the 
 " Institution of a Christian Man," modified to harmonise 
 with the Six Articles. The two books were popularly 
 distinguished, and to a certain extent rightly charac- 
 terised, by the names of the Bishops' Book and the 
 King's Book. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE REFORMATION— ITS OSCILLATIONS 
 
 TEMP. EDWARD VI. AND MARY 
 
 Edward VI., 1547 a.d. — The Influence of Foreign 
 Reformers. — Several things which were pubHshed at the 
 beginning of the reign of Edward VI. were really the 
 work of the previous reign. The English form of Com- 
 munion was not ready for publication till now ; what is 
 called the First Prayer Book of Edward VI., confirmed 
 by Convocation and legalised by Parliament (2 and 3 
 Edward VI. c. i) in 1549, was really the work of the 
 commission appointed in 1542; the same may be said 
 of the Reformed Ordinal authorised in 1550, and of the 
 First Book of Homilies, 1547. 
 
 The general spirit of the religious action of this 
 reign was very different from that which had inspired 
 the reforms of the previous period. A strong spirit 
 of Erastianism was combined with a strong leaning 
 towards the novel doctrines of the Swiss Reformers. 
 
 This Erastianism showed itself in the Act (i Edward 
 VI. c. 12) which made it treason to affirm that the king 
 was not supreme head on earth of the Church of Eng- 
 land ; in that (2 Edward VI. c. 2) which dropped the 
 old form of election of bishops under a conge d'elire and 
 substituted direct nomination by letters patent ; and in 
 the clause inserted in their patents restricting the power 
 
 159 
 
i6o HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 of ecclesiastical jurisdiction (as distinguished from ttie 
 spiritual authority inherent in the episcopal office) to 
 life or good behaviour, and directing that it should be 
 exercised in the king's name. 
 
 This leaning towards the foreign novelties led to the 
 invitation of a number of foreign divines to settle in 
 England and to teach their peculiar views here. Martin 
 Bucer and Peter Martyr were put into the influential 
 position of professors of divinity, the one at Cambridge, 
 the other at Oxford. Paul Fagius was made Hebrew 
 Professor at Cambridge. 
 
 The First Prayer Book of Edward VI. had hardly 
 been brought into general use when it was called in, 
 and a Second Prayer Book of Edward VL (5 and 6 
 Edward VI. c. i), 1552, was issued, which contained 
 considerable aherations in the direction of these new 
 opinions. In the same year Forty-Two Articles of 
 Religion were issued of the same tendency. 
 
 In 1549 and in 1550, Bonner, Bishop of London, and 
 Gardiner, Bishop ofWinchester, were deprived under the 
 "good behaviour" clause, their ill-behaviour being that 
 they did not take kindly to the new opinions and prac- 
 tices, and Ridley and Poinet were set in their places. 
 
 The spoliation of the Church continued. An Act of 
 the first year of the reign renewed that of the last year 
 of Henry which gave to the king the property of the 
 chantries and of the guilds. Some of the chantries 
 were really chapels of ease, and many of the chantry 
 priests acted as assistant curates. The guilds were the 
 benefit clubs of the period ; the fact that prayer for the 
 members and their relatives, living and dead, was one of 
 tlieir customary practices, afforded the pretext for seizing 
 their property as devoted to superstitious uses. 
 
 The last gleanings of the harvest of church property 
 
THE REFORMATION 
 
 i6i 
 
 were gathered into the royal coffers by commissioners 
 sent by the king (1553) to visit all the cathedrals and 
 churches and seize the superfluous plate and ornaments 
 for the king's use. 
 
 The arbitrary Erastianism of the Council and the 
 theological extremes to which the religious changes 
 were tending, more than the disposition of the courtiers 
 to complete the impoverishment of the Church, filled 
 moderate and sound churchmen with alarm ; it looked 
 as if they might soon be driven to choose between the 
 acceptance of the scheme of doctrine and church govern- 
 ment of the Swiss reformers and persecution. 
 
 Queen Mary, 1553. — These fears reconciled many to 
 the sudden and strong reaction which took place on 
 the accession of Mary. The daughter of Katherine of 
 Arragon had steadfastly refused to accept any of the 
 religious changes ; they were associated in her mind with 
 what she could not but regard as her mother's wrongs. 
 The coup d'etat by which Northumberland tried to place 
 Lady Jane Grey upon the throne, and the rebellion of 
 Wyatt, both in the name of reform, added political reasons 
 to religious motives for firm resistance to innovation. 
 Immediately on her accession the queen took steps to 
 undo the reform. Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were 
 arrested and sent to the Tower. Gardiner was released 
 from the Tower and made chancellor and minister. 
 
 A packed Parliament made little difficulty about re- 
 pealing the religious legislation of the late reign and 
 restoring things very much to the condition in which 
 they stood at the close of Henry's reign. The Arch- 
 bishop of York and the bishops of St. David's, Chester, 
 and Bristol were deprived for marriage ; the bishops of 
 Lincoln, Gloucester, and Hereford, consecrated under 
 
 S. T. L 
 
i62 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 Edward's letters patent, were dismissed for "ill-be- 
 haviour;" Ridley of London, Poynet of Winchester, and 
 Scory of Chichester were removed as intruders, to make 
 way for the bishops of those Sees who had been deprived 
 by Edward. Barlow resigned Bath and Wells. Sixteen 
 new bishops were consecrated ; many of the more promi- 
 nent and extreme of the reforming party fled beyond 
 sea, but the great mass of the clergy held to their cures; 
 probably many of them shared the opinion that it was 
 high time that something was done to arrest the rapid 
 degradation of the Church. Parliament by address to 
 the queen asked for reconciliation with Rome, and 
 Cardinal Pole as legate gave the nation plenary absolu- 
 tion. Parliament (i and 2 Phil, and Mary, c. 8) repealed 
 all Acts since 20 Henry VIII. against the Pope's autho- 
 rity, only it stipulated for the security of all grants of 
 church property. 
 
 In 1555 the dreadful persecution began which has 
 made Mary's reign odious in the memory of the English 
 people, and done more than all besides to set the heart 
 of the nation against the tyranny of Rome. In this 
 year Rogers, Hooper, Ridley, Latimer, and others were 
 condemned of heresy and burned. In the following 
 year (1556) Cranmer and others were burnt, and Pole was 
 made archbishop. In 1557 the persecution still con- 
 tinued ; the total number of persons burnt in this reign 
 was 277, besides those who were punished by imprison- 
 ment, confiscation, and fines ; among them were 5 
 bishops, 21 clergymen, 8 lay gentlemen, 84 tradesmen, 
 100 husbandmen, servants, and labourers, 55 women, 
 and 4 children. The persecution was arrested by the 
 death of the queen. Pole died on the following day, 
 
 It is not necessary to dwell upon the details of the 
 legislation of Edward VI. or of Mary, since these reigns 
 
THE REFORMATION 
 
 163 
 
 may be regarded as in a sense parenthetical. The ex- 
 cesses of this reign, and the reaction in the opposite 
 direction of the next, were wiped out of the statute book 
 by the early legislation of Elizabeth. The revolutionary 
 policy of the one reign, and the intolerance, and especially 
 the cruelties of the other, left a strong impression on the 
 mind of the people, and influenced the future course of 
 events ; but the ecclesiastical policy of Elizabeth and 
 the reforms of her reign are the logical continuation of 
 those of the period of Henry VIII. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE SETTLEMENT OF THE REFORMATION 
 
 Elizabeth, 1558 a.d. — When Elizabeth came to the 
 throne, it was well known that she had adhered to the 
 reformed doctrine during the reign of her Romanist 
 sister Mary, just as Mary had adhered to the unreformed 
 doctrine during the reign of Edward; and it seemed 
 probable that the violent religious changes which took 
 place on Mary's accession would now be followed by 
 equally violent changes in the other direction. Elizabeth 
 was sincerely attached to the principles of the Reforma- 
 tion as they had been laid down in her father's time, 
 viz., the assertion of the independence of the English 
 Church and a return to the standards of the Early 
 Church, but she had no sympathy with the extreme 
 views which had been introduced in Edward's reign. 
 
 The situation was one of great difficulty and danger. 
 The queen was fortunate in her choice of advisers, 
 Cecil in civil, and Parker in ecclesiastical affairs. Their 
 ecclesiastical policy was on the one side to reassure the 
 great body of moderate people who desired no further 
 great changes, and on the other to conciliate the more 
 advanced school of reformers, and so to settle the 
 Reformation on a permanent basis and restore peace 
 and unity. 
 
 The coronation showed at once the gravity of the 
 164 
 
SETTLEMENT OF THE REFORMATION 165 
 
 situation, for Oglethorpe, Bishop of Carlisle, was the 
 only diocesan bishop who consented to take part in the 
 ceremony. A Parliament was at once summoned, and, 
 with the subserviency of all the Parliaments of the Tudor 
 reigns, did very much what the crown desired it to do. 
 It repealed the Repealing Act of Mary, but the legis- 
 lation of Henry and Edward was not indiscriminately 
 revived; some of their Acts were carefully selected for 
 revival, while others were repealed ; the general effect 
 being to revive the reforms of Henry, but to relax the 
 grasp of the crown upon the liberties of the Church. 
 The supremacy of the crown was reasserted with a 
 change of the title from Supreme Head to Supreme 
 Governor, and a Court of High Commission was estab- 
 lished to exercise the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the 
 crown. A trace of the old tyranny is seen in an Act 
 providing that for maintaining that any foreign prince 
 or prelate has any spiritual jurisdiction in England, the 
 penalties should be for the first offence fine or imprison- 
 ment, for the second the penalties of premunire, and 
 for the third those of treason. 
 
 The spoliation of the Churcli was still continued. 
 An Act of this year resumed to the crown the first-fruits 
 and tenths which Mary had restored to the Church, and 
 another Act empowered the queen, on the avoidance of 
 any See, to take such of its lands as she might think 
 proper in exchange for impropriate tithes which had 
 come into the hands of the crown with monastic pro- 
 perties. The Church was allowed no voice in the ex- 
 changes, and got very much the worst of the bargain. 
 
 In the hope of winning over some of the higher clergy, 
 the queen directed that a conference should be held in 
 Westminster Abbey between ten or twelve bishops and 
 divines on each side; but it was broken off by the 
 
1 66 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 Romanist side, who had nothing to gain by it. In re- 
 commending the Reformation to the people, Jewel, in a 
 sermon at Paul's Cross, put forth the points of difference 
 in twenty-seven propositions, and gave the famous 
 challenge that "if any one sufficient sentence out of 
 any ancient father, or general council, or from Holy 
 Scripture, or example from the primitive Church of the 
 first six centuries after Christ, declarative of the Roman 
 view could be produced, he would give in his sub- 
 mission." There was much disputation in print on both 
 sides. Jewel's Apologia pro Ecdesia Anglicana was the 
 ablest defence of the Reformation in the then state of 
 the controversy. 
 
 In 1559 a new Prayer Book was confirmed by Con- 
 vocation ^ and authorised by Parliament; it was the 
 Second Book of Edward VI. with a few alterations in 
 the direction of the First Book. 
 
 In 1562 the doctrinal settlement of the Reformation 
 was brought to a conclusion. Convocation confirmed 
 TMrty-nine Articles of Religion, which were for the most 
 part the same as the forty-two articles of 1552 ; the most 
 material difference was that the new articles omitted the 
 express declaration of the former against the corporal 
 presence of Christ in the Sacrament. 
 
 Certain Injunctions were now issued by the crown, 
 and commissioners were appointed to tender the oath of 
 supremacy to the bishops and clergy ; this was accom- 
 panied by an explanation of the meaning of the royal 
 supremacy, that it is "under God to have the sovereignly 
 and rule over all manner of persons born within these 
 
 1 It has been usually. supposed that this Prayer Book was revised 
 by a committee of divines. Mr. Joyce, the historian of Convocation, 
 has recently discovered a document which makes it seem probable 
 that it was done by an episcopal synod. 
 
SETTLEMENT OF THE REFORMATION 167 
 
 realms, dominions, and country, either ecclesiastical or 
 temporal, so as no foreign power ought to have any 
 superiority over them." The title supreme head had 
 already been altered into supreme governor. This test 
 discriminated those of the clergy who finally adhered to 
 the Papacy. " The whole number of the clergy deprived 
 at this time for refusing the oath were 14 bishops (out 
 of 15 — 4 had died before Mary's death and 6 imme- 
 diately after) and 3 bishops elect, i abbot, 4 priors, 
 and I abbess, 12 deans, 14 archdeacons, 60 canons or 
 prebendaries, 100 priests well preferred, 14 heads of 
 colleges in Oxford and Cambridge, to which may be 
 added about 20 doctors in several faculties ; out of 
 about 9400 spiritual promotions." 
 
 This refusal of the higher clergy to accept the Re- 
 formation is very remarkable, especially as many of them 
 had accei)ted the reforms of Henry and Edward. In 
 explanation it may be said that the higher clergy, whose 
 duty it was to take a broad and deep view of the situa- 
 tion, had been greatly alarmed by the excesses of the 
 previous reign, which had threatened not only the 
 external organisation, but the essential doctrines and 
 principles of the Church. They dreaded the resumption 
 of these dangerous innovations, and probably came to 
 the conclusion that the continuance of the organic 
 union of the Church of England with the rest of the 
 churches of Europe, under the headship of the Bishop 
 of Rome, was the greatest protection of the Church of 
 England against the violent oscillations created by the 
 personal predilections of the sovereign, and against the 
 revolutionary designs of the extreme reformers. 
 
 The refusal of the bishops to recognise the new 
 state of things left the Episcopate in a lamentable con- 
 dition. The last year of Mary's reign was a time of 
 
168 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 terrible mortality, so that at the accession of Elizabeth 
 ten sees were unoccupied. Of the seventeen remaining 
 sees, only four were canonically filled, Durham, London, 
 Llandaff, and Sodor and Man, all the other prelates 
 having been either illicitly consecrated or translated, so 
 that they did not possess "jurisdiction." Of these, 
 four, viz., Tunstall of Durham and Bonner of London, 
 together with the bishops who had uncanonical posses- 
 sion of the remaining sees, were deprived by an abuse 
 of the royal power similar to that which had been exer- 
 cised by Mary. It became necessary to fill the vacant 
 sees, and to do it in such a way as to secure a valid legal 
 and canonical succession. 
 
