wt*
 
 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N I VE.R5ITY 
 
 OF 1 LLI NOIS
 
 THE 
 
 ROYAL SUPREMACY 
 
 ■/89/"- 
 
 WITH REFERENCE TO 
 
 CONVOCATION, THE COURT OF APPEAL, AND 
 THE APPOINTMENT OF BISHOPS, 
 
 HISTORICALLY EXAMINED IN 
 
 A LETTER 
 
 TO THE 
 
 RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. FRANCIS KING, M.A. OXON, 
 
 ENFIELD, MIDDLESEX. 
 
 PARKER AND CO. 
 
 OXFORD, AND 6, SOUTHAMPTON-STREET, STRAND, 
 LONDON. 
 
 Price One Shilling.
 
 THE ROYAL SUPREMACY, Ac 
 
 IT rs, Sir, with no little hesitation that I thus undertake to address 
 the following Letter to yourself. I am aware that I have no right 
 for such a proceeding, beyond that which any obscurest individual has 
 to address a public personage on a public question ; and the interest 
 which, as a Clergyman, I feel on the subject, would not of itself 
 warrant me in taking such a step. But, if the strength of private 
 convictions afford me no such excuse, the great importance — greater, 
 I have reason to believe, than is usually imagined to underlie so 
 abstract a subject — that the Royal Supremacy has for Churchmen, 
 and generally for all Englishmen, must be my plea for venturing upon 
 what many will consider a hardy course. And, besides, I remember 
 that I am not addressing one who has evinced no concern with this 
 particular question. Your own Letter a , Sir, of 1850, on the Supremacy, 
 and its recent reprint, must, I imagine, be taken as a sign that the 
 subject has lost none of its interest for the author ; no less than the 
 more lately added remarks, contained in the Preface to the last 
 edition. They certainly have a peculiar application for the eccle- 
 siastical crisis through which we are now passing. You there deplore b , 
 Sir, the penal proceedings against clergy of the last forty years ; but 
 the situation grows hourly worse. At this moment two, if not three, 
 English priests are lying in prison, for obeying the plain directions of 
 a rubric; and at the sentence of a judge whose ecclesiastical juris- 
 diction is, to say the least, exceedingly doubtful. 
 
 These, however, are questions which do not come within the scope 
 of the present Letter. Its aim (and its apology) shall be given in 
 better words than any of my own: " There can be, I think, nothing 
 but advantage in whatever tends to] promote historical investigation of 
 the subjects" That is precisely the end I have in view. An investi- 
 gation of the supremacy of this kind; lame and imperfect I admit, 
 but at least faithfully intended : blinking nothing, shirking nothing. 
 This is the object I propose to myself in the pages that follow. 
 I have no intention, had I even the ability, to attempt a defence 
 of the existing relations of the Crown towards the Church ; nor 
 to propound any scheme for their re-arrangement, to suit the altered 
 circumstances of our own time. All that is here attempted, is to 
 make a brief historical examination of the more important measures of 
 
 • The Royal Supremacy : A Letter by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. 
 Third Ed. (1877), with a Preface. (Murray.) 
 b Ibid., Pref., p. 4. e Ibid., p. 5. 
 
 a2
 
 4 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 the Reformation -period, together with any real or imaginary precedents 
 of an earlier date ; leaving it to others to draw their own conclusions, 
 and to judge for themselves, whether the maintenance of the Eccle- 
 siastical Supremacy of the Sovereign, is, or is not, conducive to the 
 best interests of the Anglican Church. 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that the subject is one of primary 
 importance to every Churchman, and one which ought to be well 
 weighed, seeing that every member of the Church of England is 
 bound by it, as one (if not the fundamental) principle of Anglicanism, 
 considered as the Established Church. And nothing is gained by 
 shirking the question as inconvenient and obtrusive. 
 
 The tendency of the present day is to put the Royal Supremacy as 
 much as possible out of sight, and to speak as though the Church 
 of England were still an independent society. But the fact remains, 
 and is not so easily disposed of. "We may ignore the supremacy, 
 or we may qualify it to mean nothing at all; or we may prove 
 to demonstration what are the just limits within which the civil 
 power may act in ecclesiastical affairs. And we may proceed, from 
 such reasoning, to sketch out our theories of Church organization and 
 reform, as though no material change had passed over the Catholic 
 Church in this country, since the Mission of S. Augustine. 
 
 But, no sooner is an attempt made to carry these conclusions into 
 effect, than we are confronted with the solid fact of the Crown's 
 absolute supremacy in Church government. It has not passed away 
 into the limbo of bygone events : it is not a mere date in history. 
 On the contrary, it is a principle of living and continuous force in t'he 
 Church of this country, and one which is fundamental : it is the 
 characteristic doctrine of the English Reformation. The supremacy 
 of the Crown bears the same relation to the Anglican position, that 
 the authority which it displaced, the supremacy of the Pope, occupies 
 in the Roman controversy ; it is the key to the whole question. 
 
 This, every student of history cannot help remarking, as he traces 
 the course of ecclesiastical affairs in England through the mediaeval 
 age, to their issue under Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth. 
 
 He will observe, from the reign of Alfred to the death of Wolsey, 
 the Catholic Church preserving, with some vicissitudes, a generally 
 uniform and consistent course in its relations to the Crown and to the 
 see of Rome; in its self-administrative powers, in the independent 
 jurisdiction of its own courts. 
 
 But after the twentieth year of Henry the Eighth, a new principle 
 is seen at work in the state ecclesiastical. A principle which enters 
 into and affects each portion of the spiritual province ; that touches 
 both the legislative and judicial functions of the Church, the juris- 
 diction of its bishops, and, above all, its supreme government. Through 
 
 •"\ 
 
 utur.
 
 Convocation, the Court of Appeal, fyc. 5 
 
 all these the newly-imported principle runs, marking them off from 
 the anciently-existing order of things, and forming a new epoch 
 in the ecclesiastical history of England, more clearly defined than 
 any analogous transformation that we have experienced in our civil 
 government. "What is this new and all-important principle ? It is 
 the principle of the Royal Supremacy over all persons and causes, 
 ecclesiastical and spiritual, introduced into the English Constitution 
 by Henry the Eighth. 
 
 And it is the high importance of my subject, important as the 
 fundamental principle of the Established Church ; important, most 
 important, when referred to the rest of Christendom, and to the 
 teachiug of Christian antiquity : it is for these reasons, Sir, that 
 I have ventured to address you on the subject, and in so doing, to 
 address myself, in as public a manner as possible, to those of my 
 fellow -Churchmen and fellow-countrymen who, in this earnestl 
 religious age, desire to see the Church of England standing upon th 
 ancient ways, and maintaining the customs of antiquity. 
 
 2. 
 
 But what, after all, is the Royal Supremacy ? A definition is 
 wanted. Is it possible to find an enunciation of the principle, which 
 would agree both with the consciences of Churchmen, and with the 
 actual exercise of the supremacy either now, or at any time since the 
 Reformation ? It would be difficult to say. The matter is very 
 variously treated, according as it is viewed with the eyes of a Church- 
 man or those of a lawyer. I turn to the opinions of ecclesiastics. 
 "The general principle," writes the Rev. J. H. Blunt d , "of [the 
 relations between the Church and the Crown] is, that the Crown 
 possesses a visitatorial and corrective jurisdiction iu the Church of 
 England, by right of which the Sovereign is the Supreme Governour 
 over all persons, and in all causes, ecclesiastical as well as temporal, 
 within its dominions. . . Ecclesiastical Courts are practically held 
 under the authority of the Crown ; their decisions being further sub- 
 ject to revision by the Crown on appeal." The title of Dr. Puseys 
 treatise 6 is, "The Royal Supremacy not an arbitrary Authority, but 
 limited by the Laws of the Church, of which Kings are Members;" 
 and he argues that as Tudor Princes claimed, and the Church con- 
 ceded, nothing but the ancient prerogative of the Crown ; whatever 
 authority was unknown to former times, the Church cannot be said 
 to have conceded; unless such claim, and such concession, can be 
 shewn to have been made in express terms. 
 
 The present Bishop of Lincoln states f , u The Sovereign is supreme 
 
 d Book of Church Law; Blunt : (Bivingtons, 1872), p. 7. e Boyal 
 
 Supremacy, 1850; and see ibid., p. 162. f Theoph. Anglic, 5th Ed , 302.
 
 6 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 over all persons, and in all causes ; but not over all causes. Spiritual 
 persons derive their spiritual power from Christ alone; but the 
 authority to exercise it actually and legally upon particular persons, 
 or in particular places, as dioceses and parishes, this they derive from 
 the laws ecclesiastical and civil, and from the Sovereign, who by his 
 royal consent is the efficient cause of law." And the Bishop quotes 
 Lauds, saying, that "Though our office be of God and Christ im- 
 mediately, yet may we not exercise that power, either of Orders or 
 jurisdiction, in His Majesty's or any Christian kingdom, but by and 
 under the power of the King h given us so to do." Bishop A.ndrewes' 
 rt stricts the supremacy by the following limitations, which for con- 
 ciseness' sake I beg to quote in the original Latin: "Primo sub pri- 
 matiis nomine Papatum novum Bex non invehit in Ecclesiam: sic 
 enim statuit non Begi jus ullum esse vel fidei articulos vel cultus 
 Divini novas formulas procudendi. Docendi munus, vel dubia legis 
 explicandi non assumit, non vel conciones habendi, vel rei sacrse prse- 
 eundi vel Sacramenta celebrandi : non vel personas sacrandi vel res : 
 non vel clavium jus vel censurae. Yerbo dicam: nihil ille sibi nihil 
 nos illi fas putamus attingere, quae ad sacerdotale munus, seu potes- 
 tatem ordinis consequuntur. Procul haec habet Rex : procul a se ab- 
 dicat." To these opinions of Churchmen I may perhaps be allowed, 
 Sir, to add the convictions you have expressed, that the Statute of 
 Supremacy " contains no trace of such a meaning, as that the Crown 
 either originally was the source and spring of ecclesiastical juris- 
 diction, or was to become such in virtue of the annexation to it of 
 the powers recited ; but simply bears the meaning that it was to be 
 master over its administration k ." " The powers given are corrective, 
 not directive or motive powers; powers for the reparation of defect 
 and the reform of abuse, but not powers on which the ordinary, legi- 
 timate, and regular administration of the offices of the Church in 
 any way depends for its original and proper sanction 1 ." 
 
 3. 
 
 But when we come to the opinions of the legal profession, the 
 theory of the Supremacy takes a different and, it must be confessed, 
 a much more simple character, freed from all difficulties on the score 
 of ecclesiastical propriety, and considered simply as a point of law, 
 and as a part of the Constitution of the country. Sir Edward Coke m , 
 
 8 Remains, vol. ii. pt. 2, p. 68. 
 
 h One hardly sees, if it be true that a Christian king is the efficient cause of 
 Spiritual jurisdiction, what validity attached to the ministrations of the Apostles 
 and their successors for the first three hundred years of the Church's history, 
 when the civil rulers were all Pagan ; or, indeed, how missionaries can legiti- 
 mately exercise their sacred functions now in heathen lands. 
 
 1 Tortura Torti, p. 380 ; (Londini, 1609). k Royal Supremacy : 
 
 A Letter to the Bishop of London, Ed. 1877, p. 12. J Ibid. 
 
 m Reports, Part 5, 8a— 9a; Cawdrey's case, (Thomas and Fraser Ed., 1826).
 
 
 Convocation, the Court of Appeal, 8fc. 7 
 
 writing in Queen Elizabeth's reign, declares that "by the ancient 
 laws of this realm, this kingdom of England is an absolute empire 
 and monarchy, consisting of one head, which is the King; and of 
 a body politic, which the law divideth into two general parts, the 
 Clergy and the Laity; both of them, next and immediately under 
 God, subject and obedient to the head. Also, the kingly head of this 
 body politic is instituted and furnished with plenary and entire 
 power, prerogative and jurisdiction, to render justice and right to 
 every member of this body, of what estate, degree or calling soever, 
 in all causes ecclesiastical and temporal. And as in temporal causes, 
 the King, by the mouth of the judges in his courts of justice, doth 
 judge and determine the same by the temporal laws of England; so 
 in causes ecclesiastical and spiritual, as, namely, blasphemy, apostasy 
 from Christianity, heresies, schisms, ordering, &c, the cognizance 
 whereof belong not to the common laws of England ; the same are to 
 be determined and decided by ecclesiastical judges, according to the 
 King's ecclesiastical laws 11 of this realm." He says of Elizabeth's 
 Act of Supremacy, in words which have been often quoted, "This 
 act was not an act introductory of a new law, but declaratory of the 
 old, which appeareth as well by the title of the said act, ' An act, 
 restoring to the Crown the ancient jurisdiction over the State eccle- 
 siastical and spiritual,'* as also by the body of the act. For that act 
 doth not annex any jurisdiction to the Crown, but that which in 
 truth was, or of right ought to be, by the ancient laws of the realm, 
 parcel of the King's jurisdiction, and united to his Imperial Crown ; 
 ... so, if that act had never been made, it was resolved by all the 
 judges, that the King and Queen of England for the time being, m.iy 
 make such an ecclesiastical commission by the ancient prerogative 
 or law of England." 
 
 In his chapter on the Royal Prerogative, Sir W. Blackstone says P, 
 "The Sovereign is, lastly, considered by the laws of England as the 
 Head and Supreme Governor of the national Church. To enter into 
 the reasons upon which this prerogative is founded, is matter of 
 Divinity than of law. I shall therefore only observe that by statute 
 26 Hen. VIII., c. 1, it is enacted, that the King shall be reputed the 
 only supreme Head of the Church of England, and shall have annexed 
 to the Imperial Crown of this realm, as well the title and style thereof, 
 as all jurisdictions, authorities, &c. And another statute to the same 
 purport was made 1 Eliz., c. 1." 
 
 It will be seen here that Blackstone lays no stress on Elizabeth's 
 alteration of the Title, of which much is generally made ; or rather 
 
 n " Albeit the kings of England derived their ecclesiastical laws from others, 
 yet so many as were approved and allowed here, are aptly and rightly called the 
 King's Ecclesiastical Laws of England. " — Coke. ° Ibid. 
 
 p 1 Bla. Comm. , 279.
 
 8 The Royal Supremacy 
 
 passes it over altogether, throwing the two statutes together as acts 
 of parallel import, and treating the headship of the Church as part of 
 the official prerogative of the Sovereign for the time being, and not 
 affected by Elizabeth's private opinions on the subject. He proceeds <J, 
 "In virtue of this authority the King convenes, prorogues, restrains, 
 regulates, and dissolves all ecclesiastical synods or convocations," &c. 
 "Prom this prerogative, of being Head of the Church, arises the 
 Sovereign's right of nomination to vacant bishoprics, &c. As the 
 Head of the Church, the Sovereign is likewise the dernier resort in all 
 ecclesiastical causes: an appeal lying ultimately to him from the 
 sentence of every ecclesiastical judge; which right was restored 1 to 
 the Crown by statute 25 Hen. VIII., c. 19." 
 
 I now take my leave of these writers, only remarking that a review 
 of the history of the Supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs, since its 
 institution by Henry VIII. to our own times, leads me (most un- 
 willingly) to believe that the class of authorities I have last quoted, 
 state the position with the greater correctness 8 , that is, as far as 
 modern practice is concerned. The authority which the Crown wields 
 over the Church and her affairs, seems to me to be very imperfectly 
 described, as being merely a " corrective power " and " not arbitrary :" 
 but, on the contrary, directive and motive, as also executive in all 
 legislation affecting her interests. As to Convocation, holding the 
 initiative, the veto, as well as intermediate checks upon its assemblies, 
 deliberations, and enactments. In Appeal, final, supreme, and irre- 
 formable ; and in ecclesiastical jurisdiction exerting an authority over 
 persons and things not to be reconciled with any " ancient" example 
 of the prerogative that can be adduced. 
 
 4. 
 
 Of these several departments of the Church's rightful jurisdiction, 
 I would notice, first, the changes which the Reformation principle of 
 the Crown's Supremacy effected in regard of Convocation. 
 
 The proceedings of that body in 1531-2, and the Act for Submission 
 of the Clergy three years later, based upon those proceedings, are those 
 which chiefly concern us here ; inasmuch as from that time we must 
 date the very decided modifications by which the legislative body 
 
 i 1 Bla. Comm., 280. 
 
 r This Act of Parliament certainly granted the King authority to hear final 
 appeals on all and every ecclesiastical and spiritual question in his own court ; 
 but it can hardly be said to have ' restored ' to the Crown what no Christian 
 Sovereign, in any age or part of Christendom (much less in England), had ever 
 before thought of arrogating to himself, namely, the final arbitration in cases 
 of doctrine ; and as a ' right ' too ! 
 
 s I am not, however, going to acquit the legal profession of incorrectness on 
 the score of ancient precedent. From Coke downwards, it has kept on repeat- 
 ing the historical solecism that the Statute of Supremacy only established the 
 Crown's ancient rights.
 
 with reference to Convocation. 9 
 
 of the Church is to this day limited and restrained. Not because no 
 case can be made out, from an earlier period, for royal restraints upon 
 the synodical assemblies and enactments of the Church in England. 
 The Conqueror, says Eadnier*, would not allow the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury to pass any Canons, without taking his measures from 
 the Cuurt. Under Henry I., Ecclesiastical Councils might be held 
 " when the Archbishop chose," says Dr. Stubbs u , " but the King's 
 consent must be obtained before the assembly could meet or exercise 
 any legislative power." 
 
 What is, however, pretty certain is that, (owing, perhaps, to the 
 moral influence of the martyrdom of S. Thomas, and to the submission 
 both of Henry II. and of John,) the Church enjoyed a very general 
 independence in her legislative capacity down to the Reformation itself. 
 
 It is true that Convocation, when at the mercy of Henry VIII., 
 was then made to acknowledge "according to truth, that the Con- 
 vocations of the said clergy are, and always have been, assembled 
 by the King's writ x ." But there is no reason for questioning the 
 remark of an historian of Convocation t on this head, "that a more 
 transparent and notorious falsehood T does not stand upon the records 
 of any country." As late as 1510, and by the sole mandate of the 
 
 1 Hist. Nov., 1. 1, p. 6 ; and Collier's Eccl. Hist., ii. 3. u Const. Hist., 1880, 
 vol. i. p. 359. x 25 Hen. VIII., c. 19. r Joyce, Hist. Convoc, p. 280. 
 
 1 This is not the sole instance of falsification of history in the reforming acts 
 of the Tudor sovereigns. See 2-4 Hen. VIII., c. 12, where an attempt is made to 
 fasten upon Edwards I. and III. , Eichard II. and Henry IV. , acts defending a 
 spiritual jurisdiction resident in the English Crown, " to keep it from the annoy- 
 ance of the See of Koine." It is needless to add, that no such statute or clause of 
 a statute, implying any such pretensions on the part of the civil ruler can be 
 found in any one of the reigns mentioned. See, again, 25 Hen. VHI., c. 19, § 5, 
 where the Statute of Prcemuni re of Eichard II., "the King's most noble progenitor'" 
 — he died, by-the-bye, childless— is made use of by Henry VHI., and quoted by 
 him as though it furnished a precedent for his own statute. Now it would 
 really be supposed from this interpretation of Richard's act by his successor, 
 that it repudiated the right of appeal to Eome in causes spiritual and ecclesias- 
 tical, and restricted the ultimate arbitration in such matters to the King's courts, 
 which is the effect of the statute of Henry. But what are the facts ? I turn to 
 the Act referred to (16 Eic. II., c. 5), and I find it to concern two points, and two 
 only : 1 . The rights of lay-patrons to present to benefices of their own founding, 
 (a perfectly legitimate right, and one which, at the time, was being most impro- 
 perly invaded by the Pope) ; and 2. The translation of Bishops out of the realm 
 without the King's consent. Pleas, therefore, and appeals to Eome to procure 
 such preferments and translations, in prejudice of the will of the lay-patron, are 
 accordingly threatened with pnemunire. Yet this assertion of the King's and 
 his nobles' undoubted rights, is employed by Henry VHI. to cover his own act, 
 prohibiting " any manner of appeals, of what nature or condition soever they be 
 of" — heresy, schism, discipline, doctrine — to go before the Pope, and to be 
 referred on the contrary to a secular tribunal of his own ! The monstrous 
 assertions contained in the Act 37 Hen. VIXL, c. 17, with its shameless appeal 
 to the Word of God, and its false historical premisses, I have noticed in its place 
 further on. These instances are only taken at hazard ; and any one who is desirous 
 to sift the grains of truth from the mass of fiction in which enactments of the 
 Eeformation-age are involved, will doubtless be able to multiply such examples 
 largely. Anyhow they served their end, and that I suppose is something. 
 Assertions such as these, and others like them, are the False Decretals upon which 
 the edifice of a Royal Supremacy has been so successfully reared.
 
 10 The Royal Supremacy 
 
 very archbishop who presided over the submissive clergy of 1531, 
 had Convocation been summoned and assembled in the usual way at 
 
 5. Paul's. " To quote instances," adds the same writer, "of Convo- 
 cation being assembled at the sole motion of the Archbishop, with- 
 out royal writs, would be to recapitulate facts which would fill 
 a volume." 
 
 But the independent authority of Convocation comes out plainly 
 enough in the reigns of the Edwards. In 1283 Edward I. a ''com- 
 mands and requests" the clergy to vote a subsidy as an estate in 
 parliament, at Northampton, but they refused to attend. Then, in 
 the same year, on the assembling of the Synod of the Province under 
 Archbishop Peckham, and summoned by the Archbishop in the usual 
 way, the King approaches Convocation in milder language b , and 
 ' ' affectionately requests" them to attend to his wants, which are 
 accordingly supplied. 
 
 Three years later c , in order to procure a subsidy from the Northern 
 Clergy, the King directs the Archbishop of York to summon his 
 Convocation : " We request you to hold a conference with your clergy, 
 for the purpose of paying to us the sum which the clergy have 
 voluntarily promised." Under the next reign a much bolder line 
 was attempted by the Crown, in order to control the action of the 
 spiritualty ; but with how little success will be seen from the fol- 
 lowing account d . In 1314, Edward II., in order to get expenses 
 for his war with the Scots, directs the Archbishop of Canterbury to 
 convene his Convocation at Westminster ; where the deliberations of 
 the Synod were to be held in the presence of the King's lay-deputies. 
 
 But the clergy absolutely refused to comply with the order : and 
 they stated their objections. They asserted, 1. That the summoning 
 of Convocation by Royal writ was destructive of the principle of 
 the Church's independence, and contrary to all right and precedent ; 
 2. That such writs Eoyal had been already condemned at a previous 
 meeting of the Synod ; 3. That such writs might serve as a precedent 
 prejudicial to the Church of Canterbury ; 4. That the Metropolitan 
 only could convene the clergy for certain causes, and this was not 
 one; 5. That the place of meeting, Westminster, was not usual; 
 
 6. That the presence of lay-deputies in Synod contravened the 
 principle of ecclesiastical persons and causes being outside the cog- 
 nizance of the laity, etc. Convocation therefore prays the Primate 
 to obtain a revocation of the King's writ ; and accordingly, on the 
 Archbishop's issuing his own mandate in the usual way, and at 
 the customary place of meeting, St. Paul's, there being now no just 
 
 a For the war with Llewellyn ap Griffin, Wilkins 5 Cone, ii. 91. 
 
 b Ibid., 94 ; see Joyce's Hist. Con., p. 261. c Wilkins' Cone, ii. 126. 
 
 d Ibid. ii. 442, 443.
 
 with reference to Convocation. 11 
 
 exceptions to be taken to the form of citation, the Synod assembled, 
 and the required vote was granted e . Two years later f , 1316, the 
 King again issues his writ to the Archbishop, but the customary 
 forms were maintained, deputies were not mentioned, and the Pri- 
 mate's authority, " vestra auctoritate interveniente," was expressly 
 recognized. Yet it is remarkable that in his own mandate the 
 Archbishop does not allude to the King's writ, although it was in 
 compliance with it, that he summoned his Synod. 
 
 The struggle lasted into the next reign, when a compromise was 
 effected between Archbishop Reynold and Edward III., and the 
 dispute terminated. The Convocation was summoned in obedience 
 to the Royal command, but the canonical form was preserved, by the 
 Archbishop commanding the clergy to appear before himself, " coram 
 nobis g." 
 
 5. 
 
 But the history of these reigns really has little to do with the 
 matter, seeing that the present condition of the Church's legislative 
 power, or rather the loss of such power, may clearly be attributed 
 to the Act of the twenty-fifth of Henry VIII., which effected a 
 widely different, yet very well defined, position of things. 
 
 By the statute of 1534 h , Convocation is henceforth limited and 
 restricted as follows: 1. It may not assemble at all without the 
 King's writ; 2. It may not, when assembled, make any new Canons 
 without additional Royal license ; 3. All its Canons require the Royal 
 assent and confirmation ; 4. Nothing can be enacted contrary to the 
 King's prerogative, or the law of the land. To these original restrictions 
 may be added, as further growths from the first concessions, 5. That 
 no Canon is binding upon the laity otherwise than in foro conscientice 1 ; 
 6. An address to the Crown, voted in either House of Parliament, is 
 sufficient to veto a Canon k ; 7. The Crown miy order the Primate to 
 prorogue or dissolve Convocation at any moment. 
 
