Church and State under the Tudors/Appendix 1
APPENDIX
Note I. P. 62.
Chapuys, in one of his letters to Charles V., July 17, 1531, puts this question very shortly and forcibly, if somewhat coarsely, thus: 'The Queen has kept the articles sent from Rome &c. … On considering them, it seems to me that there has been omitted one deduction so necessary that without it conclusive proof cannot be obtained, because the point is to show that the Queen was not known by Prince Arthur, which is a general negative without restriction of time or place—a thing in law unprovable: and the presumption is against her, as she lay with the Prince several nights; and moreover they have brought testimony here that the Prince had several times boasted of having used her like a true and vigorous husband. For these reasons, even if all the Queen's allegations were proved as set forth in those articles, it would not amount to proof, except by the Queen's oath, which could not be admitted by law in opposition to the said proofs and presumptions.'
This is very strong evidence coming from whence it comes.
Note II. P. 68.
The following extracts from contemporary despatches will serve to illustrate four points maintained in the text—viz.:
(1) The close connection of the divorce with the separation from Rome;
(2) The complete coercion of the clergy, by means of the Præmunire;
(3) The unpopularity of the clergy; and
(4) The entire novelty of the Royal Supremacy.
1.
Chapuys to Charles V.
January 23, 1531
Though the clergy know themselves innocent, seeing that it was determined to find fault with them, they offered of their own accord 160,000 ducats, which the King refused to accept, swearing that he will have 400,000 or will punish everyone with extreme rigour; so that they will be obliged to pass it, though it will compel them to sell their chalices and reliquaries. About five days ago it was agreed between the Nuncio and me that he should go to the said ecclesiastics in their congregation, and recommend them to support the immunity of the Church, and to inform themselves about the Queen's affairs, showing them the letter which the Pope has written thereupon, and offering to intercede for them with the King about the gift with which he wishes to charge them. On coming into the congregation, they were all utterly astounded and scandalised, and, without allowing him to open his mouth, they begged him to leave them in peace, for they had not the King's leave to speak with him; and if he came to execute any apostolic mandate, he ought to address himself to the Archbishop of Canterbury, their chief, who was not then present. The Nuncio accordingly returned without having public audience of them, and only explained his intention to the Bishop of London (Stokesley), their proctor, who said he would report it. But he will beware of doing so without having the King's command, for he is the principal promoter of these affairs.
2
Chapuys to Charles V.
February 14, 1531.
Since my last letter the clergy have withdrawn the offer of money of which I wrote, because the King demanded that in case he or any of his allies made wai', they should be bound to advance the said moneys without waiting the said five years; and also because the King would not grant them what had chiefly induced them to make the gift—viz., the restoration of their old liberties and exemption from Præmunire; and, thirdly, because the King declared to them the importance of the said law of Præmunire to guard himself from being misunderstood—which law no person in England can understand, and its interpretation lies solely in the King's head, who amplifies it and declares it at his pleasure, making it apply to any case he pleases, the penalty being confiscation of bodies and goods. At last, after a good deal of negotiation, the matter has been settled that the King shall not press them for payment before the expiration of the said five years, and that of the three demands of the clergy they should have that of the exemption and nothing more. … The thing that has been treated to the Pope's prejudice is that the clergy have been compelled, under pain of the said law of Præmunire, to accept the King as head of the Church, which implies in effect as much as if they had declared him Pope of England. It is true that the clergy have added to the declaration that they did so only so far as permitted by the law of God. But that is all the same, as far as the King is concerned, as if they had made no reservation, for no one will now be so bold as to contest with his lord the importance of the reservation. …
3
Chapuys to Charles V.
February 21, 1531.
… And now the Act has been passed against the Pope which I wrote in my last. … By this his Holiness will perceive the truth of what I have always told the Nuncio and written to him—that his timidity and dissimulation would not only prejudice the Queen's interest but his own authority—and it seems to the Queen and her friends that the Pope has no great desire to settle the matter, and will justify what the Duke of Norfolk one day said to me, that his Holiness teas glad there should always be some discord among the Princes, fearing that if they were united they would reform the Church …
If the Pope had ordered the lady to be separated from the King, the King would never have pretended to claim sovereignty over the Church; for, as far as I can understand, she and her father have been the principal cause of it. The latter, speaking of the affair a few days ago to the Bishop of Rochester, ventured to say he could prove by the Scripture that when God left this world, He left no successor nor vicar. There is none who do not blame this usurpation, except those who have promoted it. … The Nuncio has been with the King to day., … The Nuncio then entered upon the subject of this new papacy made here, to which the King replied that it was nothing, and was not intended to infringe the authority of the Pope, provided his Holiness would pay due regard to him, and otherwise he knew what to do.
4.
Chapuys to Charles V.
March 8, 1531.
The clergy are more conscious every day of the great error they committed in acknowledging the King as sovereign of the Church, and they are urgent in Parliament to retract it. Otherwise they say they will not pay a penny of the 400,000 crowns. What will be the issue no one knows. …
5.
Chapuys to Charles V.
April 2, 1531.
… Since the ecclesiastics have obtained exemption from the Præmunire, the laity, understanding that the King would make his account to draw from them a large sum, insisted that the King should give them a similar exemption, showing that they had not incurred forfeiture; and if they had, that, in consideration of the large sums of money they had given him heretofore, they ought to be absolved. As the King would not listen to them for some days, there was great murmuring among them in the Chamber of the Commons, where it was publicly said, in the presence of some of the Privy Council, that the King had burdened and oppressed his kingdom with more imposts and exactions than any three or four of his predecessors, and he ought to consider that the strength of the King lay in the affections of his subjects. And many instances were alleged of the inconveniences which had happened to princes through ill-treatment of their subjects. On learning this, the King granted the exemption, which was published in Parliament on Wednesday last, without any reservation. …
6.
Chapuys to Charles V.
May 22, 1531.
… Four days ago the clergy of York and Durham sent to the King a strong protestation against the supremacy which he pretended to have over them. The province of Canterbury have done the same, of which I send a copy to Granvelle. The King is greatly displeased. …
7.
Chapuys to Charles V.
June 6, 1531.
Giving an account of a visit of Henry VIII.'s Councillors to Katherine of Arragon to persuade her to give in. Katherine says incidentally: 'As to the supremum caput, she considered the King as her sovereign, and would therefore serve and obey him. He was also sovereign in his realm as regards temporal jurisdiction: but as to the spiritual, it was not pleasing to God either that the King should so intend, or that she should consent; for the Pope was the only true sovereign and vicar of God who had power to judge of spiritual matters, of which marriage was one.'
8.
State Papers, June 13, 1531.—Cranmer to the Earl of Wiltshire, concerning Reginald Pole's book against the divorce.
Recapitulating Pole's arguments, he says, 'As to the people, he thinks it impossible to satisfy them by learning or preaching; but as they now begin to hate priests, this will make them hate learned men all the more.'
9.
Spanish Despatches, 460.
October 15.
The King has called together the clergy and lawyers, to ascertain whether, in virtue of the privileges possessed by this kingdom. Parliament could and would enact that, notwithstanding the Pope's prohibition, the cause of the divorce be decided by the Archbishop of Canterbury. They have answered in the negative, and the King has prorogued Parliament to February. The King has told the Nuncio that, if the Pope would not show him more consideration, he would show the world that the Pope had no greater authority than Moses, and that every claim not grounded on Scripture was mere usurpation; that the great concourse of people present had come solely and exclusively to request him to bastinado the clergy, who were hated by both nobles and people.
10.
Spanish Despatches, 492.
November 13.
The King has told the Ambassador that the Convocation of Councils, except on matters of faith, was the province of secular princes, not of the Pope; and also that it would be doing God service to take away the temporalities from the clergy.
11.
Norfolk to Benet.
February 28, 1532.
… I spoke this day with his (the Pope's) ambassador here, who I doubt not will advertise him plainly of our conference, which the Pope must ponder if he wishes to retain the obedience of England to the See Apostolic. … Notwithstanding the infinite clamour of the temporality here in Parliament against the misuse of the spiritual jurisdiction, the King will stop all evil effects if the Pope does not handle him unkindly. This realm did never grudge the tenth part against the abuses of the Church at no Parliament in my day as they do now. I hope we may before Easter finish our Parliament in good sort, but it must depend upon the good news from you. …
Note III. P. 72.