 Parker was chosen for the See of Canterbury, and 
 was canonically elected under a royal conge d'elire in 
 August. Some of the bishops who had been deprived 
 in Mary's reign were restored, and other eminent divines 
 were nominated and elected to other vacant sees, but 
 the consecration of Parker was delayed until the following 
 December. 
 
 The consecration of Parker is a point of great import- 
 ance, because he was tlie principal link through whom 
 the ancient episcopal succession was derived to our 
 modern bishops, and it has for this reason been made 
 the subject of attack by opponents of the Church of 
 England. The first attack is known by the name of 
 "the Nag's Head fable." Forty-four years after the 
 event a story was started that all the consecration Parker 
 had was that at a meeting at a noted London tavern of 
 those days, several divines laid a Bible on the head of 
 Parker and said some prayers. This story rested on 
 the testimony of a Roman priest named Holywood, who 
 stated that one Neale, a chaplain of Bishop Bonner, had 
 witnessed the scene through a hole in the door. The 
 
SETTLEMENT OF THE REFORMATION 169 
 
 story seems to have been a pure invention, and was 
 refuted immediately on its publication, and is given up 
 by all respectable controversialists. The fact is, that 
 every one concerned understood very well the importance 
 of the occasion, and that the greatest care was taken to 
 make every step in it legal and canonical and to put 
 every step on record. The consecration took place in 
 the chapel of Lambeth Palace, under the Ordinal of 
 Edward VI., with dignified ceremonial, with the assist- 
 ance of the proper officials and in the presence of 
 sufficient witnesses. The consecrators were Barlow, 
 formerly Bishop of Bath and Wells in the time of Henry 
 and Edward, who had fled abroad to avoid the Marian 
 persecution, and was now Bishop elect of Chichester; 
 Hodgkin, suffragan Bishop of Bedford; Coverdale, ex- 
 Bishop of Exeter; and Scory, ex-Bishop of Chichester, 
 and now elect of Hereford. It is expressly recorded that 
 all the consecrating bishops laid their hands on Parker's 
 head, and all repeated the words of consecration. 
 
 The principal objections taken to the validity of the 
 consecration are two : first, that it cannot be proved that 
 Barlow, the chief actor in the consecration, was a bishop ; 
 and second, that the act of consecration was not valid 
 because it did not include the presentation of the insignia 
 of the episcopal office, the staff and ring. 
 
 The doubt thrown upon Barlow's episcopal character 
 is based upon the fact that there is no official record of 
 it extant either in the register of his own see of Bath and 
 ^Vells or in the register of Canterbury. The answer is 
 that the register of Bath and Wells is lost, so that we 
 cannot say whether Barlow's consecration did or did 
 not appear in it : that the register of Canterbury at that 
 period was so carelessly kept that the record is wanting 
 of six out of twenty-six bishops consecrated in Warham's 
 
I70 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 time, and of nine out of thirty-six in Craumer's time. 
 But there is abundant evidence that Barlow, one of 
 Henry's statesman-bishops, was recognised as a bishop 
 by his brother bishops, by the House of Lords, by all the 
 world, and was never challenged till these days. But if 
 Barlow was not a bishop, that does not invalidate the con- 
 secration, for there were three other consecrators whose 
 episcopal character is undoubted, who all laid their 
 hands on his head, and all repeated the words of conse- 
 cration. And it is universally admitted that though it is 
 regular that four bishops should assist in the conse- 
 cration of an archbishop, the consecration by one is 
 valid. 
 
 As to the other objection, it is a comparatively modern 
 Roman theory that the matter of consecration consists 
 in the giving of the staff and ring ; this ceremonial was 
 introduced in Mediaeval times, but for a thousand years 
 previously the imposition of hands was the essential 
 matter of consecration, and so the great Roman ritual 
 authorities declared.^ 
 
 It may be convenient to deal connectedly with the 
 measures of the Papist party. For a few years the 
 Pope entertained hopes that the Church of England 
 would continue to recognise his authority, and his adhe- 
 rents continued to attend their parish churches ; but at 
 length the hope was abandoned, and Pius IV., in 1570, 
 proceeded to excommunicate Elizabeth, declaring her 
 illegitimate and absolving her subjects from their allegi- 
 ance. His adherents began thenceforward to withdraw 
 themselves from the authorised worship. A college was 
 
 ' The subject has been exhaustively treated by A. Haddon 
 in his edition of the Works of Archbishop Bramhall, and by other 
 modern writers : the most recent is the Rev. E. Denny in " Anglican 
 Orders and Jurisdiction." 
 
SETTLEMENT OF THE REFORMATION 171 
 
 established at St. Omers,and afterwards removed toDouay 
 and back again to St. Omers, for the education of English 
 priests to minister in secret to their recusant country- 
 men, and a version of the New Testament was put forth 
 in 1582, the Old Testament in 1609-10, which continue 
 to be the English Bible of the Papal party to the present 
 time. 
 
 The fanatics of the party began, as at the beginning ot 
 Mary's reign, to contemplate political revolution as the 
 best means of reversing the religious state of things ; and 
 during the great part of Elizabeth's reign her life was 
 threatened and the kingdom harassed by a succession 
 of Popish plots. It was the act of the court of France 
 rather than that of the young and beautiful Mary Stuart, 
 then living in France as the wife of the Dauphin, that 
 her claims to the English throne were put forward on 
 the death of Mary, and that she assumed the title of 
 Queen of England; but Mary never repudiated the 
 claim, and it was the basis of several plots, and a con- 
 stant source of disquietude. It was the cause of the 
 rising in the North under the Earls of Northumberland 
 and Westmorland in 1569, of the Duke of Norfolk's 
 plot with Spanish aid in 1571-72, and of Babington's 
 conspiracy to kill the queen in 1588. The hard treat- 
 ment of recusants, the execution of Jesuit emissaries 
 and seminary priests, were due more to State policy 
 than to religious intolerance. The very fact of their 
 acceptance of the Papal supremacy was enough to 
 carry with it a suspicion of disloyalty, seeing that the 
 Pope had declared Elizabeth deprived of her throne 
 and forbidden her subjects to obey her on pain of 
 excommunication. 
 
 The execution of Mary Stuart in 1587 delivered the 
 queen and kingdom from the dangers of internal 
 
172 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 
 
 treason ; the defeat of the Grand Armada in the follow- 
 ing year (1588), from the dangers of foreign invasion. 
 During the latter portion of the reign the kingdom was 
 at peace and the Reformation was secure. 
 
 This peace and security, however, left Puritanism 
 predominant in the Church, and for this the reign of 
 Mary is to blame. The horrible burnings in the late 
 reign had created in the popular mind a hatred of Rome 
 and of everything which seemed to be a remnant of 
 Rome or a tendency towards it. The exiles of the 
 Marian reign had returned full of the doctrines of the 
 communities among whom they had sojourned. The 
 sufferings of these exiles ensured them popularity on 
 their return to their own country ; some of the most 
 eminent of them had been promoted to places of dignity 
 and influence in the Church. The party was strongly 
 represented both in Parliment and Convocation, and 
 had powerful protectors at court. 
 
 In 1564-65 the queen called the attention of the 
 archbishop to the want of conformity of many of the 
 clergy, and desired him to enforce discipline. The arch- 
 bishop, assisted by other commissioners in causes ecclesi- 
 astical, accordingly drew up a set of Advertisements or 
 ordinances on the subject of the ordinary apparel of the 
 clergy, their ministerial vestments, the mode of cele- 
 brating divine worship, &c. The queen refused to 
 confirm them, and they went out under the authority 
 of the commissioners. A considerable number of the 
 clergy still refused to con.^orm, and were suspended and 
 sequestrated. 
 
 The Nonconformists put forth their case in an Ad- 
 monition to Parliament, of which Cartwright was believed 
 to be the principal author. This was answered by 
 Whitgift. then Master of Trinity. Cartwright, a deacon 
 
SETTLEMENT OF THE REFORMATION 173 
 
 in the Church of England, and a man of some learning 
 and ability, had been one of the Marian exiles. Soon 
 after his return he was made Lady Margaret Lecturer in 
 Divinity at Cambridge, and took advantage of his position 
 to teach the Genevan doctrine and discipline, and was 
 removed by the University authorities. Thereupon he 
 set up a Presbjrterian Society (1572) at Wandsworth, 
 and began to practise what he had preached. In 1593, 
 however, he came to a better mind, and was reconciled 
 and restored to his benefice ; but he could not undo 
 the mischief he had set on foot. 
 
 Archbishop Parker died in 1576, and was succeeded 
 by Grindal, a man who sympathised with the scruples 
 of the Nonconformists, and whose laxity of discipline 
 allowed them great latitude. At length the queen called 
 upon the archbishop to put a stop to the prophesyings, 
 which in so many cases were really dissenting con- 
 venticles ; and on his refusal he was suspended from 
 jurisdiction, and continued so till his death a few months 
 afterwards. 
 
 In 1582 a considerable number of Puritan ministers 
 held a council in London, and agreed to act upon a 
 Book of Discipline which Cartwright had drawn up. 
 Its general policy was that the Puritan clergy should 
 retain their places in the Church, as their predecessors 
 had done through the changes of the previous reigns, 
 and should preach their own doctrines and introduce 
 their own practices so far as circumstances would allow. 
 The course amounted almost to a conspiracy to intro- 
 duce Calvinism under cover of the lawful order. Their 
 plan was to create over the kingdom an ecclesiastical 
 organisation of classical, district, and general assemblies ; 
 the class consisting of a few neighbouring ministers, 
 generally about twelve, well affected to the party ; the 
 
174 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 district including several of these classes, so that there 
 were about three in a county ; and the general assembly 
 being a synod of the whole body. The clergy of their 
 persuasion nominated to a benefice were to apply to 
 the dassis in which the benefice was situated and obtain 
 its sanction before accepting the bishop's induction into 
 the benefice, which was treated as a mere formal recog- 
 nition by the State official. The scheme provided for 
 electing churchwardens and collectors for the poor of 
 their party and giving them the Calvinist status of lay 
 elders and deacons. Puritan incumbents were to dis- 
 pense as far as possible with the legal ritual of the 
 Prayer Book ; they were to teach the scriptural character 
 of the Calvinist organisation and discipline as well as 
 doctrine. Arrangements were made for the propagation 
 and support of the Puritan cause in parishes whose in- 
 cumbents were not of their party. One method was 
 by instituting lecturers of their views. An old privilege 
 of the universities was taken advantage of to appoint 
 twelve lecturers who had a right to preach in any parish. 
 Another method was to found lectureships in important 
 town churches, which gave their preachers access to the 
 pulpit for an afternoon or evening sermon. Another 
 device was the holding of what they called "Prophesy- 
 ings," irregular meetings for prayer and exposition of 
 the Scriptures, which, when conducted in harmony with 
 the Church's system, might be useful auxiliaries, but in 
 opposition were simply dissenting conventicles, in which 
 ministers who had been silenced for nonconformity, and 
 laymen, often took the opportunity to put forward their 
 views. One way of dealing with the regular church 
 service was to let a curate, or even a layman, say the 
 prayers, and then for the incumbent or lecturer to come 
 in, in Geneva gown, in time to go into the pulpit ; there 
 
SETTLEMENT OF THE REFORMATION 175 
 
 he would conduct a supplementary service, viz., a psalm, 
 a short address introductory of the prayer, a long ex- 
 tempore prayer, then the sermon, followed by other 
 extempore prayers and psalmody. 
 
 In such ways as these the minds of the people, 
 especially in the great towns, were leavened with Cal- 
 vinism, and the way was prepared for the great events 
 which happened in the reign of Charles I. 
 
 It was not, then, antipathy to Rome, or their special 
 views on election and grace, which made the Puritan 
 party so popular. It was the maintenance of certain 
 principles which had fallen into the background — the 
 principle of individualism in religion ; the freedom of the 
 Church of Christ from the royal interference of which 
 the late reigns had afforded such violent examples ; the 
 rights of the laity in the conduct of church affairs ; but 
 it was more than anything else the personal character 
 which seemed to go with the doctrine, the strong faith 
 in God's government of the world, the ascetic piety, 
 the fervent religious zeal. The weakness of the party 
 was that its adherents tended to be narrow, unchari- 
 table, sour, almost Manichasan, and that the necessity 
 of affecting an exalted strain of piety by the average 
 adherents of the partly inevitably led to a vast amount 
 of hypocrisy. The controversy brought forth the 
 Ecclesiastical Polity of the "Judicious Hooker," which 
 for wide and deep learning, sound judgment, controver- 
 sial skill, and stately eloquence, is one of the literary 
 treasures of the Church of England. 
 
 Whitgift (1583) succeeded to the archbishopric, a man 
 of learning and piety, and possessing the statesmanlike 
 capacity and firmness which the ofifice and the time 
 needed. He held the ultra-Augustinian doctrines of 
 grace which by this time were predominant in England, 
 
176 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 but with a firm belief in the lawfulness (to say the 
 least) of the constitution and discipline of the Church, 
 and a strong conviction that it was for the welfare 
 of religion that lawless disobedience should not be 
 tolerated. He took successful pains, however, to win 
 men over by argument and kindness, and though firm, 
 was not harsh in his administration. He had the 
 satisfaction, as has been said, of winning Cartwright back 
 from the more extreme of his opinions, and restoring 
 him to his benefice in Warwick. 
 
 In his episcopate another set of opinions emerged 
 out of the midst of the Nonconformist ranks and crystal- 
 lised into a definite sect. Robert Brown, a clergyman, 
 taught that any assembly of Christian men were at liberty 
 to form themselves into a congregation, to formulate 
 their own creed, appoint their own ministers, and 
 regulate their own church life, and, while maintaining 
 independence of all other churches, to be recognised 
 by them all as a church. Brown himself eventually re- 
 nounced his errors and returned to the Church, but his 
 principles were taken up by others and propagated with 
 great zeal. Among the most active of these Independents 
 were Penry, Barrowe, and Greenwood. Their principal 
 mode of propagating their opinions was by a series of 
 pamphlets, of which two, called " Martin- Marprelate," 
 gave a generic title to the rest. They were attacks upon 
 bishops and clergy and the Church and its ordinances, 
 written with great spirit and considerable ability, and 
 with a coarse scurrility which made them very popular ; 
 they included also attacks on civil authority which were 
 not less than seditious. A secret press, removed from 
 place to place, printed these pamphlets, which were 
 very largely circulated and read with avidity. It is not 
 surprising, considering the harshness of the laws and the 
 
SETTLEMENT OF THE REFORMATION 177 
 
 temper of the times, that Penry was arrested, tried under 
 25 Eliz. c. I, and executed (1593). 
 