 Such, then, is the position to which the self-administrative functions 
 of the Church are reduced by the statute of Henry, and by the ill- 
 starred concessions of the clergy of 1531. "All Convocations since 
 that time," says Fuller 1 , after pointing out the independent action of 
 
 e For the whole account, see Joyce's Convoc, pp. 264 — 267. 
 
 f Wilkins' Cone, ii. 456-7. * Joyce's Hist. Convoc, 269. h 25 Hen. VIH., 
 c. 19 ; Collier, vol. ix. p. 97, (Kecords.) » See page 15, note. 
 
 k Thus Lord Westbury was able to veto a Canon on Sponsors, passed in Con- 
 vocation. See Archbishop of York's speech in York Convocation, " Guardian," 
 Feb. 27, 1878. The Archbishop's speech is worth noting. He tells his clergy 
 that the Church "is as free to do that which is her special business to do, to 
 preach the Gospel to the poor ; to administer the Sacraments to the people ; 
 to teach the young ; and to discharge every spiritual function which belongs to 
 her — as free as any other religious body in the world," — yet, on His Grace's own 
 shewing, not in possession of the self-governing powers enjoyed by the smallest 
 Dissenting Community. 
 
 1 Church Hist., vol. iii. p. 84; Oxford Ed., 1845.
 
 12 The Royal Supremacy 
 
 Convocation in the period preceding, "are born tongue-tied, till the 
 King cut the string thereof with his Letters Patent, allowing them 
 cause to debate on matters of religion. Otherwise, what they conclude 
 are arrows without piles, daggers without points, too blunt to pierce 
 into the practice of others, but sharp enough to wound themselves, 
 and bring them within the compass of a pr&munire. Yea, even such 
 Convocations with the Royal assent, subject not any (for recusancy to 
 obey their Canons) to a civil penalty in person or property, until 
 confirmed by Act of Parliament." 
 
 Whatever restrictions, therefore, certain of our Sovereigns may have 
 sought to impose, or even at times succeeded in imposing, upon the 
 liberties of Holy Church in her Synods, are something vastly different 
 from the virtual suppression of Convocation by the Eighth Henry, 
 and from that day to our own. Nor may we acquit the Spiritualty 
 of a general concurrence with the policy of the King and his Parlia- 
 ment. As Convocation had, in 1531, acknowledged the Royal Head- 
 ship of the Church ; so, in 1534, both Houses declared, after the final 
 publication of Clement's sentence against the divorce, that the Pope 
 had no more authority in England than any other foreign bishop m . 
 
 The Act of the Submission of the Clergy was simultaneous with the 
 abolition of the Papal authority in England, and the confining of all 
 ecclesiastical questions to the limits of the four seas, in fact, to the 
 Crown. Whether or no we may ascribe this degradation of the spirit- 
 ualty to the extinction of the Papal jurisdiction, as its proper cause, 
 I cannot say : certain it is that it accompanied that act ; and the 
 concessions which the Church then made to the King, though in 
 theory they might seem to have been guarded by reasonable con- 
 ditions, yet they did not, in the event, save the Church her freedom ; 
 but on the contrary, placed her legislative authority first in the 
 King's hands, and then, in process of time, in those of Parliament. 
 So that after Convocation had, under Charles II., relinquished its 
 privilege of self-taxation, nothing remained but to put an end to what 
 had been for a hundred-and-fifty years a moribund and powerless 
 body. The silencing of Convocation by George I. was only the 
 natural corollary of the admissions made to the Crown in 1531 : and 
 time was all that was needed to bring to its dissolution an institution 
 which had so grossly betrayed its dearest and most vital interests. It 
 had sunk to the condition of a mere puppet, whose every string was 
 worked by the Crown ; analogous, in fact, to the Holy Governing 
 Synod of the Russian Church, which is similarly at the mercy of 
 the Czar n . 
 
 m Lathbury, Hist. Convoc, 123. " Five years before, if a heretic hadventnred 
 so desperate an opinion, tbe clergy would have shut their ears and run upon 
 him ; now, they only contended with each other in precipitate obsequiousness." 
 — Froude, Hist. , vol. ii. p. 234. ■ See W. Palmer's Life of Nicon. 

 
 with reference to Convocation. 13 
 
 Twice ° only since the Reformation does Convocation seem to have 
 acted with anything like its ancient dignity and independence, and 
 the exceptions are significant, since either instance led to the silencing 
 of its voice by the Crown. The first was the declaration made by the 
 Convocation of 1559, in the five articles of faith presented by it to 
 Parliament ; and the other was the Convocation of Sancroft, which 
 resisted the Latitudinarian schemes of Tillotson and William III. 
 
 6. 
 
 Crippled as Convocation was by the restrictions of Henry, it was 
 only too apparent that its office as legislator for the Chnrch was 
 virtually at an end, and that the King and Parliament must hence- 
 forward take ecclesiastical measures in hand, if they were to be of any 
 real force. But this, I observe, Sir, you have disputed ; and main- 
 tained, on the contrary, that the principle of the Reformation, that 
 Convocation was to be the legislative power of the Church, was 
 recognized from the first, and continued to be so, as late as the 
 beginning of the eighteenth century p . I venture, however, with all 
 possible deference, to question the fact. 
 
 It does not appear that, even in the first century of the Reformation, 
 Convocation by any means enjoyed the exclusive handling of purely 
 spiritual matters, or that it was even thought necessary to consult it 
 as an authority. To take the second Prayer-Book of Edward VI. 
 There is nothing whatever to shew that it was the work of Convo- 
 cation, or that it even received Convocation's sanction. All that is 
 actually known of the book is, that it was attached to Edward's Act of 
 Uniformity, and passed by Parliament, April 6, 1552, together with 
 the Ordinal. And it is conjectured that the Commission appointed by 
 the King to draw up the Ordinal, had also the work of revising the 
 Service-book in question q . But this is only conjecture, and what 
 is evident is, that whoever may have prepared either Prayer-Book or 
 Ordinal, the work of Convocation they were not. 
 
 Again, on the accession of Elizabeth, the ' Book ' to be used was 
 submitted, not to Convocation, or to a Committee of Convocation, but 
 to a Committee of Divines ; " merely a private assembly," says Dr. 
 Card well r , "meeting at the house of Sir Thomas Smith, a Doctor 
 of Civil Law, and under his presidency." No authority, either of 
 Church or Crown, empowered them to act in the matter : the Statute 
 of Supremacy, which would have enabled Elizabeth to appoint a 
 Royal Commission for the purpose, had been repealed by her pre- 
 
 Cardwell, Conferences, pp. 23 and 442. r Koyal Supremacy, 1877 
 Ed., pp. 8 and 35. 
 
 i Card., Two Liturgies of Ed. VI., xvii. n. Heylin's Eef., i. 228, 229 ; and Hist. 
 Introd. to P. Book, in Blunt's Annotated Bk. of C. P. xxxi. 
 
 1 Conferences, pp. 19, 20.
 
 14 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 decessors, and Convocation was wholly opposed to the ecclesiastical 
 policy of the Queen. But this is not all. After the Divines had 
 completed their task, important alterations and additions — the Orna- 
 ments Rubric is an instance — were made in the Book, before it was 
 submitted to the Legislature s . Collier 4 is of opinion that the changes 
 were introduced during the passage of the book through Parliament ; 
 but there is every reason to think that they were made by the Queen 
 herself, in accordance with the high views of doctrine that she is 
 known to have entertained. Later on, she altered passages in the 
 Articles 11 , even after Convocation had approved them. " This is not 
 surprising," says Dr. Cardwell x , "since it was the belief of those 
 times, that the proper ratification of all ecclesiastical laws was in the 
 act of the Sovereign." 
 
 I remark, then, that the Prayer-Book of 1559, that in use till the 
 Restoration, and substantially that used in the present day, never 
 came before Convocation at all; but was revised by private hands, 
 amended either by Queen or Parliament, and finally passed by the 
 lutter, with hardly a dissentient voice. Had there, indeed, been any 
 doubts as to the Queen's authority for dealing personally with such 
 theological matters, they were entirely dispelled by the Act of Uni- 
 formity 3 ', which empowered her Highness, with the advice of Com- 
 missioners or of the Metropolitan, " to ordain and publish such further 
 ceremonies or rites, as may be most for the advancement of God's 
 glory, the edifying of His Church, and the due reverence of Christ's 
 Holy Mysteries and Sacraments." 
 
 Of these powers her successor availed himself. In 1604, changes 
 were again made in the Prayer-Book ; not many, but of considerable 
 importance. The concluding portion of the Catechism, with its 
 dogmatic statements on the Sacraments, was now added; but it was 
 not the work of the Church. Neither Convocation nor Parliament 
 were deferred to in the matter, and the additions made were the act 
 of the King, who sheltered himself under the Act of Uniformity, and 
 the section of it already quoted 1 . With these additions the Book was 
 printed ; and Convocation, which had had no voice in the transaction, 
 
 s Conferences, p. 21. * Hist., vol. ii. p. 430, etc. 
 
 u See Bp. H. Browne's XXXIX Articles, p. 9. The Queen removed the 29th 
 Article drawn up by Convocation, and added an important clause in the 20th. 
 
 x Conf., p. 21, note Q. ?1 Eliz., c. ii. s. 26. 
 
 7 Card. Conf., p. 143. " In the language of law, as well as of prerogative, the 
 royal pleasure has always been considered as the source of all authority. . . . 
 King James I., in his proclamation of October, 1603, respecting the alleged 
 corruptions of the Church, says, " We will proceed according to the laws and 
 customs of this realm, by advice of our Council, or in our high Court of Par- 
 liament, or by convocation of our clergy, as we shall find reason to lead us ; " and 
 the twelve judges declared in 1604, that " the King, without Parliament, might 
 make orders and constitutions for the government of the clergy, and might 
 deprive them if they obeyed not." — Card., Doc. An., Pref. v. and vi., and authori- 
 ties quoted, ibid.
 
 ihv Churches Judicial Functions. 15 
 
 not only submitted to it, but even expressly recognized the changes 
 made by James, and his authority for making them, in a Canon, the 
 eightieth, drawn up for that purpose. 
 
 That the legislative functions of the Church had ceased de facto, 
 as any part of the Constitution of the realm, was at length realized 
 when its voice was finally silenced by George I. But from the hour 
 that the Spiritualty " submitted " to Henry, Convocation had vir- 
 tually ceased to be the governing instrument for the Church in her 
 own sphere. Nor has it ever been able to re-establish its independ- 
 ence for any practical purpose. I believe I shall be within the mark, 
 when I say that since the Act of Submission, Convocation has been 
 little more than a consultative body ; and the Church has been ob- 
 liged to depend, for all actual legislation affecting her peculiar in- 
 terests, upon the action of the State alone a . In such purely spiritual 
 matters as the erection of new sees, the re-arrangement of old sees, 
 Forms of Divine service, the Lectionary, degradation from Holy 
 Order b , the legislation is legislation by Act of Parliament c , and not 
 by the Synod of the Province. 
 
 II. Judicial Functions. 
 
 From the legislative, the highest function of the Church considered 
 as an independent and self-governing body, I now pass to another de- 
 partment of the spiritual province, the judicial powers of the Church, 
 in order to enquire how far those powers have been affected by the 
 importation of the Reformation-principle of a Royal Supremacy in 
 all causes, ecclesiastical and spiritual. It is necessary, however, to 
 take a glance first at the system of ecclesiastical judicature, as it 
 prevailed in earlier times. 
 
 1. 
 
 Previous to the Conquest, as is well known, a mixed jurisdiction 
 was the practice, the Bishop sitting with the Alderman in the Burgh- 
 
 ■ " It is not many years ago since discussions in Convocation were limited to 
 three days, and a Cabinet Minister declared from his place in the House of 
 Commons, that the Crown would never permit Convocation to legislate for the 
 Church. The present Archbishop of Canterbury openly endeavoured, in Con- 
 vocation itself, to check its action." — E. L. Blenkinsopp, Ecclesiast. Eeform, 
 Essays, 1873, p. 70. It may be added, that the clause in the Burials Bill of 
 the late session, incidentally recognizing the authority of Convocation in eccle- 
 siastical matters, was eventually expunged as being offensive to the Political 
 Nonconformist Party ; and thus another ecclesiastical question is added to the 
 list of those decided by authority of Parliament alone. 
 
 b The so-called " Clergy Disabilities Act," of 1870. 
 
 c The celebrated judgement of Lord Hardwicke (2. Atkyns' Reports, 650) ruled 
 that the Canons of 1604, "not having been confirmed by Parliament, do not 
 proprio vigore bind the laity."
 
 16 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 mote, <o teach the law of God and the laws secular d . But this the 
 Conqueror abolished, as contrary to Canon, and with the assent of 
 the spiritualty of the realm separated the double jurisdiction; all 
 persons and causes spiritual being ordered henceforward to be tried 
 in the Bishop's court, and not in that of the hundred e . 
 
 The next date of importance is 1164, the Constitutions of the Par- 
 liament of Clarendon; by which the policy of the Conqueror was 
 reversed, and clerical offenders brought back to the secular tribunal. 
 "Clerks accused of any matter," so the Constitution directs', "being 
 summoned by the King's justice, shall come into his court, there to 
 make answer for that part which the King's court shall decide should 
 be answered for there ; and in the ecclesiastical court, for that which 
 it shall appear should be responded to in that place «." The Crown, 
 in short, asserted its right to try the criminal offence in its own courts 
 (after first deciding the nature of the charge), remitting the accused 
 to the spiritual tribunal for that part which properly belonged to it. 
 From the latter, appeals were allowed to proceed from the Arch- 
 deacon to the Bishop, from the Bishop to the Archbishop ; and for 
 lack of justice there might be, lastly, an appeal to the King, "that 
 by his precept the dispute might be terminated in the court of the 
 Archbishop : and no further appeal, except with the assent of our lord 
 the King h ." 
 
 Three points are here to be noted. First, that the revision of the 
 judgement is made, not in the King's court, but in the Archbishop's; 
 secondly, that a further appeal, to Borne, was possible if the King 
 permitted it; thirdly and lastly, there is no question here of doc- 
 trinal causes, or any matter of faith coming before the secular 
 tribunal, or indeed touched upon by the Constitutions of Clarendon ; 
 which relate to the trial of criminous clerks, the vexata qucestio of the 
 age, and thus afford no precedent for present complications. Cases 
 involving any point of doctrine 1 would still have gone before the 
 proper court for trying such questions, namely, the Convocation of 
 the Province. Thus Wycliffe in the fourteenth century, and Sawtree k 
 
 d See under Laws of Edgar and Laws of Canute, Thorpe's Ancient Laws and 
 Institutes, 1840, pp. 509 and 532. 
 
 e Beeves' Hist, of English Law, i. 62 — 64, and Comyn's Digest, " Prerogative," 
 (D. 9). 
 
 f Stubbs' Select Charters, p. 132-3. 
 
 * If the clerk was convicted, or confessed in the Christian court, the Church 
 had no power, by these Constitutions, to shelter him further. — Ibid. 
 
 h Ibid. 
 
 1 " Trials for heresy, or rather, as they were always called, for heretical de- 
 pravity (causa heretic® pravitatis) were never instituted in the court of the 
 Bishop before 2 Hen. IV., c. 15. Before that statute, it was required that the 
 conviction should take place in a general Convocation of the whole Province." 
 — Coote's Eccles. Practice, Introd. p. 20. 
 
 k The sentence on Sawtree was pronounced by the Primate, his suffragans, 
 and the whole clergy of the Province in Council assembled, " all the forms of
 
 the Church's Judicial Functions. 17 
 
 in the first year of the fifteenth, were both cited on charges of heresy 
 before the Convocation of Canterbury. Lord Cobham, in 1413, accused 
 of Lollardry, appealed to the King, and his case being transferred to the 
 Court of the Archbishop, he was there convicted l . 
 
 The effect, however, of the Statutes of Clarendon in this matter was 
 only transient. As part of his purgation for the assassination of 
 S. Thomas, Henry took oath that m "he would neither hinder, nor 
 permit any to hinder, appeals being freely made in his kingdom to the 
 Roman Pontiff, provided no hurt to himself or his realm were sought 
 thereby ; n and so matters continued down to the Reformation. 
 If anything is certain, it is that final appeals went to Rome as 
 late as the year 1534 ". It is therefore unnecessary to analyse, step by 
 step, the intervening period, since it is conceded that the King might 
 stay the course of such appeals, and did at times so prohibit : but the 
 principle of an appeal to the Supreme Pontiff en dernier resort in all 
 cases involving doctrine, remained unquestioned, and in force in 
 England, until the passing of the Act for Submission of the Clergy 
 in the twenty- fifth year of Henry VIII. Here, again, we find the reign 
 of Henry marking a new epoch in the received constitution of the 
 Church. Her system of judicature, as that of her legislature, now 
 enters npon a new course, at variance with all ancient and traditional 
 practice. 
 
 2. 
 
 Let me endeavour to recall the successive steps by which the old 
 Papal jurisdiction was abolished by Henry VIII. In November, 1 530, 
 Wolsey died, and the year following Convocation was compelled to 
 acknowledge the King as Supreme Head in earth of the Church of 
 England. The ancient liberties of Convocation were demolished at 
 the same time, and the Clergy proposed the cessation of annates to 
 Rome, together with their petition to be withdrawn from the Pope's 
 obedience, if he disallowed their proceedings. 
 
 law required herein having been observed in all things." — Fitz Herbert de Nat. 
 Brev. f. 269. » See Hardwick, Med. Ch. Hist., pp. 419. 
 
 m Collier, Hist., vol. ii. p. 379. 
 
 n Till 1532, all ecclesiastical questions would have gone by appeal to the Court 
 of Rome ; but in 1533, appeals in a specified number of ecclesiastical cases were 
 restricted to the realm, of which doctrinal suits were not the only exception. 
 Disputed episcopal elections, e. g. , would also have been referred to Home in that 
 year. Lord Campbell says of the Act of 1533, " It still allowed an appeal to the 
 Pope in all spiritual suits ; and it was framed upon the principle, that, while all 
 temporal matters (which were discussed in the Ecclesiastical Courts) should be 
 finally determined within the realm, the spiritual jurisdiction, which belonged 
 to the Pope as Supreme Head of the Western Chinch, should remain unaffected. 
 An appeal from the Archbishop's Court, in a suit involving the question whether 
 the Clerk presented to a living by the King was of unsound doctrine, would still 
 (1533) have gone to Rome."— Gorham case, Queen's Bench Judgement. Brodrick 
 and Fremantle's Eccl. Judgements, 109, 110. 
 
 B
 
 18 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 A Bill to this effect was passed in 1532°, although for the present 
 it was only suspended over the Pope's head in terrorem ; Henry being 
 granted a discretionary power to treat with his Holiness, and bring him, 
 if possible, to terms. More, seeing the direction of the King's mind, 
 resigns the seals this same year, and is succeeded by Sir Thomas 
 Audley. Warham dies, and Cranmer is appointed to the Primacy. 
 Early in 1533 (Jan. 25) the King privately married Ann Boleyn, 
 and in the May following Cranmer pronounced the divorce, crown- 
 ing Ann in June. 
 
 A fresh move in the direction of Reform was effected by the Parlia- 
 ment of this year. The first Act of Appeals p passed into law. Appeals 
 on certain specific heads — tithes, matrimony, wills, oblations, and 
 obventions — were [ordered to go from the Ecclesiastical Courts below 
 to the Archbishop, and no further: questions touching the King lay to 
 Convocation, Upper House : other spiritual causes still went to the 
 Pope. In 1533, the Gorham case would have gone to Rome. 
 
 Thus matters stood in England in 1533, and indeed till Easter, 1534, 
 with regard to the trial of spiritual suits. All ecclesiastical causes 
 remained subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the principle of ultimate 
 appeal to Eome not having been finally abandoned, and the reference 
 of spiritual causes to the Spiritualty being formally recognized in the 
 Preamble to the Act of Appeal of this year. 
 
 But this was only a momentary lull in the secularizing and revolu- 
 tionary policy of the King. Changes of a sweeping nature received 
 the force of law in the next session of Parliament, 1534: and as 
 though a prelude to what was impending, it was enacted^, that im- 
 peachment of the pretensions -of the Bishop of Borne was no longer 
 to be accounted heresy. The session had not far advanced when 
 
 23 Hen. VIII., c. 20. The Act is of a semi-conciliatory nature, the Pope 
 being still styled " our said Holy Father." 
 
 p 24 Hen. VIII., c. 12. "An Act that the appeals in such cases as have 
 been used to be pursued to the See of Eome, shall not he from henceforth 
 had but within the realm." 
 
 « 25 Hen. VIII., c. 14. This Act repealed a former Act (2 Hen. IV., c. 15) 
 forbidding any to teach contrary to the determination of Holy Church, or 
 any, excepting Parochial Clergy, to preach without licence from the Diocesan ; 
 who was empowered, under the Act, to arrest and imprison suspected heretics, 
 until they did canonically purge themselves according to the laws of the Church ; 
 and required the Ordinary to determine the business according to the Canonical 
 Decrees, within three months. This, however, Henry VHI.'s repealer pronounced 
 to be insufficient, as not marking any particular heresy, and using only general 
 terms of " canonical laws," according to which Bishops of Eome had by their 
 ordinances made many things to be heresy, being, after all, only human laws, 
 and contrary besides to the King's prerogative : and further, that seeing that 
 a great number of the unlearned sort believed that to deny the authority of the 
 Pope or his Constitutions was heresy, (which Constitutions, unless confirmed by 
 Holy Scripture, might not be taken for the law of God,) it is enacted that no speak- 
 ing against the Bishop of Eome or his pretended power, given him by human 
 laws, and not by Scripture, or against the Canon law of the See of Eome, should 
 be deemed heresy : and confirms two previous statutes, 5 Eic. II., st. 2, c. 5, and 
 2 Hen. V., st. 1, c. 7, for which see p. 19 note.
 
 the Church's Judicial Functions. 19 
 
 Clement published his final excommunication against the King, if he 
 abided by Cranmer's si ntence of divorce : and nothing now remained 
 but to declare, in as decisive and unequivocal manner, the entire 
 extinction of the Pope's authority in the realm. The famous Act for 
 the Submission of the Clergy r was immediately passed. The proceedings 
 of the Convocation of 1531 now became law. The admissions of the 
 Clergy in that year touching the authority of Convocation, and the 
 payment of annates, are recited against them : or rather, the whole onus 
 of the Statute is made to rest upon their shoulders, and "according to 
 the said humble submission and petition of the Clergy " it is enacted : 
 First, that the powers of Convocation should be reduced in the manner 
 already mentioned ; and next, that no appeals of any kind should go 
 out of the kingdom to the see of Rome. Further, the restrictions of 
 the Act of the preceding year are confirmed, with the addition (now 
 the final appeal was removed from Rome) of a farther and ultimate 
 Court of Appeal, viz., to the King in Chancery ; who might appoint 
 Commissioners to determine such appeals, like as in case of appeal 
 from the Admiral's Court. By a further statute s of the same year, 
 the payment of annates to the Pope was definitely prohibited. All 
 presentations of Bishops-elect to the Pope for confirmation were 
 henceforward forbidden, together with all application to Rome for Bulls 
 of consecration ; while the freedom of episcopal elections disappeared 
 for ever, in the form of the conge d'eslire now granted by Act of 
 Parliament to the King. 
 
 Only one step more remained to be taken. The Supremacy of the 
 Pope had been repudiated, and the Church of England was without 
 a visible Head. This deficiency was supplied by the first statute of 
 the twenty-sixth of Henry. The Royal Supremacy was declared to be 
 the law of the land. "Although," says the Act, "the Clergy had admitted 
 the Supremacy three years before in Convocation, nevertheless" — (and 
 the reasons for legalizing the Supremacy are worth noting) — rt never- 
 theless, for corroboration and confirmation thereof, and for increase of 
 virtue in Christ's religion within this realm of England, and to 
 repress and extirp all errours*, heresies, abuses, and other enormities, 
 
 » 25 Hen. VIIL, c. 19. • 25 Hen. VHI., c. 20. 
 
 * "The cognizance of heresy, errours, and lollardries," says the Statute 
 2 Henry V., c. 7, " belongeth to the judges of Holy Church, and not to secular 
 judges :" and orders the delivery of suspected persons to their Ordinaries, " to 
 be acquit or convict by the laws of Holy Church." This Act of Henry V. is of 
 further importance as shewing the line which, before the Eefonnation, the Crown 
 took in repressing cases of heresy. The Eoyal power came to the assistance of 
 the spiritual, not trenching upon the independent jurisdiction of the Christian 
 Court, but facilitating its operations ; bringing suspected persons before the 
 Ecclesiastical Judge, and carrying out the sentence in case of canonical con- 
 viction. The Act of Henry V. is directed against the Lollards. It orders 
 Judges and Magistrates to take oath to put their whole powers to suppress the 
 heresy : they were to assist the Ordinary, and arrest Lollards at the instance of 
 Ordinaries ; the accused, if convicted of heresy by the said Ordinaries, to forfeit 
 
 b2
 
 20 The, Royal Supremacy icith reference to 
 
 etc., it is enacted that the King, his heirs and successors, Kings of 
 England, he taken, accepted, and reputed the only Supreme Head 
 in earth of the Church of England, and shall have annexed to the 
 Crown as well the title thereof, as all jurisdictions, authorities, etc., 
 to the said dignity of Supreme Head appertaining;" and therefore, 
 "that our Sovereign Lord, his heirs, etc., Kings of England, shall 
 have full power and authority to repress, redress, reform, order, 
 correct, restrain, and amend, all such errours, heresies, abuses, offences, 
 etc., which by any manner, spiritual authority, or jurisdiction, ought, 
 or may lawfully be reformed, repressed, etc., most to the pleasure of 
 Almighty God, any foreign prescription or authority to the contrary 
 notwithstanding. 7 ' 
 
 3. 
 