State Papers, July 17, 1533.—Cranmer to Hawkins.
Giving an account of the Dunstable judgment and Anne Boleyn's coronation, he says: 'This coronation was not before her marriage, which took place about St. Paul's Day last.'
Mr. Pocock, reviewing Hamilton's edition of Wriothesley's Chronicle in the 'Academy,' July 10, 1875, quotes Nicholas Sanders as having given November 14 as the date of Anne Boleyn's marriage, and explains it by stating that the festival of St. Erkenwald's (November 14) was kept with great solemnity at St. Paul's in London, and was sometimes called Paul's Day. It was the day on which the remains of St. Erkenwald were removed from the centre of the church to the high altar in 1148; and, as he says, if the marriage took place on that day nothing can be more proper than the birth of Elizabeth in the following November. As neither Mr. Pocock himself nor Nicholas Sanders can be represented as partisans of Anne Boleyn, this testimony is of some value; though, to my own mind, the probabilities as stated in the text are sufficient without it.
Note IV. P. 116.
Mr. Pocock has some further remarks on Edward's Prayerbook in the 'English History Review,' No. 4, October 1886, in an article on the Reformation settlement. He says that under Henry VIII. there was 'the old form of belief minus the papal supremacy.' This appears to me, as I think I have shown in the text, to be not the whole truth on the subject, at least in Henry's later years.
He says further that the religion of Edward VI.'s reign is properly represented by his second Book, and that it was 'in the main Zwinglian, and characterised by a general disparagement of sacramental grace,' and that in Elizabeth's time the tendency was towards Calvinism. He disputes Archbishop Lawrence's view that the Articles of the Church of England are mainly Lutheran, by showing
(1) That the main difference between Luther and Calvin was in regard to the Sacraments.
(2) That much of what was afterwards known as Calvinism, was, in England, drawn from an earlier source, viz.: from Wycliffe.
(3) That the English Articles were always included among the Reformed, and not the Lutheran confessions.
This sort of Zwinglian Calvinism, he says, held its ground, and went on constantly progressing until the accession of James I., when the Hampton Court Conference was the first stage of a reaction against it, completed after the failure of the Savoy Conference, He maintains further that the two Prayer-books of Edward VI. were meant to be progressive and were so, and points out that the notes to the Geneva Bible and the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum all point in the same direction. He remarks also that the Elizabethan changes were slightly in the direction of conciliating those who were addicted to the old learning—e.g., the restoration of the words used in the first Prayer book of Edward VI. at the distribution of the consecrated elements—nevertheless they might have been adopted by Catholics, Lutherans, Zwinglians, or Calvinists. He maintains further, that the Geneva Bible, translated by Whittingham and other exiles, circulated generally in England, up to and beyond the publication of James I.'s authorised version, and had in its later editions, from 1579 to 1615, a Calvinistic catechism inserted into it, and marginal notes of a similar character. Similarly, that the University of Oxford in 1579 passed a statute requiring its junior members to study Calvin's catechism, or else the Heidelberg catechism, and afterwards Bullinger's catechism and Calvin's Institutes. He claims that the Hampton Court Conference was a first step in the reaction from the principles of the Reformation, and that Archbishop Laud, by means of his Majesty's declaration, allowed a new sense of subscribing the Articles, and that the action which followed the failure of the Savoy Conference established a more Catholic tone than the formularies of the Church had countenanced for more than a century.
The fact that Elizabeth's divines were nearly all formed in the school of Zurich or Geneva, and that they (Grindal, for instance, as we have seen) looked upon Lutherans as 'semi-papists,' tends strongly to confirm these views.
Note V. P. 145 (from Burnet's collection, vol. v. p. 381).
Sent by the Queen's Majesty's commandment, in the month of March, Anno Domini 1553 (1554).
By the Queen.
A copy of a letter, with articles sent from the Queen's Majesty unto the Bishop of London; and by him and his officers, at her grace's commandment, to be put in speedy execution with effect in the whole diocese, as well in places exempt as non-exempt whatsoever, according to the tenor and form of the same:—
'Right reverend father in God, right trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well. And whereas heretofore, in the time of the late reign of our most dearest brother, King Edward the Sixth (whose soul God pardon), divers notable crimes, excesses and faults, with sundry kinds of heresies, simony, advoutry, and other enormities, have been committed within this our realm, and other our dominions; the same continuing yet hitherto in like disorder, since the beginning of our reign, without any correction or reformation at all; and the people, both of the laity and also of the clergy, and chiefly of the clergy, have been given to much insolency and ungodly rule, greatly to the displeasure of Almighty God, and very much to our regret and evil contentation, and to no little slander of other Christian realms, and in manner, to the subversion and clean defacing of this our realm. And remembering our duty to Almighty God, to be, to foresee, as much as in us may be, that all virtue and godly living should be embraced, flourish and increase. And therewith also, that all vice and ungodly behaviour should be utterly banished and put away; or at the least ways, so nigh as might be, so bridled and kept under, that godliness and honesty might have the over-hand: understanding, by very credible report, and public fame, to our no small heaviness and comfort (sic), that within your diocese, as well in not exempted as exempted places, the like disorder and evil behaviour hath been done and used; like also to continue and increase, unless due provision be had and made to reform the same (which earnestly in very deed we do mind and intend) to the uttermost all the ways we can possible, trusting of God's furtherance and help in that behalf.
'For these causes, and other most just considerations us moving, we send in to you certain articles of such special matter, as among other things be most necessary to be now put in execution by you and your officers, extending to the end by us desired, and the reformation aforesaid; wherein ye shall be charged with our special commandment, by these our letters, to the intent you and your officers may the more earnestly and boldly proceed thereunto, without fear of any presumption to he noted on your -part, or danger to he incurred of any such our laws, as by your doings, of that is in the said articles contained, might any wise grieve you, whatsoever he threatened in any such case; and therefore we straitly charge and command you, and your said officers, to proceed to the execution of the said articles, without all tract and delay, as ye will answer to the contrary. Given under our own signet, at our palace of Westminster, the fourth day of March, the first year of our reign.'
Here follow the articles referred to.
A commission to turn out some of the reformed bishops.
Id. p. 386.
'Regina dei gratifi, &c., perdilectis et fidelibus consiliariis suis, Stephano Wintoniensi episcopo, summo suo Angliæ cancelario, et Cuthberto Dunelmensi episcopo, necnon reverendis et dilectis sibi in Christo Edmundo Londoniensi episcopo, Roberto Assavensi episcopo, Georgio Cicestrensi episcopo, et Anthonio Landavensi episcopo salutem.
'Quia omne animi vicium tanto conspectius in se crimen habet, quanto qui peccat major habetur, et quoniam certis et indubitatis testimoniis, una cum facti notorietate et famâ publicâ referente, luculenter intelleximus et manifesto comperimus Robertum archiepiscopum Eboracensem, Robertum Menevensem, Joannem Cestrensem, et Paulum Bristoliensem episcopos, aut certe pro talibus se gerentes, Dei et animarum suarum salutis immemores, valde gravia et enormia dudum commisisse et perpetrâsse scelera atque peccata, et inter csetera quod dolenter certe, et magna cum amaritudine animre nostras proferimus, post expressam professionem castitatis, expresse, rite et legitime emissam, cum quibusdam mulieribus nuptias de facto, cum de jure non deberent, in Dei contemptum et animarum suarum peccatum manifestum necnon in grave omnium ordinum, tarn clericorum quam laicorum scandalum; denique cæterorum omnium Christi fidelium perniciosissimum exemplum contraxisse et cum illis tanquam cum uxoribus cohabitâsse.