 The accession of James to the throne of England 
 awoke new hopes in those who were dissatisfied with the 
 state of the Church in England. His personal bringing 
 up, in the straitest school of Puritanism, his official con- 
 formity to the Scottish Kirk, modelled on the lines of the 
 Genevan polity, raised the expectation that the new 
 king would favour the Calvinistic school in England. 
 The result of forcing Puritan doctrine and discipline with 
 harshness upon an unwilling mind had not been suffi- 
 ciently taken into account. While on his journey south- 
 ward a petition was presented to the king called the 
 Millenary Petition, because it was intended to be signed 
 by a thousand ministers, "though there wanted some 
 hundreds to complete the number," ^ on the services, and 
 on ministers and their maintenance, and on discipline. 
 The king commanded a conference to be held between 
 the two parties who divided the Church, represented 
 by certain bishops and divines on one side and some of 
 the leading Nonconformist ministers on the other. The 
 conference, held in the presence of the king and certain 
 of his privy council, from the place of meeting is known 
 as the Hampton Court Conference. It is a little surpris- 
 ing that the objections raised against the Church were 
 so unimportant and so feebly supported ; the objectors 
 seem to have abandoned the more serious positions taken 
 up by Cartwright, and only asked for an explanation of 
 some ambiguous things in a more decidedly Calvinistic 
 sense, for some ritual modifications, such as the disuse 
 of the ring in marriage, of sponsors, and the sign of the 
 cross in baptism, and for leave for those who pleased to 
 
 ' Collier, Ecclesiastical Ilistoty of Great Britain. 
 
 5. T. M 
 
178 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 disuse the clerical habit and vestments. The bishops 
 noted a few of the objections which had been made to 
 the Prayer Book, and made a few modifications in ac- 
 cordance with them, and at the same time took the 
 opportunity to add a prayer for the royal family, the 
 thanksgivings for special occasions, and the latter part 
 of the catechism on the Sacrament. The king issued a 
 proclamation stating the result of the conference : that he 
 and the council had found strong remonstrances sup- 
 ported by slender proofs, and no sufficient reason for 
 any changes in those things most clamoured against ; 
 wherefore he enjoined a general conformity. 
 
 The Parliament passed an Act (i Jac. I. c. 3) dis- 
 abling the crown from receiving conveyances of epis- 
 copal estates ; " thus the king stopped the issue of 
 sacrilege and delivered himself from the importunity of 
 courtiers." 
 
 The Convocation summoned with this Parliament 
 passed a Book of Canons which was afterwards ratified 
 by the king's consent. These canons of 1603 are a 
 witness to the opinions of that period, and are still legally 
 in force, except where expressly repealed ; the change of 
 time and circumstances has left many of them obsolete. 
 A few months after the beginning of the new reign 
 Whitgift died, and Bancroft was raised from London to 
 the archiepiscopal See (1604 a.d.). Bancroft governed 
 with vigour, and pressed for conformity with so much 
 success, that the services of the Church were more 
 solemnly performed, the fasts and festivals better ob- 
 served, the use of copes revived and the surplice worn, 
 and things generally brought back to the first settlement 
 under Elizabeth. About forty-nine clergymen were de- 
 prived for refusing the Prayer Book and canons. These 
 continued their agitation by the publication of a pamphlet 
 
SETTLEMENT OF THE REFORMATION i79 
 
 entitled the Abridgement and others, and kept alive 
 the dissenting opposition. 
 
 Some zealots of the Papist party, seeing their last 
 hopes destroyed by the accession of James, conceived 
 a plot to blow up the king, his two sons, and the 
 two Houses of Parliament, and to lay the plot upon the 
 Puritans ; to proclaim Elizabeth, the king's little daughter, 
 as queen, and so by degrees bring back Popery upon 
 the kingdom. This Gunpowder Plot was discovered, 
 several of the conspirators executed, and the general 
 horror of the intended atrocity served to alienate the 
 public mind still further from any lingering sympathies 
 with the Pope's adherents. 
 
 I 
 I 
 
 I 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE TRIUMPH OF THE PURITANS 
 
 Charles I.— The Tudor absolutism had been mitigated 
 in the reign of a popular female sovereign ruling through 
 wise and prudent ministers ; it fell into ill odour in the 
 hands of the first Stuart, who used extravagant language 
 about the divine right of kings, but ruled by unworthy 
 favourites, feebly, and above all unsuccessfully. A 
 strong and widespread desire had gradually grown up 
 in the time of James for constitutional checks upon the 
 power of the crown and for guarantees of the liberties of 
 the subject. 
 
 At the same time, in the sphere of religion a reaction 
 had set in against the dominant Calvinist theology in 
 favour of the principles of the earlier phase of the Refor- 
 mation, and by the end of James's reign the reaction was 
 rapidly spreading among the people, and its leaders 
 were beginning to obtain positions of influence in the 
 Church J notably Laud, its ablest representative, had 
 been promoted to the episcopacy. Charles I. came to 
 the throne (1625 a.d.) when these opposite principles in 
 Church and State were about to enter upon a great con- 
 test for the ascendancy. 
 
 Charles possessed considerable learning, political ability, 
 and good intentions ; he began his reign by continuing 
 his father's policy with his father's minister, Buckingham ; 
 
THE TRIUMPH OF THE PURITANS i8i 
 
 but on summoning Parliament, he soon found that it 
 was no longer content to play the subordinate part to 
 which it had been reduced in previous reigns, that of 
 granting supplies and passing the bills prepared by 
 the king's ministers; it was resolved to exercise an 
 efficient control over the royal power. Three succes- 
 sive Parliaments were summoned, only to be speedily 
 dissolved. Then the king, with the Earl of Straf- 
 ford and Laud, by that time archbishop, for his 
 ministers, resolved to rule without a Parliament ; using 
 irregular, not to say illegal, modes of raising neces- 
 sary funds. The experiment lasted for eleven years 
 (1629-1640), when the king was obliged to recognise its 
 failure. 
 
 Laud was all the while the leader of the High Church 
 reaction against Puritanism. When raised to the arch- 
 bishopric (1633 A.D.), he carried out, in concert with 
 Neale, Archbishop of York, a general metropolitical 
 visitation for the purpose of promoting the observance 
 of Prayer Book and canons. He met with a stubborn 
 resistance in many places, and had to proceed against 
 some of the Puritan clergy in the court of High Com- 
 mission, which coerced the offenders by suspension or 
 deprivation. A cry was raised against him that he was 
 secretly bent on restoring the Papal authority ; it was 
 utterly untrue, but the dread of Rome made the masses 
 suspicious and unreasonable. Laud tried to counteract 
 this move of his opponents by citing three of them, 
 Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton, before the Star Chamber 
 (1637), where he made an able explanation and defence 
 of his ecclesiastical policy, to which people gave no heed, 
 and the condemnation of the accused to the pillory for 
 their slanders simply had the effect of causing them to 
 be regarded as martyrs, 
 
i82 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 In justice to Charles, it must be remembered that 
 he had inherited the state system of the Tudors, and 
 that under that system England had become great and 
 prosperous ; and that the English nation was the first to 
 assert the principles of constitutional government, which 
 all civilised nations have since more or less adopted. 
 It is possible to sympathise very honestly with both 
 sides. It is possible to sympathise with the king, who, 
 conscious of his intention to rule wisely and well, found 
 his government thwarted and embarrassed, and was 
 alarmed at the new spirit and the new claims, which 
 threatened to disorganise all government, to enfeeble 
 the kingdom in its foreign relations, and endanger its 
 domestic quiet and prosperity. It is possible to sym- 
 pathise with the spirit of the English people, which was 
 resolved no longer to leave its liberties to the chance 
 of the good or bad disposition of the sovereign, but to 
 secure constitutional guarantees for personal freedom 
 and good government. 
 
 Affairs came to a crisis when the Scots broke out 
 into rebellion (1640 a.d.), invaded England, and seized 
 Newcastle. The king summoned another Parliament to 
 vote measures for meeting the emergency ; but Parlia- 
 ment saw its opportunity in the king's extremity, and 
 still resolutely persisted in discussing grievances before 
 voting supplies. The king and his advisers seemed at 
 length to have recognised the character of the political 
 situation, and to have made up their minds to yield to 
 the nation's demands. Parliament was dissolved ; the 
 king summoned a Council of Peers at York, and con- 
 sented to adopt constitutional principles, and made a 
 treaty with the Scots ; then he summoned a fifth Parlia- 
 ment with the intention of settling a constitutional com- 
 promise. The Long Parliament met November 3, 1640. 
 
THE TRIUMPH OF THE PURITANS 183 
 
 The king's ministers were sacrificed to the popular anger. 
 Strafford and Laud were ordered into custody and sent 
 to the Tower. In the first session the king formally ~ 
 abandoned the encroachments which he had made upon 
 the rights and liberties of the subject, and granted con- 
 cessions which made those rights and liberties more 
 ample, better defined, and more secure than ever before. 
 " There was not a public or private grievance," says Hume, 
 " but what was redressed within the first nine months of 
 the meeting of the Parliament." 
 
 Many of the most patriotic of those who had been 
 alienated by the arbitrary measures of the earlier part 
 of the reign now rallied to the side of the king. The 
 several parties in Church and State had made the alli- 
 ances which were natural. The High Church party 
 had allied themselves with the party of the king ; 
 the Puritan party had allied themselves with Parlia- 
 ment and advocated the kindred Presbyterian form of 
 government in the Church. The nation was divided 
 into two camps, the king and Church on one side, 
 and on the other the Parliament and Presbyterians. 
 The king had made the fatal mistake in policy of 
 assenting to a bill enacting that the Parliament should 
 not be dissolved except by its own consent, and had 
 thus elevated the Parliament into a rival power in the 
 kingdom with which henceforward he had to deal ; 
 and it soon became evident that the Parliamentary-Pres- 
 byterian party was prepared to go to the length of civil 
 war to attain its ends. 
 
 The civil history of the time must be referred to for 
 a narrative of the civil war ; it is only the religious part 
 of the lamentable strife which can be outlined here. 
 
 Three days after the meeting of Parliament the House 
 of Commons formed itself into a Committee of Religion, 
 
i84 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 and relegated the business to a sub-committee, who set 
 themselves vigorously to work to purge the Church of 
 "scandalous ministers." This committee appointed sub- 
 committees in every county, and a paper was issued 
 inviting "all ingenuous persons in every county of the 
 kingdom to be very active to improve the present oppor- 
 tunity." Afterwards other papers were published setting 
 forth that " it is found by sad experience that parishioners 
 are not forward to complain of their ministers," and paid 
 agents were therefore appointed to go about and get up 
 accusations against them— a trade which was vulgarly 
 called "parson-hunting." The accusation of two or 
 three "aggrieved parishioners," or even of one, was 
 enough to put a clergyman on his trial before one of 
 the committees. The accusation was not required to be 
 proved on oath. Conformity to the doctrines and ritual 
 of the " Laudian School," attachment to the royal party, 
 were offences under the name of " malignity; " to these 
 were often added charges of immorality of various kinds, 
 a common device with the assailants of clergymen, as 
 calculated to make them odious in the sight of men ; 
 as Dugdale says, "their enemies put this charge upon 
 them, as the ancient pagans put skins of wild beasts on 
 the holy martyrs, to make the dogs worry them." 
 
 These earlier proceedings against the clergy (1640- 
 1643), Baxter, himself a Puritan, says drove out half the 
 clergy, leaving half who could do neither good nor harm. 
 To complete the story here, many of the latter half 
 were driven out later, as the various parts of the country 
 came under the power of the Parliament (1643-1649), 
 for refusing to take "the Covenant," which required 
 them to destroy Prelacy (i.e., the Episcopal form of 
 church government), and to support the Parliament 
 against the king. In all, it is estimated that about 8000 
 
THE TRIUMPH OF THE PURITANS 185 
 
 of the clergy were ejected from their b enefic es. Their 
 fate was various. Some, to avoid ill-treatifilnt^and im- 
 prisonment, fled and hid themselves or went abroad. 
 Others less fortunate were arrested and imprisoned. 
 When the jails were filled, hulks were used as places of 
 imprisonment. There was talk at one time of relieving 
 the overcrowded prisons by selling the prisoners to the 
 American plantations or to the Algerines. Rigby, a 
 member of Parliament, twice brought before Parliament 
 a motion that they should be sold. What became of 
 the majority is unknown, but this fact is full of signifi- 
 cance, that on the Restoration, when the ejected clergy 
 returned to their livings, there were only 800 left out of 
 the 8000 to claim their own again. ^ 
 
 In January 1641 commissioners were appointed by 
 Parliament to deface and remove all images and super- 
 stitious ornaments in churches. There are some details 
 on record of the way in which these commissioners 
 destroyed sculptured screens, sepulchral monuments, 
 stained windows, and other monuments of antiquity. 
 On December 30, the Bishops being prevented by the 
 mob from attending the House of Lords, issued a pro- 
 test against anything done in their absence. The House 
 of Commons took advantage of it as a pretext for arrest- 
 ing them and sending them to the Tower. On February 
 14, 1642, the Bishops were deprived of their seats in the 
 House of Lords. On April 15 the Parliament usurped 
 the powers of government and proceeded to raise money 
 and troops. August 22, the King raised his standard at 
 Nottingham and the Civil War began. It extended over 
 
 * In all the history of the Church of England there is not so 
 lamentable a chapter as that which records the details of this 
 bitter persecution. It will be found in Walker's " Sufferings of the 
 Clergy." 
 
1 86 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 
 
 the next nine years, included seven great battles and 
 innumerable minor engagements, and filled the country 
 with confusion and misery. During the winter Parlia- 
 ment entered into a Solemn League and Covenant 
 with the Scots, which pledged them to mutual defence, 
 and bound all who subscribed to it to extirpate Popery, 
 Prelacy, superstition, heresy, and schism, and to support 
 the cause of the Parliament. All holders of ofifice in 
 Church and State were required to "take the Covenant," 
 and those who refused were deprived. 
 