 "We have now before us the principal statutes of the years 1533 — 
 1535, which affect the Church. Together with the submission of 
 Convocation in 1531, on which they are based, they form the chief 
 measures of Henry's Reformation. And they shew the course by 
 which the old spiritual jurisdiction passed from Pope to King ; and 
 how, in the process, first the Pope's prerogative was diminished, and 
 that of Convocation and the Primate for a time affirmed : and then, 
 the Pope's Supremacy disowned, the claims of the Spiritualty in their 
 turn ignored, and the supreme jurisdiction in all causes vested in the 
 Crown absolutely. And so it has remained to this day. The modifi- 
 cation of the style of the Supremacy under Elizabeth has not in any 
 way affected the ecclesiastical jurisdiction asserted for the sovereign 
 by Henry VIII. ; or the force u of the statute (25 Hen. VIII., c. 19), 
 which is still part of the Constitution of the country. The Church's 
 appellate jurisdiction has since that time been universally exercised 
 by the Crown. 
 
 As the legislative functions, whether of Church or State, are the 
 highest of all, marking its autonomous capacities; so the supreme appel- 
 late jurisdiction, by whomsoever exercised, denotes the fountain-head 
 of judicial jurisdiction, as being the court of last resort in cases of 
 appeal. And the enjoyment of such ultimate arbitrative authority 
 does, in combination with other privileges, go to denote the Sovereign 
 authority in all matters over that body in which it is exercised. In 
 
 all their lands, etc. Moreover, Justices of King's Bench and Justices of the 
 Peace are to enquire of heretics, and if necessary to arrest suspected persons, 
 handing them over to the Bishop for trial (as above). The preceding Act of 
 Bichard II. (5 Bic. II., st. 2, c. 5) in the same way directs sheriffs to arrest 
 heretical preachers, if so required to do by the Prelates. Either Act plainly 
 reserves to the Church her prescriptive right of determining the spiritual offence 
 in her own courts. 
 
 u See Lord Campbell's decision in Gorham case. Q. B. judgement, Brod. and 
 Premantle's Eccl. Judgements, p. 115.
 
 the Church's Judicial Functions. 21 
 
 other words, the Court of Highest Appeal is one of the prerogatives 
 of the Chief Magistrate. 
 
 But by the Reformation this jurisdiction in spiritual suits was an- 
 nexed to the Crown, as part of the Crown's ecclesiastical supremacy. 
 It therefore rendered the Sovereign the Fountain-head of ecclesias- 
 tical authority. And had Henry VIII. never claimed the precise 
 designation of Head of the Church, the right of hearing final appeals 
 in spiritual causes would have made him such x ; but as it was, his 
 assumption of the title only made the appellate jurisdiction a matter 
 of more natural congruity. 
 
 And, it is fair to ask, to whom at such a juncture could the Church 
 of England have turned for remedy, if not to the King? The Pope's 
 Supremacy was gone, and it was clearly necessary to provide a sub- 
 stitute, " a national head of some kind," as the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury y expresses it, both as centre of unity, and as Judge of Appeal ? 
 What, then, was to take the place of the old order of things ? Who, 
 in short, was to be the new Pope ? The Primate, as Papa alterius 
 orbis, might have served for such a capstone to the ecclesiastical 
 edifice; but, as a fact, it was never realized. "The Archbishop of 
 Canterbury," says the present Primate himself 2 , "is not Patriarch 
 over the other Archbishops." And failing him, to whom could the 
 Church of England turn for redress after the Papal Headship had 
 been abolished? The answer is simple, to the King. "Happily," 
 remarks Archbishop Tait a , "English Christians could still (if the 
 power of the Western Patriarch was renounced) rally round the King 
 and their Metropolitans." But, as a fact, it was to the King, and to 
 the King alone, that Church and Nation had to look, in the emergency, 
 for the supreme direction in all matters ecclesiastical. Henry and 
 Cromwell, in their capacities of Head of the Church, and Vicegerent, 
 were superior to every spiritual person within the realm, and indeed 
 to every assemblage of the spiritualty in synod. The Archbishop b 
 allows that Diocesan or Provincial Synods might have been con- 
 stituted courts of appeal; but he points out that the "far-sighted" 
 Reformers thought differently. "They maintained the old Bishops' 
 courts with graduated appeals, not to any meeting of the Church in 
 synod, but first to the courts of the several Archbishops, and lastly to 
 the Sovereign." "This was their mode then," the writer approv- 
 ingly remarks, "of solving another difficulty." I will only leave it 
 to others to judge whether the " difficulty " does not remain as great 
 as before, in spite of this marvellous solution of it. 
 
 x Blackstone says, " An appeal lies from all these courts (ecclesiastical, mili- 
 tary, maritime, &e.) to the King, in the last resort : which proves that the juris- 
 diction exercised in them is derived from the Crown of England, and not from 
 any foreign potentate or intrinsic authority of their oicn. ,y — 1 Bla. Comm. 84. 
 
 y Preface to Brodrick and Fremantle's Judgements, p. x. 
 
 * Ibid. , p. ix. * Ibid. b Ibid. , p. xiii.
 
 22 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 4. 
 
 It is difficult to resist the conclusion (and I suppose few would 
 care to dispute the point) that Henry Till, fully intended to, and 
 as far as Statutes could empower him did, actually annex the whole 
 of the then recognized Papal prerogative over the Church in England 
 to the Crown en bloc. Being already King, he decided to be his own 
 Pope into the bargain. Every vestige of the Pope's right to inter- 
 meddle in ecclesiastical affairs had been swept away by 1535, and the 
 spiritual sovereignty secured by every safeguard that could be de- 
 vised c , to the King. 
 
 With this passed over, as a matter of course, the appellate juris- 
 diction of the Court of Eome. It was very simple. Henry was now 
 Head of the Church. Section 3 of the Great Statute (25 Hen. VIII., 
 c. 19) says, "no manner of appeals shall be had out of this realm to 
 the Bishop of Rome, or to the See of Borne, of what nature or con- 
 dition soever they be of, or what cause or matter soever they con- 
 cern;" but that they should, on the contrary, lie to the King in 
 Chancery, " like as in cases of appeal from the Admiral's court, and 
 no further appeal to be had or made from the said Commission." 
 Could, I ask, words be found to express more thoroughly the degra- 
 dation of the Church's appellate prerogative to the level of a mere 
 department of state ? The highest possible doctrinal cause was to be 
 decided by appeal to the Crown, just like an Admiralty case ? Could 
 the completeness of the transfer of jurisdiction from Pope to King be 
 more clearly stated ? Appeal to Borne is swept away, and in the 
 same breath made to lie, in the last instance, to the Crown. " This 
 appeal" (says Lord Campbell d ) "is given in all causes in the courts 
 of the Archbishop ; as well in the causes of a purely spiritual nature, 
 which might have, hitherto, been carried to Borne, as in causes 
 of a temporal nature." With the change of spiritual allegiance went 
 also, it has to be noted, all appeals from places claiming exemption. 
 The religious foundations, that had of old time right of immediate 
 appeal to the See of Borne, were now to enjoy an equal privilege in 
 respect of the King e , the exemption from episcopal intervention 
 being confirmed. As part also of the change of spiritual dynasty, the 
 annates formerly paid to the Pope, went now to the new Head of the 
 Church. The forms, too, of the King's new Court of Appeal were 
 borrowed from the Pope's Court of Chancery; and the appointment 
 from time to time of a "Commission of Beview," the only way in 
 
 c Bonner, in 1535, has the oath administered to him. He is " to the cunning 
 wit and uttermost of his powers, to defend all acts, &c, made or to be made 
 within this realm, in derogation, extirpation, and extinguishment of the Bishop 
 of Borne and his authority ; and all other acts and statutes made or to be made 
 in reformation and corroboration of the King's power, as Supreme Head in earth 
 of the Church of England." — Collier, vol. v. p. 135. 
 
 d Brodrick and Fremantle, p. 111. • 25 Hen. VIII., c. 19, sect. 6.
 
 the Church* 8 Judicial Functions. 23 
 
 which decisions of the court could be re-heard, was, in fact, precisely 
 the practice of the Pope iu such matters f , now exercised by the 
 King. 
 
 And what has to be remarked is this, that the jurisdiction, in virtue 
 of which the Crown now claimed to hear such appeals, was no such 
 office as the Judicial Committee now-a-days, with indifferent Gallio- 
 air affects to hold, with reference to cases of doctrine that come before 
 it ; but it was in a directly spiritual capacity. Just, in short, the hitherto 
 recognized jurisdiction of the Pope now appropriated by the King. 
 On this there can hardly be two opinions. Henry's claim was nothing, 
 if it was not a claim to spiritual power. By Act of Parliament he has 
 the title of Head of the Church; he has also all spiritual jurisdiction 
 pertaining to that peculiar dignity. He reforms heresy and doctrinal 
 error, and it is declared that he reforms them by "spiritual authority;" 
 he decides, in the last resort, any ecclesiastical question in his own 
 court, and the whole claim appeals for support to the Word of God. 
 Moreover, the spiritual office is not created by Parliament for Henry's 
 benefit alone, but declared to be henceforward inherent in the Crown ; 
 and Elizabeth, therefore, on her revival of the Supremacy, feels justified 
 in asserting to the full as large an authority in ecclesiastical affairs, as 
 ever her father or brother had enjoyed?. JN"o one perusing the eccle- 
 siastical statutes of these sovereigns can have any reasonable doubt on 
 this point ; the only question being whether such a claim can be 
 paralleled by any similar example in the whole course of the Church's 
 history. Hooker puts it very plainly h : " Whatsoever any spiritual 
 authority or power (such as legates from the See of Rome did sometime 
 exercise) hath done, or might heretofore have done, for the remedy of 
 such evils, as much in every degree our laws have fully granted the 
 King for ever may do." Again 1 , "This power being sometime in the 
 Bishop of Rome, was for just considerations by public consent annexed 
 unto the King's imperial seat and Crown." k Says Bishop Gibson k , 
 summarizing Elizabeth's supremacy, "Such spiritual jurisdiction as 
 hath heretofore been exercised by the Pope, shall be for ever annexed 
 to the Crown." 
 
 "Prom the Dean of Arches," Blackstone remarks 1 , "an appeal lies 
 to the King in Chancery, (by statute, 25 Hen. YIIL, c. 19) as supreme 
 Head of the English Church, in the place of the Bishop of Rome, who 
 
 1 See inf. p. 24. * And see her "Admonition," quoted below. 
 
 h Eccl. Pol., bk. viii. cap. 4. * Ibid. 
 
 k Codex Juris, 44. The Bishop distinguishes the reigns of Henry VHI. (and 
 Edward VI.), Mary, and Elizabeth as follows : — " Cap. I. Papal authority 
 abolished, and restored to the Crown. Cap. II. Papal authority restored to the 
 See of Rome. Cap. HI. The Supremacy, as it stands at present, perpetually 
 annexed to the Crown." These two kinds of Ecclesiastical Government he calls, 
 1 Supreme Head of the Church of England, Papal and EegaV Ibid., p. 22. 
 
 1 3 Comm. 65.
 
 24 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 formerly exercised this jurisdiction" Speaking of the King's power to 
 grant a Commission of Review for rehearing appeal cases under the Act, 
 Mr. Justice Williams says m , "The King was not restrained (i.e. from 
 granting snch a Commission) by the Statutes (24 and 25 Hen. VIII.) : 
 and the Pope, as supreme Head, whose authority is now annexed by the 
 Crown, had power to do it." " Henry," says Lord Campbell, " resolved 
 to break with Rome altogether, and preserving all the tenets of the 
 Bom an Catholic faith, to vest in himself the jurisdiction which the 
 Pope had hitherto exercised in England. Sir Thomas More had 
 resigned the Great Seal, and it was held by the pliant Lord Audley, 
 who was ready to adopt the new doctrines in religion, or to adhere to 
 the old, as suited his interests 11 ." 
 
 5. 
 
 I now proceed to notice the actual exercise of the Royal Supremacy 
 as Judge of Appeal in spiritual causes. It has been seen how, simul- 
 taneously with the abolition of the Pope's authority in England, all 
 appeals were ordered to lie to the King in Chancery for final ad- 
 judication. The original and customary form of the new tribunal 
 was the "Court of Delegates p" {Judices Deleyati), as the Commission 
 appointed under the Act was termed ; and which continued with some 
 intermissions from 1534 to 1832, when it was abolished. The work 
 of the "Delegates" was interrupted by more expeditious forms of 
 procedure under the Six Articles Act, and by the King's Visitors in 
 Edward Vl.th's reign. In the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, the 
 Court of High Commission was established, being furnished (in 1583) 
 with additionally severe and inquisitorial 1 powers, and became the 
 regular court for trying heresy until its suppression in 1640. But with 
 the Restoration the old Court of Delegates re-emerged, as the proper 
 Court of Appeal in Ecclesiastical questions, and so continued until 
 1832. In that year, appeal cases were handed over to the Privy 
 Council; and in 1833 the "Judicial Committee" of the Privy Coun- 
 
 m Law of Executors, i. 437, 3rd Ed. 
 
 n Brodrick and Fremantle, Eccl. Judgements, p. 110. ° Sup. p. 19. 
 
 p Brodrick and Fremantle, Introd., p. xl. et seqq. For the History of the 
 Court of Delegates, and other matters connected with the Act of Appeals, I am 
 largely indebted to Mr. Fremantle' s Introduction. 
 
 i " The germ of the High Commission Court seems to have been a Commission 
 granted by Mary to certain Bishops and others, to enquire after all heresies, 
 punish persons misbehaving in church ; . . . . but the primary model was the 
 Inquisition itself." — Hallam, Const. Hist., i. 271. "Whosoever will compare 
 the powers given to this tribunal (Court of High Commission) with those of 
 the Inquisition which Philip the Second endeavoured to establish in the Low 
 Countries, will find that the chief difference between the two courts consisted in 
 their names." — Lingard, Hist., v. p. 316. " In the year 1583, the first year of the 
 primacy of Archbishop Whitgift, a new Commission was issued, containing 
 express authority for administering the oath l ex officio' to the prisoner : and the 
 court was provided with a series of questions, from whose scrutiny, at once 
 minute and comprehensive, he could not possibly escape." — 1 Card., Doc. An., 
 Pref.. xiv.
 
 the Church's Judicial Functions, 25 
 
 cil became the permanent form of the Court of Final Appeal in all 
 ecclesiastical suits. 
 
 But through all these reigns, from the Reformation downwards, and 
 in whatever form the court itself was composed, it was an appeal to 
 the Crown, as holding the appellate jurisdiction in virtue of the Great 
 Statute of Henry. This is the key to the somewhat involved history 
 of ecclesiastical judicature since the Reformation. 
 
 It will be seen then at once, and as an immediate consequence of the 
 final appeal in spiritual cases lying to the King, that the Ecclesiastical 
 Courts below existed upon no independent basis of their own, or indeed 
 upon any other than that of Royal authority. The stream could not 
 rise above its head, and that head was the King. This is clearly enough 
 stated by the Statute 1 of Edward VI. " All authority of jurisdiction, 
 spiritual and temporal, is derived and deduced from the King's Majesty 
 as Supreme Head, so that all Courts Ecclesiastical be kept by no other 
 authority, either foreign or within the realm, but by the authority of 
 His Most Excellent Majesty." And Blackstone lays down the principle 
 with equal force 8 : "From all these Courts" (ecclesiastical, military, 
 maritime, etc.) "an appeal lies to the King in the last resort, which 
 proves that the jurisdiction is derived from the Crown, and not from 
 any foreign potentate, or intrinsic authority of their own. And it ap- 
 pears beyond a doubt, that the civil and canon laws are by no means 
 a distinct, independent species of laws, but are inferior branches of the 
 customary or unwritten laws of England, properly called the eccle- 
 siastical, the military, etc., laws." 
 
 It would, however, be imagined that the propriety of referring 
 points of Church law and doctrine to spiritual persons, would have 
 required that the Court, for such purposes, should be composed only 
 of ecclesiastics; but such does not by any means appear to have been 
 the practice even in the first age of the Reformation. It will be suffi- 
 cient only to refer to the researches 1 which have been made on this 
 head, in consequence of decided, though apparently unfounded, asser- 
 tions 11 the other way. The conclusions at which Mr. Fremantle arrives, 
 after a careful examination of the Repertory Books of the Court of 
 Delegates, are of a very different character. Bishops appear to have 
 been generally in a minority, and often in a very small minority, of 
 the Cuurt. In most cases they were altogether absent. The Commis- 
 sions of 1538 — 1544, for instance, were composed entirely of civilians. 
 Elizabeth's first Commission x (which, by the way, gave the Visitors 
 authority to proceed by ecclesiastical censures,) had on it one spiritual 
 person, Edwin Sandys; and her next? warrant, the same year 1559, 
 
 r 1 Ed. VI., c. 2. ■ 1 Comm. 84. l Brodrick and Fremantle, Eccl. Jud. 
 of the P. Council, Introd., xlviii.— lviii. u Dr. Pusey, in Royal Supremacy, 
 
 pp. 202, 203, etc. » 1 Card., Doc. An., 249. » Ibid., 255.
 
 26 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 is addressed to Parker and Grindal, and the rest, seventeen, laymen. 
 In the seventeenth century, out of 1080 appeals in causes ecclesi- 
 astical heard between 1619 and 1634, the tribunal in 872 cases was 
 composed of laymen only. And as time went on, the lay element 
 became even more pronounced, the last record of a Bishop's name ap- 
 pearing on commission occurring in 1798 z . So that when the Judicial 
 Committee was established in 1833, as the fixed substitute for the old 
 Court of Delegates, of which three Bishops were to be the only mem- 
 bers spiritual, and they only as assessors : it does not appear that the 
 composition of the later court involved any material departure from 
 what had been customary from the beginning. 
 
 But this is really immaterial, a3 Dr. Pusey has already pointed out*. 
 The grievance is not that a preponderance of laymen, or that any lay 
 person, a non-member of the Church, should be allowed on commission 
 to try appeals on spiritual questions. This is, at most, an aggravation 
 of the proceeding. " The fundamental defect is (he says b ) that the 
 doctrines of the Church should, for any purpose, be authoritatively 
 determined by any other than the Church herself." 
 
 6. 
 
 For doctrinal causes came at once before the secular tribunal the 
 moment the final appeal was removed from Pope to King : the ampli- 
 fication of the Statute (" no manner of appeal shall be had out of this 
 realm to the Bishop of Rome, of what nature or condition soever they 
 be of, or what cause or matter soever they concern "), being expressly 
 devised to cover all and every point that would formerly have gone on 
 appeal to the See of Rome. The parallel Act c for Ireland states that 
 "as they or any of them were wont to have their appeals, etc., to and 
 from the Bishop of Rome, or to or from the See Apostolick," they 
 should now resort to the King in Chancery, " for final determination 
 of all causes in the said appeals, and in the principal matter, and in all 
 circumstances and dependants thereof." 
 
 It will hardly, then, be pretended that any possible point of 
 Catholic faith or ceremonial, requiring the highest spiritual arbitration, 
 could be excluded from the venue of the King's new tribunal. Such 
 cases have, at least since the Restoration, been rare (only three 
 occurring between 1660 and 1800): but the existing form of the 
 Appeal Court, the Judicial Committee, has frequently decided points 
 of doctrine, beginning with the ruling in 1850, that Baptismal re- 
 generation was an open question. Nor is there any reason to suppose 
 that the court is exceeding its province in so doing. "Advancing 
 doctrines d not conformable to the Articles of the Church," are among 
 
 7 See the whole question discussed in Brod. and Fremantle, In trod, 
 xlviii. — lviii. a Koyal Supremacy, p. 14. b Ibid. c 28 Hen. VIII. 
 
 c. 6, s. 2. d Report of the Commission of 1830, p. 13; and see Brod. 
 
 and Fremantle, Introd., p. fix. note.
 
 
 the Church's Judicial Functions. 27 
 
 the offences specified by the Commissioners of 1830, as suits which 
 could come before the new Court of the Privy Council upon which 
 they had to report. 
 
 '* The Judicial Committee," says a former member of it, Sir John 
 Coleridge e , " takes cognizance of doctrine directly, and as the point in 
 issue : it does so in the last resort. Its decisions bind every court, and 
 even itself; so that if it should happen to determine certain propo- 
 sitions not to be contrary to the Articles, or vice versa, however mani- 
 festly wrong or dangerous the decision, these propositions might be 
 maintained and preached by any incumbent to his flock with impunity ; 
 and to preach propositions logically contradictory of them, might sub- 
 ject an incumbent to prosecution and its consequences. It cannot be 
 doubted," adds Sir John Coleridge, "that this would practically be 
 very much the same as making new doctrines for the Church." 
 
 And this was, in fact, the case in the Gorham trial. Those who pro- 
 tested at the time against the decision of the court, did so because they 
 considered that the effect of it was to abandon one of the Articles of 
 the Creed f , and that the Church of England would be bound by the 
 decision, if the heresy involved in the Judgement were not formally 
 repudiated by her. And this has never been done. 
 
 The "Judgement" in this case has a further importance, as stating 
 the principles which guide the court in dealing with the doctrinal cases 
 that come before it. "The question we have to consider," Lord 
 Langdale& said, in giving judgement for the appellant, u is not whether 
 [opinions] are theologically souad or unsound, but whether such 
 opinions are contrary to, or repugnant to, the doctrines which the 
 Church of England, by its Articles, Formularies, and Rubrics, requires 
 to be held by its Ministers." "This h court has no jurisdiction or 
 authority to settle matters of faith, or to determine what ought, in any 
 particular, to be the doctrine of the Church of England. Its duty only 
 extends to the consideration of that which is by law established to be 
 the doctrine of the Church of England, upon the true and legal con- 
 struction of the Articles, etc. ; and we consider that it is not the duty 
 of any court to be minute or rigid in cases of this sort." 
 
 Upon this very remarkable definition of its jurisdiction by the Ju- 
 dicial Committee itself, I will only remark that, it is difficult to 
 see how, upon such admissions (to say nothing of the constant prac- 
 tice of the court) the Committee can evade the charge of exercising 
 authority in matters of faith. Matters of faith, i.e., what is (not 
 what ought to be) the doctrine of the Church, the court has to con- 
 
 « Memoir of Kev. John Keble, by the Right Hon. Sir J. T. Coleridge, p. 468. 
 f M I acknowledge one Baptism/ &c. See the " Resolutions " in Pusey's Royal 
 Supremacy, p. 22. 
 * Brodrick and Fremantle, Gorham case (Judgement), p. 689. h Ibid., p. 102.
 
 28 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 sider and to define. Points of doctrine are brought before it, the tests 
 of orthodoxy applied are the Articles of Religion, etc., of the Church 
 of England, according to the Committee's view of what is their "true 
 and legal construction," and judgement is accordingly given. How, 
 discharging such very explicit functions as these, the Judicial Com- 
 mittee can disown so smoothly all jurisdiction in matters of faith, I 
 will leave it to others to determine. It remains, that for all its dis- 
 claimer, the court does so decide, has frequently so decided, and that 
 there is no higher court to determine cases of the kind. Either they 
 are incapable of settlement, or the Judicial Committee determines 
 the matter 1 . 
 
 7. 
 
 Taken by itself, however, there is undeniable truth in the learned 
 Judge's assertion that the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council 
 "has no authority or jurisdiction in matters of faith." It has none, 
 none whatever. None by derivation, for the Act of Parliament which 
 created it, or its predecessor, the Delegates' Court, could give it none : 
 none from the status of the court, which is a temporal, and not a 
 spiritual one. Its decisions on points of faith, or Church ceremonial, 
 have just as much canonical force as the rulings of a Chairman of 
 Quarter Sessions. 
 
 This is not the point. What is objected is, that the Committee, 
 though expressly disowning jurisdiction in matters of faith, should yet 
 decide disputed doctrinal statements, as though it were really invested 
 with the necessary spiritual authority for so doing. So that not only 
 have we to endure the "strange and horrible thing" of a lay-court 
 ruling what is the Church's teaching, but the court at the same time 
 coolly declares itself to be without the jurisdiction requisite for so 
 peculiar an office. Even Henry VIII. would not have presented such 
 an anomaly as this : he, at least, in reforming heresy, claimed to act 
 by spiritual authority. 
 
 And it is very certain that the gravest items of the Church's faith 
 are brought before the Committee, and are ruled accordingly. In his 
 " Six Privy Council Judgements k ," Mr. Brooke gives a summary of the 
 more important cases and judgements affecting doctrines of the English 
 Church : and one is thus enabled to ascertain at a glance, without 
 reference to Fathers or Councils, " what is by law established to be 
 the doctrine of the Church of England." Are the Sacraments of the 
 Church too high matters for the Committee to treat of? Not at all. 
 
 1 "Admitting, for the sake of argument, that the Judicial Committee may not 
 be the best possible court (although I doubt whether a better could be formed), 
 it is the only authorized exponent of the Law in ecclesiastical causes : and 
 if individuals can disobey laws because they are distasteful to them, then there 
 is an end to all order in Church or State." — Letter of the Bishop of Liverpool 
 to the Kev. J. Bell Cox, quoted in " Standard " newspaper of Sep. 7, 1880. 
 
 k W. G. Brooke, Barrister-at-law, 1873. See Appendix, pp. 249—272.
 
 the Church's Judicial Functions. 29 
 
 The Gorham case ] may be referred to for the ruling of the court on the 
 effect of Baptism. The doctrine of Baptismal regeneration may be 
 affirmed or denied with equal legality. Such is the judgement given. 
 "It set at rest," Mr. Brooke points out m , "the question as to the 
 comprehensiveness of the Church in relation to the subject of Christian 
 baptism. It decided, that on a principal point in dispute between 
 different theological schools, the Church of England maintains an 
 absolute neutrality." "The dogma 11 of the unconditional regeneration 
 of infants in Baptism .... in the English Church, has always re- 
 mained an open question ; and this is the liberty which is vindicated 
 for the Church of England by the ruling of the Judicial Committee 
 in the Gorham case." 
 