'Ne igitur tantum scelus remaneat impunitum ac multos alios pertrahat in ruinam, vobis tenore præsentium committimus et mandamus, quatenus vos omnes, aut tres saltem vestrûm qui præsentes literas commissionales duxerint exequendas, dictos archiepiscopum Eboracensem, episcopum Menevensem, episcopum Cestrensem, et episcopum Bristoliensem, diebus, horis et locis, vestro, aut trium vestrum arbitrio, eligendis et assignandis ad comparendum coram vobis, ceu tribus vestrûm, vocetis aut vocari faciatis, vocent, aut vocari faciant, tres vestrûm: (ceu saltem) si ita vobis aut tribus vestrûm videatur, eosdem archiepiscopum et episcopos prædictos adeatis, aut tres vestrûm adeant, et negocio illis summarie et de piano sine ullo strepitu et figurâ judicii exposito et declarato, si per summariam examinationem et discussionem negotii per vos aut tres vestrûm fiendam, eundem archiepiscopum et episcopos prædictos sic contraxisse, aut fecisse constiterit; eosdem a dignitatibus suis prædietis, cum suis juribus pertinentibus universis, omnino amoviatis, deprivetis et perpetuo excludetis, ceu tres vestrûm sic amoveant, deprivent, perpetuo excludant: pœnitentiam salutarem et congruam pro modo culppe vestro aut trium vestrûm arbitrio imponendam eisdem injungentis, cæteraque in prædietis cum eorum incidentibus emergentiis annexis et connexis quibuscumque, facientes quæ necessaria fuerint, ceu quomodolibet oportuna.
'Ad quæ omnia et singula facienda expedienda et finienda, nos tam auctoritate nostrâ ordinariâ, quam absolutâ, ex mero motu certâque scientiâ nostrâ, vobis et tribus vestrûm postestatem, auctoritatem et licenciam concedimus, et impertimur per præsentes cum cujuslibet cohercionis et castigationis severitate et potestate in contrarium facientes, non obstantibus quibuscumque.
'In cujus rei, &,c. Teste Reginâ apud Westmonasterium 13. die Martii.'
Another commission to turn out the rest of them.
Id. p. 388.
'Mary by the grace of God, etc., to the right reverend fathers in God, our right trusty and right well-beloved councillors, Stephine, Bishop of Winchester, our Chancellor of England; Cuthbert, Bishop of Duresine; Edmond, Bishop of London; Robert, Bishop of Sainte Asaphe; George, Bishop of Chichester, our almoner; and Anthonye, Bishop of Landaff, greeting. Where John Taylor, Doctor of Divinity, naming himself Bishop of Lincolne; John Hoper, naming himself Bishop of Worcester and Glocester; John Harley, Bishop of Hereford; having their said several pretensed bishoprics given to them, by the letters patents of our late deceased brother. King Edward the Sixte, to have and to hold the same during their good behaviours, with the express clause (quamdiu se bene gesserint) have sithence, as hath been credibly brought to our knowledge, both by preaching, teaching, and setting forth of erroneous doctrine, and also by inordinate life and conversation, contrary both to the laws of Almighty God, and use of the universal Christian Church, declared themselves very unworthy of that vocation and dignity in the Church.
'We minding to have their several cases duly heard and considered, and thereupon such order taken with them, as may stand with justice, and the laws, have, for the special trust we have conceived of your wisdoms, learning and integrity of life, appointed you four, three, or two of you, to be our commissioners in this behalf: giving unto you four, three, or two of you, full power and authority to call before you, if you shall think so good, the said John Taylor, John Hoper, John Harley, and every of them; and thereupon, either by order of the ecclesiastical laws, or of the laws of our realm, or of both, proceed to the declaring of the said bishoprics to be void, as they be already indeed void. To the intent some such other meet personages may be elected thereunto, as for their godly life, learning, and sobriety, may be thought worthy the places.
'In witness, &c. Teste Reginâ apud Westm. 15 die Martii.'
Note VI. P. 233.
Orders in the Church of England.
It can be proved beyond reasonable doubt, that Episcopal orders were not insisted upon in practice, in the Church of England, as an indispensable condition to ministry, down to the great rebellion, or in one or two instances even after it.
1. In the answers of the Commission in the year 1540 to the questions raised in preparation for the issuing of the 'Erudition of a Christian man,' on the special subject of orders, the rest of the commissioners are unanimous in considering that the Apostles had Divine authority to ordain, three only going so far as to say that had there been Christian princes at the time, their licence would have been required—a manifest complaisance on their part to Henry's recent legislation. Cranmer in his answers plainly treats ordination as a matter of indifference, as does also Barlow.[1]
The latter also states in a sermon:[2] 'If the King's Grace, being supreme head of the Church of England, did choose denominate and elect any lay man (being learned) to be a bishop, that he so chosen (without mention being made of any orders), should be as good a bishop as he is or the best in England.'
2. Edward VI. assumed the power of dispensing with orders at his pleasure. Thus he writes[3] to the Bishop of Exeter in December 1552, that 'the King's pleasure is to dispense with Dr. Haddon for taking of any other orders than he had already. What his orders were does not appear, but they must have been irregular, otherwise dispensation would have been needless.
3, The real difficulty—as far as one exists—in pro^dng the point of the employment of non-episcopally ordained ministers, in the earlier part of the period referred to, arises from the fact that contemporaries do not notice it in individual cases, because there was no real question about it. It is simply inconceivable, from the general history of the times, that all the hot-gospellers and volunteers of the Reformation, and all the foreign allies who came from Germany, Holland, and elsewhere, were in every case either re-ordained by the English bishops, or were prohibited from ministering in the churches, and that in no single case should any record of the fact exist. The cases of Whittingham and Travers have been sufficiently referred to in the text. Travers, I may repeat, expressly states that 'afore Mr. Whittingham's case (i.e., 1578) there was never any question moved to the contrary,' and Whitgift finds no fault with his statement.
As has been frequently pointed out—most recently and very clearly by the Dean of Peterborough[4]—the Church of England, though she requires her own ministers to be episcopally ordained, nowhere asserts that non-episcopal orders are invalid. Indeed, we may go further than this, and say that the requirement is to be found only in the preface to the Ordinal—where it was apparently in the first edition—and that the language used in this, as in the Articles, seems carefully to avoid deciding the question, when obviously it would have been more natural to have used more definite expressions.
4. Two further points call for remark in this matter, viz., (1) As the Dean further notices, the Church of England has not in practice always insisted upon the above requirement. (2) Has this non-insistance been lawful or otherwise? I will take the latter question first.
The words of the Act of the 13 Eliz. c. 12, s. 6, are given in the note above, p. 219. It is quite clear that those words contemplate that there are or may be persons who ' shall pretend to be priests, &c.,' and shall 'have ecclesiastical living' in some diocese 'by reason of some other form of consecration or ordering' than the one contained in the Book of Common Prayer, and to such persons the Act prescribes, not re-ordaining, but that they shall, in the presence of the ordinary, declare and subscribe their assent to the Articles.
It has been alleged, no doubt, that this Act was intended to take security, so to speak, of the old incumbents who had continued in their livings since Mary's reign, and not to admit irregularly-ordained Protestants. The answer is obvious—viz., that the words, however they might have been intended, did admit both; and, further, that a strong presumption exists that they wei-e intended to do so, from the practice to be shortly referred to, and from the following passage of Bishop Cosin, written in the year 1650.[5] This letter is now well known. He is writing to a person named Cordel, who, while residing in France during the Great Rebellion, scrupled about communicating with the French Protestants. Cosin, who was, or had been, as may be remembered, a Laudian High Churchman, advises him to do so, under protest as to the irregularity of their orders, 'considering that there is no prohibition of our Church against it, as there is against our communicating with Papists, and that well founded upon Scripture and the will of God.' Upon the immediate point before us he says—after objecting to the 'irregularity of the orders of the French Protestants, 'If at any time a minister so ordained (i.e., unepiscopally) in their French churches came to incorporate himself in ours, and to receive a public charge or cure of souls among us in the Church of England (as I have known some of them to have so done of late, and can instance in many others before my time), our bishops did not re-ordain him before they admitted him to his charge, as they would have done if his former ordination here in France had been void. Nor did our laws require more of him than to declare his public consent to the religion received among us and to subscribe the Articles established.' This one quotation might suffice for both my present points. No better authority could be imagined than Bishop Cosin. He had been secretary to Bishop Overall, at Norwich, more than thirty years before, and was greatly esteemed as a churchman and a man of learning.[6] Baxter says of him that 'he was excellently well versed in canons, councils, and fathers,' and he was one of the principal speakers at the Savoy Conference.