 On February 2, 1643, an Assembly of Divines was 
 nominated by Parliament to consult and advise on mat- 
 ters of religion ; it was the Presbyterian substitute for the 
 old Convocation. The Independents pleaded before 
 this Assembly for the toleration of their worship, and 
 were refused ; the object of the Puritan party was 
 not toleration, but the general enforcement of their own 
 opinions. When the Independents published an Apology 
 and requested leave not to be compelled to communicate 
 in the churches of their parishes, but to be at liberty to 
 form congregations of their own, the Assembly of Divines 
 replied, that " to gather churches out of true churches is 
 repugnant to the Word of God," that it " would encourage 
 perpetual schism and division in the Church, always 
 drawing off from the existing churches," and "thus 
 would give rise to misunderstandings and animosities." 
 When the Independents offered to maintain occasional 
 communion, the Presbyterians replied, that " if the Inde- 
 pendents can occasionally attend their worship and com- 
 municate with them, they cannot see why they should not 
 do it always, and so separation and church gathering 
 would be unnecessary." When conscientious scruples 
 were pleaded, the divines answered that "by parity of 
 reasoning the Church might be broken into as many 
 
THE TRIUMPH OF THE PURITANS 187 
 
 subdivisions as there are different scruples in the minds 
 of men." 
 
 In order to supply the places of the ejected clergy, 
 in 1623 a Parliamentary ordinance empowered certain 
 members of the Assembly of Divines to examine and 
 ordain candidates for the ministry and license them to 
 preach. In the following year this power was extended 
 to the classical presbyteries (see p. 174) within their 
 respective boundaries ; and in the following year an ordi- 
 nance forbade unordained men to preach. 
 
 1645, August 24, St. Bartholomew's Day, a Parlia- 
 mentary ordinance came into force which abolished the 
 Book of Common Prayer and required the Directory 
 of Public Worship to be used in all churches. The 
 Directory was to be observed under a penalty of 40s. 
 for each omission, and who ever spoke against the 
 Directory was to be fined not less than nor more 
 than ;^so. The Directory gave only general rules; 
 prescribed the heads of prayer before sermon, leaving 
 the language to the minister; and the method of the 
 sermon, where the minister was allowed by the Presby- 
 tery to preach ; in the prayer after sermon some of its 
 more useful heads were directed to be turned into peti- 
 tions. The dead were to be buried without any prayer 
 or religious ceremony ; the forms for matrimony, visita- 
 tion of the sick, and some other occasions were left to 
 the discretion of the minister. The penalty for using 
 the Prayer Book, either in public or in private, was 
 
 for the first offence, ;^io for the second, and a year's 
 imprisonment for the third. 
 
 1646, October. Episcopacy was abolished by Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 1647, The king put himself into the hands of the 
 Scottish army, which sold him to Parliament for 
 
i88 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 ;^2oo,ooo. Parliament desired to make a treaty with 
 the king which would have given England a government 
 by Parliament with a king under it, and would have 
 settled the Presbyterian form of church government and 
 Calvinistic doctrine as the Established Church ; but 
 the negotiations came to nothing through the king's 
 refusal to sacrifice the constitution and doctrine of the 
 Church to the demands of the Presbyterian party. It is 
 this fact, that Charles's steadfast maintenance of the 
 Church cost him his crown and his life, which seemed to 
 the Church of after times to justify his commemoration 
 in the Church's calendar as " king and martyr." " No 
 candid reader," says Hallam, " can doubt that a serious 
 sense of obligation was predominant in Charles's perse- 
 vering fidelity to the English Church." Tlie attempt 
 to blast the king's character with a charge of untrust- 
 worthiness in these negotiations was a politic device of 
 his enemies ; Hume and Hallam both acquit him of 
 the charge. 
 
 The Parliament became alarmed at the attitude of 
 some of the principal officers of the army, and proposed 
 to disperse the danger by disbanding the army ; but the 
 principal officers formed themselves into a council, 
 assured themselves of the adhesion of their regiments, 
 and then seized the king's person, marched on London, 
 excluded from the House of Commons the members 
 unfriendly to their cause, and made themselves masters 
 of the situation. 
 
 1649, January 29. The king was executed, in spite of 
 the remonstrances of the Presbyterian ministers. Parlia- 
 ment abolished monarchy and the House of Lords, and 
 elected a Council of State. 
 
 1653. Cromwell at the head of the army was master 
 of the situation ; he turned the " Rump Parliament " by 
 
THE TRIUMPH OF THE PURITANS 189 
 
 force out of the House, and formed a Council of State of 
 which he was chief. A Parliament of his own nominees 
 — the Barebones Parliament — offered him the govern- 
 ment for life with the title of Lord Protector. 
 
 Cromwell found it as difficult to govern with a factious 
 Parliament as Charles had done, and solved the diffi- 
 culty in a similar way by ruling without a Parliament. 
 He divided the country into districts, over each of which 
 he placed a Major-General as the representative and 
 agent of his own absolute authority; the church and 
 crown lands, the sequestrated estates of the Royalists, 
 arbitiary taxes, and the tenth levied from the incomes 
 of Royalists brought in abundant supplies ; and the 
 Parliament and the Presbytery, as well as the monarchy 
 and the Church, lay powerless under the heel of the 
 fanatical soldier. In the regulation of religious matters 
 he tolerated all the sects except Papists and Quakers, and 
 appointed a Commission of Tryers to reject all ministers 
 presented to livings whom it considered unfit, and another 
 Commission of Ejectors to turn out the unfit who were 
 already in possession of livings. " Episcopalians " were 
 rigidly proscribed. The payment of tithes was still 
 enforced, though of course for the most part they 
 were paid by churchmen for the support of sectarian 
 ministers. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE RESTORA TION 
 
 As soon as it was seen that the Restoration was resolved 
 upon, the chief representatives of the old Presbyterian 
 and Puritan party skilfully seized the opportunity, by 
 sending some of their number to Breda, to offer their 
 assurances of loyalty to Charles, and to seek to obtain 
 promises for the future. They requested the king not 
 to have the Prayer Book used in his chapel, and that 
 the use of the surplice might be discontinued by his 
 chaplains. The king replied that he would not be 
 restrained himself while others had so much indulgence ; 
 that he had retained the usages of the Church in which 
 he was bred during his exile, and that he would not 
 abet irregularity by his own practice, nor discountenance 
 its ancient and laudable customs. He referred to the 
 wisdom of Parliament to decide what indulgence and 
 toleration might be necessary for the repose of the 
 kingdom. 
 
 No hasty measures were taken. An Act of Parliament 
 restored their estates to the crown and the bishops ; the 
 ejected clergy, the few of them (about 800) who survived, 
 were reinstated in their benefices ; the rest of the men 
 in actual possession of benefices were left undisturbed 
 until some general settlement of religion should be 
 arrived at. To rcjnciliate the Puritan party, the king 
 
THE RESTORATION 191 
 
 nominated some of its leading men as his chaplains, and 
 Calamy, Reynolds, and Baxter were offered bishoprics, 
 and three others deaneries. Reynolds only accepted the 
 offer, and was made Bishop of Norwich. 
 
 Then, after the precedent set by James, the king 
 summoned representatives of the two parties to a confer- 
 ence, which from the place where it assembled was called 
 the Savoy Conference. The objections of the Noncon- 
 formists and the answers of the Church divines were 
 conducted in writing and are on record. They show that, 
 as at the Savoy Conference, the objections were of two 
 kinds : some were objections to things in the Prayer Book 
 embodying Church principles which the Church divines 
 could not in conscience give up ; others were small 
 criticisms of the wording of the prayers, &c., which were 
 hardly worthy of serious debate. Perhaps one of the 
 most interesting incidents of the Conference was that 
 Baxter, with a few weeks' labour, composed a new 
 Prayer Book, which, however, his own friends declined to 
 adopt. The final result was the adoption by the Bishops 
 of some of the amendments suggested, none of which 
 are of sufficient importance to need mention here. The 
 work of revision of the Prayer Book was committed to 
 the Convocations with the recommendation of these 
 amendments. The result was the Book of Common 
 Prayer, which has descended without further alteration, 
 (except as to the " State Services " and Calendar) to our 
 own day. 
 
 The re-settlement of religion was formally completed 
 by the Act of Uniformity, May 19, 1662, which legalised 
 the Prayer Book as revised by the Convocations. The 
 men who had been left all this while undisturbed in the 
 benefices of the Church had the option given them to 
 conform before the next St. BartholoL.ew's day (August 
 
192 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 24) or to retire from their usurped benefices. The great 
 majority conformed and remained. The number who 
 refused and were ejected is variously stated. Calamy 
 states it at 2000, but only names 523 ; Baxter says 1800 ; 
 more modern authorities (Curteis, Bampton Lectures, 
 1871) say that the number was about 800. Much has 
 been said from that day to this of the intolerance and 
 cruelty of the ejection of the " two thousand Noncon- 
 formist ministers," but it must be considered who and 
 what they were. The majority of them had been in- 
 truded into the benefices of the Church of England 
 when the Church was proscribed and persecuted ; some 
 of them were undoubtedly men of learning and piety, and 
 it is a subject of regret that they could not see their way to 
 waive their objections ; but some of them must have been 
 the Independents and Baptists and " illiterate mechanic 
 preachers" of whom the Presbyterian Edwardes com- 
 plains; and while we respect them for their refusal to 
 abandon their principles and sympathise with their suf- 
 ferings for conscience-sake, we must recognise that the 
 Church could not allow them to continue to minister at 
 her altars and preach in her pulpits while they repudiated 
 her constitution and doctrine. The complaint of the 
 orthodox side was that so many were allowed to become 
 ministers of the Church who were in their hearts opposed 
 to her doctrines and discipline. A comparison of the 
 ejection and persecution of the ortnodox clergy in the 
 early part of the story with the consideration with 
 which the intruders were treated at the Restoration is 
 one of which Church people have no reason to be 
 ashamed. 
 
 The subsequent measures taken against the Noncon- 
 formists during this reign were the work of Parliament 
 rather than of the Church, and were due to political as 
 
THE RESTORATION 
 
 193 
 
 well as to religious motives. It must be borne in mind 
 that the Royalist laity had suffered bitterly from the 
 harshness of the dominant Puritans, and both Royalists 
 and Presbyterians from the tyranny of the Cromwellian 
 Independents; and that all sober-minded people were 
 sincerely shocked by the licentious fanaticism which 
 had emerged from the confusion; and that what the 
 nation earnestly desired was a cessation from religious 
 as from civil strife. It was the " Cavalier Parliament " 
 which refused to pass an Act recognising as lawful the 
 dispensing power, which the king conceived to be in- 
 herent in him, and so enabling him to mitigate the 
 rigour of the Act of Uniformity. It was the same Par- 
 liament which passed the Conventicle Act, suppressing 
 by a severe ascending scale of penalties unlawful assem- 
 blies for religious worship. Besides the objection to 
 tolerate dissenting assemblies for public worship, it was 
 probably feared that such assemblies might be made 
 centres of political as well as religious association. In 
 contrast, however, with the Puritan prohibition of the use 
 of the Prayer Book even in private, families were not now 
 forbidden to have worship in any form they pleased, only 
 there must not be more than four strangers present. 
 Another Parliament in the same spirit passed the Five 
 Mile Act, which forbade an ejected minister from 
 coming within that distance of a borough town or of 
 a place in which he had held the position of a minister, 
 unless he would swear not to attempt to alter the existing 
 settlement of Church and State. 
 
 In 1672 the king risked his popularity by acting on 
 the dispensing power which he claimed, and issuing a 
 Declaration of Indulgence, which suspended all penal 
 laws in matters ecclesiastical, thus giving complete 
 liberty to Romanists as well as Dissenters. It was 
 5. r. N 
 
194 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 Strongly suspected that the measure was intended to 
 favour the former, for the king's brother and heir, James, 
 Duke of York, had lately (1671) avowed himself a 
 pervert. The people became alarmed ; the Houses of 
 Parliament strongly opposed the legality of the declara- 
 tion ; and the king prudently withdrew it. Parliament 
 then passed the Test Act, which required that no one 
 should hold ofifice who refused to " take the test " — that 
 is, to make a declaration of disbelief in the doctrine 
 of transubstantiation and to receive the Sacrament 
 according to the riles of the Church of England. The 
 Duke of York surrendered the office of Lord High 
 Admiral, the Earl of Clifford his office of Lord High 
 Treasurer, and every honest Romanist was deprived of 
 office. Many Nonconformists made no difficulty of 
 occasional conformity, which was held to be a sufficient 
 compliance with the law. 
 
 In 1677 Parliament passed an Act abolishing the 
 statute de heretico cotnburefido, and the oath ex officio, 
 which compelled men to become their own accusers, and 
 an Act forbidding the profanation of the Lord's Day. 
 
 The revival of the English Reformation in the Stuart 
 period had raised up a school of learned and eloquent 
 divines, as Hammond, Sanderson, Jeremy Taylor, South, 
 Butler, Pearson ; some of the works of these Caroline 
 divines have been among the most valued authorities 
 of Anglican theology ever since. The period also pro- 
 duced a strain of sober but exalted piety among both 
 clergy and laity. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE REVOLUTION 
 
 James II. (1668) came to the throne with a firm resolve 
 to use his power to the utmost on behalf of his religion. 
 The lessons of the previous half century seem to have 
 been lost upon him. He seems to have confidently be- 
 lieved that he could carry out his design by the use and 
 abuse of the royal prerogative ; forgetting that his father 
 had tried that method of government, and it had landed 
 him in civil war ; that his brother had experimented in 
 that direction, and found it prudent to retreat; and 
 failing to understand that a generation which had learned 
 and practised the principles of constitutional govern- 
 ment was little likely to submit to a return to the 
 methods of arbitrary power. 
 
 The two weapons on which the king relied were the 
 Royal Supremacy and the Dispensing Power. The 
 dispensing power he assumed to be inherent in the 
 crown, and to give him the right, not indeed to abrogate 
 laws, but to dispense with their execution in individual 
 cases at his discretion. The supremacy gave him dis- 
 ciplinary jurisdiction over the Church ; and his right of 
 nomination to bishoprics and other dignities, and the 
 dispensing power to excuse his nominees from all tests 
 and obligations, put great influence into his hands. 
 