 On the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, and the legality of 
 "Altar" and "Sacrifice" in the Church of England, there have 
 been several cases before the Privy Council of an important bear- 
 ing. In Liddell v. Westerton, the Judge, Lord Kingsdown , pointed 
 out the very express substitution of the word " Table " for " Altar," 
 in all editions of the Prayer-Book since 1552; and referred to the 
 Pinal Rubric in the Communion Office, "which goes to subvert the 
 notion that a real sacrifice is intended, and is consequently at variance 
 with the proper meaning of 'Altar.' " "It was," said the Judge P, 
 " no longer to be an Altar of sacrifice, but merely a table, at which 
 the communicants were to partake of the Lord's Supper." 
 
 But in Parker v. Leach this point was laid down with even greater 
 plainness. Lord Westbury, in giving judgment**, — after remarking that 
 the Dean of the Arches, who had used the term "Altar" (in con- 
 nection with Church of England worship) must have been employ- 
 ing the word in a borrowed sense, applicable only to Pre-reforma- 
 tion or Roman Catholic Churches, — goes on to say : "In a Roman 
 Catholic church there is an Altar, where the Priest offers sacri- 
 fice. In a Protestant church there is no Altar in the same sense, 
 but there is a Communion Table, on which bread and wine are placed, 
 etc." This is the "judgement," and a very remarkable one it is. But 
 perhaps the case of Sheppard v. Bennett exemplifies best the bold 
 dogmatizing of the Committee upon the most sacred mysteries of the 
 Faith. Mr. Brooke's summary r of this case, giving the pages of the 
 "judgement" as he proceeds, will be all that is required. "The 
 following points, in relation to the doctrine of the Church on the 
 Lord's Supper, have been ruled. The Church of England has no 
 sacrificial Altar (p. 238), nor any propitiatory offering on the Lord's 
 Table (p. 239). To teach that the sacrifice or offering of Christ can 
 
 1 See the " Judgement " in this case, ibid., pp. 18—38. 
 
 ra Ibid., Appendix, Note A. p. 249. n Ibid., 251. ° Ibid., Append. 
 
 Note B. pp. 255, 256. p Ibid. , p. 70, (Judgement). * Ibid. , Append. 
 
 Note C. pp. 257, 258. r Ibid., Append. Note K. p. 274.
 
 30 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 be repeated is illegal (p. 239). The Church of England does not 
 affirm any Presence in the Lord's Supper, except a presence to the 
 soul of the faithful receiver (p. 234). To adore the Consecrated 
 Elements is illegal (p. 242)." The Judgement was read, at the request 
 of the Chancellor, by the Archbishop of York. 
 
 In the "Essays and Keviews'" case 3 , the court sustained the 
 Essayists in the denial of the Inspiration of Scripture in every part 
 of it ; and in the ultimate salvation of the wicked, a hope expressed 
 by one of the writers. 
 
 8. 
 
 These are given as specimens : not with the view of criticising the 
 orthodoxy of the judges, but that it may be shewn beyond a doubt, 
 that vital points of dogma do come before the court, and the legality 
 of the doctrine at issue decided accordingly. In this way the doctrine 
 of the Real Presence, the sacrifice in the Eucharist, the reality of the 
 Altar in the Church of England, Regeneration in Baptism, Inspiration 
 of Scripture, Everlasting Punishment, are carried before the Privy 
 Council, and "judgement" pronounced. 
 
 Thirty years ago Dr. Pusey wrote*, "The Privy Council cannot 
 continue to be the Judge of heresy in the English Church." That 
 was in 1850. And the rulings given above are precisely the result of 
 the action of the court in the two-and-twenty years succeeding the 
 publication of Dr. Pusey 's treatise. And they reveal the havock 
 which the Judicial Committee has been able to make of the Catholic 
 faith in that space of time. What doctrine the Church requires her 
 Ministers to hold, is here laid down in no ambiguous terms. At 
 least, this is the existing doctrine ; for the court may unsay to-morrow 
 what it has said to-day, as it did in the Purchas case, condemning the 
 use of the Ornaments of the Church, which in the Westerton case it 
 had sanctioned. Policy 11 and expediency, not truth, guide its de- 
 cisions : it is no part of its duty to be " rigid." 
 
 Yet it continues to be the court of final arbitration in cases of 
 Church Doctrine, and matters are exactly in the same condition that 
 they were when Dr. Pusey protested against the Gorham Judgement. 
 
 Mr. Brooke's list of cases extends over 1850 to 1872. Having 
 attacked one Sacrament in 1850, and pronounced Baptismal Regen- 
 eration to be an open question in the Church of England ; the Com- 
 mittee, in the last suit, left the Sacrament of the Eucharist even 
 more severely handled. Any sacrifice, any altar, any Presence of 
 
 8 Ibid., pp. 99—102. * Koyal Supremacy, p. 195. 
 
 * Archdeacon Allen, " writing to the Times " of Nov. 9, 1880, records the remark 
 of the late eminent ecclesiastical counsel, Mr. Benjamin Shaw, Q.C., made to 
 himself apropos of thePurchas Judgement : " The Privy Council is guided in its 
 judgements by policy as well as by law ;" and see Mr. Gladstone's Letter to Bp. 
 Blomfield, p. 4.
 
 the Appointment of Bishops. 31 
 
 the Saviour apart from the soul of the receiver, any adoration of the 
 Sacrament, was wholly and absolutely denied, and the judgement 
 of the court on these matters pronounced with unwonted decision 
 and severity. 
 
 Dr. Pusey x urges the Upper House of Convocation as the proper 
 Court of Appeal for the Church of England. But this very point was 
 raised in the Gorham trial, and an attempt made to appeal against the 
 sentence of the Privy Council to the Synod of the Province. But Lord 
 Campbell y replied, that the Act of Henry (25 Hen. VIII., c. 19) was 
 perfectly plain and decisive on the question, and had never been 
 doubted : and that no provision was made by the Act for a further 
 appeal to the Upper House of Convocation, but on the contrary, to the 
 King in Council, in the last resort. And since this ruling, all attempt 
 to question the Royal Supremacy in spiritual causes, or to appeal to 
 any other tribunal, has completely dropped. 
 
 We are, then, in a position to judge of the effect produced by the 
 concession to the Crown in 1534 of the appellate jurisdiction in 
 spirituals, anciently exercised by the Bishop of Rome. The Spiritualty 
 of the realm, which seemed likely at one time to inherit the Pope's 
 privilege, did not succeed to it in the event. The final appeal was 
 never, as a fact, allowed to lie to the Primate, or to Convocation, or to 
 any body or person spiritual, but to the King 2 . And so it has con- 
 tinued to be to this present hour, the claims of the Church being 
 utterly ignored. 
 
 III. Appointment of Bishops. 
 
 There remains now to be considered a further exercise of the 
 Supremacy, also dating from the Reformation, — the jurisdiction, 
 namely, said to be conveyed, since that date, to Bishops of the Church 
 of England from the Crown. Anterior to the Reformation, English 
 Sovereigns have, at various times, claimed to nominate to sees, to 
 issue congfa d'eslire, to approve elections, to receive homage of Bishops 
 for their temporalties, to grant investitures. This is the utmost, 
 taken at its widest extent, that any King of England had claimed to 
 do before the times of the Tudors, and even on these points they were 
 continually being defeated by the action of the Court of Rome. 
 
 1. 
 
 Investiture with ring and crosier, though professedly meant to 
 denote the grant of the temporalties, were forbidden by the Popes of 
 
 1 Koyal Supremacy, p. 169. J Gorham case, Queen's Bench, Brod. and 
 
 Fremantle, p. 107, seq. 
 
 z The judges who in 1711, in Whiston's case, were of opinion that the Convo- 
 cation of Canterbury might be a court for trying heresy, conceded this on the 
 distinct understanding that an appeal would lie from Convocation to the King. 
 See Brod. and Fremantle, Pref. vi. and p. 323.
 
 32 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 the eleventh century ; on the ground that the tokens used, were 
 emblems of a power which no earthly potentate could derive : and 
 a compromise was generally effected, as in the case of Henry I. and 
 S. Anselm, the Pope consenting that the Bishop should do homage for 
 his barony, while the King on his part relinquished the privilege 
 of investiture*. 
 
 Nor was the Crown more successful in procuring its nomination 
 to sees, when the will of the Roman Bishop pulled another way. 
 Edward I. fails to secure such important sees as Canterbury and 
 "Winchester for his own candidates : and in the next reign, Norwich 
 and Winton again are filled up by Papal appointments, in defiance of 
 the Royal pleasure b . 
 
 But (to go back a little earlier) the history of S. Edmund's ap- 
 pointment to the Primatial see in Henry the Third's time c illus- 
 trates, as well as any thing I could mention, the nature of the juris- 
 diction exercised by the Pope before the Reformation, in the matter of 
 episcopal elections. In 1231, the Metropolitical See of Canterbury 
 became vacant by the death, in Italy, of Archbishop Richard : and 
 the monks agreed upon Ralph Neville, Bishop of Chichester, as his 
 successor. The King accepts Neville, and invests him with the tem- 
 poraries; but on the appointment going to Rome for confirmation, 
 Neville was set aside. Simon Langton, to whom the Pope turned for 
 advice, represented the Primate-elect as too much of a courtier, and 
 besides, not well affected to the Roman Court, and the election was 
 accordingly quashed. The year following, 1232, the Archiepiscopal 
 See being still vacant, the monks pitch upon their own Prior, John ; 
 the King again approving the choice. Prior John goes to Rome for 
 confirmation ; is put under a stiff examination, lasting three days ; 
 and, although his examiners expressed themselves satisfied, he ap- 
 peared to Gregory IX. to be too old and simple for the office, and was 
 persuaded, without difficulty, to resign. The Pope ordered the monks 
 once more to elect a fit person; in the autumn they chose John 
 Blund, a divine of Oxford, who with the King's approval set out 
 forthwith for Rome, in company with some of the monks, to have the 
 election confirmed. Yet this election fared no better than the pre- 
 ceding. The Bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches, had invoked 
 the support of the Emperor in Blund's behalf; and money, so it is said, 
 
 ft 1 Blackst. Comm., 378, 379. 
 
 b Edward I. applied for the Archiepiscopal See, on Archbishop Kilwardby's 
 elevation to the Cardinalate, for his Chancellor, Burnell ; but the Pope, 
 Nicholas III., rejected the request, and gave the Primacy to John Peckham, 
 a Franciscan Friar; and a very good appointment. Cf. Stubbs' Const. Hist., 
 vol. ii., Library ed., pp. 121 and 123 ; and for the Pope's rejection of Edward the 
 Second's nominees, see ibid., pp. 386, 387. 
 
 c The history of this transaction is told by Collier, ii. 445, and by Dr. Luard, 
 "Kelations between England and Kome," Deighton & Co., Cambridge, pp. 55—61.
 
 the Appoin tmen f of Bis/i ops. 33 
 
 accompanied the letter to secure the confirmation d . "The Pope," 
 says Dr. Luard c , "was not to be influenced in this Tray, and as the 
 elect confessed to holding two benefices with cure of souls, (against 
 the 29th Statute of the Lateran Council,) his election was set aside: 
 and the monks who had come with him, under the Pope's direction, 
 elected Edmund of Abingdon, treasurer of Salisbury, to whom the 
 Pope sent the pall. The monks, however, determined to receive 
 neither him, nor any one else, excepting with the consent of the 
 Convent." In the end of the year, Dec. 22, " The Pope writes 
 to the Suffragans of Canterbury, stating that he had confirmed the 
 election of Edmund, and bade them receive him with due humility, 
 and obey him." 
 
 2. 
 
 I give this instance, at some length, because it represents what was 
 the general procedure in Episcopal appointments in England prior to 
 the Reformation, and shews the limits within which the authority of 
 the Supreme Pontiff might "lawfully" act in the confirmation of 
 Bishops-elect. It points out also the respective actions of the several 
 parties concerned in the process. 
 
 The election itself is made by the Canons of the Cathedral, i. e. the 
 Chapter. In an earlier age the act of the Clergy and people, and then 
 of the King, the election of a Bishop had, by the end of the tenth 
 century, come to be the recognized province of the Chapter of the 
 Cathedral f : and has, indeed, so continued to be the custom, though in a 
 very modified form, until the present day. Their privilege in this matter 
 was attempted to be very considerably circumscribed by Henry II., but 
 it was fully restored to them by the charter of King John. " Which 
 branch of their right," John declares s , " we have formally secured to 
 
 d Mat. Paris, iii. 243. e England and Eome, p. 61. 
 
 1 Collier, i. 501. Hallam, Mid. Ages, p. 38 note. Burn, Eccl. Law, vol. i. 
 p. 198. sqq. (Ed. Phillimore), 1842. In Collier's account of the ancient (medieval) 
 mode of election of Bishops, taken from the Cotton Library, he describes the 
 process as follows : On the vacancy of the see, the Canons appoint the day of 
 election, and notify absent brethren: at the same time drawing up an instrument 
 shewing how the see came to be vacated, and when. The Chapter being 
 assembled, it was then put to the question whether the election should be decided 
 by a majority of votes, or referred to a Committee. When the election was com- 
 pleted, it was publicly announced, and the elect carried before the high altar, 
 when his assent was demanded. The election is then notified to the Metropolitan, 
 as Legate of the Apostolic see, praying him, or his Vicar- General for him, to 
 confirm the election. Collier points out that no mention of the King, or ap- 
 plication for the conge, cTexlire, occurs in the whole transaction. Hist., v. 221. 
 
 x Collier, ix. 33. " On the passing of the Great Charter," Mr. Froude says (Hist., 
 ii. p. 2, and follg.), " the Church had recovered her liberties, and the privilege 
 of free election had been conceded by a special clause to the clergy. The 
 practice which then became established was in accordance with the general spirit 
 of the English Constitution. On the vacancy of a see, the Cathedral Chapter 
 applied to the Crown for a conge d 'eslire. The application was a form : the 
 consent was invariable. A Bishop was then elected by a majority of suffrages ; 
 his name was submitted to the Metropolitan, and by him to the Pope. If the
 
 34 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 them by our charter, and procured confirmation of it by his present 
 Holiness, Pope Innocent the Third : we promise that we will not hinder, 
 nor permit any to hinder, the electors from freely setting over them 
 what pastor th< y will." The King reserved to himself the guardianship 
 of the temporalties during vacancies, and the licence to elect, with 
 approval afterwards ; although it was admitted that if the approval 
 were withheld, it would not invalidate the election. 
 
 After canonical election, the choice was submitted to the King for 
 approval, and, if he accepted the elect, the temporalties of the see were 
 bestowed : but not the spiritualties. Neither could the Pope, on his 
 part, grant the temporalties of a bishopric. In 1302, Boniface VIIL, 
 in the plenitude of his power, pretended to give the temporalties as 
 well as the spiritualties of the see of Worcester, to which he had pre- 
 sented William of Gainsborough 11 . But this bold move was immediately 
 resisted by Edward I., who obliged the Bishop to renounce all connection 
 of the Pope with the temporalties of the see, and fined him heavily 
 besides, for acquiescing in the act of the Pope : and, in consequence, it 
 became the rule for English Bishops, in doing fealty to the Sovereign, 
 to disavow all connection of the see of Rome with their temporalties, 
 which they acknowledged to receive from the King alone. The next 
 and concluding step was, the " confirmation" of the election by the 
 Bishop of Rome. The claims of the Popes of the thirteenth and 
 fourteenth centuries 1 to nominate directly to sees, to " reserve" 
 bishoprics, and translate at their pleasure Prelates in and out of the 
 realm, was an abnormal stretch of power, combated, and at length 
 effectually checked, by the Parliaments of Edward III. and Richard II. k 
 But the Confirmation^ of the election, as giving the Bishop-elect proper 
 jurisd ction within his diocese, had come to be the recognized function 
 of the Apostolic see from the time of S. Augustine, and so continued, 
 in short, until the practice was made an end of by Henry VIII. It 
 was generally granted as a matter of course, although not unfrequently, 
 and more particularly where the greater sees were concerned, the claims 
 
 Pope signified his approval, the election was complete ; consecration followed, 
 and the Bishop having been furnished with his bulls of investiture, was presented 
 
 to the King, and from him received ' the temporalties ' of his see There 
 
 was thus in the Pope's hand an authority of an indefinite kind, which it was 
 presumed that his sacred office would forbid him to abuse, but which, however, 
 if he so unfortunately pleased, he might abuse at his discretion. He had absolute 
 power over every nomination to an English benefice, etc." 
 
 h Lea's Oath of Homage, p. 4. 
 
 * See Hallam's Mid. Ages, {Church and State,) Alex. Murray, 1868, p. 67. 
 
 k By the Statutes of Provisors and Pr<zmunire (25 Ed. III., st. 5, c. 12, and 13 
 Eic. II., st. 2, c. 2 and 3., and 16 Bic. II. c. 5.) 
 
 1 Bishop Forbes (XXXIX Artt. p. 749 note) gives, amongst the items of the 
 Pope's ancient jurisdiction in England, the gift of the Pall to Metropolitans, ori- 
 ginally recognizing, then confirming, and finally conferring Metropolitan power. 
 This prerogative of the Pope, he says, was coeval with the establishment of 
 Christianity in England, and as early as 735, was understood to be necessary 
 for the completeness of the Metropolitan character.
 
 the Appointment of Bishops. 35 
 
 of the candidate were subjected to a careful enquiry at Rome, and in 
 the case of an unworthy election, set aside. 
 
 It must be admitted, however, that as far as the prerogative of the 
 Chapter was concerned, it had fallen into decay long before Henry VIII. 
 introduced the present form of the conge oVedire. "With the growing 
 ascendancy of the Crown, the capitular rights could not fail to become 
 little more than a nominal power. The appointment of Bishops was 
 virtually the act of the King m . It was so in Henry the Seventh's 
 time: by an arrangement similar to the Concordat between Leo X. 
 and Francis in the succeeding century, the King presented the elect 
 to the Pope for confirmation and collation, retaining, as his share of 
 the transaction, half of the first-fruits of the Clergy for his privy 
 purse 11 . 
 
 3. 
 
 Nor was any definite alteration of the old system attempted, until 
 Henry the Seventh's son and successor had been twenty-two years upon 
 the throne. In 1532, an Act was passed abolishing the payment of 
 annates to the Pope, on the occasion of Episcopal elections : but it was 
 only a " feeler," and the King was empowered, under the Act, to make 
 an amicable settlement with the Pope, offering his Holiness a per- 
 centage of the revenues of the sees, in lieu of the old payment of first- 
 fruits. Nothing as yet had passed into law denying the Pope's right 
 to confirm elections, provided he accepted Henry's terms. On the 
 contrary, the candidate was still to be "named and presented to the 
 Court of Rome by the King, to be Bishop of the see or diocese :" only 
 the bulls of consecration were not to be denied, on account of the refusal 
 to pay the customary first-fruits. The ancient Papal jurisdiction, in 
 short, had not been actually abolished, and was still recognized in 
 England, although the sands were fast running out. The traditions of 
 a thousand years could not so easily be swept away in a moment. 
 
 And what were those traditions? What was the mediaeval con- 
 ception of the Papacy ? One must throw oneself into the opinions of 
 the men of that age, and endeavour to realize the unique position 
 conceded to the Bishop, who was believed to be the representative of 
 S. Peter, if only to. appreciate the gigantic task which the Eighth 
 Henry had set himself to attempt, and the absolute character of his 
 rule that enabled him to accomplish it with success. 
 
 In the eyes of all Western Europe, if not, indeed, of the whole of 
 Christendom, the supreme place in the Church had belonged to the 
 Bishop of Rome by a prescription of centuries. To him the Bishops 
 looked for the confirmation of their privileges, and for the bestowal of 
 the Episcopal character . He was at once the centre of Unity and 
 the Fount of Jurisdiction ; and the sacred hierarchy mounted up by 
 
 m Green, Short History, p. 330. n Hardwick, Med. Ch. Hist., 1853, p. 366. 
 See Pope Pascal's letter to Henry L, Collier, ii. 151; and Eadmer's Hist., 
 lib. 5, p. 114. 
 
 „ 9
 
 36 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 a series of grades, which, culminated at length in the chair of S.Peter 
 himself p . 
 
 "We have decreed," wrote S.Boniface, the English Winfrid, to 
 Cuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the former half of the eighth 
 century q , " we have decreed in our synodal assembly, and confessed, 
 that we will to our lives' end observe Catholic Eaith and Unity, and 
 subjection to the See of Rome: that we will be subject to S.Peter 
 and his Vicar : that the Metropolitans shall seek their palls from that 
 see : and in all things we desire to follow canonically the precepts 
 of S. Peter, that we may be numbered among the sheep committed 
 to him." 
 
 " We define," echo, seven hundred years later, the Fathers of the 
 united (Greek and Latin) Council of Florence 1 ", " that the Holy 
 Apostolic see, and the Roman Pontiff, hold the Primacy over the 
 whole world : and that the Roman Pontiff himself is the successor of 
 blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and the true Vicar of Christ, 
 and the Head of the whole Church, and the Father and Doctor of all 
 Christians ; and that to him, in the person of the blessed Peter, our 
 Lord Jesus Christ has committed full power of feeding, ruling, and 
 governing the Universal Church." 
 
 I make one further quotation on this subject, from a celebrated 
 document s which after events have invested with so strange an irony. 
 Only ten years before that |Henry VIII., in his eagerness for the 
 divorce, compelled his clergy to acknowledge him Supreme Head 
 of the Church ; he had written, " Luther cannot deny that every 
 Church of the faithful acknowledges and reverences the Holy Ro- 
 man See as their Mother and Primate. . . . Certainly, if any one will 
 ponder the records of history, he will find that of old time, as soon as 
 peace was restored to the world, the greater number of the Churches 
 of Christendom obeyed the Church of Rome. Even the Greek Church, 
 although the Empire had removed to their side, yielded the point of 
 Primacy to the Roman Church, etc." 
 
 Such then, I suppose, we may take to represent the purely 
 mediaeval conception of the Papacy 4 : "that monarchical principle," 
 
 r " The authority of the Church over the State, the Supreme Kingship of Christ, 
 and consequently of him who was held to be Christ's Vicar above all worldly 
 sovereignties, was an established reality of mediaeval Europe. The Princes had 
 with difficulty preserved their jurisdiction in matters purely secular ; while in 
 matters spiritual, and in that vast section of human affairs in which the spi- 
 ritual and secular glide one into the other, they had been compelled to ac- 
 knowledge a power superior to their own. To the Pope was the ultimate ap- 
 peal in all causes of which the spiritual courts had cognizance." — Froude, 
 Hist., i. p. 434. 
 
 i S. Bonif. Ep. lxiii. (a.d. 745) ; Hardwick, Med. Ch. Hist., p. 38, note. 
 
 r Hardwick, p. 392, note. 
 
 * Assertio 7 Sacramentt. adv. M. Luther edita ab rege Hen. Octavo. Pari- 
 siis, 1522, pp. 15 and 16. 
 
 1 A fairer witness, for the mediaeval belief on the point of the Pope's Suprem- 
 acy, than Bp. Grossetete could not, I suppose, be found. His life (1175—1253 a.d.)
 
 the Appointment of Bishops. 37 
 
 says Mr. Lecky, "once thought to be the key-stone of the -whole," but 
 now swept away by the Reformation as a corruption of the faith. 
 Such, from the age of Charlemagne to the Pontificate of Leo X., may 
 be said to have been the idea of the spiritual sovereignty which the 
 Western Church, England included, had for ages recognized as in- 
 herent in the Bishop and See of Rome. The praster-humun claims 
 of Innocent III., startling as they were, were even surpassed a cen- 
 tury later by Boniface VIII., when by the Bull Unam Sanctum it 
 was at length declared, that the subjection of every human being 
 to the Roman Bishop was an article of necessary faith u . 
 
 4. 
 