But the question of the practice of the Church of England needs not to depend on any one authority however eminent. On the contrary, we may trace a perfect 'tradition' in the English Church, to the effect of the validity of non-episcopal orders, through a whole line of bishops, from Jewell in the commencement of Elizabeth's reign, through Whitgift, Bancroft, Andrews, Overall, Morton, and Cosin, who died some twelve years after the passing of the last Act of Uniformity: thus Whitgift—besides the negative evidence given in the text in reference to the Travers case—says plainly, in a letter to Sir Francis Knollys,[7] 'If it had pleased her Majesty, with the wisdom of the realm, to have used no bishops at all, we could not have complained justly of any defect in our Church'; and again, 'If it had pleased her Majesty to have assigned the imposition of hands to the deans of every cathedral church, or some other number of ministers which in no sort were bishops, but as they be pastors, there had been no wrong done to their persons that I can conceive.'
Andrews, as is well known, took part in the consecration of three bishops for Scotland who had never been ordained priests, and in so doing was supported by Bancroft. There are two somewhat different accounts of this transaction in which both Andrews and Bancroft are implicated. Thus Canon Perry (vol i. p. 184) says that Bancroft removed Andrews's scruple—viz., that the Presbyterians to be consecrated bishops had not received episcopal ordination—by the argument that episcopal orders might be conferred at once even on a layman, and that it contained in itself the lower functions of deacon and priest, alleging the cases of Ambrose and Nectarius as examples. He refers to Collier (vol. vii. p. 362) as his authority. But Spotswoode's 'History of the Church of Scotland,' vol. iii. p. 29, has the following account: 'A question in the meantime was moved by Dr. Andrews, Bishop of Ely, touching the consecration of the Scottish bishops, who, as he said, must first be ordained presbyters, as having received no ordination from a bishop. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Bancroft), who was by, maintained "that thereof there was no necessity, seeing where bishops could not be had, the ordination given by presbyters must be esteemed lawful, otherwise that it might be doubted if there were any lawful vocation in most of the Reformed Churches." This, applauded to by the other bishops, Ely acquiesced, and on the day and in the place appointed, the three Scottish bishops we^'e consecrated.' Collier quotes Heylin as his authority for putting the other reasons into Bancroft's mouth. The difference of value of the two authorities appears to be that whereas Spotswoode was one of the Scottish bishops then and there consecrated, Heylin was at the time a boy of ten years old.
Further than this, in carrying on a correspondence with the well-known Peter du Moulin, Andrews says, in comparing the Anglican with the French Huguenot Church: 'Though our government be by Divine right, it follows not that there is no salvation, or that a Church cannot stand, without it. He must needs be stone blind that sees not Churches standing without it. He must needs be made of iron and hard-hearted, that denies them salvation. … Somewhat may be wanting that is of Divine right (at least in external government), and yet salvation may be had.'[8]
In another letter while speaking of Calvin and Beza, he writes: 'To what purpose is it to abolish the name and to retain the thing (for even you retain the thing without the title), as they two, whom you named, while they lived, what were they but bishops in deed, though not in name?'[9] Now it must be observed that Calvin had received no orders in the Catholic Church above those of sub-deacon, and Beza none at all.
With regard to Bishop Overall, we have the authority of Cosin, who was at one time his secretary, in a letter quoted by Birch in his life of Tillotson[10]— and which letter Birch says he had before him when he wrote—which is so circumstantial that the passage is worth quoting in full. He says: 'Dr. de Laune, who translated the English Liturgy into French, being presented to a living, and coming to the bishop then at Norwich with his presentation, his lordship asked him where he had his orders. He answered that he was ordained by the presbytery at Leyden. The bishop, upon this, advised him to take the opinion of council (sic) whether by the laws of England he was capable of a benefice without being ordained by a bishop. The doctor replied that he thought his lordship would be unwilling to re-ordain him if his council should say that he was not otherwise capable of the living by law. The Bishop rejoined: "Re-ordination loe must riot admit, no more than a re-baptisation; but in case you find it doubtful whether you be a priest capable to receive a benefice among us or no, I will do the same office for you, if you desire it, that I should do for one who doubts of his baptism, when all things belonging essentially unto it have not been duly observed in the administration of it, according to the rule in the Book of Common Prayer, 'If thou hast not already,' &c. Yet, for mine own part, if you will adventure the orders that you have, I will admit your presentation, and give yon institition into the living howsoever" But the title which this presentation had from the patron proving not good, there were no further proceedings in it; yet afterwards Dr. de Laune was admitted into another benefice without any new ordination.'
The evidence in regard to Morton comes from two opponents in a controversy—viz., the once celebrated John Durel, author of the 'Sanctæ Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ vindicia,' and Mr. Hickman, a nonconformist fellow of Magdalen ejected at the Restoration. These both tell pretty much the same story, though the latter adds the fullest particulars. He says that 'the Archbishop of Spalato (Antonio di Dominis), while living in England, asked Morton, Bishop of Durham, to do someone who had been ordained beyond the seas the favour of re-ordaining him presbyter, in order that he might have freer access to ecclesiastical benefices. Morton wrote back to say that such a thing could not be done without very great offence to the Reformed Churches, a scandal of which he did not choose to be the originator. My witness is … Calendrin, pastor of the Anglo-Belgian Church in Essex, who has in his possession the original letter in Morton's own handwriting.' The above quotation I make at second hand from an anonymous pamphlet (by 'Cantab,' a Cambridge man who has joined the Church of Rome) entitled 'Apostolical Succession Not a Doctrine of the Church of England,'[11] p. 65. But I am now able to give the original quotation from Hickman's book 'Apologia pro ministris &c.,' 2nd edit. p. 18, Eleutheropoli, anno ssrse Bai-tholome?e, as follows: —
'Petiit e Mortono Episcopo Dunelmensi Spalatensis dum apud nos ageret, ut dignaretur quendam in Ecclesiis transmarinis ordinatum denuo ordinare presbyterum, quo liberior esset ei aditus ad beneficia ecclesiastica. Rescripsit Mortonus, non posse illud fieri, sine gravissimo ecclesiarum reformatarum scandalo, cujus ipse autor esse noluit … testem habeo Dominum Calendrinum ecclesiæ Anglo-Belgicæ apud Trinobantes pastorem, in cujus manibus est ipsum autographum literarum Mortoniarum.'
I may add that there is independent evidence that Mr. Calendrin was a friend of Bishop Morton.
Cosins' own view upon the subject, as well as his evidence (or some of it) in regard to the usage of the English Church up to the time of the Commonwealth, has been already given. There is, however, a further letter of his[12] to a Mr. Gunning, wherein he speaks of the re-ordination of Presbyterian ministers as a thing 'which was never yet done in the Church of England' (except in an individual case to which he refers apparently with disapproval); but he says, 'it has rather admitted them and employed them at several times in the public administration of the Sacraments'; and he quotes Bishop Overall to the same effect.
To this series of bishops I am now enabled to add the name[13] of Joseph Hall. He says: ' The sticking at the admission of our brethren returning from the Reformed Churches was not in the case of ordination, but of institution; they had been acknowledged ministers of Christ without any other hands laid upon them. … I know those more than one, who by virtue only of that ordination which they have brought with them from other Reformed Churches have enjoyed spiritual promotion and livings without any exception against the lawfulness of their calling.'