 His first step was to maintain the small army which 
 195 
 
196 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 had been raised to meet Monmouth's rebeUion and to 
 appoint Romanists as its officers. These appointments 
 were a violation of the Test Act, but the king dis- 
 pensed the officers from the obligation to take the test. 
 Parliament remonstrated, and the king prorogued it, and 
 proceeded to obtain a legal recognition of the validity 
 of his dispensation. When the judges were sounded, 
 it appeared that four were opposed to the legality of 
 the king's action ; but the judges were in those days 
 appointed during the king's pleasure ; so the four were 
 removed and others put in their places. Then a collusive 
 action was brought against one of the Romanist officers 
 for refusing the test ; he pleaded the king's dispensation ; 
 and the judges decided that such dispensations freed 
 those who received them from any penalties imposed 
 by any laws whatsoever (1686). The way was now 
 clear. 
 
 The king appointed an Ecclesiastical Commission 
 Court, which was a revival of the Court of High Com- 
 mission abolished among the surrenders of Charles I. 
 to constitutional ideas in 1641. At its head he put 
 the infamous Jeffries ; the three bishops placed upon 
 it were Sancroft the arclibishop, and Spratt and Crewe, 
 two men who were willing to be the king's tools. San- 
 croft declined to act, and was banished from the king's 
 court. The court suspended Compton, Bishop of Lon- 
 don, for refusing to take proceedings against Sharpe, 
 rector of St. Giles, for preaching against Popery. The 
 king proceeded boldly and openly ; he appointed Father 
 Petre and two other Romanists to the Privy Council ; 
 made a Romanist judge ; sent an ambassador to Rome, 
 and received a Papal nuncio and three Roman bishops 
 in partibus ; set up a Popish service at St. James's, 
 where a colony of Benedictine monks was placed ; 
 
THE REVOLUTION 
 
 197 
 
 Jesuits at the Savoy, Franciscans at Lincoln's Inn, and 
 Carmelites in the city. Roman chapels were com- 
 menced, processions were seen in the streets. Obadiah 
 Walker, the Master of University College and several 
 Fellows of other colleges turned Romanists, and received 
 from the king dispensations to retain their positions. 
 Sclater, vicar of Putney, turned Romanist, and received 
 a dispensation to retain his living. The king imposed a 
 Popish principal at Christ Church, Oxford, who turned 
 one of the college rooms into a chapel and set up the 
 mass. He turned out the Fellows of Magdalen because 
 they refused to elect his Popish nominee, and had his 
 own man introduced by force. He ordered the Uni- 
 versity of Cambridge to confer the M.A. degree upon 
 a Benedictine monk without exacting the oaths, and 
 deprived the Vice-Chancellor for non-compliance. He 
 packed the corporations, so as to secure a House of 
 Commons which would be subservient to him, and pro- 
 posed to swamp the opposition in the Lords by new 
 creations. 
 
 At length, April 4, 1687, he issued a Declaration 
 of Liberty of Conscience, suspending all laws against 
 Romanists and Dissenters alike, and giving them per- 
 mission to worship publicly. The inclusion of Dis- 
 senters was intended to secure their support. In 1688 
 another Declaration of Indulgence was issued, which the 
 king commanded to be read in all the churches. The 
 bishops who happened to be in London met at Lambeth 
 and drew up a petition in which they begged to be 
 excused from publication of the Declaration, on the 
 ground that it was founded on a dispensing power 
 which had often been declared illegal in Parliament, 
 and that they could not in prudence, honour, or con- 
 science so far make themselves parties to it as the 
 
198 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 solemn publication of it in time of divine service would 
 amount to. 
 
 The seven bishops who thus stood in the gap were 
 W. Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, W. Lloyd, Bishop 
 of St. Asaph, F. Turner, Bishop of Ely, J. Lake, Bishop 
 of Chichester, T. Kenn, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 
 T. White, Bishop of Peterborough, and J. Trelawney, 
 Bishop of Bristol. 
 
 The bishops sought an audience and presented their 
 petition. The king read it with surprise. " These are 
 strange words," he said ; " I did not expect this from you. 
 This is a standard of rebellion." Then, in reply to their 
 protestations of loyalty, " God has given me this dis- 
 pensing power, and I will maintain it. I tell you there 
 are 7000 men, and of the Church of England too, that 
 have not bowed the knee to Baal." No doubt the time- 
 serving compliance of three or four prelates might en- 
 courage the king to hope for the yielding of the rest; 
 but when Bishop Spratt began to read the declaration 
 on the appointed Sunday in Westminster Abbey, the 
 congregation rose in a body and streamed out of the 
 building. Only about 200 of the clergy out of about 
 9000 read it ; the rest abided the result of their refusal. 
 
 The king was right in regarding the action of the 
 bishops as a standard of resistance, and he accepted the 
 battle on this point, and the whole nation looked on 
 with interest. The bishops were summoned before the 
 Council on a charge of misdemeanour and sedition, 
 and, on their declining to give bail, as inconsistent 
 with their privilege as peers of Parliament, were com- 
 mitted to the Tower. The people understood the im- 
 portance of the occasion. Crowds assembled to witness 
 their embarkation on the barge which was to convey 
 them to the Tower, some in tears, some kneeling to 
 
THll REVOLUTION 
 
 199 
 
 ask their blessing, many crying " God save the bishops," 
 " God save the Church. ' On their arrival at the Tower, 
 their reception was still more striking ; the men on 
 guard, and even some of the officers, received them 
 kneeling and asked their blessing. 
 
 On their trial at Westminster Hall, vast crowds filled 
 the building and the neighbouring spaces. The sentence 
 of acquittal was received with a tremendous burst of 
 applause in the hall, which was taken up outside, and 
 soon announced the news to the whole capital, and the 
 news was conveyed by mounted messengers to all parts 
 of the kingdom. The news reached Hounslow while 
 James was reviewing the army encamped there, on 
 which he was relying to support him in the last resort ; 
 they too broke into joyful shouts. James asked " what 
 it meant." Nothing, he was told, " only the soldiers are 
 glad that the bishops are acquitted." "So much the 
 worse for them," threatened the king. 
 
 But by this time the spirit of the whole nation had 
 been roused against the king's arbitrary acts, which 
 clearly pointed to a forcible re-establishment of the 
 Popish tyranny. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes 
 in 1685, and the influx of French Huguenots fleeing from 
 the cruel persecution which followed, no doubt helped 
 to alarm the people as to the results of a restoration 
 of the Papal power, backed by the tyranny of a king 
 like James. On the day of the acquittal of the seven 
 bishops, a deputation of seven men of rank and political 
 eminence, carrying with them the invitation of many 
 others, formally invited William, Prince of Orange, who 
 had married Mary, the king's eldest daughter, to come 
 over with an armed force to defend the liberties of 
 England, with the offer of the crown. James found 
 himself deserted by his subjects and fled. A Convention 
 
20O HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 Parliament declared the throne vacant, and offered the 
 crown to William and Mary as joint sovereigns. 
 
 The Nonjurors. — The mere fact of the accession of 
 William and Mary to the throne by the vote of the 
 Convention Parliament was the occasion of an important 
 episode in the history of the Church. It was convenient 
 to accept the king's flight from the kingdom as a 
 practical abdication, but in fact he had not formally 
 abdicated ; on the contrary, he shortly appeared at the 
 head of an army in Ireland, to contest what he regarded 
 as the usurpation of the Prince of Orange. 
 
 When the holders of all offices in the kingdom were 
 called upon to take an oath of allegiance to the new 
 sovereigns, it appeared that some of the bishops and 
 clergy had conscientious scruples ; they were willing to 
 accept William and Mary as de facto sovereigns, but 
 they scrupled to take oaths of allegiance to them while 
 James still claimed adhejence to the oath which they 
 had previously sworn to him, and a large number of 
 the laity sympathised with them. The bishops who 
 entertained this scruple were for the most part the very 
 same whose resistance to James's declaration of in- 
 dulgence had raised the standard of resistance to the 
 abuse of the royal prerogative, so that their action stood 
 above suspicion of any other than the highest motives 
 and secured for them the general sympathy. 
 
 The king offered a compromise, viz., to excuse the 
 clergy from the oath on condition that they would 
 assent to the repeal of the tests of churchmanship 
 required from all who held civil office. It must be 
 borne in mind that William was bred a Presbyterian and 
 was from conviction a latitudinarian, and that he was 
 naturally anxious for a large measure of comprehension. 
 The compromise was not generally acceptable. The 
 
THE REVOLUTION 
 
 201 
 
 Church and nation as a whole were not yet prepared 
 to abandon the principle that whatever toleration might 
 be extended to Dissenters, national interests required 
 that the holders of any office should be adherents of 
 the existing unity in Church and State. The court party 
 had sufificient power to procure the passing of an Act of 
 Parliament enacting that all clergymen who refused the 
 oath of allegiance should be deprived. Under this Act 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury and six other bishops 
 were ejected, and about 400 clergymen, among whom 
 were a remarkable number of men eminent for learning 
 and piety ; the names of some of them, as Hicks, Collier, 
 Dodwell, Kettlewell, Sherlock, are still well known as 
 ecclesiastical authors of repute. It was a critical 
 moment. Great numbers both of the clergy and laity 
 sympathised with the Nonjurors, and had any attempt 
 been made to force on the Church such changes in 
 constitution and doctrine as those projected in the Bill 
 of Comprehension and for the Repeal of Tests, a very 
 serious disruption of the Church might have resulted. 
 But the advisers of William were prudent men; they 
 recognised that no real comprehension and pacification 
 could be obtained by measures which, while they ad- 
 mitted a few Dissenters, excluded a great body of church- 
 men. On the other hand, the Nonjurors, with praise- 
 worthy moderation, were content to suffer in silence 
 and patience the hardships which their obedience to 
 conscience had brought upon them. The larger and 
 better part of them made no attempt to create a schism, 
 and they said nothing against their brethren who had 
 not scrupled to take the oath. Since their expulsion 
 was an act of the secular power, and they had not been 
 canonically deprived, some conscientious men scrupled 
 to take their ofifices as not vacant; but they said no 
 
202 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 bitter things against those who did take them, and they 
 encouraged their sympathisers to accept things as they 
 stood. Some did not fall in with these moderate counsels, 
 and an attempt was made to keep up a Nonjuring suc- 
 cession of bishops and priests ; but, discountenanced by 
 the rest, it gradually died of neglect. 
 
 The principal result of the secession of the Non- 
 jurors was that it deprived the Church of the ablest 
 representatives of the conservative Reformation just 
 at the time when they were needed to balance a new 
 "school of thought" which had been growing up for 
 some time past and which was soon to acquire, under the 
 patronage of the crown, an influence disproportioned to 
 its numbers. It was soon known by the name of the 
 Low Church party. Its doctrines had been published 
 by Hales and Chillingworth in the time of Charles I. ; 
 soon after the Restoration it began to gain numerous 
 adherents ; and with the Revolution it came into power. 
 The ejection of the archbishop and six other bishops 
 left vacancies which William filled up with men of the 
 Low Church — some of them were men of learning, 
 ability, and piety, as Tillotson, Burnet, Stillingfleet, 
 Tenison — with the result that the bench of bishops as 
 a whole was no longer in harmony with the great body 
 of the clergy or with the national religious feeling. 
 The new school was averse from enthusiasm and ex- 
 tremes, and was content to accept things as they stood. 
 It accepted the Church as the existing organisation of 
 religion in England, and not contrary in any way to the 
 Word of God, and therefore having a claim upon the 
 adhesion of all reasonable men. But while preferring 
 the doctrine and discipline of the Church, it was tolerant 
 of dissent in every orthodox form, and not averse from 
 making considerable concessions to Dissenters, if by so 
 
THE REVOLUTION 
 
 doing it could attain the desirable end of inducing them 
 to abandon their separatist organisations. This spirit 
 of tolerance led in many cases to latitudinarianisra, 
 and in some leaned towards Socinianism. 
 
 The immediate practical result of the new appoint- 
 ments to the episcopate was that it put the bench of 
 bishops in antagonism with both the Lower House of 
 Convocation and with Parliament. When William 
 summoned his first Parliament, he omitted to summon 
 Convocation at the same time, which was a breach of 
 the constitution. On the petition of Parliament he 
 was obliged to repair the omission ; and Convocation, 
 especially the Lower House, took a large part in the 
 subsequent business. At the same time that the king 
 summoned the Convocation a Comprehension Bill was 
 introduced into Parliament which had not received any 
 Convocational assent. It proposed to excuse ministers 
 from signing the Thirty-nine Articles ; to recognise 
 Presbyterian ordination ; to make certain ceremonies 
 optional, as the use of the surplice, the cross in baptism, 
 sponsors, kneeling at the reception of the Communion ; 
 and it proposed to petition the crown for the revision 
 of the liturgy and canons, and the reform of the 
 ecclesiastical courts. It was the last great endeavour 
 to revolutionise the Church of England in accordance 
 with the personal predilections of the sovereign, and 
 happily it was unsuccessful. 
 
 The proposals excited great and almost universal 
 alarm among Church people. Macaulay estimates that 
 nine-tenths of the clergy were opposed to them, and that 
 probably represents nine-tenths of the people. The 
 public alarm was justified and intensified by the fact 
 that in Scotland, when the bishops scrupled to take the 
 oath of allegiance, the mob had been allowed to "rabble" 
 
204 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 the episcopal clergy without interference on the part of 
 the authorities; the Scottish Parliament had been allowed 
 to abolish Episcopacy, and the Presbyterian system had 
 been re-establisiied, with the king's consent. The Eng- 
 lish people very naturally began to fear that in escaping 
 the Scylla of James and Popery, they had run into 
 the Charybdis of William and latitudinarian Presbytery. 
 The national feeling was so strong that the king found it 
 prudent to abandon his design. 
 
 The utmost which he was able to obtain from Parlia- 
 ment was the Toleration Act (1689, i Will, and Mary, 
 "c. 18), which permitted ministers of the three chief dis- 
 senting bodies — Presbyterian, Independent, and Baptist 
 ■ — who should take the oath of allegiance and subscribe 
 the thirty-six doctrinal articles out of the Thirty-nine 
 Articles of the Church of England, to conduct public 
 worship for their adherents without interference or 
 penalties, and protected their worship from molestation. 
 These "Orthodox Dissenters" were not only tolerated, 
 but in a measure established ; the magistrates registered 
 and protected their places of worship, the king set aside 
 a considerable annual sum — the Regium Donum — in 
 stipends for them, and they were permitted to approach 
 the crown by petition as a recognised body. In 1691 
 an attempt was made to unite the Presbyterians and 
 Independents, but it came to nothing, and the latter 
 body rapidly declined into Unitarianism. 
 