 Referring to the principal Act x of Philip and Mary for the extent of 
 the actual authority possessed by the Pope, prior to the reforming 
 statutes of Henry, Dr. Cardwell y says, " From this Act it appears 
 that the Pope's jurisdiction in England was comprised under the five 
 following heads: 1. He was acknowledged as chief Bishop of the 
 Christian Church, with authority to reform and redress heresies, 
 errours, and abuses within the same; 2. To him belonged the insti- 
 tution and confirmation of Bishops-elect ; 3. He could grant licences 
 of non-residence, and permissions to hold more than one benefice ; 
 
 coincided with the period at which the Papacy was approaching its meridian 
 of glory. Yet it is well known that he was the most fearless and consistent re- 
 buker of the Papal encroachments, of his day. In the spirit, and almost in 
 the very words, of the Statute of Provisors, he declaims against the intolerable 
 practice of "reserving" benefices by the Court of Rome, and, in fear of the 
 servitude to which the English Church was rapidly being reduced, calls upon 
 the nobles and citizens to rise in defence of their spiritual Mother. At Lyons 
 he even rebuked Innocent IV. to his very face, and in the last year of his life 
 and episcopate, he refused to induct the nephew of Innocent, Frederick di 
 Lavagna, to a canonry at Lincoln, to which the Pope had presented him. The 
 fear of a possible schism, as the result of the oppressive rule of Rome, seems to 
 have been constantly before him, and haunted even his dying bed. Such was 
 the Bishop of mediaeval England, whom Wickliffe and Huss regarded, not 
 unnaturally, as a kindred spirit ; and now having premised this, I enquire what 
 was Grossetete's belief on the question of the official prerogative of the Bishop of 
 Borne. To the Chapter of Lincoln (Ep. exxvii., Rolls series) he points out that 
 the Pope is as Moses was, whom God made Prince over all Israel, and has the 
 plenitude of power over nations and kingdoms. Bishops in the same way 
 correspond to the judges who, by Jethro's advice, assisted Moses. On juris- 
 diction, he says that the Bishop receives power for his work from the Pope at 
 first hand (a primo tradente), thence committing the power of the Ministry to 
 inferior pastors. The Pope receives plenitude of power from Jesus Christ, whose 
 place he holds ; the Bishop receiving his power from the Pope, and from 
 Christ through the Pope. The Pope and the Bishops he compares respectively 
 to the sun, and to moon and stars. As the sun cannot shine always everywhere, 
 but of his own fulness illumines the moon, that the earth may not be left in 
 darkness : so the Pope conveys to Bishops whatever power they have for 
 enlightening and vivifying the Church, and exhibits his own presence in their 
 persons. See Rob. Grossetete Epp., ed. H. R. Luard, D.D., (Longmans, 1861,) 
 pp. lxxiii. — lxxxiii. ; and Epp. exxvii. and exxxi. ; also Hardwick, Med. Ch. Hist., 
 pp. 246, 399, note, and 427. 
 
 u Hallam, Mid. Ages, Church and State, p. 63, note, (Alex. Murray, 1868.) 
 
 x 1 and 2 P. and M., c. 8. 
 
 i 1 Card., Doc. An., Introd., p. 9 ; and Lingard, Hist., v. p. 74, note.
 
 38 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 4. He dispensed in the canonical impediments of matrimony ; 5. He 
 received appeals from the Spiritual Courts." 
 
 But by the Reformation these privileges of the Roman Bishop were 
 appropriated either directly, or virtually, by the Crown. In some 
 minor matters the Archbishop of the Province had a share. The 
 highest examples of jurisdictional power, the reformation of heresy, 
 the hearing of appeals from the spiritual courts, went, as we have 
 seen, not to the Archbishop, but to the King. In the matter of 
 licences and dispensations 2 , the Archbishop was restricted as to his 
 own act, to such grants " as be matters of no great importance," 
 and of which the tax was under four pounds; all other faculties 
 requiring the Royal confirmation under the Great Seal. 
 
 But to come to the appointment of Bishops. The Pope had 
 formerly collated: now it became part of "the King's prerogative 
 Royal; to whom only appertaineth the collation and gift of all 
 Archbishoprics, Bishoprics, etc.," as the Act, a of Edward VI. states, 
 which abolished even the figment of the conge oVeslire. Neither 
 Henry nor Edward can be charged with any misconception of the 
 spiritual powers which they had " annexed" to the Crown, nor with 
 any half measures in carrying them into effect. According to the old 
 bi lief, the Bishop derived his jurisdiction from the Pope: but, says 
 the Act b of Henry VIII., " Archbishops, Bishops, Archdeacons, and 
 other ecclesiastical persons, have no manner of jurisdiction ecclesias- 
 tical, but by, from, and under your Royal Majesty." Henry, and 
 Edward after him, issued Royal Commissions to Bishops, ''that they 
 might exercise their episcopal jurisdiction ." " Forasmuch," says the 
 warrant, "as all authority of jurisdiction, and all manner of jurisdic- 
 tion whatsoever, as well that which is called ecclesiastical as secular, 
 and of all magistrates within our realm, emanates, as to its original 
 source, from the Royal power as Supreme Head d ;" the King then 
 delegates his powers {vices nostras) to the Bishop, and begins by 
 declaring him duly licensed. The Supreme Head then gives the 
 Bishop power to ordain ! 
 
 Indeed, the Commission given to Bonner states clearly enough, that 
 it was only from the impossibility of the King's lay- Vicegerent, 
 Cromwell, performing in person all his duties, that the power of 
 ordination itself was delegated to the Bishop e . Cromwell was already 
 the superior of every spiritual peer of the realm, not excepting the 
 
 * 25 Hen. VIIL, c. 21, s. 6. a 1 Ed. VI., c. 2. b 37 Hen. VIII., c. 17, s. 2. 
 
 c See " Commissio domino Episcopo Hereford, a rege data, pro jurisdictione 
 sua Episcopali exercenda." Wilkins, iii. 797; and 1 Card., Doc. An., p. 1, for 
 Ed. 71. 's Commission to Cranmer. d Ibid. 
 
 e The words are, " Quia tamen, ipse Thomas Cromwell negotiis adeo pra3- 
 peditus existit, quod ad omnem jurisdictionem in sua persona expediendam non 
 sufticiet, vices tibi nostras committendas fore, teque licentiandum esse decer- 
 nimus ad ordinandum quoscunque, etc." — Brodrick and Fremantle, Introd., 
 p. xxxiii. and note ; and Wilkins' Cone, iii. p. 798.
 
 the Appointment of Bishops. 39 
 
 Primate himself. As Henry's vicar, and wielding the ecclesiastical 
 jurisdiction, he had, though a layman, the reformation of heresy and 
 error in the Church. In the House of Lords he sat on the same bench 
 as the Archbishop of Canterbury, and above him. 
 
 But to return to the Commission. The King gives the Bishop 
 power to ordain f , to institute to benefices, etc., to hear ecclesiastical 
 suits, etc. ; all which powers, saving and excepting such as are the 
 Bishop's by Holy Scripture ? , the King grants in his own name and 
 authority, together with power of every kind of ecclesiastical coercion 
 appertaining. 
 
 Accordingly, a new style came into vogue at this time in the de- 
 scription of the Episcopal title. Prae-reformation Bishops were said to 
 be appointed "by the grace of God and of the Apostolic See 11 ;" now 
 it was altered. In strict conformity with the new doctrines, Cran- 
 mer began to style himself as, " Thomas, permissione Divina, Can- 
 tuar. Archiepiscopus, etc. per illustrissimum Edwardum Sextum sufli- 
 cienter et legitime fulcitus 1 :" and as an emblem of the connection 
 between the Episcopal order and the Crown, it was commanded k that 
 "Bishops, or persons exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction," should 
 have the King's arms graven on their seals of office. 
 
 5. 
 
 On the death of Henry and accession of Edward, it was thought 
 necessary by Cranmer to take out a new Commission for the Metro- 
 political see, but these Letters of Jurisdiction terminated with this 
 reign, and were not revived by Elizabeth. She did, however, revive 
 the conge d'eslire, which her brother had abolished : and although 
 the process seems fairly to warrant the remark of Edward 1 , that 
 " the said elections be in very deed no elections, but only by a writ 
 
 1 1 Card., Doc. An., p. 2. The King also licensed to " preach." In Feb. 1548, 
 this power was committed to the King, the King's Visitors, and the Bishops. In 
 April of the same year, the licensing power was restricted to the King, Protector, 
 and Primate only. By September, all licences were cancelled, all preaching 
 forbidden, and Bishops themselves had to obtain permission to preach from the 
 Crown. 1 Card., Doc. An., 63. 
 
 * The words are, "praeter et ultra ea quae ex sacris Uteris commissa tibi 
 esse dignoscuntur." Mr. Haddan (Apost. Succession, p. 287,) thinks this clause 
 saves the whole of the Commission from serious objection. I really cannot see 
 it. The King declares in most ample terms, that all ecclesiastical jurisdiction 
 proceeds from himself. Having premised this, he proceeds to declare the 
 Bishop duly licensed, and gives him power to ordain. But, says the King, 
 this does not touch any powers belonging to you according to Holy Scripture. 
 And what can this mean, except that the King does not pretend to convey 
 the power of Order, but the power of Jurisdiction ? And this is a spiritual 
 grant, as before it had emanated from a spiritual person, the Pope ; whose 
 confirmation of a Bishop-elect, gave him, not his order, but his jurisdiction. 
 
 h Hardwick, Med. Ch. Hist., p. 240. 
 
 1 Ex. Reg. Cranmer. 1 Card., Doc. An., 85. These words " per regem fulcitus," 
 as occurring in the official instruments of Bishops, were expressly ordered to be 
 discontinued, by Mary. See her letter of Articles, 1 Card., Doc. An., 122, Art. 2. 
 
 " 1 Ed. VI., c. 2. > 1 Ed. VI., c. 2.
 
 40 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 of cong6 cP estire have colours, shadows, or pretences of elections, serv- 
 ing nevertheless to no purpose ;" yet, notwithstanding, the venerable 
 comedy is still enacted each time that a new occupant has to be pro- 
 vided for an episcopal vacancy. 
 
 In point of fact, all Bishops in England are nominated by the 
 Crown, and the process from first to last is directed by Royal autho- 
 rity 111 . A congdd'esUre is sent to the Chapter, ordering them to proceed 
 to election, together with a letter missive from the King, containing the 
 name of the person whom he would have them elect. If no election be 
 made within twelve days, the appointment devolves directly to the 
 King, who can appoint by letters patent. Or if the Chapter refuse to 
 elect the King's nominee, they incur prcemunire. The same penalty 
 also attaches to the Archbishop, if he fails to perform any of his duties 
 in the matter. When the election is made, the King gives his assent, 
 and issues his mandate to the Archbishop authorizing him to confirm 
 the election. In the process of confirmation 11 , the election and the 
 Royal assent thereto are recited : the oaths of office are taken, and a 
 citation or si quis read, enabling objectors to oppose the election, if 
 necessary. Thereupon the Archbishop confirms by authority of the 
 aforesaid Eoyal mandate, then he consecrates, also under Royal writ. 
 
 It should be remarked, however, that the provision supposed to be 
 afforded for possible objections to the appointment is purely formal. 
 Objections, as a fact, are inadmissible. The point has been tested. At 
 the confirmation of Dr. Hampden in 1848°, objectors presented them- 
 selves, and were refused. On an application for a mandamus to the 
 Archbishop to hear the objections, the court was equally divided in 
 opinion : two of the four judges thinking it imperative, by the Act of 
 Henry VIII. (25, c. 19), on the Archbishop to confirm, without taking 
 cognizance of the objections ; and two, that the objections ought to have 
 been heard. In these circumstances no mandamus was issued. Such is 
 the mode by which the liberties of Holy Church, and in particular, 
 the freedom of elections, are preserved under our present constitution. 
 
 One closing act in the appointment of Bishops remains to be noticed. 
 The Prelate, who has thus been elected, confirmed, and consecrated by 
 Royal command, now enters the Presence, and kneeling down before 
 the King, and placing his hands in the King's hands, makes the 
 following remarkable declaration : " I, A.B., now elected, confirmed, 
 
 m Act 25 Hen. VIII. , c. 20, regulates the present mode of appointing Bishops ; 
 and see Burn, Eccl. Law, Ed. 1842 (Phillimore) , under "Bishops ; " and Hook's 
 Ch. Diet. 
 
 n The modern process of " confirmation " of an election, involves no less than 
 eleven "instruments" in the course of it, according to Burn. The "definite 
 sentence or act of confirmation," he says, " is that which commits to the Bishop 
 elected the care, governance, and administration of the spiritualties," and is 
 usually performed by the Archbishop's Vicar- General. See Burn's Eccl. Law, 
 (Bishops), pp. 204—207, Ed. 1842, Phillimore. 
 
 ° See Warren's Ed. of Blackstone, p. 293.
 
 the Appointment of Bishops. 41 
 
 and consecrated Bishop of C, do hereby declare that your Majesty is 
 the only Supreme Governor of this your llealm in spiritual and eccle- 
 siastical things, as well as in temporal, etc. And I acknowledge, that 
 I hold the said Bishopric, as well the spiritualties as the temporalties 
 thereof, only of your Majesty ; and for the same temporalties I do my 
 homage to your Majesty, so help me Godi'." 
 
 Such is the tenor of the Oath of Homage. The concluding clause 
 has given rise to a good deal of anxiety ; but there is every reason to 
 believe it to be a perfectly innocuous statement. The " Spiritualties" 
 here asserted to be held of the Crown alone, and which a casual reader 
 would suppose to denote the Bishop's spiritual jurisdiction, are probably, 
 I may say almost certainly, nothing more than the equivalent of the 
 " spiritualia bo?ia" of the Episcopal benefice, and a matter of so many 
 pounds, shillings, and pence. This Mr. Lea has conclusively proved 
 in his Pamphlet^ on the subject, to which I beg to refer all those who 
 may be desirous of further information on the question. What is, per- 
 haps, of more importance, is the fact that the mention of "spiritualties" 
 as held of the Crown, does not occur in any Bishop's oath previous to 
 the Reformation'. They are first named in the oath taken by Parker, 
 and appear to have been generally used since that time. The old form ■ 
 of the oath spoke of "temporalties" only, or of "the lands" which the 
 Bishop claimed to hold of his Sovereign. Cranmer, in taking oath 
 in 1533, makes no mention of spiritualties, only of temporalties: 
 and Mr. Lea's example of a Bishop's oath of Mary's reign is to the 
 same effect. 
 
 6. 
 
 The wording of the Oath of Homage 1 is, however, of very minor 
 importance ; the point which alone merits serious consideration being 
 that underlying the oath, the spiritual jurisdiction, namely, which the 
 
 p This form of the oath was supplied by the late Lord Kussell in his letter to 
 the " Times " of March 6, 1875. 
 
 i Oath of Homage, J. W. Lea. (Eivingtons, 1875.) 
 
 r Collier, Hist., iii. 196, gives a Bishop's oath of Eichard Second's time. 
 "Bishop's Fealty — I, A.B., shall be faithful, and true faith and troth bear unto 
 you, our Sovereign Lord, and to your heirs, Kings of England. And I shall do 
 and truly acknowledge the service of the hauls, which I claim to hold of you, 
 as in the right of the Church." Another of the same period, in the Harl. MS. 
 (867, fol. 426), runs as follows: — "I will be faithful and true, and faith and 
 loyalty I will bear to the King, and to his heirs, Kings of England ; of life, and 
 of member, and of earthly honour, against all people who may live and die. And 
 truly acknowledge, and freely will do the services which belong to the temporalties 
 of the Bishoprick of N. which I claim to hold of you, and which you render to 
 me. So help me God, and His Saints." 
 
 * Lea's Oath of Homage, pp. 48 — 51. 
 
 1 The prae-Beformation Bishop, it should be added, first made oath to the Pope, 
 promising obedience to S.Peter, ihe Holy See, to the reigning Pope, and his 
 canonical successors ; as also to defend the Papacy and the Begalia of S. Peter 
 against all comers. The Act of Henry VIII. (25, c. 20, s. 5), on the contrary, 
 expressly ordered the Bishop-elect to make " such oath and fealty only to the 
 King." Cf. Burn, Eccl. Law,- Ed. 1842, (Bishops;.
 
 42 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 Crown, whether or not, conveys to Bishops of the Church of England. 
 And to this I now apply myself. 
 
 It is, of course, unreasonable to suppose that the Civil power could 
 pretend to convey that spiritual capacity of a Bishop which comes of 
 order only. But it is not so clear that the Crown, though dis- 
 claiming power of order, equally disclaims the grant of such spiritual 
 authority as may enable the Bishop to put his power of order in 
 action. That Henry and Edward presumed to devise this authority 
 to Bishops, is plain from the terms of the Jurisdictional Commissions 
 already quoted: but the question remains, whether the Civil power 
 has, since that time, retired from such unwarrantable claims, and 
 contented itself with a prerogative more in accordance with reason, 
 no less than with tradition and Church law? Does the Crown, in 
 fact, still impart episcopal jurisdiction, or no ? 
 
 The answer is very simple u . "We have to go back no further than the 
 reign of his late Majesty, William the Fourth, and to the founding of 
 the see of Australia, for ample information on this head. In the terms 
 of the Letters Patent the King gives the Bishop, 1. Power to Ordain, 
 u We do by these presents, give and grant to the said Bishop of Aus- 
 tralia, and his successors, Bishops of Australia, full power and authority 
 to admit into the Holy Orders of Deacon and Priest respectively, those 
 whom he shall deem duly qualified." 2. Power of Ecclesiastical censure, 
 
 a The Keformation principle, that the Crown is the immediate source of 
 Episcopal jurisdiction in the Church of England, is not peculiar to the reigns of 
 Henry VIII. or Edward VI. In 1803, Bishop Horsley stated the theory with 
 great lucidity, on the occasion of a petition presented to the House of Lords by 
 the Irish Eoman Catholic Bishops. He said, "A noble Duke has said, in excul- 
 pation of them, that these Eoman Catholic Bishops are really ' Bishops.' Most 
 undoubtedly they are Bishops, as truly as any here ; they are of the Episcopal 
 order, and men, I daresay, in their individual character, highly worthy of that 
 pre-eminence in the Church. But, I am sure, the noble Duke knows enough of 
 our eoclesiastical matters to be apprised of the distinction between the ■ Power 
 of Order,' and the ' Power of Jurisdiction.' The power of order these Eoman 
 Catholic prelates possess, but the power of jurisdiction does not of necessity 
 attach upon the power of order. A man may be a Bishop, and yet it follows not 
 that he is Bishop of a diocese. The two powers of order and jurisdiction are 
 quite distinct, and of distinct origin. The power of order is properly a capacity 
 of exercising the power of jurisdiction conferred by a competent authority ; and 
 this power of order is conveyed through the hierarchy itself, and no other au- 
 thority but that of the hierarchy can give it. The only competent authority to 
 
 give the power of episcopal jurisdiction is the Crown In neither part of the 
 
 Kingdom, therefore, can there be any legitimate Power of Jurisdiction but what is 
 conferred by the Crown : and the claim of such a power, independent of the 
 Crown, is a most outrageous violation of the very first principle of our ancient 
 Constitution." (Hansard, First Series, vol. iv. col. 800.) In 1825, another eminent 
 prelate, Bishop Van Mildert, makes precisely the same observation in the House 
 of Peers. He refers to Bishop Horsley's exposition of the matter, and concludes 
 thus ; " the true line of distinction I apprehend, my Lords, to be this : spiritual 
 functions belong exclusively to the Church, spiritual jurisdiction belongs to the 
 State, as allied to the Church ; and although exercised by the Church, is derived 
 from the State." (Hansard, Second Series, vol. xiii. col. 696.) And the teaching 
 of Bishops of the present day is of the same kind. Vide Sup. Bp. Wordsworth 
 on derivation of Jurisdiction from the Crown, p. 6.
 
 the Appointment of Bishops. 43 
 
 t( and to punish and correct chaplains, ministers, priests, and deacons, 
 according to their demerits." 3. Power to confirm ; " and we do give 
 and grant, etc., full power and authority to confirm those that are 
 baptized and come to years of discretion." 4. Plenary powers of 
 jurisdiction ; " and to perform all other functions peculiar to, and appro- 
 priate to the office of a Bishop, within the limits of the said see of 
 Australia, and not otherwhere"." 
 
 It would seem then placed beyond all doubt, that the prin- 
 ciple of the Crown being the fount of episcopal jurisdiction, which 
 Henry VIII. and Edward VI. declared it to be, is still the theory and 
 practice of the present day. Indeed, the present Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury admits as much. He views the spiritual jurisdiction and the 
 civil precisely in the same light as the Tudor princes regarded them ; 
 Bishops and Magistrates being on a par with each other, so far as 
 ihe source of their several jurisdictions is concerned, that source being 
 the same to both, the Crown. Speaking of the doctrine of the Re- 
 formers, the Archbishop says x , " Both (i.e. the clergy and the magis- 
 trates) were acknowledged to derive their authority from the same 
 source." The only objection that the Archbishop can see to this is, 
 lest these two kinds of officers should be supposed to derive their 
 respective authority "in the same way." But this objection he shews 
 is met by the clause of the thirty-seventh Article, which separates 
 11 clerical functions and the Power of the keys from temporal do- 
 minion y ." The power, that is to say, not of order, but of juris- 
 dicti >n, is held to proceed from the Crown. 
 
 And this is no such jurisdiction as Ethelbert, for instance, gave 
 S. Augustine, in allowing him to preach in the royal city, and in 
 assigning him buildings for the purpose. It is the gift of an autho- 
 rity which is of a wholly spiritual nature. The Crown pretends 
 to grant the Bishop full power to ordain, confirm, and perform all 
 
 v Bp. Broughton's Patent, Vicar- General's Office, Jan. 13, 1836. Five years 
 later a similar patent was given to Bishop Selwyn for New Zealand ^granting 
 power to ordain, and conveying to the Bishop spiritual and ecclesiastical juris- 
 diction throughout the new see. The Queen also asserted her right to appoint 
 Archdeacons in the diocese, and to revoke the patent at her pleasure. These 
 last two points Bishop Selwyn was able to get removed from the Patent : but the 
 first and more offensive statements the Officers of the Crown refused to alter. 
 See Tucker's Life of Bishop Selwyn, vol. i. p. 72. 
 
 1 Pref . to Brod. and Fremantle, p. x. 
 
 y Were it not for the Primate's statement to the contrary, it would hardly be 
 worth while to insist on the utter inadequacy of the thirty-seventh Article, in 
 the way of any real limitation of the Supremacy on the point under dispute. 
 It cannot be brought forward as a saving clause, on a question of the source of 
 Jurisdiction. For what does the Article say? " We give not to our Princes th» 
 ministering, either of God's Word, or the Sacraments : " and this is nothing ti 
 the purpose. No one ever imagined that Kings or Queens of England would b< 
 anxious to preach or baptize, any more than that the Pope would be likely t< 
 occupy his time with the duties of an ordinary parish priest. The question is, 
 whether the Civil power makes no pretension to convey jurisdiction to Bishops, 
 and this the Article does not touch.
 
 44 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 other episcopal functions. "When, therefore, Archbishop Bramhall * 
 states that Bishops only derive from the Crown " liberty and power to 
 exercise actually and lawfully upon the subjects of the Crown, that 
 habitual jurisdiction which we received at our ordination," but con- 
 tends, in the same breath, that no spiritual jurisdiction is here in- 
 volved, he does, in reality, make one half of his proposition contra- 
 dict the other. The "habitual jurisdiction received at ordination," 
 if it means anything, means the power of order; and " liberty and 
 power to exercise actually and lawfully" the power of order upon 
 certain persons, is nothing else than the power of jurisdiction. And 
 it is undoubtedly a spiritual power, as also a new and true power in 
 itself, distinct from the power of order; and as such has never per- 
 tained to the civil governor to grant, but to the pastors of the Church 
 alone, as part of her spiritual commission. And, besides, I think that 
 any one looking at the principles laid down by Henry VIII. on his 
 adoption of the headship, will see that they did actually involve the 
 theory of a spiritual jurisdiction in the Crown, and the consequent 
 capacity of the Crown to transmit the requisite jurisdiction to a Bishop. 
 And the same may be said of the Supremacy of Elizabeth. Neither of 
 them can be charged with the anomaly of dispensing authority to 
 Bishops, and yet maintaining that they acted in so doing merely in 
 a civil capacity, or that the authority so granted was not the full 
 equivalent of the jurisdiction imparted under the old regime. On the 
 contrary, it was very plainly declared that the office would in future 
 be supplied by the Crown. English prelates were not to suffer any- 
 thing from the abolition of the Papal jurisdiction; for the jurisdiction 
 itself was neither abolished nor suspended, but only transferred to the 
 Civil power. 
 
 Henry himself had no doubt as to the nature of the authority he 
 was then claiming. The origin of all jurisdiction, spiritual or tem- 
 poral, lay in the regal office, and he wished even to extend his newly- 
 discovered principle to a period rather embarrassing to his theory, 
 viz. the Apostolic Church. " Whether the Apostles, lacking a higher 
 power, as in not having a Christian king among them, made Bishops by 
 that necessity, or by the authority given by God a ?" is 'the significant 
 problem put by the King to the Bishops for their consideration; and 
 Cranmer replies to a similar position, that " he that is appointed 
 
 z Works, vol. i. p. 272. There seems to be some confusion in this author's 
 mind between "subjects of the Crown " and " subjects " in the theological sense ; 
 according to which it is said (Suarez, de Legibus, 1. iv. c. 4) " that when a see is 
 given to a Bishop, matter for jurisdiction is applied to him, so that certain 
 persons become his subjects, which before they were not." And besides, juris- 
 diction is not "habitual," for it may be recalled. Henry VIII. allowed his 
 Bishops to hold their authority only during his pleasure; and William IV. and 
 pur present Queen assert their right to revoke the Bishop's patent as they 
 please. See pp. 43 and 47, notes. a Burnet, Hist. I. pt. ii. p. 338.
 
 the Appointment of Bishops. 45 
 
 to be a Bishop or Priest, needeth not consecration by the Scripture, 
 for election and appointing thereto is sufficient 15 ." 
 
 Having once, therefore, established his ecclesiastical supremacy, 
 Henry was quite prepared to carry it to its logical conclusion. He 
 was, by statute, Head of the Church of England; he had all the 
 jurisdiction pertaining to that dignity, and it is declared that he 
 can act in that capacity with all the spiritual authority attach- 
 ing to such an office. Then we turn to his official acts. In his 
 Commissions to Bishops, the King gives them authority to exer- 
 cise their episcopal jurisdiction, and enunciates as a principle that 
 all ecclesiastical jurisdiction flows from the King as its fountain- 
 head. Elizabeth's Act of Supremacy, as will be seen further on, 
 only asserted this axiom of the Reformation in even plainer 
 terms. 
 