There is also a vast array of individual instances in which men of more or less distinction have been admitted to various offices in the English Church, where no notice can be found of their re-ordination, when they were undoubtedly ordained first in one of the foreign Protestant Churches, and when the presumption is so strong against it, especially when taken in connection with the distinct statements of Overall, Morton, Cosin, and Hall already quoted, that it seems pure quibbling to insist on the probability, or even possibility, of their having been so. The case of several of these who were admitted to canonries is attempted to be got over by the statement that these and other such dignities have no cure of souls attached to them, and so might possibly be held by laymen. I will therefore adduce but very few, and those shall be such as had cure of souls in some shape or another. The well-known Dr. Saravia is the first instance I will mention. Saravia was made a minister in Holland and was employed in Guernsey in 1 564. Afterwards he became a schoolmaster at Southampton, and then Professor of Divinity at Leyden. Later than this he received preferment in the Church of England—not only a canonry of Canterbury, and afterwards of Westminster, but also the rectory of Great Chart in Kent, to which he was presented by Archbishop Bancroft. Now, there is no reason whatever to believe, but a total absence of any, that Saravia was ever re-ordained by any English bishop. No proof, no record of any such proceeding is produced, and had it been so, it would have invalidated entirely the statements of Overall, Morton, and Cosin already quoted. This is the more remarkable since Saravia himself preferred the Anglican to the Presbyterian discipline, and even wrote a work in defence of the three orders of the ministry, and also urged upon the unepiscopally-ordained ministers of Guernsey the propriety of taking episcopal orders, if they were natives of the island. In the last years of Richard Hooker's life, Saravia was his near neighbour and intimate friend, and is specially mentioned by Walton as having administered the Communion to him and his friends on the day before his death.[14] This and his incumbency of Great Chart seem to settle the question so often raised of whether the privileges of an unepiscopally-ordained person in the Church of England did not stop short of the 'cure of souls.'
In the same way Peter du Moulin the elder, who was a very distinguished French Protestant pastor, became chaplain to King James I., and frequently administered the Communion to him, and was preferred to a canonry of Canterbury. He returned to France, and presided over a synod at Alaix which confirmed the decrees of Dort. Afterwards he came back to England, and was presented to a sinecure rectory in Wales, but on the death of James I. he once more returned to France, and became Professor of Divinity at Sedan, where he died at a great age in 1658. There is of course, in this as in the last case, not the smallest evidence, nor the least reason to believe, that Du Moulin was ever re-ordained; and, at any rate, he alternately performed the duties of a French Protestant pastor and an Anglican clergyman, in a way which goes far to show that the two positions were not looked upon in his day as in any way incompatible.
I will give but one other instance in the case of the son[15] of the above, another Peter du Moulin, born at Paris in 1600, and who took his degree of D.D. at Leyden. He was instituted Rector of Adisham and Staple, in Kent, 1662. The curious part of this is, that this Presbyterian minister was so instituted in succession to one Charles Nichols, who was also a Presbyterian, and was ejected as such! The difference between the two was that Nichols was an Englishman ordained by presbyters in England, Du Moulin a Frenchman ordained equally by presbyters abroad. Thus then, within a few months of the passing of the Act of Uniformity, did Charles II. take advantage of the saving clause which was, and still is in it, 'That the penalties in this Act shall not extend to the foreigners or aliens of the foreign Reformed Churches allowed or to be allowed by the King's Majesty, his heirs or successors, in England.' The same transaction also shows that the objection to Presbyterian orders in the English Church was still in 1662 what it was when Whitgift silenced Travers in 1584, namely not a theological or ecclesiastical, but purely a legal objection. I shall not refer at length to the case of the Channel Islands, in which, though they were a part of the diocese of Winchester, many of the ministers had no more than Presbyterian ordination until the year 1820, as the fact is now well known; but it seems to prove that the Bishops of Winchester, either deliberately left some hundreds of the people committed to their charge without valid Sacraments, or else did not believe in the doctrine of Apostolic succession: and this from generation to generation for a matter of 250 years.
As a commentary on some of the above, I may refer to the diary of Philip Henry, one of the ministers expelled in 1662. He says (p. 247): 'All or most of the Conformity have said they could not deny us ministers, but not ministers of the Church of England, without episcopal ordination. … Now suppose a Dutch or French Protestant minister to come into England to preach, he is not re-ordained but only licensed'; and further, in referring to the transaction which I have commented upon, he says: 'In King James's time when four (sic) Scotch presbyters were to be consecrated bishops at Lambeth, 'twas moved they might be first ordained presbyters again, but overruled—'twas without need.'
Lord Bacon's[16] remarks on the subject are worth quoting also, as those of a man of the very highest intellect of his time, and also from his position and occupation likely to be well informed as to the actual state of the facts. He wrote ' an Advertisement touching the controversies of the Church of England,' according to Mr. Spedding, about 1589, occasioned by the 'Martin Marprelate' tracts. In it he says of the controversies themselves that 'they are not touching the high mysteries of the faith, … neither are they concerning the great parts of the worship of God of which it is true that "non servatur unitas in credendo, nisi eadem est in colendo," such as were the controversies of the East and West Churches touching images, and such as are many of those between the Church of Rome and us, as about the adoration of the Sacrament and the like. But we contend about ceremonies and things indifferent, about the external policy of government of the Church.' Again (pp. 86-7), he points out the growth of extreme views on both sides thus: 'It may be remembered that on their part who call for reformation' (i.e., the Puritan party) 'was first propounded some dislike of certain ceremonies supposed to be superstitious; some complaint of dumb ministers who possess rich benefices, and some invectives against the idle and monastical continuance within the Universities by those who had livings to be resided upon, and such-like abuses. Thence they went on to condemn the government of bishops as an hierarchy remaining to us of the corruptions of the Roman Church, and to except to sundry institutions as not sufficiently delivered from the pollution of former times. And lastly they advanced to define of an only and perpetual form of policy in the Church, which without consideration of possibility or foresight of peril or perturbation of the Church and State must be erected and planted of the magistrate. Here they stay. Others, not able to keep footing in so steep a ground, descend further. That the same must be entered into and accepted of the people at their peril, without the attending of the establishment of authority; and so in the meantime they refuse to communicate with us, as reputing us to have no Church. This hath been the progression on that side—I mean the generality, for I know some persons (being of the nature not only to love extremities, but also to fall to them without degrees) were at the highest strain at the first. The other part' (i.e., the Church party), 'which maintaineth the present government of the Church, hath not kept one tenor neither. First those ceremonies which were pretended to be corrupt they maintained to l)e things indifferent, opposed the examples of the good times of the Church to the challenge that was made to them because they were used in the later superstitious times. Then were they also content mildly to acknowledge many imperfections in the Church as tares come up among the corn which yet (according to the wisdom taught by our Saviour) were not with strife to be pulled up lest it might spoil and supplant the good corn, but to grow on together until the harvest. After they grew to a more absolute defence and maintenance of the orders of the Church, and stiffly to hold that nothing was to be innovated partly because it needed not, partly because it would make a breach upon the rest. Thence (exasperate through contentions) they are fallen into a direct condemnation of the contrary part as of a sect. Yea, and some indiscreet persons have been bold in open preaching to use dishonourable and derogative speech and censure of the Churches abroad; and that so far as some of our men (as I have heard) ordained in foreign parts have been pronounced to be 710 lawful ministers. Thus we see the beginnings were modest but the extremes are violent; so as there is almost as great a distance now of either side from itself as was at first from one to the other.'
These remarks seem to be valuable on other grounds besides the main intention of the writer, in showing the progressive character of differences originally small, as proving also—(1) That there was no doubt in the minds of the men of that time as to the trifling character of the original differences between the Church party and the Puritans, nor yet of the important and essential differences between the Roman and English Churches; (2) the respect in which the foreign Protestant Churches were at first held in the English Church, of which there is also ample proof in the other writings and correspondence of the time; (3) that the idea of questioning foreign Protestant orders was looked upon by Bacon (fifty years after the separation from Rome) as not only a novelty, but also an outrageous novelty.
The above extracts are very far from exhausting the subject, but they seem difficult to reconcile with any continuous adhesion to a strict view of the necessity of episcopal ordination, whether in theory or in practice.
Since the above Note was in print I have seen two other papers which require notice. One is a letter addressed by Dr. Hammond to Lord Burleigh, Nov. 4, 1588, on the Divine Authority of Bishops, published in the 'Hatfield Calendar,' Pt. III. No. 754, in which he expressly denies it, and concludes his paper almost in the same words as does Archbishop Whitgift, above (p. 296):—'The bishops of our realm do not (so far as I ever yet heard), nor may not, claim to themselves any other authority than is given them by the statute of the 25th of King Henry the Eighth, recited in the first year of her Majesty's reign, or by other statutes of this land: neither is it reasonable they should make other claims, for, if it had pleased her Majesty, with the wisdom of the realm, to have used no bishops at all, we could not have complained justly of any defect in our Church; or if it had liked them to limit the authority of bishops to shorter terms, they might not have said they had any wrong. But sith it hath pleased her Majesty to use the ministry of bishops, and to assign them this authority, it must be to me, that am a subject, as God's ordinance, and therefore to be obeyed according to St. Paul's rule.'