 The policy of the reign of Queen Anne (1702 a.d.) 
 was to some extent a reaction against the ecclesiastical 
 as well as political policy of the preceding reign. The 
 latitudinarian policy of William, no longer supported by 
 the court, was at a disadvantage in face of the opposite 
 views of the great body of the clergy and the nation. 
 The trial of Dr. Sacheverell (17 10) afforded the popular 
 
THE REVOLUTION 
 
 205 
 
 feeling an opportunity of manifesting itself. He was 
 rector of St Saviour's, Southwark, a man of no great 
 learning or cliaracter, but with a striking presence, good 
 delivery, and a fanatical preacher of the popular doc- 
 trines. In a sermon at St. Paul's before the Mayor and 
 Corporation, he preached violently in favour of non- 
 resistance, against the principle of toleration, declared 
 the Church in danger, and abused Godolphin, the chief 
 minister of the Whig cabinet. The ministry impeached 
 him and brought him to trial. The event greatly moved 
 the popular mind. When the queen passed through the 
 streets, shouts were raised, "God bless your majesty 
 and the Church. We hope your majesty is for Dr. 
 Sacheverell." There were riotous attacks upon the 
 Dissenters' chapels, some of which were burnt. The 
 mild sentence of the House of Lords, that Sacheverell's 
 sermon should be burnt, and that he should be silenced 
 for three years, was regarded as a triumph, and the man 
 was regarded as a popular hero. The display of national 
 feeling hastened the fall of the Whig ministry ; the Tory 
 party came into office, and retained its ascendency during 
 the remainder of the queen's reign. 
 
 This reaction showed itself in the Occasional Con- 
 formity Act of 1 7 II. It was regarded as a religious 
 scandal, as well as a political grievance, that Dissenters 
 should come to Holy Communion in church once a year 
 merely to qualify themselves to hold municipal and other 
 offices, and the Act put the test the other way ; instead 
 of taking such occasional conformity as an evidence of 
 churchmanship, it enacted that those who had attended 
 Dissenting public worship within the previous year should 
 be reckoned Nonconformists. This was followed up by 
 the Schism Act of 17 14, which was directed against the 
 seminaries for training Dissenting ministers, and against 
 
2o6 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 some private schools conducted by eminent Dissenters 
 with such success that the sons of some of the nobility 
 and gentry were sent to them for education. The Act 
 prohibited Nonconformists from keeping, or even being 
 ushers in, schools. 
 
 The queen showed her good-will to the Church in 
 a practical way by restoring to it the first-fruits and 
 tenths which Henry VIII. had seized, which Mary had 
 restored, which Elizabeth had resumed. They were 
 wisely settled in a trust fund, under the title of Queen 
 Anne's Bounty, for the augmentation of poor livings, 
 which still continues its useful work. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE HANOVERIAN PERIOD 
 
 With the accession of the House of Hanover a new era 
 begins. The old High Church party lived on especially 
 among the country clergy and gentry, and with it an 
 inclination to the cause of the Stuart dynasty ; but the 
 mass of the people were quite content to Hve in peace 
 under the new regime. The Dissenters were conciliated 
 by the repeal (1719) of the Occasional Conformity Act 
 and the Schism Act, but the Test Act was retained. In 
 religion men's thoughts were turning into new channels. 
 The questions which were coming to the front con- 
 cerned the very foundations of revealed religion. The 
 Bangorian controversy, which raged about the Erastian, 
 latitudinarian, and perhaps Socinian views ably put 
 forward and defended by Hoadley, Bishop of Bangor 
 (and successively of Hereford, SaHsbury, and Winchester) 
 marked the change. Then there sprung up a school of 
 Deistical writers, who challenged the existence of any 
 revelation. The chief of these were Shaftesbury in his 
 " Characteristics ; " Woolston " On the Miracles;" Toland, 
 "Christianity not Mysterious;" Collins, "On Free-Thinlc- 
 ing ; " Tindal, " Christianity as Old as Creation." These 
 called forth able replies, some of which have obtained 
 the position of theological classics, as Warburton's 
 
 " Divine Legation of Moses ; " Conybeare's " Defence of 
 207 
 
2o8 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 "Revealed Religion," and Butler's "Analogy." The 
 Deists were worsted in the discussion, and Christianity 
 came out of the contest strengthened by the apologies 
 which had been called forth on its behalf. 
 
 Then the Socinian views which had been simmering 
 in men's minds found open expression in the Arianism 
 of the works of Whiston and Clarke, and among 
 Dissenters in those of Lardner and Priestley. Bishop 
 Bull had already published his great work, Defensio pro 
 Sytnbolo Niceno, against the foreign Socinians; the con- 
 troversy was chiefly carried on by Waterland, Jones of 
 Nayland, and Bishop Horsley, who did much to arrest 
 the spread of error and to establisli the orthodox faith 
 in the public mind. 
 
 After so long a period of religious strife and contro- 
 versy there followed a period of sluggish inactivity. 
 There were admirable bishops, but the idea of the 
 episcopal life was one of dignified representation, 
 learned leisure, and mild rule of the " inferior 
 clergy." In the rural districts the rectors were genial 
 and charitable, half country squire and half parson; 
 many parishes had no resident rector or vicar, and were 
 served by stipendiary curates, and the religious life 
 of the people was at a low ebb. In the towns the 
 principal clergy were highly respected, and the better 
 classes of the citizens were a church-going people ; 
 but it was hardly considered as part of their duty to 
 create new machinery for the improvement of the social 
 condition of the people, or to engage in systematic 
 mission-work among the neglectors of religion. The 
 Dissenting bodies were in much the same condition. 
 "The Nonconformist ministers, comfortably established 
 among their flocks, and enjoying their modest tem- 
 poralities, shared the spiritual ease of churchmen " 
 
THE HANOVERIAN PERIOD 209 
 
 (Macaulay). This was the state of things when a 
 wave of religious zeal swept over the land, like that 
 which gave birth to the Franciscan and Dominican 
 orders in the thirteenth century, and began a new era, 
 which has passed through various phases, and is still in 
 full flood. 
 
 If the birth of the Evangelical School may be attri- 
 buted to any one man, it may be assigned to William 
 Law, the author of " A Serious Call to a Devout Life " and 
 " Christian Perfection." These works had a great effect 
 upon the mind of Henry Venn, who may be regarded 
 as one of the earliest, and perhaps the most influential, 
 of the Evangelical school, and also on that of John 
 Wesley, the organiser of a separate branch of the 
 revival which must be dealt with in a distinct para- 
 graph. With Venn may be enumerated as early Evan- 
 gelicals Samuel Walker of Truro, James Hervey, the 
 author of the " Meditations in a Country Churchyard," 
 and William Talbot of Reading. Later names of 
 eminence are William Romaine, Joseph and Isaac 
 Milner, John Newton, the poet Cooper, Richard Cecil, 
 Thomas Scott the commentator, Leigh Richmond, 
 Henry Martyn the missionary, Charles Simeon, John 
 Thornton, the chief of the Clapham school, and William 
 Wilberforce. 
 
 The revival was rather pietistic than doctrinal, but it 
 did specially exalt those doctrines which immediately 
 touch the relations between the individual soul and God. 
 Its great merits were a profound veneration for the 
 Bible, faith in the atonement, and an ardent personal 
 sense of religion. Its defects lay in its individualism, 1 
 its undervaluing of creeds, sacraments, worship, unity, 
 and all which relates to Christ's church system of bring- 
 ing religion to bear upon universal mankind. 
 
2IO HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 The Wesleyan movement began within the Church, 
 on High Church lines doctrinally, in the form of Societies 
 — Guilds as we should now call them — for the cultiva- 
 tion of personal piety. At first they were members of 
 the Church who were grouped into these local societies, 
 but in a short time the popularity of the movement 
 attracted people from outside the Church into the 
 Wesleyan Societies, who were Wesleyans first and 
 churchmen afterwards. With all its admitted excel- 
 lence, the movement tended from the beginning in the 
 direction of the formation of a separate religious organi- 
 sation. The steps of this separation were these : the 
 opening of the Foundry House in London and tlie 
 building of the Preaching House at Bristol, both in 
 1739, were the beginning of the gathering of separate 
 congregations. The permission, unwillingly given, by 
 John Wesley to Maxwell, the first lay preacher, to preach 
 in public in 1741 was the beginning of an unauthorised 
 ministry. In 1788 the lay preachers were allowed to 
 read the Prayer Book on Sunday mornings in their 
 meeting-houses. In the very year of John Wesley's 
 death (1790) he formally put forth the statement 
 in his magazine, "I hold all the doctrines of the 
 Church of England. I love her history, I approve 
 her plan of discipline, and only wish it could be 
 put in execution." Wesley would have kept his fol- 
 lowers as an order within the Church, but for a long 
 time previous to his death it was only his personal 
 influence which had kept back the tendency of his 
 followers to break off from the Church and exercise 
 their entire independence as a separate organisation. 
 In 1795 the governing body gave permission to the 
 preachers to assume all the functions of the priest- 
 hood, to baptize, conduct public service, administer 
 
THE HANOVERIAN PERIOD 211 
 
 "the Lord's Supper," and bury, and the schism was 
 complete. 
 
 The same revival of religion which produced the 
 Evangelical school and the VVesleyan society in connec- 
 tion with the Church roused the Dissenters into activity. 
 Previously they were not numerous, about one to twenty 
 of the population,! and they shared the general religious 
 apathy. But three causes tended to their rapid increase : 
 first, the rapid increase of the population and its sudden 
 accumulation in the towns and manufacturing districts, 
 and the failure of the Church to make sufficient provision 
 for the spiritual wants thus suddenly created. Secondly, 
 the facility with which Dissenters could erect cheap build- 
 ings and provide ministers for them. Thirdly, the fact 
 that the whole drift of Evangelical teaching encouraged 
 the people to see nothing but minor and very unimpor- 
 tant differences between the Church and the sects. It 
 must be said in excuse for the Church of the time, that 
 a great and ancient organisation is always inevitably 
 cautious and slow in adapting itself to new circum- 
 stances ; that, with its Convocation silenced for a century 
 past, the Church had lost the machinery and the habit of 
 united action ; that tlie erection of a new church required 
 a special Act of Parliament ; and that it required years 
 of education for its candidates for holy orders. The re- 
 sult was a rapid increase in the number of Dissenters. 
 In the absence of a religious census it is impossible to 
 give authoritative statistics, but from the latest sources 
 of information it is gathered that the Wesleyans now 
 number not more than 1,356,906 adherents in Great 
 
 1 Sherlock in his "Test Act Vindicated" calculates that in 1676 
 Dissenters, including Romanists, were to the Church people in the 
 proportion of I to 20, and that they had not increased during the first 
 twenty-five years of the next century. 
 
212 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 Britain; the Independents about 1,250,000; the Bap- 
 tists less than 1,000,000; Romanists probably less than 
 2,000,000; the minor sects it is difficult to estimate. 
 The proportion of the people who seek their religious 
 ministrations at the hands of the Church is probably 
 about 75 per cent, of the population ; the population of 
 England and Wales by the census of 189 1 was 29 
 millions, and 75 per cent, of that is 2 if millions. 
 
 With their increase in numbers and wealth the Dis- 
 senters naturally acquired political influence, and used it 
 to free themselves from their legal disabilities. In 1774 
 an Act of Parliament relieved their ministers and school- 
 masters from the subscription to the Articles of Religion 
 required by the Toleration Act. In 1828 the repeal of 
 the Test and Corporation Acts opened Parliament and 
 all civil offices to them. In 1829, after long and pro- 
 found agitation, the Catholic Relief Act extended the 
 same liberty to Romanist dissenters. In 1836 the 
 Dissenters' Marriage Act licensed Dissenting meeting- 
 houses for the celebration of baptisms, marriages and 
 funerals ; the Act 3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 30 relieved their 
 meeting-houses from local taxation. In 1858 the repeal 
 of the Jewish disabilities admitted Jews to Parliament. 
 
 Then began a series of legislative assaults upon the 
 Church which the political activity of the assailants and 
 the pseudo-liberality and lethargy of Church people 
 rendered successful. In 1869 an Act of Parliament 
 gave them a share in the government of the Church's 
 grammar-schools. In 1870 the Act 34 Vict. c. 26 gave 
 them admission to the Church's colleges, and in 1882 
 another Act gave them a share in their emoluments 
 and government ; the colleges at the Universities of 
 Oxford and Cambridge, founded to keep their students 
 under the religious and moral discipline of the Church, 
 
THE HANOVERIAN PERIOD 213 
 
 were thrown open to Dissenters, and the Church began 
 at once to found new colleges for herself. In 1880 an 
 Act gave Dissenting ministers the power of conducting 
 their funeral services in the churchyards. 
 
 The High Church Revival. — In the earlier part of the 
 nineteenth century there were still a few clergymen who 
 had inherited the learning and the principles of the 
 Caroline divines. The revival of the school of thought 
 as one of the modern parties in the Church began in 
 Oxford about 1825. It was a reaction against the 
 defects of the Evangelical school, and its aim, as in the 
 earlier phase of the sixteenth-century Reformation, was 
 to bring the Church of England back to the primitive 
 standards of faith and practice. The common room of 
 Oriel College, Oxford, was the centre of the movement, 
 and Newman, Pusey, Keble, Froude, Isaac Williams, 
 Palmer, Wilberforce,- were among its leaders. Tiieir 
 design of forming a Society having been discouraged 
 by those in authority, it was chiefly by their writings 
 that their principles were disseminated. Among those 
 writings the " Tracts for the Times " were the most 
 notorious ; the pubUcation of translations of the Fathers 
 and of the works of the English theologians of the 
 seventeenth century, had a still greater influence. At 
 the same time began a revived interest in and admira- 
 tion of mediaeval art, and this led to the restoration 
 of churches and the improvement of services ; while the 
 " Christian Year " of Keble, and collections of hymns, 
 lent the aid of poetry to the popularising of the revival. 
 The movement was at first misunderstood ; it was feared 
 that it was leading people back towards Rome ; authori- 
 ties looked disapprovingly upon it, partisans prosecuted 
 it, the mob rabbled its clergy and services. The new 
 leaven, however, gradually wrought, and has had a great 
 
214 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 effect upon the popular religion of the latter part of 
 the century. In so great a movement there were sure to 
 be extremes, but the general result has been to extend 
 and consolidate the work of the Evangelical revival, 
 and to add to its piety and earnestness the theologi- 
 cal learning and church organisation in which it was 
 defective. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THE MODERN PERIOD 
 
 The revival of the "High Church" school of thought, 
 in the second quarter of the present century, seems to 
 have inspired the Court of Rome with the hope that the 
 time had come for recovering England to the Roman 
 obedience, in forgetfulness perhaps of the fact that it was 
 that school of thought which broke with the See of Rome in 
 the time of Henry VIII., and which raised the standard 
 of resistance to the attempt of James II. to bring the 
 Church of England back into the old bondage. 
 