 The notion, then, that the Crown gives jurisdiction, but not 
 "spiritual" jurisdiction, seems to me to be one that will not stand 
 the test of historical accuracy, besides being opposed to the idea of 
 episcopal jurisdiction itself. What jurisdiction can a Bishop receive 
 from any source ; if, that is, such authority be requisite for the exer- 
 cise of his episcopal functions, unless it be a spiritual one ? Either it 
 is spiritual, or it is nothing ; for it will not be pretended that a civil 
 jurisdiction can give validity to spiritual ministrations, which without 
 it would be null ! 
 
 Bramhall is, therefore, so far correct in stating that the Crown 
 does, at least since the It formation, convey to Bishops authority to 
 exercise their power of order; only, it was never any part of the 
 Civil power to bestow. Rightly or wrongly, the "Confirmation" of 
 a Bishop-elect (and hence his power of jurisdiction) had lain with the 
 Pope. This prerogative of the Koman see, Henry himself admitted so 
 late as the year 1532; although the Act c provided for episcopal 
 consecrations notwithstanding, in case the necessary bulls should be 
 refused from Borne. Two years later, however, all presentments of 
 Bishops-elect for Papal confirmation were prohibited d , and the process 
 was ordered to be referred to the Archbishop, or to any four Bishops. 
 What, then, was it which empowered the Archbishop or the Bishops, 
 now deprived of all " bull, brief, or pall apostolic," to execute so novel 
 an office? It was the King, by authority of Parliament. His high- 
 ness was enabled under the Act, to signify the election, by letters 
 patent under the Great Seal, to the Archbishop or Bishops, requiring 
 and commanding them to confirm, invest, and consecrate the Bishop- 
 elect with all celerity ; and if the said prelates failed in any part of 
 their duties, they incurred praemunire forthwith. 
 
 b Burnet, Hist. I. pt. ii. p. 350. c 23 Hen. VIH., c. 20. 
 
 d 25 Hen. VHL, c. 20.
 
 46 The Royal Supremacy with reference to 
 
 Of course, if the process of confirmation by an Archbishop, or by 
 any four Bishops, acting under authority of the King's letters patent, 
 and trembling in fear of pain of life and member, with forfeiture of 
 goods; liable to be put out of the King's protection, and their bodies, 
 wheresoever found, taken, imprisoned, and ransomed at the King's 
 will, — if confirmation of the Episcopate, under such conditions as 
 these, be held equivalent to the anciently-received mode, there is an 
 end of the matter. 
 
 7. 
 
 Neither is the modern custom of creating new sees in the Queen's 
 dominions, and elsewhere, by Act of Parliament, altogether free from 
 exception. A new see, for example, is founded in the Colonies : new 
 ground opened, and a new spiritual kingdom set up under a Bishop, 
 with subjects given him. Or else in England, a portion of the spiritual 
 subjects of an ancient see is detached from it, and transferred to a 
 newly-formed diocese. But in neither case can any theory of an 
 inherent jurisdiction in the see itself be pleaded, for a new episcopal 
 chair altogether is created. And a creation of this kind, so purely 
 spiritual in its nature, has never been the act of the Civil power 
 alone. Kings have founded and endowed new bishoprics, but that 
 which authorized and confirmed their foundation, was never of old 
 time any but the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church e . 
 
 Anciently, new sees were established by the Synod of the Province, 
 and there is a Canon of an African Council f to that effect, requiring the 
 matter to be enacted " in full Council, with the consent of the Bishop 
 in whose diocese the new Church lay, and by the authority of the 
 Metropolitan." In this way, S. Augustine procured the subdivision 
 of his own diocese of Hippo, and S. Remigius established the bishopric 
 of Laon. In time, this prerogative passed, it is true, from the Council 
 to the Pope ; but a right principle was maintained, that spiritual 
 jurisdiction could be derived only from a spiritual, and not a tem- 
 poral source. 
 
 But what is the modern practice? New bishoprics are created, 
 new sees with their proper spiritual and ecclesiastical jurisdiction 
 defined, and the new spiritual kingdom committed to a Bishop, neither 
 by authority of Synod, Pope, Primate, or Diocesan * : but disregard- 
 
 e The Council of London, 1075 (Canon III.), removes, with the King's con- 
 sent, the sees of Sherborne and Selsey, to Sarum and Chichester. Dorchester 
 was removed to Lincoln, by the consent and authority of Pope Alexander, 
 Lanfranc, and the rest of the Episcopate : see Collier, ii. pp. 20, 21 ; and Monast. 
 Anglic, vol. iii. p. 258. 
 
 f Cone. Carth. 2, Can. 5, and Con. 3, Can. 42 ; and Ferrand. Breviar. Canon., 
 c. 13, quoted by Bingham, p. 52, ed. Bohn. 1852. 
 
 B The spiritual functionary is only called in, afterwards, to note what the secular 
 power has effected. Thus William IV. (in Bishop Broughton's patent) ordains 
 that the office of Archdeacon of New South Wales shall cease ; constitutes all 
 the territories of the colony into a diocese, and declares it named the Bishopric
 
 the Appointment of Bishoj)s. 47' 
 
 ing all ancient custom and canon ; and solely by Act of Parlia- 
 ment, a lay and secular body possessing no ecclesiastical qualifica- 
 tions whatsoever. 
 
 And this is not even confined to the Queen's dominions. It would 
 seem, indeed, as though the ecclesiastical Supremacy of England, so 
 far from growing feebler with lapse of time, were increasing in power, 
 and bade fair to become a centre of spiritual jurisdiction for the world 
 at large. East and West flock to her for the transmission of a true 
 line of Bishops, and for an undoubted succession from the Apostles. 
 Twice within the last hundred years have the founts of spiritual 
 commission been thus unsealed, to water distant lands and nations 
 entirely unconnected with the King of England's temporal rule. 
 By an Act of George III. h , either Archbishop was empowered to 
 consecrate any foreigner a bishop : no Royal licence for the election, 
 confirmation, or consecration being required, and no oath of obedience 
 to King or Primate demanded. This was for the United States of 
 America. 
 
 But in 1841, the Spiritual Commission of the Crown was again 
 invoked from abroad, and exerted in even bolder terms l . This time, 
 all principle of subordination to authorities spiritual or civil, was 
 flung to the winds. The Bishops to be consecrated under the Act, 
 need not even be citizens of the country in which they were to officiate. 
 The territory and the persons to be thus episcopally governed, had no 
 affinity, even of the remotest, with the Queen's jurisdiction: yet it is 
 enacted by the Queen's most excellent Majesty, "that Bishops so 
 consecrated, may exercise, within such limits as may from time to 
 time be assigned for that purpose, in such foreign countries by Her 
 Majesty, spiritual jurisdiction over the ministers of British congre- 
 gations of the United Church of England and Ireland, and over such 
 other Protestant congregations as may be desirous of placing them- 
 selves under his or their authority. And accordingly, in the letters 
 patent the Queen says, " We are graciously pleased to assign Syria, 
 Chaldaea, Egypt, and Abyssinia, as the limit within which the said 
 Michael Solomon Alexander may exercise spiritual jurisdiction, etc., 
 subject nevertheless to such alterations in the said limits, as we from 
 time to time may be pleased to assign k ." But such an act implies 
 a perfectly Papal power. It is to claim the very royalties of the 
 Redeemer ! " I will give Thee the heathen for thine inheritance, 
 and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession." 
 
 of Australia. Then he nominates W. G. Broughton, so that he shall be Bishop 
 of Australia ; retains the power of revoking the appointment, subordinates the 
 Bishop to the Archbishop of Canterbury — and then, this being done, the King 
 " signifies " to the Archbishop that he has created and founded the said See 
 of Australia. h 26 Geo. in., c. 84. ' 5 Vict., 6. 
 
 k Patent for the Bishopric of Jerusalem, Nov. 6, 1841, Vicar-General's Ofiice.
 
 48 The Supremacy of Elizabeth. 
 
 Consider this. The Queen and her Parliament erect, in 1841, an 
 episcopal see at Jerusalem ; parcel out the Holy Land as the territory 
 of the new Bishop, pretend to assign him proper jurisdiction, and 
 from the Holy City as a centre, extend the spiritual sway over Syria, 
 Chaldaea, Egypt, and Abyssinia. 
 
 "Thou on the throne of David in full glory, 
 Erom Egypt to Euphrates, and beyond, 
 Shalt reign, and Rome and Caesar need not fear." 
 Go back eighteen hundred years; at the hour of His glorious Ascen- 
 sion, the Lord of all, standing on the Mount of Olives, and in view 
 of that same city of Jerusalem, commissions thus the assembled 
 eleven : " Wait for the promise of the Father, which ye have heard 
 of Me. Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days 
 hence ; ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come 
 upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto Me, both in Jerusalem, 
 and in Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the 
 earth !" 
 
 IV. The Supremacy of Elizabeth. 
 
 It will, however, be said that, as far as the present Church of 
 England is concerned, we are bound, not by the reforms of Henry 
 or Edward, but by that of Elizabeth ; whose statutes of Supremacy 
 and Uniformity are the basis of the existing Constitution of Church 
 and State. Elizabeth did not revive all the reforming acts that Mary 
 had repealed : and in particular refused to assume the style of Head, 
 but on the contrary dropped it. A more reasonable notion of the 
 Supremacy succeeded. In the Injunctions of 1559, and Articles of 
 1570, the Ministry of the "Word and Sacraments is disclaimed as any 
 part of the prerogative of the Crown. And in the State Papers quoted 
 by Mr. Eroude 1 , the Queen declared that she claimed no other authority 
 in the Church, than had attached from immemorial time to the 
 English Crown. To decide any article of faith or point of religion, 
 was no part of the province of the Sovereign ; nor did the Queen 
 desire to change rites and ceremonies before received and observed 
 in the Catholic Church. The Supremacy meant no more than this, 
 that she, as Queen of England, should have the right to rule all 
 persons born in the realm, as her subjects, and hers only. And 
 the Queen assures them that she did not intend that any of her 
 subjects should be molested inquisitorially in matters of faith: but 
 that each might retain their own opinions upon religious observances, 
 an outward conformity being all that was required m . 
 
 1 Hist., x. 5, and sqq. 
 
 m This proclamation was sent to every parish, and hung up in some public 
 place : besides being read aloud in service-time from the pulpit. Ibid., p. 6.
 
 The Supremacy of Elizabeth. 49 
 
 1. 
 
 This is certainly a considerable improvement upon the tone of 
 Henry's reforming Acts ; and had the Supremacy amounted to no more 
 than this, its character as the norm and model of the existing authority 
 of the Crown in ecclesiastical affairs, would present little difficulty to 
 a Catholic mind. No one would quarrel with Elizabeth, if she de- 
 manded no more than had been the Crown's from time immemorial : 
 no one could dispute her right to regard all Englishmen as her subjects 
 and hers only. But the question is, whether such abstract professions 
 as these do faithfully represent the whole of the ecclesiastical power 
 that Elizabeth claimed and exercised ? 
 
 There can hardly, I imagine, be two answers to this question. Eor 
 my own part, I look upon all these enunciations of principle and 
 precedent, all these qualifications of the prerogative, as so many blinds; 
 so much dust thrown in the eyes of the disaffected, whether Calvinist 
 or Catholic, all the time that a free and unlimited exercise of the 
 Supremacy was in full swing all over the kingdom, as though no such 
 conditions had ever been made. Henry himself had glossed his 
 own usurpations when it suited his purpose. He, too, had guarded his 
 claim to spiritual power, by falsely declaring it to be of ancient right, 
 and declared that the supremum caput concerned only " the persons of 
 priests, their laws, their acts, and order of living 11 ." 
 
 And I am inclined to rate Elizabeth's professions much at the same 
 value. She declares that she will disturb no point of Catholic faith or 
 ceremony, nor molest the consciences of her subjects in matters of 
 religion : and yet, at that very time, and throughout her reign, there 
 kept issuing under the Royal sign manual, injunctions, proclamations, 
 commissions, and orders in Council ; handling, and for the most part 
 utterly changing, the old form of service, both in general and in detail ; 
 heresy and error reformed as though by spiritual authority, and the 
 Mayors of the larger towns ordered to make rigorous enquiries into 
 the cases of those who refused to conform on grounds of conscience °. 
 Lastly, the reign of Elizabeth is distinguished by a series of executions 
 on the score of religion, estimated even by Anglican authorities at from 
 160 to 180 sufferers p. 
 
 But turn to the Queen's Statute of Supremacy q ; Section xvi. abol- 
 ishes the Pope's jurisdiction, which Mary had brought back, and fixes 
 the precise day when it was to come to an end. "No foreign prince, 
 person, prelate, state, or potentate, spiritual or temporal, shall at any 
 time after the last day of this session of Parliament, use, enjoy, or 
 
 n Letter to the Convoc. of York ; Wilkins' Cone, iii. 762-4. 
 
 See, for example, the history of the proceedings at York in the Queen's 
 reign, as told by a contemporary writer in "Troubles of our Catholic Fore- 
 fathers." 
 
 p Professor Smyth's Lectures on Mod. Hist., vol. i. p. 266. * 1 Eliz., c. i.
 
 50 The Supremacy of Elizabeth, 
 
 exercise any manner of power, jurisdiction, superiority, authority, 
 preeminence, or privilege, spiritual and ecclesiastical ', within this realm, 
 etc. ; hut from henceforth the same shall be clearly abolished out of 
 this realm, and all other your highness' dominions for ever." 
 
 Section xvii. is simply the correlative of the preceding. It hands the 
 spiritual jurisdiction, thus wrested from the Pope, over to the Crown. 
 " Such jurisdictions, privileges, superiorities, and pre-eminences, spiri- 
 tual and ecclesiastical, as by any spiritual and ecclesiastical state and 
 persons, and for reformation, order, and correction of the same, and 
 of all manner of errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, offences, contempts, 
 and enormities, shall for ever, by authority of this present Parliament, 
 be united and annexed to the Imperial Crown of this realm." 
 
 Section xviii. puis the Queen in immediate possession of the spiritual 
 jurisdiction so conveyed, and gives her and her heirs, etc., "full power 
 and authority by virtue of the Act" to name Commissioners who 
 might exercise, under her highness, all manner of jurisdiction, in any 
 wise touching any spiritual and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, in England 
 and Ireland : reforming all errors, heresies, and schisms, which by 
 any spiritual authority or jurisdiction can lawfully be reformed. 
 
 Such, then, is the Statute upon which the existing authority of the 
 Crown in, ecclesiastical affairs is based. It is similar to the parallel Act 
 of Henry, only that it is framed in ampler terms than his : and is more 
 precise on the point of the removal of the spiritual authority from the 
 Pope, and its transference to the Queen. 
 
 2. 
 
 But if further light is desired on this important statute, it is sup- 
 plied by the Injunctions 1 issued in the same year, 1559. In them the 
 Queen is at pains to propagate a more moderate definition of the 
 Supremacy, in order to satisfy both Papist and Puritan at once. But 
 see what she admits ! The paragraph of the Injunctions referred to is 
 headed, " An admonition s to simple men deceived by the malicious." 
 It says ', " The Queen's Majesty .... would that all her loving subjects 
 should understand that nothing was meant or intended by [the Oath of 
 Supremacy] than was acknowledged to be due to the most noble Kings 
 of famous memory, King Henry the Eighth, her Majesty's father, or 
 King Edward the Sixth, her Majesty's brother." It is then observed, 
 that if it be supposed that the wording of the oath implies a claim on 
 the part of the Crown to minister Divine offices in the Church, then 
 those who draw such inferences have been much abused by ill-disposed 
 
 r 1 Card., Doc. An., p. 210. 
 
 8 "This Admonition may be reckoned in the nature of a contemporaneous 
 exposition of a law ; as restraining the Eoyal Supremacy, which was established 
 by the Act 1 Eliz., c. 1."— Hallam, Const. Hist.,i. p. 120. Ed. 4to. 1827. 
 
 1 1 Card., Doc. An., p. 232.
 
 The Supremacy of Elizabeth. 51 
 
 persons. ''For certainly," the Queen u adds, " her Majesty neither doth, 
 nor ever will, challenge any other authority than that was challenged 
 and lately used by the said noble Kings of famous memory, King Henry 
 the Eighth and King Edward the Sixth, which is and was of ancient 
 time, due to the Imperial Crown of this realm." That is, to have the 
 rule over all her subjects, spiritual or temporal, so that no other foreign 
 power sh< uld have any superiority over them. 
 
 Here, then, we have the Queen frankly disclosing to us her own 
 mind on the whole subject. And one gains a view of the position, 
 which lends a wonderful unity and shape to the whole series of 
 Reformation enactments from the beginning : and makes the Reforma- 
 tion, not of Henry or Edward, but of Elizabeth, the true and proper 
 stand-point for the existing Church of England. Her Act restoted 
 the Supremacy to the state in which it had stood in her father's tim< j . 
 Indeed, the whole history of that troubled period becomes immensely 
 simplified, as we listen to Elizabeth expounding the Reformation. 
 Mary's reign goes for nothing. Mary's repeal of the obnoxious Acts 
 of her father and brother may be disregarded. For whatever autho- 
 rity, whatever most daring pretension to spiritual power Henry had 
 claimed and exercised, that, no more and no less, does his daughter 
 expressly declare that she also "challenge!." 
 
 That expression of her grace, by the way, shews how much she 
 meant, when she exchanged the title of Head, for the more politic one 
 of Supreme Governor; just as it throws a curious light upon all her 
 other professions. What mattered the name ? She had the thing \ 
 Her father's authority was hers now ; eleven Acts of Henry she 
 formally revived, and the tenth section of her own reviver declares 
 " that the branches, sentences, and words of the said several Acts " 
 (i.e. those revived) " and every of them, from henceforth, shall and 
 may be judged, deemed, and. taken to extend to your highness, your 
 heirs and successors, as fully and largely, as ever the same acts, or any 
 of them, did extend to the said late King, Henry the Eighth, your high- 
 ness' father." 
 
 3. 
 
 Now two y of the Acts thus revived by Elizabeth, and still stand- 
 ing in force, speak of the King as Supreme Head of the Church of 
 
 n 1 Card., Doc. An., p. 233. 
 
 x " The Queen is not willing to be called the Head of the Church of England, 
 although this title has been offered her: but she willingly accepts the title of 
 Governor, which amounts to the same thing. The Pope is again driven from 
 England, to the great regret of the Bishops, and the whole tribe of shavelings. 
 The Mass is abolished," etc. — John Parkhurst to H. Bullinger, May 21, 1559; 
 (Zurich Letters, xii.) " On the accession of Elizabeth, the Crown, while re- 
 claiming the authority (i.e. of Head), thought it prudent to retire from the 
 designation." — Froude, Hist., ii. p. 324. 
 
 r 25 Hen. YIIL, c. 21 ; and 37 Hen. YIH., c. 17. 
 
 d2
 
 52 The Supremacy of Elizabeth, 
 
 England. The second of them (37 Hen. VIII., c. 17) is very express 
 In its statements, and deserves close attention. The King, it declares, 
 '"is and has always justly been, by the Word of God, Supreme Head, 
 in earth, of the Church of England : and has full power and authority 
 to correct all manner of heresies, errours, etc., growing within the 
 ■same; and to exercise all manner of jurisdiction, commonly called 
 ecclesiastical jurisdiction." Then it is said that, notwithstanding this 
 privilege of the Crown, the Bishop of Rome and his adherents have 
 done their utmost to abolish such power given by God to the princes 
 of the earth ; prohibiting, by their decrees, any married person to be 
 judge in courts ecclesiastical, lest their false and usurped power, which 
 they pretended to have in Christ's Church, should decay. And such 
 prohibitions (not being as yet abolished by law) seem to make greatly 
 for the power of the Bishop of Rome ; and on the other hand, to be di- 
 rectly repugnant to His Majesty, as Supreme Head of the Church, 
 ■and prerogative royal, his Grace being a layman. 
 
 Section II. treats of the Crown's spiritual jurisdiction: "Archbishops, 
 Bishops, Archdeacons, and other ecclesiastical persons, have no manner 
 of jurisdiction ecclesiastical," so it boldly asserts, "but by, from, and 
 under your Royal Majesty." And the continued monopoly of the 
 'ecclesiastical courts by ecclesiastics, will, it is feared, only tend to 
 make ill-disposed persons "to think the proceedings and censures eccle- 
 siastical, made by your Highness and your vicegerent, officials, etc., 
 (being also lay and married men), to be of little or none effect or force." 
 Section III. treats of Appeal : "Your Majesty is the only and un- 
 doubted Supreme Head of the Church of England, and also of Ireland 2 , 
 to whom by Holy Scripture all authority is given, to hear and determine 
 ■all manner of causes ecclesiastical." 
 
 Such are the express statements of an Act of Henry VIII., repealed 
 by Mary, and revived by Elizabeth. Her father's Act of Supremacy 
 she did not revive. Yet that act does not contain statements and 
 assertions more offensive, more false, more profane, or, to come to the 
 point, more strong on the principle of the spiritual jurisdiction of the 
 CrowD, than this Bill for Married Doctors of Civil Law, which 
 Elizabeth revived, and which is still part of the Law of the land. 
 And therefore, in conformity with the directions of Elizabeth's statute, 
 
 1 Hooker, writing after Elizabeth had been more than thirty years upon the 
 throne, shews plainly enough that the principle of the Sovereign being ex officio 
 Head of the Church, was an acknowledged fact, even if the name of Head were 
 discarded. He says, "It is, some do imagine, too much, that Kings of England 
 should be termed Heads, in relation to the Church. That which lawfully princes 
 are, what should make it unlawful for men by special styles or titles to signify ? 
 If the having of supreme power be allowed, why is the expressing thereof by the 
 title of Head condemned? " Again, "If, therefore, a Christian King may have 
 any pre-eminence or chiefty above all others in the Church, even hereupon to 
 term him Head of that Church which is his Kingdom (Hooker's italics), should 
 not seem so unfit a thing." — Eccl. Pol., bk. viii. 4. 
 
 .
 
 
 The Sujwemacy of Elizabeth. 53 
 
 we are to judge, deem, and take, to extend this act, with all its 
 obnoxious clauses, all its falsifications of fact, all its profane appeals 
 to the Word of God, and wresting of Scripture, in branches, words, 
 and sentences, to Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors, "as fully 
 and as largely as ever the same act did extend to King Henry the 
 Eighth." 
 
 When, therefore, Elizabeth disclaims the Ministry of the Word and 
 Sacraments, but "challenges" all the spiritual authority her father had 
 claimed and used: when she appoints mixed commissions of ecclesiastics 
 and laymen, to reform heresy and error by spiritual power, to vMt with 
 ecclesiastical censures a , and give licence to preach : when she can, by 
 statute, ordain additional rites and ceremonies in the Church, alter 
 articles of religion, and interpolate rubrics in the Prayer-Book : when 
 in the matter of Parker's consecration, she can of her own mere motion 
 and certain knowledge, supply by her supreme authority any possible 
 defect there might be, either in the act of consecration or in the persons 
 of his consecrators b : when her highness can address the Bishop of Ely, 
 "Proud Prelate, you know what you were, before I made you what 
 you are ! If you do not immediately comply with my request, By 
 God, I will unfrock you ! " and reply to an address from the Commons, 
 that " if they " (the Bishops) " should neglect their duties therein, her 
 Majesty, by her supreme power and authority over the Church of 
 England, would speedily see such good redress therein, as might satisfy 
 the expectations of her loving subjects " — when such is the tone of 
 her Grace's acts and speeches in ecclesiastical affairs, increasing in 
 assertion as she increased in years, then it seems to me, that she is 
 literally carrying out the extravagant principles even of Henry 
 himself. 
 
 4. 
 
 I return, then, to a question already asked. To what authority in 
 spiritual matters, now that the Pope's jurisdiction was once more 
 
 ■ Even Burnet calls this "a great stretch of the Supremacy" and "an abuse." 
 Hist. Ref., ii. 801. 
 
 b The words of her Commission to the consecrating Bishops, containing this 
 covering clause, are as follows : — " Supplentes nihilominus suprema auctoritate 
 nostra regia, ex mero motu et certa scientia nostris, siquid aut in his quae, juxta 
 mandatum nostrum, per vos fient, aut in vobis aut vestrum aliquo, conditione, 
 statu, facultate vestris ad praemissa perficienda desit aut deerit eorum, quae per 
 statuta hujus regni, aut per leges ecclesiatticaa in hac parte requirantur aut 
 necessaria sint ; temporis ratione et rerum necessitate id postulante." And in the 
 Act (8 Eliz., c. i.) clearing Parker's consecration from possible objection, it was 
 stated that the Queen " hath also (beside such words as were used in her father's 
 and brother's reigns,) used and put in Her Majesty's letters patent, divers other 
 general icords and sentences, whereby her Highness, by her supreme power and 
 authority, hath dispensed with all causes or doubts of any imperfection or 
 disability that can be objected against the same." 
 
 c D'Ewes' Journal, 1575, p. 257. Contrast this speech of the Queen with King 
 Edgar's address to the Bishops, also on a question of ecclesiastical reform. 
 Vid. inf. p. 56.
 