The other is an answer (?), published in the 'Newbery House Magazine,' by the Rev. J. Hancock, to the Dean of Peterborough's paper quoted above. To this it must be objected—(1) That it quite fails to answer any one of Dean Perowne's facts. It fails to show how men like Bishop Cosin could have either stated what was not true, or failed to know what had happened in their own days and in those of older men, like Bishop Overall, with whom they had been associated. (2) That it falls into the somewhat fashionable error of treating the Reformation as an event of the seventeenth century alone, and almost entirely ignoring the occurrences of the sixteenth. The position which all the advocates on this side of the question fail to touch is, shortly, this—that for almost two generations after the separation from Rome, neither the practice nor the theory of the Church of England even suggested a belief in the modern doctrine of Apostolical succession, while many instances occur, as I have already shown, in which it was both neglected in practice and repudiated in theory.
Note VII. P. 253.
As to the Protestantism of Elizabeth and her advisers:
(1.) Letter of Sandys, afterwards Bishop of Worcester and Archbishop of York, to Bullinger, from Strasburg, December 20, 1558.
He reports as part of Elizabeth's reply to Queen Mary's last request that she would make no change in religion: 'I will not change it provided only it can be proved by the Word of God, which shall be the only foundation and rule of my religion.'[17] This can, of course, only be a report, and goes therefore for little but a proof that such reports were about at the time.
(2.) There is a letter from Cecil to one Mr. Herd, about a commonplace book and some notes of Cranmer's, in which he says that the Queen thinks such a rare and precious treasure should not be hid in secret, and commands him to send up without delay the precious documents for perusal.[18]
(3.) In the Queen's declaration after the suppression of the rebellion in the north, she sets forth ' her determination to continue in support of the true Christian religion.' This being also a good instance of the use of true Christian religion in contradistinction to the Roman Church.[19]
(4.) The Queen, in a letter urging the sending of contributions towards the relief of those of the religion in the town of Montpelier suffering from an earthquake, speaks of her own subjects as 'fellow members ' with the Montpelier people, and ' such as do make profession of one religion with them.' She thus treats the French Huguenots as of one religion with the Church of England.[20]
(5.) A private letter from one Herll to Sir Edward Horsey speaks of the Queen as ' sharply set against the Papists.'[21]
(6.) The Queen's instructions to Lord Huntingdon, President of the Council of the North. There were thirty members of this Council, of which live were clerics—viz., Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of York; James Pilkington, Bishop of Durham; Richard Barnes, Bishop of Carlisle; Mathew Hutton, Dean of York; and William Whittingham, Dean of Durham. Amongst their duties were that whenever they sit they shall enforce observance of laws, ordinances, etc., made by the Privy Council, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, or Parliament, touching religion and Divine service, and aid the archbishop and bishops therein also. Not a word of Convocation or the Church as distinct from the State.[22]
What was thought of the matter by the authorities of the Roman Church is sufficiently proved—by the refusal of all but one of the Marian bishops to crown Elizabeth, by the unanimous adhesion of Convocation to the arrangements of Mary by the equally unanimous opposition of the bishops in the Upper House to the Acts of Restoration and Uniformity (1 Eliz. c. 1 and 2), by the excommunication of Pope Pius V., and by the innumerable plots against the Queen's life sanctioned, as we have seen, by popes, cardinals, and princes.
It is certain also that Elizabeth's adhesion to Protestantism was taken as a matter of course before her accession, by both friends and foes, and further, as her earliest biographer Camden points out, that it would have been impossible for her to acknowledge the Roman Church without declaring Mary Stuart's title to the throne better than her own, inasmuch as two popes had declared her illegitimate.
The fact is that in the early times of the Reformation there was no thought of, and no room for, a via media, and it is this very fact which constitutes the difficulty in showing clearly that it did not exist. There is absolutely nothing to suggest its existence, and much that is incompatible with it; but the actual proof of a negative is, of course, an impossible task.
The first suggestion of a Divine right of bishops was made, as we have seen, some fifty years after the separation from Rome, and early in the latter half of Elizabeth's reign. How it was then received may be seen from a letter of Sir Francis Knollys to Burleigh, in the State Papers, vol. ccxxxiii. 62, in which he suggests that Whitgift (whom he uniformly accuses of it) had incurred the penalty of a præmunire (!) by claiming it. Henry ^ III. 's via media broke down as soon as his hand ceased to support it, and had even before that given indications that it would have to advance further in the direction of Protestantism if it was to hold its own.
I have said enough in the text to show that it is difficult to exaggerate the Erastianism of the whole of this period; but I may give one more instance of it[23] which is almost comic when we observe the quarter from whence it comes. It is amusing to find the very Dr. Bancroft whose claim of Divine right for bishops had made such a sensation in 1588, a few years after—having himself become Bishop of London in the interval—writing to Sir J. Stanhope in 1599 as follows, in evident tribulation at having fallen into disgrace with the Queen: 'Those things that I do well in are either kept from her or depraved, and every omission or want of foresight has been aggravated ever since I was bishop; so that I rather marvel at her clemency, that she has not either cast me into prison, or thrust me from my bishoprick, than to hear of her great displeasure towards me.' This seems to show that he felt no great confidence that the 'Divine right,' which he had so mildly suggested in his sermoii, would avail much against the papal power which he had so boldly claimed for the Queen in the same sermon.
There is a very curious paper which is anonymous,[24] in which it is argued that the Queen in her recent general pardon could not have intended to include offences, such as adultery, &c., punishable by ecclesiastical law, because though she has the power of the Pope (and, the writer seems to imply, even more, inasmuch as she has it de jure as well as de facto, which the Pope had not), yet as the Pope 'non potest dispensare contra jus divinum ant naturale,' neither can the Queen. This was the very question which was argued in regard to Katherine of Arragon's divorce.
Lord Huntingdon, when first made President of the North, began his instructions to the Justices of the Peace thus: ' You are first to inquire and certify to us the names and addresses of all known and suspected Papists within your rule, the enemies of God and of good order.'[25]
Another anonymous paper[26] says: 'The realm is divided into three parties, the Papist, the Atheist, and the Protestant. All these are alike favoured: the first and second being many, we dai'e not displease them; the third because, having religion, we fear to displease God in them. All three are blamed: the Papist as a traitor, the Atheist as godless, the Protestant as a precisian. The last should not be feared, as he obeys in God's fear; the other two know no obedience, and Government must either tread down the bad, or let them devour the godly,' &c. This appears to be a Puritan production, but it shows something of the contemporary view of the Church of Rome.
In another paper[27] we have a letter from one Copley, apparently a Catholic exile, to Burleigh, in which he defends his own position, and speaks of the Catholic Church as 'a surer pillar to lean unto than the changeable, confused doctrine of contrary teachers; yea, or any Act of Parliament which has not long used to judge causes of faith, or prescribe ecclesiastical laws:' showing how the Catholics at that day, as ever since, looked upon the Anglican Church as the creation of Parliament—i.e., of the State.
Again, we have some notes by Lord Burleigh,[28] in which he speaks of 'the sacrifice of the Mass as a thing to be rooted out of the Church as altogether evil,' with answers thereto arguing that it should be tolerated in those who think the Mass to be the service of God, as Christ kept company with Pharisees, and meat offered to idols was not forbidden to be eaten.
Bishop Cooper in his 'Admonition,'[29] answering one of the Martin Marprelate libels, and in particular a charge of committing simony like the Pope, says that 'there ought to be great difference between Christian preachers and writers inveighing against Antichrist and his members, and ministers of the Gospel and zealous professors blaming and reproving the faults of their own bishop and clergy, in the estate of a Church by authority settled. The one part is handled with an earnest zeal and detestation of the obstinate patrons of error and idolatry; the other should be moved only with a charitable sorrow and grief to see preachers of the truth not to declare in life that which they utter to other in doctrine.'