 In 1850 the Pope gave a new organisation to the Papal 
 sect in England by the creation of a new hierarchy in the 
 country, consisting of an archbishop, taking his title from 
 Westminster, and twelve other bishops, taking their titles 
 from other great towns. 
 
 This Papal Aggression was the outward advertisement 
 of a new attack upon the Church of England. Rome 
 gave itself in earnest to the task which it had undertaken. 
 Money was supplied in profusion for the erection of 
 beautiful churches and the maintenance of attractive 
 services ; convents of men and women were founded in 
 various places ; charitable institutions presented the re- 
 ligion in its most persuasive character ; social influences 
 were brought to bear upon individuals ; in short, all that 
 statesmanlike plan, skilful intrigue, Jesuitical astuteness, 
 215 
 
2i6 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 and money, all that Christian earnestness, zeal, and self- 
 devotion ably directed could do was done, in the hope 
 of gaining a great body of converts, and thus of social 
 influence and political power, and so of ultimately win- 
 ning back England to the Roman obedience. In the 
 early days of the movement it had a considerable suc- 
 cess. A number of clergymen, some of them men of 
 eminence for piety and learning, some of them dignitaries 
 of the Church, were won over, and a rather large number of 
 converts of the higher classes, and a certain number out 
 of the poorer classes, who, having no religion, were natur- 
 ally attracted by bright services and kindly ministrations ; 
 but the result on the whole has been a great disappoint- 
 ment. It soon appeared that High Churchmanship was 
 not an easy introduction to Romanism, but its most 
 formidable opponent, and that the strong popular pre- 
 judices against the old tyranny of Rome were not to 
 be easily overcome. 
 
 Meantime the character of the party has changed ; 
 the genial Gallicanism of the " old Catholic families " has 
 been replaced or overlaid with a fanatical aggressive 
 Ultramontanism. The new dogma of the Immaculate 
 Conception, accepted by the Vatican Council in 1854, and 
 of the Papal Infallibility, declared in 1870, have raised 
 new barriers to the acceptance of modern Romanism by 
 educated churchmen. 
 
 The controversy between the English Church and the 
 Papacy has assumed a new phase. The Roman contro- 
 versialists recognise that the strong point of the Church 
 is its actual unbroken descent, through all the oscilla- 
 tions of the Reformation period, from the ancient Church, 
 and they are devoting their best energies to prove that 
 the descent failed on the accession of Parker to the See 
 of Canterbury (see p. 168), and so to excuse the intra- 
 
THE MODERN PERIOD 
 
 217 
 
 sion of a schismatical hierarchy as a replantation of 
 a true succession in this country. That "the Italian 
 Mission " has at least no claim to be the descendant and 
 representative of the old unreformed English Church 
 
 is made plain by the following facts. 
 
 1. The intrusive hierarchy is not descended from the 
 bishops and clergy of the old Church. The bishops 
 and priests who, on the death of Queen Mary, refused 
 to conform to the reformed order made no attempt to keep 
 up a succession ; they died out and left no successors. 
 
 2. The ancient Church of England was not governed by 
 Roman canon law ("What have I to do with a Roman 
 canon ? " asked Henry I., see p. 82), but by the canons 
 made by its own English synods. The Papal sect is 
 governed by Roman canon law, so far as that is not 
 suspended by the absolute authority of the Pope. 
 
 3. The ancient Church of England had its own 
 liturgy, which descended from the Ephesian family of 
 the four great ancient liturgies ; the Papal sect uses the 
 modern Roman liturgy. 
 
 4. The doctrine which the Papal sect teaches is not 
 that of the unreformed Church of England, but that 
 doctrine as modified by the Council of Trent plus the 
 dogma of the Immaculate Conception, plus the Papal 
 Infallibility, and other modern accretions. 
 
 5. The raison d'etre of the Papal sect in England is 
 the assertion of the Papal supremacy ; but the supremacy 
 which it asserts is the modern theory that the Pope is 
 by divine right the absolute ruler of the Church, and 
 the infallible teacher of divine truth ; which is a totally 
 different thing from the patriarchal authority, carefully 
 defined and limited, which the Church of England ad- 
 mitted at the Conquest, and, finding it abused, burden- 
 some, and mischievous, threw off at the Reformation. 
 
2i8 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 The most remarkable fact in the modern historjr of 
 the Church of England is its rapid extension over the 
 world, and its organisation into what is virtually a new 
 patriarchate. When the American plantations declared 
 their independence in 1776, there were numerous con- 
 gregations of the Church of England there, but they 
 were all under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London. 
 Laud had proposed in 1638 to send a bishop to New 
 England, and Clarendon obtained the sanction of Charles 
 II. to the establishment of a bishopric for Virginia; and 
 Archbishop Tenison left a bequest for providing an 
 American episcopate, but Walpole prevented its taking 
 effect. In 1784, with the advice and assent of the 
 English ecclesiastical authorities, the political and legal 
 difficulties of the case were evaded by the consecration 
 of Bishop Seabury at the hands of the bishops of the 
 disestablished Scottish Church. Three years afterwards 
 the legal difficulties were overcome, and the English 
 Church consecrated bishops for several of the United 
 States. In 1793 Canada was supplied with a bishop of 
 its own, and in 1813 a bishop was consecrated for our 
 Indian dominions. 
 
 But the great extension of the Anglican communion 
 is the work of more recent times. The wonderful 
 growth of our population led to the foundation of 
 colonies in North America, New Zealand, Australia, and 
 South Africa, which developed with great rapidity. The 
 Religious Societies helped the early colonists to build 
 churches and schools, and provided them with clergymen, 
 and at length completed their ecclesiastical organisation 
 by the appointment of Colonial Bishops. The Eng- 
 lish Bench of Bishops made an appeal in 1841 to the 
 nation for funds to provide bishops immediately for New 
 Zealand, the British possessions in the Mediterranean, 
 
THE MODERN PERIOD 
 
 219 
 
 New Brunswick, Cape of Good Hope, Van Diemen's 
 Land, and Ceylon ; they proposed afterwards to make 
 similar provision for Sierra Leone, British Guiana, South 
 Australia, Port Philip, Western Australia, Northern India 
 and Southern India. Within sixteen years these Sees 
 v/ere founded and endowed by voluntary contributions ; 
 the work thus begun has been steadily continued, until 
 the whole number of colonial and missionary bishoprics 
 amounts to seventy-seven. The Sees of the Church of 
 the United Stales meantime have grown to the number 
 of seventy-one. 
 
 In 1867 the foundation was laid of the organisation 
 of all the Churches of the Anglican communion. The 
 first formal expression of a desire for it came from the 
 Provincial Synod of Canada, and the bishops of the 
 United States intimated that they would gladly take part 
 in a general conference of Anglican bishops. There 
 actually assembled at Lambeth in that year 78 out of a 
 total of 144, viz., 18 English, 9 Irish, 7 Scottish, 23 from 
 British Colonies, and 21 from the United States. The 
 conference lamented " the divided condition of the flock 
 of Christ throughout the world," and expressed "its 
 solemn conviction that unity will be most effectually pro- 
 moted by maintaining the faith in its purity and integrity 
 as taught in the Holy Scriptures, held by the primitive 
 Church, summed up in the true Creeds, and affirmed 
 by the undisputed general Councils." The conference 
 passed a series of resolutions pointing in the direction 
 of the complete organisation of the Church of England 
 with the Churches of the Colonies and those of the 
 United States into what would be a new patriarchate 
 having the Archbishop of Canterbury as the centre of 
 its organisation. The prospect is perhaps a little vague, 
 but it is a very grand one. It is all but certain that the 
 
220 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 Colonies will grow into great nations ; the United States 
 will also continue to grow; and the English-speaking 
 peoples will exercise a great influence in the world of 
 the future. Even if the Colonies, or some of them, should 
 assert their political independence, after the example of 
 the United States, still this ecclesiastical organisation will 
 unite them with the rest of the Anglican communion 
 for religious purposes, and will greatly help to bind all 
 together in international unity. England is not only 
 the pivot of this external machinery, it is the heart and 
 brain of this spiritual organisation ; it behoves English 
 churchmen to see that their soundness in the faith and 
 holiness of character and spiritual energy are such as 
 to fit them for the part which they are called upon to 
 take. A glance back at the history of the Church will 
 show how in ancient times, through the political and 
 material depression of the East and the political and 
 material growth of Europe, the centre of gravity of 
 Christendom moved from the Greek to the Latin civi- 
 lisation, from Constantinople to Rome ; the action of 
 the same causes, the political and material depression 
 of the European nations and the vigorous growth of the 
 English-speaking nationalities, may cause a like transfer 
 of the religious centre from the Latin to the Teutonic 
 civilisation, from Rome to Canterbury. It has long 
 since been pointed out (by Montalembert) that the 
 English Church, holding fast to the faith and constitu- 
 tion of the primitive Church, and gladly embracing the 
 results of the growth and development of the race, 
 affords a centre round which divided Christendom might 
 one day rally. The Churches of the East are already 
 beginning to regard us Avith interest and sympathy ; the 
 manhood of the Roman Churches is aUenated and 
 ripening for another Reformation. There is said to be 
 
THE MODERN PERIOD 221 
 
 a strong and growing feeling in the Scotch Kirk in the 
 direction of the primitive standards of organisation and 
 creed. 
 
 Another most remarkable phenomenon of the religious 
 condition of England is the manifold divisions of our 
 English Christianity, the wonderful rapidity with which 
 it is subdividing. Down to the beginning of this cen- 
 tury the principal Dissenting bodies were the Presby- 
 terians, Independents, Romanists, Baptists, Wesleyans, 
 Friends. The census of 1851 enumerated 75 different 
 denominations. The Registrar General's return of 
 places licensed for divine worship gave in 1871 177 
 names of denominations; in 1886 this had increased to 
 213; in 1894 it was 273. This constant subdivision 
 does not affect the whole population; about 75 per 
 cent, of the population are reckoned as more or less 
 Church people ; the gross number of Dissenters, it is 
 probable, does not increase in proportion to the popu- 
 lation; but it is this minority of the population which 
 is subject to the wonderful disintegration shown in the 
 official returns. At the same time, there is reason to 
 believe that there is a strong tendency among Dissenters 
 to forsake the old standards of orthodoxy. The modern 
 school of criticism has sapped the foundations on which 
 they rested. It is said that there is a strong leaven of 
 Socinianism among the Independents, and the Wesleyan 
 authorities recently decided that baptism was not neces- 
 sary for " membership " of their body. 
 
 Though the dissent of the country includes only a 
 minority of the people, it is earnest, well organised, and 
 exercises a political power and social influence which 
 is enough to paralyse the religious action of the country 
 as a whole. The Government can give no support or 
 encouragement, or even countenance, to religion; in 
 
222 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 setting up a system of National Education the whole 
 country would desire it to be religious, but the Govern- 
 ment is obliged to leave religion to take its chance, be- 
 cause it considers itself bound to neutrality among the 
 different religious bodies. 
 
 The consular chaplains, who used to witness for the 
 religion of the English wherever the consular flag 
 witnessed to the political and commercial power of 
 England, are withdrawn as inconsistent with the attitude 
 of neutrahty which the Government assumes amidst the 
 contending sects. 
 
 Foreign Churches are frightened from the path of 
 reform by the spectacle of the confusion which has 
 resulted here. Intelligent heathens scornfully bid our 
 missionaries to settle their religion among themselves 
 before they offer it to the accejjtance of other people. 
 
 All our Colonies have been founded in the modern 
 period, and the people who founded them carried with 
 them these unhappy religious divisions. The result is 
 a great weakening of the power of Christianity wherever 
 the English form of it prevails. So far as human judg- 
 ment and foresight can venture to pronounce on such 
 a question, the most important gain to the cause of 
 Christ and His Church in the immediate future would 
 be the reunion of English Christianity round the standard 
 of the Historic Church. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Advertisements of Elizabeth, 172. 
 Agilbert, Bishop of West Saxons, 50. 
 Aidan sent from lona to Northum- 
 
 bria, 40 ; founds Lindisfarne, 40 ; 
 
 converts Northumbria, 41 ; bis 
 
 character, 41. 
 Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne, 57. 
 Alfred reconquers the kingdom, 61 ; 
 
 encourages religion and learning, 
 
 62. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain, 16 ; 
 
 kingdoms, 18. 
 Annates, Act against, 143. 
 Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 
 78. 
 
 Appeals, Act for restraining, 144. 
 
 "Appropriate" parishes, no. 
 
 Architecture, British, 40 ; Saxon, 57, 
 64 ; Norman, 77, 85 ; Early Eng- 
 lish, 109 : fourteenth century, 120 ; 
 fifteenth century, 124. 
 
 Aries, Council of, attended by 
 British bishops, 10. 
 
 Art, Saxon, 64. 
 
 Articles of Religion, the Ten Articles, 
 157 ; Six Articles, 157 ; Forty-two 
 Articles, 160 ; Forty-nine Articles, 
 166. 
 
 Assembly of Divines, 186. 
 Augustine, his mission to England, 
 
 24 : interview with Ethelbert, 25 ; 
 
 converts Kent, 26 ; interview with 
 
 British bishops, 27. 
 
 Bancroft, Archbishop, 178. 
 Bangorian controversy, 207. 
 Barlow, Bishop, 169. 
 