 54 The Royal Supremacy 
 
 thrown overboard, could Church or nation look, unless it were to the 
 crown? And, indeed, what was the Reformation, save the rejection of 
 the one jurisdiction, and the substitution of the other in its room ? For 
 the two were not simultaneous. Never in the whole course of history- 
 had such pretensions as the Tudors challenged, been made on behalf of 
 the Crown, side by side with the acknowledgement of the Pope's spi- 
 ritual jurisdiction. The proposition has only to be stated, to contradict 
 itself. And yet this is the defence that is made. The Church, it is said d , 
 having only conceded the ancient jurisdiction, limits the Crown to a 
 jurisdiction which had co-existed with the Church for centuries, while 
 in union with Rome. That is to say, the ecclesiastical Supremacy was 
 coincident with a posture of affairs, which that very Supremacy, in 
 the assertion of it, had destroyed; and yet it had coincided with it 
 for centuries! And, what good is it to appeal to the wording of 
 statutes, when the ecclesiastical authority wielded now by the Crown 
 is not to be reconciled with any exercise of the Royal prerogative 
 prior to the break with Rome ? 
 
 What Sovereign before Henry VIII. claimed to reform heresy e , 
 to decide spiritual causes on appeal in his own courts, or act in eccle- 
 siastical affairs by ecclesiastical authority ? What English or Norman 
 Monarch declared himself to be Supreme Head in earth of the Church, 
 or asserted, as a principle, that all ecclesiastical jurisdiction emanated 
 from the Sovereign, as its fountain-head f ? 
 
 Elizabeth, herself, could find no actual precedent to go by, further 
 than those two noble Kings of famous memory, her own father and 
 brother ; and when it is pleaded that the Crown can only exert the 
 
 d Haddan, Apost. Succession, p. 290. 
 
 ■ Mr. Fremantle (Introduction to Brodrick and Fremantle's Eccl. Judgements, 
 p. lxv.) quotes Mr. Dicey, (in his Arnold Essay, 1860, p. 32,) to the effect that the 
 Privy Council dealt with heresy and sorcery in Henry VLth's reign. But, with 
 every expression of respect to Mr. Fremantle, I do not think that this statement 
 can be substantiated. Mr. Dicey himself does not go so far as this. He merely 
 points out the Privy Council's directions to Bishops to proceed against heresy, 
 a very different thing. And he remarks that the Government of Henry VI. 
 seems to have been little disposed for active measures against heresy, and 
 then, less as a defender of the faith than as protector of the King's peace. I 
 have not been able to refer to the proceedings of the Privy Council of Henry 
 Sixth's reign, but I should expect them to correspond with the laws against 
 heretics of Kichard II. , Henry IV., and Henry V. And the acts of those reigns 
 (see above, pp. 18, 19 notes) require the trial of cases of heresy to go before 
 the ordinary; the secular Judge being only empowered to enquire in cases of 
 suspected heresy, to arrest at the instance of the ordinary, and if the ordinary 
 convicted, to carry out the sentence. Henry VI., who had every reason to 
 court the support of the Church, would hardly have been likely to exceed the 
 bounds of civil jurisdiction in this matter. 
 
 f |' If we are to understand that the King is Supreme Head of the Church,. in 
 spirituals as in temporals, and that this may be affirmed to be allowed by the 
 law of Christ, then this construction being repugnant to the doctrine of the 
 Catholic Church, I must dissent from it, lest I should seem to dissent from 
 the Catholic Church, outside of which no Christian can be saved." — Tunstal, 
 Bishop of Durham, Debate on Supremacy in York Convoc. ; Wilkins, Cone, iii. 745.
 
 in the Light of History. 55 
 
 ancient jurisdiction, the fact remain?, that the Privy' Council, a lay 
 and secular court, is determining in the last instance what is by law 
 established to be the doctrine of the Church of England, and the 
 Sovereign in Council ratifies the judgement ! 
 
 V. Historical Precedent. 
 
 To return to the whole question. Is there any true precedent for 
 existing practice to be found in the prae-Reformation period, and in 
 what the Archbishop of Canterbury & calls "Roman Catholic times " ? 
 The Anglo-Saxon era, with its mixed jurisdictions, its conjunctions of 
 Kings, nobles, and ecclesiastics, in promoting the Church's welfare, is 
 not unfrequently spoken of, as though it corroborated the present 
 relations between Church and State. The Sovereigns of the tenth 
 and eleventh centuries styled themselves by even higher- sounding 
 titles than any that Henry or Edward ventured to assume. Edgar, 
 King of Mercia, calls himselfVicar of Christ; Edward the Confessor, 
 Vicar of the Most High King h . 
 
 1. 
 
 But are the cases really parallel ? " We must look at history as it is," 
 remarks a recent essayist 1 , " and not through the mists of nineteenth- 
 century politics. So long," he continues, " as men will not divest 
 themselves of the notion that there were working [then] the like 
 jealousies, and envies, producing contentions, bitterness, encroachments 
 of one power against another, of one order against another, of an 
 ecclesiastical potentate against a secular one, they will not only mis- 
 read history, but will draw the most erroneous conclusions. In those 
 times, the royal power worked harmoniously with the ecclesiastical, 
 and they mutually assisted each other. There was no wish to en- 
 croach on one another, no intention to make the one bend before 
 the other." 
 
 This is, I think, truly said. It is difficult to put our Saxon Kings 
 on a par with the absolute monarchy of Henry VIII. Indeed, the 
 very loftiness of style, so freely used by the Kings I have instanced, 
 is sufficient of itself to remove all doubt as to the kind of Supremacy 
 which the earthly monarch considered himself entitled to. It was 
 the kingly power viewed from the point of faith of a Christian, the 
 ordinance of God : and the doctrine of the Incarnation, the dominant 
 article of the Christian faith, had thrown a new light, and shed a new 
 lustre even upon crowns of this world. It was by the Incarnate 
 Deity, the God-Man, the "Fair Father Christ" of the Idylls, that 
 
 ■ See p. 66. h Quoted by Pusey, Royal Supremacy, pp. 153, 155. 
 
 Essays on Ecclesiastical Reform ; Essay II. ; E. L. Blenkinsopp, p. 82.
 
 56 The Royal Supremacy 
 
 Kings reigned, and princes executed justice ; and they were His Vice- 
 gerents, and His representatives. 
 
 And with this, again, must be considered another important point 
 of difference, not to be put out of account when men argue from the 
 life of the Church in the tenth century, to the political acts of the 
 sixteenth. I mean the religious aspect of the Christian world in that 
 age, the brotherhood in a common faith, that held men of that time in 
 a single spiritual society. To say nothing of the absence of all secta- 
 rian divisions, the modern principle of National Churches had not then 
 been thought of, and would have appeared absolutely unintelligible* 
 Long before England had been united under one temporal head, it had 
 been one in faith and spiritual government. The unity of the Church, 
 centred in the Apostolic see of the "West, was then no visionary 
 theory, but a substantive reality. The spiritual kingdom of Christ, with 
 its solemn rites, its sacred buildings, its religious orders, was the one 
 earthly object of veneration and obedience, and the one dispenser of 
 the supernatural life to rival and hostile peoples. Amid the constant 
 fluctuations of successive races and rulers, it was the one Body, gifted 
 with immortality, that could survive all variations of temporal dy- 
 nasty, and, when the Conqueror had England at his feet, stood waiting 
 to receive its own. And this state of things must not be disregarded, 
 when the period before the Conquest is ransacked for precedents to 
 justify the Reformation. The case must, indeed, be considered 
 desperate, when the laws of S. Edward are made an apology for the 
 Statute of Supremacy. 
 
 "When, therefore, King Edgar in an ecclesiastical transaction styles 
 himself the Yicar of Christ, when the Confessor is called the Yicar of 
 the Most High King, it must be remembered that the Supremacy of 
 the Roman Pontiff was an admitted fact. Neither of them pretended to 
 act in any such capacity, as would have invaded the province of the 
 Apostolic See. And, what is of equal if not greater importance, is 
 the fact that the Royal action in question did not touch any point of 
 faith, or religious ceremony, or spiritual commission : but was simply 
 an enforcement of ecclesiastical discipline, in effecting the expulsion 
 of some vicious monks from a convent at the request of S. Dunstan. 
 
 This will be plain from the speech of the same King Edgar on 
 a precisely similar occasion k . The King addresses the assembled 
 Prelates, and concludes as follows: — "I have the sword of Con- 
 stantine, ye of Peter : let us join hands, unite sword to sword, that 
 the leprous may be cast out of the camp, and the sanctuary of the 
 Lord be cleansed. Thou, Dunstan, hast with thee the venerable 
 fathers, Athelwald, Bishop of Winchester, Oswald, Bishop of Wor- 
 
 k In Pusey's Royal Supremacy, p. 152.
 
 in the Light of History. 57 
 
 cester; to you I commit the matter. That both by episcopal censure 
 and Royal authority, evil livers may be cast out of the Churches, and 
 others living by rule be brought in." It would hardly be possible, 
 I think, to state more clearly and concisely the proper relative posi- 
 tions of Church and State iu joint ecclesiastical transactions, than is 
 done by this Saxon Sovereign : or to distinguish better than Edgar 
 does here, between the legitimate prerogative of a Catholic prince \ 
 and the due jurisdiction belonging to the Church alone. 
 
 2. 
 
 With the Conquest the reins of Government certainly got into much 
 stronger hands : but the constitution of the Church, as an independent 
 spiritual corporation, owing obedience to the rule of the Pope, re- 
 mained unchanged. Indeed, the immediate effect of the accession of 
 "William I. was, for the time, to aggrandize™ the authority of the 
 Court of Rome in this country, and with it the jurisdiction of the 
 Christian courts. His separation of the ecclesiastical and the civil 
 tribunals, the most important ecclesiastical transaction of his reign, 
 contributed directly to this result. 
 
 It is only when we come to the reign of Henry II., that anything 
 like a true parallel is found to the Royal Supremacy of the Reform- 
 ation. If the ecclesiastical policy of Henry VIII. has a prototype in 
 the earlier history of our constitution, it is in this Prince and his 
 Clarendon Constitutions. In his wish to confine appeals to the realm, 
 if not in his control of episcopal elections, and episcopal courts, Henry 
 II. may be said to have almost anticipated the policy of his more 
 famous namesake. And, had his Constitutions remained in force, had 
 they been handed on to after ages as the rule and practice of the 
 Crown in its relations with Holy Church, then the ecclesiastical 
 statutes of the sixteenth century would not wear that marked cha- 
 racter of novelty which distinguishes them. 
 
 But what are the facts? So far from becoming any part of the 
 Constitution, the force of the Clarendon Statutes did not even survive 
 
 1 The following, from the Anglo-Saxon Institutes, may serve to shew something 
 of the position of the Sovereign of that time, as regards the Church. " Of an 
 earthly King. It is the duty of a Christian King, in a Christian nation, to be 
 the people's comfort, and a liighteous Shepherd over a Christian flock. And it 
 is his duty, with all his power, to upraise Christianity, and everywhere further 
 and protect God's Church." Again, "It is incumbent on Bishops patiently to 
 endure what they cannot themselves mend, until it shall have been announced 
 to the King : and let him then get amends for the offence against God when the 
 Bishop cannot, if he will rightly execute God's will, aud righteously exalt his 
 own Kingship." — Thorpe's Ancient Laws, vol. ii. pp. 305 and 319. 
 
 m The recognition of the Civil authority of the Court of Borne, Blackstone 
 (Comm., iv. 105) traces to the era of the Conquest and the joint action of the 
 Pope and the Conqueror in relation to the Saxon hierarchy. The spiritual 
 authority of the Papacy in this country, he implies, had existed from S. Au- 
 gustine's time.
 
 58 The Royal Supremacy 
 
 Henry the Second's reign. In 1174, just ten years after their enact- 
 ment, the King made his "purgation 11 " for the death of Becket; the 
 effect of it being to efface everything that had been done in prejudice 
 of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The point of appeal, the most impor- 
 tant feature of the Constitutions, was expressly conceded ; the King 
 pledging himself to let nothing hinder a free appeal being made out of 
 the realm to Rome. And what Henry II. had thus yielded in the 
 matter of appeal, John made good in the election of Bishops, which 
 were declared to be free. The Great Charter did not proclaim the 
 liberty of the subject in plainer terms than it asserted the rights and 
 liberties of Holy Church. 
 
 Nor is there any serious disturbance of the ecclesiastical atmosphere 
 for a hundred years after, and then we enter upon a prolonged struggle 
 between the Kings of England and the Court of Rome upon a question 
 of civil rights. The Papal power had already passed its period of 
 greatness, and gone beyond it : but the claims of individual Pontiffs, 
 and the exactions levied by them upon the distant provinces of the 
 Church, continued unabated. England was about the best-plundered 
 of them all. And then, certainly, both Crown and Parliament joined 
 together to assert, not indeed the Supremacy of the Civil ruler in 
 spiritual things, but the independence of the kingdom of England 
 from any subjection to the Pope, in matters that touched the King, 
 "his crown, his regalty, or his realm ." 
 
 An enormous patronage was claimed and dispensed by the Pope, 
 with all its attendant emoluments; the firstfruits alone upon bene- 
 fices forming a perfect river of English gold, which kept flowing into 
 the Papal exchequer: while English Bishops, at the Pope's mere 
 pleasure, were being translated to sees in and out of the realm, 
 without consent of the King, or even of the Bishops themselves. 
 "Which prelates," says the Statute of Richard II. p, "be much 
 profitable and necessary to our lord the King, and to all his realm. 
 By which translations (if they should be suffered) the statutes of 
 this realm should be defeated, and his said liege sages of his council, 
 without his assent and against his will, gotten out of his realm; 
 and the treasure of the realm shall be carried away, and so the 
 realm destitute as well of council, as of substance." 
 
 And the position of lay-patrons was even worse. Advowsons secured 
 to the patron by the English courts, were pursued to Rome by an un- 
 successful candidate, and the decision of the English court reversed : 
 while excommunications could be procured against Bishops instituting 
 any but the Pope's presentee to the benefice in question. When such, 
 therefore, was the practice of the Popes of that day, increasing in 
 cupidity as they declined in power, and denizens to boot of a fureign 
 
 n Vid. sup. p. 17. ° 16 Eic. II., c. 5. p Ibid.
 
 in the Light of History. 59 
 
 and hostile state — what wonder if the King, nobles, and commons 
 of England rose up as one man to defend their own ? They repudiated 
 the notion that the English Crown " which hath been so free at all 
 times, that it hath been in no earthly subjection, but immediately 
 subject to God in all things touching the Regalty of the same Crown, 
 and to none other, should be submitted to the Pope ; and the laws and 
 statutes of the realm by him defeated and avoided at his will, in 
 perpetual destruction of the sovereignty of our Lord, his crown, his 
 regalty, and of all his realm q ." 
 
 3. 
 
 Such is the tenor of the Statutes of Provisors of Edward III. and 
 Richard II. But, put it at its utmost, what does the struggle between 
 Plantagenet King and Sovereign Pontiff amount to, in the way of 
 precedent for the usurpations of the Tudors ? Then, it was a question 
 of civil rights, of rights of property, rights of advowson, rights of the 
 King to the services of his ecclesiastical councillors. The jurisdiction 
 of the courts of the realm, the majesty of English law, was being 
 impugned by a foreign power. But there was no question of the 
 Pope's jurisdiction in spirituals, to give confirmation to Bishops, to 
 hear appeals. The point of such jurisdiction was then not so much 
 as raised. And this should be borne in mind, when Henry VIII. 
 quotes the instance of former Kings, as a justification of his own 
 peculiar policy. 
 
 What evidence is there from any period, until after 1530, that the 
 temporal power ever encroached upon the immediate spiritual pro- 
 vince of the Church ? Did the Sovereigns of the former age, I ask, 
 claim to be the founts of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, as they were 
 of secular ? Did they claim the initiative and the veto in all legis- 
 lation of Convocation, and bind it in verbo sacerdotii to make no 
 Canons without Royal writ? The Lords spiritual of 1393 hesitated 
 either to affirm or deny the Pope's right to translate Bishops, or 
 threaten with excommunication ; but what hesitation would they 
 have shewn, had they been asked to accept Richard the Second as 
 Supreme Head of the Church, or had there been any question then 
 of the necessity for union with the See of Rome, or of the Supremacy 
 of its Bishop ? The notion is indeed not worth pursuing. And yet it 
 is confidently stated 1 " that " a careful consideration of" the history of 
 the Provisors of Edward III. and Richard II. " will, it is believed, 
 go far to overthrow the idea that the Royal Supremacy in ecclesi- 
 astical matters was first asserted and established by Henry VIII." 
 I deny the conclusion : and I have a right to do so, until better 
 
 i 16 Rich. II., st. 5. 
 
 1 Six P. G. Judgements, W. G. Brooke, Barrister-at-Law. Introd. xxxi.
 
 60 The Royal Supremacy 
 
 evidence of a prse-reformation Supremacy of the Crown in eccle- 
 siastical affairs is produced, than the Statutes of Pro visors and prae- 
 munire. I might resist such statements on the simple ground, that 
 no King of England could have claimed such spiritual powers as 
 long as the Pope's jurisdiction was not abolished. And the proof 
 of it would be, that Henry VIII. found it necessary to efface the 
 Papal jurisdiction in England, before he was able to "annex" it 
 to his own crown. It is, to say the very least, unfair to class the 
 resistance shewn to the Papal impositions of the fourteenth century 
 with the supremacy of Henry VIII. 8 Beyond the fact that they 
 were both disputes between English Kings and Roman Bishops, what 
 is there in common between them ? On a question of the Crown's 
 ecclesiastical supremacy, the point of historical precedent is of so 
 high importance, to Churchmen at least, that it can hardly be over- 
 rated. It was on the distinct ground, that the Crown claimed only 
 its ancient rights, and that the continuity of Holy Church was 
 violated by no innovations contrary to Catholic custom, that the 
 Supremacy was first admitted in this country, and is accepted on 
 the same conditions by English Churchmen now. In so critical 
 a matter therefore, it is impossible to dispose of the question by 
 general and loosely- drawn inferences. 
 
 If Henry YIII. was not the first of our Kings to establish the 
 ecclesiastical supremacy, let any one of his predecessors be produced, 
 who established a jurisdiction in spirituals similar to his own. 
 Appeal to Rome was not finally cut off even by the short-lived 
 modifications of Henry II., and ecclesiastical suits terminated, even 
 then, in the Archbishop's Court, and not in that of the King. And, 
 besides, there is nothing doubtful, nothing obscure, in the Church 
 reform of Henry YIII., or in the supremacy that he claimed. On 
 the contrary, it was a perfectly plain, straightforward, well-defined 
 plan, and consistent in all its parts. The King, a layman, was 
 Supreme Head of the Church in England : as Head he claimed 
 to give jurisdiction to Bishops; gave them power to ordain, even 
 implying that Cromwell could ordain, had he not other matters 
 to attend to. He determined appeals on doctrine in his own 
 Courts ; received appeals from places exempt, as the Pope had 
 done; in short, he claimed to supply, as far as England was con- 
 
 s Blackstone himself, in his chapter on the Statutes of Praemunire of 
 Edward III. and Eichard II., etc., points out, plainly enough, that they 
 were directed against the Pope's temporal pretensions, and were perfectly 
 distinct in their scope from the legislation of the sixteenth century, which 
 attacked the Pope's spiritual claims. " This," he says, speaking of the 
 statute 2 Hen. IV. c. 3, " is the last of our ancient statutes touching this 
 offence (praemunire) : the usurped civil power of the Bishop of Rome being 
 pretty well broken down by these Statutes, as his usurped religious power 
 was in about a century after loai'ds." — Com.,iv. 113.
 
 in the Light of History. 61 
 
 cerned, all that the central authority of the See of Rome had hitherto 
 provided. But such a jurisdiction as this requires stronger prece- 
 dents than can be found in the Statute-book of Edward the Third 
 or Richard II. 
 
 Because the Crown of England hath never been in subjection to 
 a foreign power, therefore, it is concluded, the Church of England 
 can never have been subject to the See of Rome. Because the 
 Pope may not frustrate the laws of the Realm, therefore he may 
 have no voice in the laws of the Church. Because the King of 
 England may not be submitted to the Bishop of Rome, in anything 
 touching the Regally, therefore the King may owe no submission 
 to the Bishop of Rome, in anything touching the Faith. Because 
 Richard II. protests against the Pope's translation of his ecclesi- 
 astical counsellors out of England, therefore Henry VIII. may law- 
 fully deny the Pope's privilege of confirming Bishops whom he may 
 nominate and present to the Pope for that purpose. Because the 
 Pope has no temporal jurisdiction in England, therefore, he has no 
 ecclesiastical '*, etc., etc. But is this arguing? Yet it is the only 
 way by which the Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire can be 
 made a precedent for the Submission of the Clergy, or the Statutes 
 of Supremacy. 
 
 It is by taking the undoubted supremacy of the Crown in tem- 
 porals, and applying it to a claim of similar supremacy in spiritual 
 things, that Edward III. and Richard II. are made answerable for 
 the unparalleled enactments of the Eighth Henry. One would hesi- 
 tate to question the venerable comment of Coke, that Elizabeth's 
 act was "not introductory of a new law, but declaratory of an 
 old u ;" but without qualification, is it the case? Not a new law! 
 How old, then, was it ? Just twenty-four years. 
 
 4. 
 
 There may have been, and doubtless there were, in earlier reigns, 
 points where the line separating the two jurisdictions became very 
 faintly marked : when the two powers clashed, and the spiritual had 
 
 1 See, e. g. the letter of the Barons to Pope Boniface VTH. in 1301. They deny 
 that the Kingdom of Scotland has ever appertained to the Church of Rome 
 in temporals, and state their unanimous decision that the King of England 
 " shall in no wise answer before you as judge in the matter of his sovereign 
 rights or any other his temporalties." This, however, can hardly be construed 
 into a denial of the Pope's spiritual prerogative. This very letter is addressed 
 to the " Supreme Pontiff by his devoted sons." Its opening words are, " The 
 Holy Boman Mother Church, through whose Ministry the Catholic faith is 
 governed, etc." The King (Edward II.) the barons declare to be as Catholic 
 and devoted to the Boman Church "as any earthly prince." See the Letter in 
 Collier, vol. ix. p. 42. 
 
 u See above, p. 7. With Coke's Fifth Pt. of Reports should be read its 
 11 answer" by the Bev. B. Parsons, 1606. The writer makes a careful examin- 
 ation of Coke's precedents of Boyal authority in Eccl. matters before and since 
 the Conquest, and shews them to be no real parallel to Henry YHI.th's claims.
 
 62 The Royal Supremacy 
 
 to be restricted to its more immediate sphere. The Royal " pro- 
 hibitions " in ecclesiastical suits are a case in point. But the Reform- 
 ing Statutes of Henry were a leap forward, the audacity of which is 
 only equalled by its remoteness from all historical precedent what- 
 soever. It was a complete revolution. 
 
 A few years have, before now, sufficed to transform the face of 
 things in State, as in Church, almost beyond possibility of recog- 
 nition. The five years that ended with 1793, saw the throne of 
 Prance hurled to the ground, and her line of Kings consigned to 
 oblivion, as though they had never been. Yet the changes which 
 then swept over the political stage of France, were hardly more 
 momentous or more decisive than the difference presented by the 
 Church as it existed in England in 1530, and as it issued from 
 the struggle in 1535. 
 
 It was a difference not of degree, but of kind. In earlier stages of 
 the Roman controversy, the English hierarchy had, for the most part, 
 sided with the national policy. Langton had fought the cause of 
 Church and State alike, against the tyranny of John, backed up by the 
 support of Innocent III. The legatine missions and the Papal exac- 
 tions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had found opponents 
 among the leading bishops of the time x . Even the anti-Papal statutes 
 of Edward III. and Richard II. were passed with the general con- 
 currence of the spiritualty. The contest, so far, had not been one of 
 the Crown versus the Episcopate, but between Pope and King. 
 
 But the case is wholly altered when we come to review the Refor- 
 mation of Henry the Eighth. It was no quarrel between King and 
 Pontiff alone, or between the Crown and the Spiritualty only; but it 
 was the repudiation of all ecclesiastical authority superior to the King, 
 or independent of the Royal will. If Henry abolished the supremacy 
 of the Pope, it was not in order to vest the spiritual sovereignty in 
 the successor of S. Augustine, but to annex it to the Imperial crown. 
 If he forbade appeals to go to the court of Rome, it was not to erect 
 the court of the Archbishop, or the Synod of the Province as the tri- 
 bunal of final appeal, but to order the final hearing before himself in 
 Chancery. In Convocation as in Chapter, the free action of the spirit- 
 ualty resolved itself into an execution of the Royal fiat. Le Roy le 
 veult. It was a short and intelligible method of settling everything. 
 
 x In 1214, the Archbishop of Canterbury and suffragans complain of the 
 Papal Legate filling up vacant sees, as an infringement of the liberties of Can- 
 terbury, to whom such matters belonged. Collier, ii. 415, etc. In 1237, the 
 Primate (S.Edmund) protests against the King calling the Legate into England. 
 Ibid., 452. In 1392, the Archbishop condemns the Pope's capricious translations, 
 and prays the King to have the protest entered upon the Roll. Ibid., iii. 209. 
 Grossetete's opposition to the encroachments of the court of Eome, I have 
 noticed already, (p. 37,) and see Hardwick, Med. Ch. Hist., p. 246, and notes, and 
 p. 351 note.
 
 in the Light of History. 63 
 
 There is, in truth, no precedent in any country calling itself Cath- 
 olic, for the pretensions which Henry VIII. advanced and secured. 
 His whole policy was dictated by cruelty, rapacity, and lust. Once 
 perceiving that the Pope would not minister to his adulterous intrigue 
 with Anne, he stepped clear of all authority, Divine and human, 
 and proceeded to settle matters at his own pleasure. He was already 
 committed to the match, yet he wished, if it might be, to have some 
 sanction of law upon the union : and with that object, matrimonial 
 causes were ordered to be determined within the realm. Yet even 
 then (1533) the Papal supremacy had not gone overboard, and it 
 would have been possible to have employed the authority of Rome, 
 had it proved favourable to his divorce. 
 