The Bishops, in answering Barrow's (the Puritan's) demand for a conference, say: 'It is no reason that all the Reformed Churches in Europe (acknowledging our Church of England for a sister), the same should be now brought into question at the will and request of a few sectaries.'[30]
Whitgift also, in a letter to Beza,[31] when in the act of remonstrating with him for his interference in favour of the Puritans, says: 'If the labour of some had been employed, not against their brethren that professed one and the same substance of true doctrine, but to the throwing down and beating back the kingdom of the common enemy, the Roman antichrist, it would now have fared better and happier, in his judgment, with the Church of Christ'; and this letter he addresses: 'Ornatissimo atque eruditissimo viro, D. Theodoro Bezæ, fratri et symmistæ suo in Christo charissimo, &c.
It would be equally tedious and needless to multiply instances of similar expressions. The correspondence of the greater number of the Elizabethan bishops is full of them; and they seem to establish plainly these propositions—viz., (1) That these men were throughout intensely—nay, many of them bitterly—Protestant: e.g., Jewell, who, writing to Peter Martyr (without a date, but apparently in 1559) from London,[32] says: 'Our Papists oppose us most spitefully, and none more obstinately than those who have abandoned us. This it is to have once tasted of the Mass! He who drinks of it is mad. Depart from it all ye who value a sound mind: he who drinks of it is mad.' (2) That they themselves looked upon Elizabeth's reform as a restoration of Edward's—e.g., Cox, writing to Weidner, in May 1559,[33] says: 'The sincere religion of Christ is therefore established among us in all parts of the kingdom, just in the same manner as it was formerly promulgated under our Edward of most blessed memory.' (3) That they looked upon themselves as of the same faith as the Swiss Churches, and as absolutely contrary to the Roman, I have already sufficiently shown. (4) That the claim of Divine right for bishops was a novelty introduced mainly as a weapon against the Puritans, and was not well received even then, the last note has sufficiently established; as also (5) That the whole Papal power was claimed for the Crown.
In her answer to the petition of the Puritans in Parliament for the adoption of the new model, in 1586, Elizabeth expressly claims for herself, as part of her prerogative, that the full power, authority, jurisdiction, and supremacy in Church causes, which heretofore the Popes usurped and took to themselves, should be united and annexed to the imperial crown of this realm. (Strype, 'Whitgift,' vol. i. p. 494, where the authority quoted is the Lambeth MSS.)
I am not concerned to argue for or against these propositions in themselves: all I assert is that they were the prevailing views of the divines and the statesmen of Elizabeth's reign, and, in a great degree at least, of the Queen herself.
Of evidence on the other side I find little or none. One curious document there is among the State Papers which I have taken some pains to investigate. It is in volume vii. No. 4G, and is entered under date of November 1559, and called 'List of Bishops who returned into England on Queen Elizabeth's Assession, and the Bishops present in her first Parliament. Progress of Convocation in framing the Book of Common Prayer':—
'That returned to England upon Queen Mary's death that had been bishops in King Edward's time:—
- Coverdale.
- Scory.
- Cheyne (sic).
- Barlowe.
'That remained bishops for some time that were bishops in Queen Mary's time:—
- Oglethorp, Bishop of Carlisle, who crowned Queen Elizabeth.
- Kitchin, Bishop of Landaff.
'There were bishops in the Parliament holden primo Eliz., and in Convocation holden at the same time: —
Edmund, Bishop of London.
John, Bishop of Winton.
Richard, Bishop of Worcester.
Ralph, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield.
Thomas (sic), Bishop of Lincoln.
James, Bishop of Exeter.
'The Book of Common Prayer published primo Eliz. was first resolved upon and established in the Church in the time of King Edward VI. It was re-examined, with some small alterations, by the Convocation, consisting of the said bishops and the rest of the clergy, in primo Eliz., which being done by the Convocation and published under the great seal of England, there was an Act of Parliament for the same book, which is ordinarily printed in the beginning of the book; not that the book was ever subjected to the censure of the Parliament, but, being agreed upon and published as aforesaid, a law was made by the Parliament for the inflicting of penalty upon all such as should refuse to use and observe the same: for the authority therefor is not in the Parliament, neither hath been in former times yielded to the Parliament, in things of that nature, but the judgment and determination thereof hath ever been in the Church, thereto authorised by the King, which is that which is yielded to Henry VIII. by the Statute 25 of his reign.'
The style of this paper is at once sufficient to show that it is not contemporary, and what struck me first on reading it was that the ideas and opinions it contains were not invented at the date to which it refers; they belong to the epoch of Laud, and not that of the early part of Elizabeth's reign. There are, it should be mentioned, two copies of the paper, in different hands, of which one is endorsed by Sir Joseph Williamson, with the words 'In Sir Th. Wilson's hand.' Sir Thomas Wilson was appointed Keeper of the State Papers in James I.'s reign, and therefore, unless the other copy be the older, which I have been unable to ascertain with certainty, it would appear that my conjecture is right. The contents of the paper are of no value whatsoever except as showing the ignorance or dishonesty, or both, of the Laudians in their dealings with history. Thus, as will be seen, the writer reckons Cheney as one of the 'bishops who returned into England upon Queen Mary's death that had been bishops in King Edward's time,' whereas Cheney was first made a bishop in 1562. The account of Elizabeth's Prayer-book is entirely mythical. The Convocation 'primo Elizabethæ' certainly had nothing to do with it whatever, and the fictitious history of it here given seems to have been made to suit the Laudian theory, and to be entirely independent of facts. What the meaning of the last list of bishops may be, it is difficult to discover, unless the writer supposed that there were but eight Marian bishops remaining, and that they were responsible for Elizabeth's Prayer-book! or that the members of all these three lists sat in Parliament together!
One other point is worthy of notice as remarkable. In the same vol. vii. No. 68 is entered as 'Relation of the Rites and Ceremonies observed at the Consecration and Installation of Archbishop Parker.' The original is in Latin, and contains two curious points. One is a statement which appears almost incidentally introduced, 'Nullum Archiepiscopo tradens pastorale baculum'; the other that the prayers, etc., used are stated to be 'juxta formam libri auctoritate parliamenti editi.' This appears under date of December 17, 1559. It is singular that in a previous paper, vol. v. No. 25, entitled 'Order for the Consecration of an Archbishop of Canterbury; the Mode to be Pursued,' with marginal notes by Cecil, the text (which is not very legible) concludes with a statement that the order of King Edward's bock is to be observed, for that there is none other special made in this last session of Parliament; to which Cecil annotates, ' This book is not established by Parliament.'
Note VIII.
The alleged corruption of the clergy in the sixteenth century.
The ecclesiastical reaction of the last half-century, together with the vastly-increased accessibility of innumerable original sources of information in State Papers and other archives which has come about during the same period, has produced a vast number of calls upon us to reconsider the evidence upon which our fathers believed in the intense and almost universal corruption of the late pre Reformation clergy, and in more than one instance a demand that the old verdict of condemnation should be reversed.
I may take two recent writers as at once thorough-going and at the same time well-informed advocates on the side of the reversal—viz., Canon Dixon and Father Gasquet. The former says[34] very plainly that 'no general charge of corruption has ever been made good against the English clergy.' The latter, in a voluminous and special work dealing with the whole question of Henry VIII. and the English monasteries, says that ' the voices raised against the monks were those of Cromwell's agents, of the cliques of new men, and of his hireling scribes, who formed a crew of as truculent and filthy libellers as ever disgraced a revolutionary cause.' I shall confine myself in this discussion to two questions: (1) Are we in fairness entitled to dismiss the evidence of Cromwell's visitors as entirely worthless? and (2) Is there, or is there not, sufficient evidence, independent of theirs, of the general corruption of the monasteries? The first question is one which need not detain us long. If there were no further evidence in the case than that of Cromwell's commissioners, it would closely resemble one of those cases so common in our inferior courts in which the only evidence against the prisoner is the evidence of policemen: and then, if doubts were thrown upon the individual policemen's character—as they often are—it would be the duty of the magistrate to consider what the value of those doubts was, from what quarter and with what probable motives they were suggested; and if he thought that they were justified, it would no doubt largely modify the importance that he attached to the police evidence, and might in some cases induce him, if no untainted evidence against the prisoner were adduced, to dismiss the case. On the other hand, if further evidence, though but slight, were produced, he would not entirely reject that of the constables, but would estimate it in a great degree according to the support, or the reverse, which it received from that which was entirely unconnected with it. He would in scarcely any case be justified in rejecting the evidence altogether, without a previous consideration of how far it looked in itself like a truthful account of the particular transactions which it professed to describe.