 Becket, Thomas, 88 ; cliancellor, 89 ; 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, 92 ; 
 quarrel with the king, 93 ; martyr- 
 dom, 96. 
 
 Bede, 57. 
 
 Benedict Biscop, 50 ; founds Wear- 
 mouth and Jarrow, 57. 
 
 Bertha of Kent, 21. 
 
 Bible, translations of, Wiclif's, 119; 
 Tyndale's, Coverdale's, Matthews', 
 Cranmer's great Bible. 156. 
 
 Birinus converts the West Saxons, 43. 
 
 Bishoprics, Anglo-Saxon, 56 ; new, 
 temp. Henry VIII., 154. 
 
 Bishops, British, at Aries, 10 ; at Sar- 
 
 Boniface, the Apostle of Germany, 57. 
 Bradford on-Avon, Saxon Church at, 
 57, 63- 
 
 Breviary expurgated, 156. 
 
 Britain, ancient inhabitants of, 2 ; 
 
 coinage of, 2 ; religion of, 3. 
 Britannia, a province of the Roman 
 
 empire, 3 ; planting of the Church 
 
 in, 9 ; abandoned by the Roman 
 
 empire, 12. 
 British Church, its peculiarities, 14 ; 
 
 Bran, the legend of, 6. 
 
 C/EDWALLA conquers Northumbria, 
 
 35 ; slain at Hevenfelt, 39. 
 Canute, 64. 
 
 Cartwright, founder of Presbyterian- 
 Catholic emancipation, 212. 
 Cedd converts the East Saxons, 44. ' 
 
224 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Chadd, Bishop of Northumbria, of 
 
 Mercia, 57. 
 Chantry chapels, 129 ; suppression of, 
 
 160. 
 
 Charles I., his policy, 180, 188. 
 
 Church and State, definition of their 
 relations in the Act for restraining 
 appeals, 144 ; relations between, in 
 Saxon times, 7 ; altered by William 
 I., 76 ; attempted alteration by 
 Henry II., 91 ; altered by Henry 
 VIII., 146. 
 
 Clarendon, Constitutions of, 92. 
 
 Claudius, his conquest of Britain, 3. 
 
 Colman of Lindisfarne, 50. 
 
 Colonial churches, 218. 
 
 Communion in one kind, 134. 
 
 Continuity of the Church through the 
 Reformation, 146, 155, 168. 
 
 Conventicle Act, 193. 
 
 Convocation, 149. 
 
 Councils at Aries, Nicsea, Sardica, 
 Ariminum, 11; Verulamium, 14; 
 Whitby, 50 ; Hertford, 52 ; Heath- 
 field, 53; Cealchythe, 58; Cloves- 
 hoe, 58 ; Winchester, 73 ; London, 
 77 ; Pisa, Constance, Basle, 122 ; 
 Vatican, 216. 
 
 Crannier, Archbishop, 142. 
 
 Cromwell, 1S8. 
 
 Curabria,kingdomof,i9; conquered, 20. 
 
 Damnonia, kingdom of, 19 ; con- 
 quered, 20. 
 
 Danes, their invasions, 60 ; conquests, 
 61, 64. 
 
 Deistical writers, 207. 
 
 Deusdedit, Bishop of Kent, 29, 51. 
 
 Dioceses, Anglo-Sa,xon, 56. 
 
 Directory of public worship, 187. 
 
 Dispensing power, 195. 
 
 Dissent, 173, 176, 189, 192, 204, 205, 
 
 Divorce of Henry VIII., 139, 140. 
 Doncaster, church built at, 34. 
 Druids, the, 3. 
 
 Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 63, 65. 
 
 Eadcar, King of England, 62. 
 
 Eanfleda, Queen of Northumbria, 49. 
 
 East Anglia, kingdom of, founded, 
 18 ; converted, 44. 
 
 Ecclesiastical courts, origin of, 76. 
 
 Edward the Confessor, 64, 66 ; his 
 character, 69 ; introduces foreigners 
 into English Sees, 69. 
 
 Edward I., his resistance to Papal 
 claims, 114; assertion of rights of 
 the crown over the clergy, 114. 
 
 Edward VI., First Prayer Book of, 
 159; Second Prayer Book of, 160. 
 
 Edwin, King of Northumbria, 31 ; 
 his conversion, 32 ; baptism at York, 
 32 ; death, 35. 
 
 Egbert, King of Wessex, unites the 
 Heptarchic kingdoms, 58. 
 
 Egfrid, Archbishop of York, 57. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, ecclesiastical policy 
 of, 164 ; excommunicated, 170. 
 
 Essex, kingdom of, founded, 18 ; con- 
 verted, 43. 
 
 Ethelbert, King of Kent, 21 ; inter- 
 view with Augustine, 25 ; conver- 
 
 Ethelburga, Queen of Northumbria, 
 
 31. 36- 
 Evangelical school, 209. 
 
 Felix, first bishop of the East Angles, 
 44. 
 
 Five Mile Act, 193. 
 
 Foreign reformers, influence of, 159. 
 
 Free chapels, 127. 
 
 Friars, orders of, founded, 111 ; work 
 of, 127; suppressed, 152. 
 
 G.\UL, the planting of the Church 
 in, 9. 
 
 Germanus of Auxerre visits Britain, 
 14. 
 
 Glastonbury, 6 ; legend, 5. 
 Gregory the Great, 23 ; sends a mis- 
 sion to England, 24. 
 Grindal, -Archbishop, 173. 
 Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, 105. 
 Guilds, 129; suppression of, 160- 
 
INDEX 
 
 225 
 
 Hampton Court Conference, 177. 
 " Head of the Church," 148, 165, 166. 
 Henry II., 88 ; his quarrel with 
 
 Becket, 92. 
 Henry III., character, 104 ; Church 
 
 abuses in his reign, 105, 106 ; war 
 
 with the barons, 107. 
 Heretics, statute against, 120. 
 High Church school of thought, 155, 
 
 164, 180, 213. 
 Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, 48, 50. 
 Honoritis, Bishop of Kent, 29. 
 Hooker, his " Ecclesiastical Polity," 
 
 175- 
 
 " Immaculate Conception," the, 133, 
 216. 
 
 Independents, origin of, 176, 
 Indulgence, Declaration of, 193, 197. ' 
 Indulgences, 136. 
 
 " Institution of a Christian Man, ' 
 157- 
 
 Investiture, the quarrel of, 80, 83. 
 lona, foundation of, 38 ; sends mission 
 
 to Northumbria, 39. 
 Italians hold English benefices, 106. 
 
 Jacob the Deacon, 39, 50. 
 James I., 177. 
 
 James II., his ecclesiastical policy, 
 195. 
 
 Jewish disabilities repealed, 212. 
 
 John, King, resists Pope Innocent III., 
 100 ; is excommunicated, ici ; sub- 
 mits to the Pope, loi ; grams Magna 
 Charta, 103 ; death, J04. 
 
 Julius CsEsar, his expeditions to i?ri- 
 
 Justus, Bishop of Rochester, 28. 
 
 Kent, kingdom of, founded, 18 ; con- 
 verted, 26. 
 
 Lambeth Conference, 219. 
 Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 
 74. 77- 
 
 S. T. 
 
 Loud, Archbishop, 181, 183. 
 
 aurentius, Bishop of Canterbury, 29. 
 Lichfield an archbishopric, 58. 
 Lincoln, British bishop at, 10 ; Sa.\on 
 
 church built at, 34. 
 Litany revised, 156. 
 Lollards, 117. 
 
 London, British bishop at, 10; Saxon 
 church built there, 28. 
 
 Long Parliament, 182. 
 I Low Church Party, 202. 
 I Lucius, King of the Britains, 6. 
 
 Lupus of Troyes visits Britain, 14. 
 
 Lyons, the Church planted there, 8. 
 
 Mary, Queen, ecclesiastical policy of, 
 161 ; persecution under, 162. 
 
 Mary Stuart, Queen, 171. 
 
 Mass altered into Communion, 156. 
 
 Mellitus, Bishop of London, 29 ; of 
 Canterbury, 29. 
 
 Mercia, kingdom of, founded, 19 ; 
 converted, 43. 
 
 Millenary Petition, 177. 
 
 Monasteries in Kent, 30 ; in Northum- 
 bria, 42, 48, 57. 
 
 Monastic Institution, the, 87, 126. 
 
 Monlfort Simon de, 107. 
 
 Mortmain, statute of, "116. 
 
 " Necessakv Doctrine of a Christian 
 
 Man," 158. 
 New Learning, the, 137. 
 Nonconformists, 172; measuresagainst, 
 
 192. 
 
 I Nonjurors, 200. 
 
 Northumbria, kingdom of, founded, 18; 
 Paulinus's mission to, 31; converted 
 by Aidan. 40. 
 
 Occasional Conformity Act, 205 ; 
 
 repeal of, 206. 
 Offa, King of Mercia, 58. 
 Oswald, King of Northumbria, 38 ; 
 
 sends foi missionaries to lona, 39 
 
 his death, 42. 
 Oswy, King of Northumbria, 42, 52. 
 
 P 
 
226 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Papal abuses, 113 ; complaints of, 115, 
 ti6. 
 
 " Papal Aggression," the, 215, 217. 
 Papal infallibility, 216. 
 Papal supremacy, 68, 72 ; rejected, 
 144. 
 
 Papists, their action, temp. Eliza- 
 beth, 170 ; James, 179 ; modern, 
 214. 
 
 Parishes organised, 50 ; country, 50 ; 
 
 town, 128. 
 Parker, Archbishop of Canterburj-, 
 
 168. 
 
 Parliament, its resistance to Papal 
 
 claims, 114. 
 Paulinus, his mission to Northumbria, 
 
 31, 32 ; his missionary work, 33 ; 
 
 description of, 35 ; return to Kent, 
 
 36 ; Bishop of Rochester, 36. 
 Pelagius, his heresy introduced into 
 
 Britain, ,3. 
 Persecution of the clergy, 183. 
 Peter's Pence, Act abolishing, 144. 
 Pilgrimage of Grace, 154. 
 Plate and ornaments of the churches 
 
 seized, 161. 
 Posidonius, Greek, visitor to Britain, 2. 
 Prayer Book, First, of Edward VI , 
 
 159 ; Second, of Edward VI., 160 ; 
 
 of Elizabeth, 166; of James, 178; 
 
 of the Restoration, 191. 
 Prayer Book suppressed, 187. 
 Preaching in the Middle Ages, 131. 
 Premunire, Statute of, ii5. 
 Printing, resul of, 138. 
 Prophesy ings, 174. 
 Provisors, Statute of, 113. 
 Prymers, 133, 156. 
 Purgatory, 135. 
 Puritans, 172-175. 
 
 Pytheas, Greek, visitor to Britain, i. 
 
 Queen' -Anne's Bounty, 206. 
 
 Rebellion, the great, 183. 
 Redwald, King of the East Angles, 
 
 converted, 29. 
 Reformation, the, causes of, 137. 
 
 Religious instruction in the Middle 
 Ages, 130 ; manuals for clergy, 130 ; 
 j for people, 132. 
 
 j Restoration of mon.irchy and church, 
 
 I I go- 
 Revolution, the, 199- 
 
 j Rochester, church built there, 28. 
 Romanus, chaplain of Queen Ean- 
 
 j fleda, 49- 
 
 I Rome, its history in the fifth and sixth 
 : centuries, 23. 
 
 1 Rome, Church of, its history in the 
 fifth and sixth centuries, 23 ; in the 
 I ninth and tenth centuries, 66. 
 Royal supremacy, 148, 195. 
 
 St. Alban, the protomartyr of 
 
 Britain, 10. 
 St. Alban's Abbey, 11. 
 St. Paul, legendary' connection of, » ith 
 
 the conversion of Britain, 6, 7. 
 Saint worship, 135. 
 Savoy Conference, igi. 
 Saxon Church, its peculiarities, 65. 
 Schism Act, 205 ; repeal of, 207. 
 Schoolmen, iii. 
 
 Sebert, King of the East Sa.\ons, con- 
 verted, 29. 
 
 Secessions of clergy on the accession 
 of Mary, 162 ; of Elizabeth, 167. 
 
 Sermons, mediaeval, 131. 
 
 Seven bishops sent to the Tower, 
 198. 
 
 Severus of Treves visits Britain, 14. 
 
 Sigebert, King of the East Saxons, 
 I converted, 43. 
 I Socinian writers, 208. 
 , " Solemn League and Covenant," 186. 
 I South Saxon kingdom founded, 18; 
 I converted, 44. 
 
 Southwell, church built at, 35. 
 
 Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 70, 72 ; deposed, 73. 
 
 Submission of the clergy, 146-149. 
 
 Suppression of religious houses, 151. 
 
 Supremacy, Papal. See " Papal." 
 
 Surrender of the great monasteries, 
 152. 
 
INDEX 
 
 227 
 
 Test Act, 194 ; repealed, 212. 
 
 Theodore, Archbishop of Canterburj', 
 52 ; holds Synod at Hertford, 52 ; at 
 Heathfield, 53 ; subdivides dioceses, 
 54 ; organises parishes, 56. 
 
 Thirteenth century, character of, io3. 
 
 Toleration Act, 204. 
 
 Transubstantiation, 134. 
 
 Uniformity, Act of, 191. 
 
 V'ERULAM.St.Alban martyred there, 10. 
 Vicarages founded, no. 
 Virgin Mary, cultus of, 133. 
 
 Wales, kingdoms of, 19. 
 Welsh Church, 27, 37. 
 
 Wesleyan movement, 210. 
 
 Wessex, kingdom of, founded, 1 3 ; 
 converted, 43. 
 
 Whitby, Synod at, 50. 
 
 Whitgift, Archbishop, 175. 
 
 Wiclif, John, his opinions, itS ; trans- 
 lation of the Bible, 119. 
 
 Wighard, 52. 
 
 Wilfrid of York, 50 ; converts the 
 South Saxons, 35, 55 ; his appeals 
 to Rome, 55. 
 
 William I., his ecclesiastical policy, 74- 
 
 William III., 100. 
 
 William Rufus, his invasion of the 
 rights of the Church, 80 ; quarrel 
 with .\nselm, 80. 
 
 Wini, Bishop of the West Saxons, 51. 
 
 THE END 
 
Date Due 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 re — 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I 
 
BW5020.C99 
 
 History of the Church of England. 
 
 1 1012 00035 7535