 It was only when Clement VII. had, as one of his latest acts, pro- 
 nounced finally in favour of the Queen, and excommunicated Henry 
 if he retained the wretched partner of his guilt, that the King 
 hurled defiance at the Roman Bishop, and vested in himself a jurisdic- 
 tion such as no earthly potentate had ever dreamt of. Supreme, 
 Only Supreme Head in earth of the Church of England ! Imperator 
 tt Pontiiex ! It was a wonderful triumph ! 
 
 And he ended by an awful, God-abandoned death ! And the chan- 
 tries, the masses, and the mass-priests that he had so religiously en- 
 dowed for his soul's repose, were all of them swept away by the 
 advancing wave of Reform ! He left three children to survive him, 
 and each of them perished, in turn, without posterity or offspring : 
 and the very line which he had excluded, by will, from the succession, 
 was the one to come eventually to the Throne 7 ! The curse of the 
 traitor was hanging over him. " His posterity was destroyed, and in 
 the next generation his name was clean put out." 
 
 V. Conclusion. 
 
 I may now perhaps give, in extenso, passages from two writers whom 
 I have already had occasion to refer to, and who will serve very fitly 
 to sum up a general view of the whole subject. 
 
 J "He that had made void so many men's wills, had his own made void in 
 every particular. All those sixteen councillors whom he had appointed to govern 
 the kingdom in his son's minority, either by threatening, exclusion, or imprison- 
 ment, were all of them forced to give way to one, who wholly took upon him 
 the government of the whole kingdom. And he that took such care that his son 
 should have none to be of his Council, but such as should be Catholicks, had his 
 will so performed, that there was one who took care that no Catholic should 
 come near him. And when the heads of these gainsayers of his will were cut off, 
 his son was left in tuition of such hands as, it was verily believed, made his son 
 away, that they might set up one upon his throne in opposition to his own daugh- 
 ter. The religion wherein his son was bred and commanded to be brought up in, 
 was changed ; his laws abrogated ; and, he that took so many unlawful courses to 
 obtain issues, had so many children, and all of them died issueless." Life and 
 Death of Bishop Fisher. Tho. Baily, D.D. (Subdean of Wells), 1655. p. 239.
 
 64 The Royal Supremacy 
 
 1. 
 
 The first is Hooker*. "There is required an universal power, 
 ^which reacheth over all, importing supreme authority of government 
 over all courts, all judges, all causes ; the operation of which power, 
 is as well to strengthen, maintain, and uphold particular jurisdictions, 
 which haply might else be of small effect ; as also to remedy that 
 which they are not able to help. This power being sometime in the 
 Bishop of Rome, who by sinister practices had drawn it into his 
 hands, was for just considerations, by public consent annexed unto 
 the King's seat and crown. From thence the authors of reformation 
 would translate it into their national assemblies or Synods ; which 
 Synods are the only help which they think lawful to use against 
 such evils in the Church, as particular jurisdictions are not sufficient 
 to redress. In which case, our laws have provided that the King's 
 supereminent authority and power, shall serve. As, namely, when the 
 whole ecclesiastical state, or the principal persons therein, do need 
 visitation and reformation ; when, in any part of the Church, 
 errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, offences, contempts, enormities are 
 grown ; which even in their several jurisdictions, either do not, or 
 cannot help ; whatsoever any spiritual authority or power (such 
 as legates from the See of Rome did sometimes exercise) hath 
 done, or might heretofore have done, for the remedies of those 
 evils in lawful sort, (that is, without violation of the laws of God, 
 and nature, in the deed done) as much in every degree, our laws 
 have fully granted the King for ever may do : not only by setting 
 ecclesiastical synods in work, that the thing may be their act, 
 and the King their motion unto it; but by commissioners few or 
 many, who having the King's Letters Patent, may in the virtue 
 thereof, execute the premises as agents, in the right, not of their 
 own peculiar and ordinary, but of his supereminent power." 
 
 2. 
 With this, compare the following*, from the pen of the present 
 Archbishop of Canterbury. " The problem which the English Re- 
 formers had to solve, was how to break away from the dominion 
 of foreign tyranny, while they still maintained a firm bond of in- 
 ternal unity, both in ecclesiastical legislation and in ecclesiastical 
 judicature. There was danger, lest (when the forced and unna- 
 tural chain, forged by Rome, was shivered) the Church might 
 resolve itself into its primitive elements, and all outward unity 
 be lost ; lest each diocese, if not each congregation, or insignificant 
 aggregate of congregations, might not set up a claim to make its 
 own laws, and try its own causes. Happily the English Church 
 
 2 Eccl. Pol. , bk. viii. cap. 4. » Brod. and Fremantle, Preface, p. viii.
 
 Conclusion. 65 
 
 in its ancient constitution, was not left thus disunited .... If the 
 power of the "Western Patriarch was renounced, to save the Church 
 from his usurpations and from the fatal errors in doctrine and 
 practice which his usurped power fostered, English Christians could 
 still rally round the King and their Metropolitans." 
 
 After remarking that the union of dioceses in the Province under 
 the several Archbishops (of whom there were six in the realm, and 
 no one of them recognized as Patriarch over the rest) would not 
 have produced any real unity, His Grace proceeds b , "It is con- 
 tended, if each National Church, consisting perhaps of several 
 ecclesiastical provinces, was to be bound together in one outward 
 constitution, this union could not be cemented without a national 
 head of some kind. The Reformers knew that Metropolitans had 
 become centres for uniting Bishops, and Patriarchs for uniting 
 Metropolitans ; not through any institution of Christ, but by the 
 exigencies of the Christian community in past times ; and they 
 turned now, not unnaturally, to the civil ruler of the nation, as 
 affording a ready means whereby the several dioceses and pro- 
 vinces in a Christian realm could be welded together into one 
 outward body." 
 
 On the derivation of ecclesiastical jurisdiction from the Crown, 
 as a natural consequence of the subordination of Church to King, 
 the Archbishop says c , "At first there was a tendency in our Re- 
 formers to overlook the distinction between the sacred functions 
 of the Clergy, and the duties of the civil magistrate. Both were 
 acknowledged to derive their authority from the same source; and 
 there might be a misconception, as if they derived this authority in 
 the same way. But this misunderstanding, against which a protest 
 was afterwards recorded in the thirty-seventh of the XXXIX. Arti- 
 cles, produced no lasting practical evil. A marked line was soon 
 recognized, now as of old, as separating clerical functions, and all 
 that purely spiritual authority which theologians comprehend un- 
 der 'the powers of the Keys,' from temporal dominion." 
 
 The writer then passes to the subject of the Crown's appellate 
 jurisdiction. In return for its support of the Church, the State 
 claimed the right, on the part of the civil ruler, to hear appeals 
 from the spiritual courts. " When d this principle [of supremacy 
 over all persons and causes] was unreservedly acknowledged, the 
 right of an appeal of some sort to the supreme civil ruler, from 
 every ecclesiastical as well as temporal court in the realm, must 
 have followed as a corollary. To sum up then, the courts of the 
 Archbishops were not allowed an irresponsible power. It is con- 
 tended that when the supervision of the Pope was repudiated, it 
 b Brod. and Fremantle, Preface, p. x. e Ibid. d Ibid., p. xii. 
 
 E
 
 66 The Royal Supremacy. 
 
 was felt that if the Archbishops were permitted to exercise such, 
 powers, there would be, not only as in Roman Catholic times, 
 one, but several distinct examples of an imperium in imperio in 
 the nation. The Church was in intimate alliance with the State, 
 and the State claimed, as a part of this alliance, that, as Pro- 
 vincial Synods for legislation were to be restrained by a veto of 
 the civil ruler, so there was to be no ecclesiastical tribunal whose 
 judicial decisions, in which temporal and spiritual interests were 
 necessarily blended, should not be subject to his review .... As 
 the restraining power of the Crown prevented Provincial Synods 
 from introducing into the national Church the confusion of an 
 independent and ever-varying legislation, so the appeal to the King 
 in Chancery established a national centre in matters relating to 
 ecclesiastical jurisdiction." 
 
 The Archbishop then discusses e the alternative of referring such 
 causes to the spiritualty. "If Diocesan Synods were not abolished 
 in the Eeformed English Church, and Provincial Synods were clearly 
 recognized, it might have seemed a not unnatural course to refer 
 cases of breach of discipline, or unsoundness of doctrine, to those 
 assemblies, either in the first instance, or as Courts of Appeal. But 
 the far-sighted men who, under providential guidance, directed such 
 matters for the Church of England at this crisis, thought that such 
 was not the way to maintain the majesty of justice ; and they pre- 
 ferred to stand in the old paths, and to draw a marked line between 
 Church legislation and Church judicature. This, then, was their 
 mode of solving another difficulty. They maintained the old Bishops' 
 courts with graduated appeals ; not to any meeting of the Church in 
 synod, but first to the courts of the several Archbishops, and lastly 
 to the Sovereign, acting through a court appointed by him for that 
 purpose." 
 
 3. 
 
 Here, then, are two remarkable exponents of the Reformation prin- 
 ciple of the Royal Supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs. The one, 
 a voice from the past, if, indeed, Hooker can be justly so designated ; 
 the other, the voice of the existing living Church : and, at the dis- 
 tance of three centuries, they deliver themselves on the subject of the 
 Supremacy, and they are in perfect accord with one another ! And 
 the question is, not whether their doctrines may be agreeable to any 
 notions of our own, but whether they agree with fact. Are they, 
 or are they not, in harmony both with the whole course of the 
 Crown's relation to the Church since 1530, and with the statutory 
 enactments upon which those relations are based ? 
 
 There is, indeed, something almost aweful in this close and complete 
 e Brod. and Fremantle, Preface, pp. xiii., xiv.
 
 Conclusion. 67 
 
 correspondence of the great teacher of the sixteenth century and the 
 Primate of to-day. It becomes a kind of application of the Yincentian 
 rule to the characteristic doctrine of the Reformation. What becomes 
 of our refinements, our nice distinctions, our careful explainings aud 
 limitations of the jurisdiction of the Crown ? This is the semper tibique 
 et ah omnibus of the Constitution of Church and State. "This power 
 being sometime in the Bishop of Rome," says 1594, " was, by public 
 consent, annexed to the King's royal throne." " If the power of the 
 Western Patriarch was renounced," says 1880, " English Christians 
 could still rally round the King." " "Whatsoever spiritual authority 
 the See of Home did exercise, as much in every degree our laws have 
 granted that the King for ever may do," says the age of Elizabeth. 
 "When appeals to Rome in spiritual causes were forbidden," echoes 
 the reign of Victoria, "the rule of appeal to the King from all the 
 Archbishops' courts was finally settled." " The King may act," says 
 the one, "not only by ecclesiastical synods, but by Commissioners, 
 who execute the premises in the right, not of their own peculiar, 
 but of his super-eminent power." And the other replies, " As the 
 restraining power of the Crown prevented synods from introducing 
 an independent legislation, so the appeal to the King in Chancery 
 established a national centre in matters of ecclesiastical jurisdiction." 
 
 Apologists of the Supremacy seem to think that they have made 
 a point if they can lay their finger on clauses in Statute, Article, or 
 Prayer-Book, consonant with right principles of Church government ; 
 and so they have, were such principles really observed. But such is 
 not the case. The legislative functions of the Church are at present 
 absolutely in the hands of the State. No one doubts it. That Par- 
 liament should have legislated for the Church, when every member 
 of it was necessarily a Churchman and communicant, had some show 
 of reason about it, if not much ecclesiastical precedent. But what 
 shall we say of Church legislation by Parliament as at present con- 
 stituted? A mere medley of religious sects and opinions, the existing 
 legislature is framed upon the principle that no form of belief, un- 
 belief, or misbelief shall exclude from membership in its assembly. 
 As a natural consequence, Parliament is increasingly (and instinc- 
 tively) averse to discuss the concerns of the Church, discourages gene- 
 rally ecclesiastical questions; and yet the significant fact remains that 
 the State, instead of loosening, is tightening its hold more and more 
 firmly upon the Spiritualty ; unwilling to meddle itself with spiritual 
 subjects, and, at the same time, denying the Church's right to manage 
 her own affairs. And the condition of the other branch of the 
 Church's prerogative is even more serious still. Who can question 
 whether the Civil Power has any authority to determine matters of 
 faith ? And yet, who can deny that a lay and secular court does ac-
 
 68 The Rotjal Supremacy. 
 
 tually determine such points in the last instance, there being no 
 higher appellate tribunal ? 
 
 In the opening of my subject, I quoted Bishop Andre wes' limitation 
 of the royal power in relation to spiritual affairs f . I ask, how much 
 is it worth? "Under the title of Supremacy," says Andrewes, "the 
 King does not introduce a new Papacy in the Church ;" and Elizabeth 
 abolishes the spiritual jurisdiction of the Pope, and declares the same 
 annexed to the English Crown. " The King has no right to frame 
 new articles of faith," says the Bishop ; yet Queen Elizabeth adds or 
 omits Articles of Religion as she pleases. " Nor any new forms of 
 Divine worship;" and the new Prayer-Book of 1559 is revised by 
 private authority, and passed by Parliament, no reference being made 
 to Convocation whatever. " The King assumes not the office of teach- 
 ing, or of explaining doubtful points of the law divine ; " yet the King 
 in Chancery, and the Judicial Committee, define what is the construc- 
 tion of the Church's doctrinal teaching. "Nor of preaching;" and 
 Tudor princes give and withhold licence to preach ; Cromwell 'tunes' 
 the pulpits, and prescribes the heads of discourse. "Nor to consecrate 
 persons or things;" and Elizabeth supplies, of her supreme autho- 
 rity, any possible defects in the form of consecrating an Archbishop, 
 or in the persons of the consecrators. " Nor the power of the keys, or 
 of censure;" Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth each visit with ecclesias- 
 tical censure ; Charles I. 6 " assoils" Archbishop Abbott from canon- 
 ical irregularity, and restores him to his metropolitical functions, " of 
 our own supreme, kingly, and ecclesiastical authority." " The King 
 does not claim any thing pertaining to the sacerdotal office, or the 
 power of order;" but Henry and Edward give Bishops licence to or- 
 dain, "William IV. gives full power and authority to confirm and or- 
 dain, and Victoria does the same. "Ear is the King from such pre- 
 tensions as these, far does he retire from such acts," exclaims my 
 author; and Henry VIII. and Edward VI. declare themselves to be 
 the fountain-heads of all authority of jurisdiction, and of all eccle- 
 siastical jurisdiction whatsoever. 
 
 4. 
 
 Certainly, Princes wield a Divinely -given power: they are or- 
 dained of God. Heathen Emperors are spoken of in Scripture h as 
 Liturgi Dei, exercising a sacred, a sacerdotal, a hieratic office ; but 
 it is within their proper sphere. The sacred character and autho- 
 rity that attaches, by Divine appointment, to the Kingly office, is 
 valid and available for all purposes that can be named in connection 
 with the discharge of earthly rule ; but it applies not in the things 
 of God, and in that kingdom which is in the world, but not of it. 
 
 ' See above, p. 6. * Collier, vol. vii. p. 418. h Bomans xiii. 6.
 
 Conclusion, 69 
 
 "We are required to believe in a Church which is one, universal, 
 and Divine; and the very "idea" of such an institution is, that it 
 should know no territorial barriers; but, on the contrary, that over- 
 riding all physical and political boundaries, it should present every- 
 where what, in the nature of if, it must ever be, an imperium in im- 
 perio. And it is to confuse in their very principles both the temporal 
 and the spiritual order of things, to apply what is said of the Divine 
 right of Kings within their proper province, to the exercise of the 
 same rights in the peculiar sphere of the Church's jurisdiction. 
 
 Nor is the case altered when the Sovereign is a Christian Prince '. 
 His Christianity, as it affects not the Divine original of his authority, 
 so as to make it other than it was in the hands of a Pagan ruler, so 
 neither does it confer any new capacity to intrude into the plane of 
 ecclesiastical jurisdiction. This is sufficiently clear from the ancient 
 distinction of the " Two Swords." That of Constantine is the King's 
 by right Divine, but no authority will support him, should he put 
 forth his hand to wield the sword of Peter. 
 
 A Christian Sovereign is certainly bound to recognize his devoir 
 towards the Church in his realm, to protect it, to approve ecclesiasti- 
 cal decrees, and to enforce their execution as part of the law of the 
 land, but not to make them. Neither has he any power, in virtue 
 of his baptism, to convey jurisdiction to Bishops, or to determine spiri- 
 tual causes in his own courts. Such an usurpation would be directly 
 contrary to the Lord's words, which restrict Caesar to Caesar's things, 
 and deny his authority in the things of God. It would be contrary, 
 too, to the solemn asseveration of the Apostles, who, when an attempt 
 was made to dictate to them on a point of doctrine, refused obedience 
 to the powers that be, and said they could not but speak the things 
 which they had seen and heard. 
 
 5. 
 
 According to the second Canon of 1604, the King's Majesty is 
 stated to have the same authority in causes ecclesiastical that was 
 enjoyed by Christian Emperors of the Primitive Church. Certainly, 
 if this were all that the Supremacy meant, no reasonable being would 
 have cause for complaint. The Christian Enperor Honorius says k : 
 "If anything was to be determined between prelates on matters of 
 religion, the judgement ought to have been episcopal; for the inter- 
 
 1 " A prince's turning Christian does by no means enlarge his jurisdiction, 
 or lessen the authority of the Church. For what is it that makes the distinc- 
 tion between a Pagan and a Christian prince ? Nothing but Baptism. But this 
 Sacrament conveys nothing of spiritual jurisdiction. On the contrary, it im- 
 parts obedience and subjection to the law and authority of the society with 
 which the person is incorporated ; and, by consequence, makes a member, but 
 not a governour, of the Church." — Collier, Hist., ii. 20. 
 
 k Kp. Honor. Imp. ad Arcadium. See Dr. Pusey s Ancient Precedents, in 
 his Royal Supremacy, for this and following quotations.
 
 70 The Royal Supremacy \ 
 
 pretation of Divine things belongs to them, to us the obedience of re- 
 ligion." The Christian Emperor Theodosius says : " We sanction 
 by a perpetual law that no Bishop be drawn into the court of any 
 judge, ordinary or extraordinary ; so far, that is, as relates to eccle- 
 siastical causes, which ought to be decided by episcopal authority K" 
 Yalentinian II., Christian Emperor, says : " It is not lawful for me, 
 whose place is in the laity, to busy myself with matters of faith. Let 
 the Priests and Bishops, to whom this case belongs, meet apart by 
 themselves, wherever they will m ." Valentinian and Gratian enact n : 
 " The custom as to civil causes shall be observed in ecclesiastical also ; 
 so that whatsoever shall relate to the observance of religion, as to 
 dissensions and light offences, shall be heard in their own places, and 
 by the synods of their diocese : except such criminal actions as are 
 appointed to be heard by the ordinary or extraordinary judges." The 
 Donatists in the fourth century, appealing to Constantine for justice 
 from the Council of Aries , the Emperor, after conceding their ap- 
 plication (but confirming the decision of the Council), reprehends very 
 forcibly the impropriety of demanding an appeal to the Crown on an 
 ecclesiastical question. " "What frenzy is this of theirs" (the Dona- 
 tists), he exclaims p , in his circular letter to the Catholic bishops; 
 " they reject right judgement given, and demand mine in an imperial 
 sentence ! How often have I myself repelled them, in their most 
 shameless application, with the answer they deserve ! They ask for 
 my judgement, who myself wait for the judgement of Christ. Eor, 
 I say the truth, that the judgements of Priests ought to be accounted 
 as though the Lord Himself sat and judged. What, then, mean 
 these wicked men? They seek for secular judgements, forsaking 
 heavenly," etc. Henry VIII. appealed to the Emperor Justinian 
 as a witness in his favour q ; an unfortunate selection, since Justinian 
 died in heresy. Here, however, is Justinian's law r on the trial of 
 ecclesiastical suits : "If the offence be ecclesiastical, let the Bishop 
 judge this, and let not the rulers of the province share in it. Eor 
 we do not wish that such subjects should be even known to civil 
 rulers, since these things ought to be investigated ecclesiastically, and 
 the souls of offenders should be gained by ecclesiastical censures, 
 according to the holy Canons, which our laws do not disdain to 
 follow." 
 
 Such instances might, of course, be almost indefinitely prolonged ; 
 and if to the practice of the early Christian Emperors were added the 
 teaching of the Fathers, whatever the argument might gain in com- 
 pleteness, would be more than lost through the immense length to 
 
 1 Cod. Tlieod., lib. 16, tit. xii. de Episc. Jud. Leg. III. m Sozomen, 
 
 vi. 7. n Cod. Theod., lib. 16, tit. ii. de Episc. Leg. xxiii. ° See Pusey's 
 
 Royal Supremacy, pp. 32-7. p Constantin. Ep. ad Episc. Cathol. * Letter 
 to Convoc. of York ; Wilkins, Cone, iii. 762-5. r Novel., 83.
 
 Conclusion. 71 
 
 ■which such extracts would run. I shall conclude, therefore, the re- 
 ference to primitive Church History with a very short quotation from 
 S. Athanasius 8 , which appears to me to he to the point. He is com- 
 plaining of the innovations of Constantius: "Again, the Emperor 
 claims to himself the right of deciding causes, which he refers to the 
 Court instead of to the Church, and presides at them in person. . . . 
 Terrible indeed, and worse than terrible, are such proceedings; and 
 yet is this conduct suitable to him who represents the character of 
 Antichrist. Who that beheld him bearing sway over his pretended 
 Bishops, and presiding in Ecclesiastical causes, would not justly ex- 
 claim that this was the abomination of desolation foretold by Daniel?" 
 And this is said of Constantius, the Arian and the heretic ! He fitly 
 usurped the jurisdiction of Christ's Church, who first denied Christ's 
 eternal power and Godhead. But will any man in his senses say that 
 this is an example for a Chiistian Sovereign ? 
 
 6. 
 
 And, if this appears to be the testimony of History, we shall cer- 
 tainly find no other doctrine taught in Holy Scripture. Not to the 
 Rulers of this world, but to the Twelve, was it said, "I appoint unto 
 you a kingdom, as My Eather hath appointed unto Me, that ye may 
 sit on thrones, judging the tribes of Israel." Not to the Imperial 
 officers of Asia, but to its first Bishops, it was said, " Take heed unto 
 all the flock, in which the Holy Ghost appointed you Bishops, to feed 
 the Church of God, which He hath purchased with His own Blood." 
 
 Not to any earthly Prince, but to St. Peter, was it said, "I say 
 unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, 
 and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I w r ill give 
 unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven : and whatsoever thou 
 shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven ; and whatsoever thou 
 shalt loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven :" " Strengthen thy 
 brethren :" " Eeed My sheep." The Pastoral Epistles are only a com- 
 mentary on such texts as these. 
 
 It would be idle to speculate upon what may be the ultimate issue 
 of the existing conflict between the rival jurisdictions : but it is not, 
 I hope, impertinent to hazard the prophecy, that the present relations 
 between the two will not continue long unchanged. The late Bishop 
 of Capetown is said to have declared, that unless the Church de- 
 stroyed the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the Privy 
 Council would destroy the Church : and he only expressed the feel- 
 ings of thousands of Churchmen by the remark. If, as we believe, 
 
 • Hist. Tracts, viii. §§ 76, 77 (Oxf. Transl.).
 
 72 The Royal Supremacy. 
 
 the English Church be a divine, and not a human institution, pos- 
 sessing a supernatural life, which is exhibited in a high degree by 
 her present revival ; it cannot be that she can tolerate for ever this 
 complete forfeiture of all her proper powers of self-government and 
 self- administration. To hint at such possibilities is, it will be said, 
 to demand disestablishment, pure and simple ; and doubtless this is 
 the construction which many would put upon such simple assertions 
 of right. But it is not, by any means, the only or the necessary con- 
 clusion. "Let the Church be free, and enjoy all her rights," is all 
 that is pleaded in the Church's behalf, whether it be in the thir- 
 teenth, or in the nineteenth century. 
 
 But it is only fair to admit, that the alliance with the State may 
 be too dearly purchased. There is something greater and higher than 
 the establishment of National Churches, and that is, the establishment 
 of Church principles. To desire to prolong the State connection, 
 when it had exceeded its due and canonical limits, would certainly 
 be to sacrifice the Divine office of the Church for the sake of temporal 
 and accidental advantages, — 
 
 " Et propter vitam, vivendi perdere causas." 
 
 It is possible that, in the designs of Providence, the Reformation- 
 concordat may have served its end, in effectually liberating the 
 Church from foreign control, and must now yield to the exigencies 
 of widely-altered times, circumstances, and feelings : — 
 
 " The old order changeth, giving place to new, 
 And God fulfils Himself in many ways, 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 
 
 Certainly the spirit of the former age is not ours now. Light and 
 darkness are hardly more opposite than the destructive acts of the 
 sixteenth century, and the happy promise and fruitfulness of our own 
 days. And amid so much to cheer, encourage, and re- assure, we 
 can view, without alarm, the crash and havoc of the reigns of the 
 Tudor Monarchs. 
 
 I have the honour to be, Sir, 
 
 Your most obedient servant, 
 FRANCIS KING. 
 Christmas, 1880. 
 
 PRINTED BY PARKER AND CO., CROWN YARD, OXFORD.