Unless we are prepared to pronounce very rash judgment, and fall into a great number of errors and inaccuracies, we must not lay down a hard-and-fast rule that because a man is not what is ordinarily considered a respectable member of society, therefore his evidence on no subject whatever is to be held as entitled to any weight. That this is the rational view of such matters is sufficiently proved by the fact that we constantly see criminals brought up from gaol itself in order to give evidence in court, and that their evidence is considered necessary for the purpose of enabling the court to arrive at a correct decision. If, then, we apply these principles to the case before us, there can, I think, be no doubt but that we ought not to dismiss the whole evidence of Cromwell's commissioners as unworthy of credit, but to examine, in the first place, the character of the evidence itself, and, in the second, to see how far it is corroborated, or the reverse, by independent evidence gathered from other sources. If Cromwell's commissioners were commonly indebted, as Father Gasquet is constantly suggesting, mainly 'to their imaginations for their facts,' why did their accounts of different houses differ so widely from one another?[35] Why did they show so much favour to Catesby and Godstow, to Ramsey and Woolstrope, and various other houses, both of monks and nuns 1 They speak here of the abbot as an honest man, with some very disorderly monks under him; elsewhere of the abbot being the worst offender, or of but one or two monks being bad.
The various charges brought against the commissioners and their employers are to a great extent mutually destructive. If it be true that Henry and Cromwell had made up their minds for the general suppression of the religious houses, and sent these men down, not to inquire but to condemn, and that they themselves knew the purpose for which they were sent and were indifferent as to the truth of the facts they alleged, so that they lent support to their employers' purpose, why did they send good reports when they knew that evil would be more acceptable? and why did they make out a case against a comparatively small minority of the thousands of 'religious' inhabiting the houses?[36]
The fact to which I have just referred is the point upon which the whole question really turns. It was, after all, to but a minority of the clergy that gross vice was really brought home; and that fact has been used equally by their apologists and their detractors for more than it is really worth. Apologists have said in effect: 'You cannot make men in large bodies perfect. There were of course a few bad men among the monks, as there are and always will be amongst any numerous body of men; but they were the rare exception, and the rest were what they professed to be—men who had forsaken the world and its pleasures and gains, and given up their time to devotion or to pastoral work: and to condemn the body as a body is as unreasonable as it is unjust.' The detractors reply somewhat as follows: '"Ex uno disce omnes." Here were a set of men who were nothing if not better than the rest of the world—who had severed themselves from the world because it was not good enough for them—and yet you find them wallowing in sensual vice which would have disgraced a body of brigands or free-lances, and using the opportunities afforded by their sacred calling to make others twofold more children of hell than themselves; and since they were all one united body, and all trying to make out the best case they could for themselves, and possessed every advantage for successful combination, there can be no doubt that the evil which we know of them was all well established, and was, in fact, far wider spread among them than was ever suffered to appear. Their whole raison d'etre was to be the light of the world, and their own light was darker than the outer darkness itself.' In each instance the case is overstated, but there is no room for real doubt that the second is nearer to the facts than the first.
Still, it may be admitted that, if the reports of Cromwell's commissioners were all the evidence we have, it would not go for much. Their stories, if taken together, as they ought in fairness to be, do not, it is true, look as if they were 'cooked': but, on the other hand, the character of at least some of the men, and the evident hostility of their employers towards the monks, would be enough to discredit them .as witnesses; and if their evidence stood alone, the utmost it could do would be to leave an uncomfortable doubt on a reader's mind as to whether or not monasteries were all that they should have been or professed to be. But the case is in fact the very reverse of the one here supposed. There is ample proof of the corruption of the monasteries, quite apart from the evidence of Cromwell's commissioners; and it is just the coincidence of their evidence with that of other witnesses, untainted by the suspicion which attaches to them, which alone gives value to it. Into this evidence I do not propose to go at length, for reasons many and obvious. I will but classify it here; but I will claim, and do claim, that those who call for a reversal of the sentence pronounced more than three centuries ago, and persisted in by all English historians of credit down to the time of Lingard, shall meet this evidence fully and fairly before their demand can be even listened to. There is, then, first, and of least importance, the evidence of the satirists and lampooners from Walter de Map and Piers the Ploughman down to 8imon Fish. Depreciate these men as you will, say that they romanced, and even lied boldly and unscrupulously, and I admit at once of them, as of Cromwell's commissioners, that their evidence standing alone might lie worthless. It is its coincidence in the main with other and worthier writers which gives it value. There is, secondly, the evidence to which I have referred in the text—viz., the records of the law courts, as seen in the Ripon Chapter-book and the excerpts from Consistory Court of London. These belong to a quite different category from the above, and the effect which they produce on a mind like that of Bishop Stubbs I have already quoted. Finally, there is evidence supplied by the visitations of Archbishops Morton, Wareham, and Wolsey. Of these, if I mistake not, only a portion of the first has been published. Every effort has been made to minimise its effect, and not without reason; for it establishes in every particular against the most magnificent of all monasteries, the very charges which the commissioners subsequently made against so many others: and this on the authority, not of a rapacious Minister or an unscrupulous commissioner, but of the orthodox episcopal Minister of the most orthodox of fifteenth-century kings, duly authorised by the Pope himself. It has been pleaded that it was half a century before Cromwell's visitation, and there had been ample time for amendment since; and that it applied to one monastery, and that it is unfair to extend its conclusions to others. These allegations have been met beforehand by Mr. Froude, who states of Morton's visitation, after quoting a portion only of his account of St. Albans, ' Offences similar in kind, and scarcely less gross, were exposed at Waltham, at S. Andrew's, Northampton, at Calais, and at other places'; and further that 'in 1511 a second visitation was attempted by Archbishop Warham. This inquiry was more partial than the first, yet similar practices were brought to light. … A third effort was made by Wolsey twelve years later; again exposure followed, and again no remedy was found.'
These statements are definite; they can but be either true or false If the apologists of the monks really believe in their own case, why do they not publish these registers, or at least those parts of them which contain the account of these visitations? If they do so, and can show that little or no scandalous matter is contained in them, they will not only refute Mr. Froude, but they will do more by that one publication to rehabilitate the monks than by all the thousands of pages of special pleading which have been, and no doubt will be, expended upon their defence; but unless or until they can do that, they will fail to reverse what is, in the main, the verdict of history for more than three hundred years, and in almost every country in Europe.
In fact, the evidence of Cromwell's commissioners, which these writers treat as if it were the sole evidence against the moral condition of the monasteries, is the very best that can be used in their favour, inasmuch as it shows, on the testimony of witnesses certainly not favourable to them, that a certain considerable proportion of them still led decent and regular, if not very useful, lives—a fact which might have fallen out of sight if we had only the strictures of episcopal visitors like Morton, or the records of courts of justice, wherewith to correct the scurrility of lampooners and the declamation of moralists.
When we compare the particulars, for example, charged against the abbot and monks of S. Alban's in Morton's visitation with those contained in many of the visitors' letters in regard to other places, we find that they are of so exactly similar a character, and so precisely like those brought in vague and general terms against the clergy in the lampoons and satires of the time, that it is quite impossible to avoid the conclusion that these were the actual faults of monasteries generally, and that they were and had been very prevalent in them for some generations before the suppression. Mr. Froude states, as we have seen, supporting his statement by reference to the MS. registers of Warham and Wolsey, that they also make similar charges. These registers I do not profess to have examined myself, but it obviously lies with the apologists of the monks to show that they fail to support the charges which are founded upon them, if, indeed, they do so fail. At present these gentlemen seem to rest their case mainly upon the allegations which they are enabled to make against the personal character of some of Cromwell's commissioners. These allegations are many of them probably true, but they are not always relevant, and at the best they serve to remind us of the Old Bailey practice on certain occasions of 'abusing the plaintiff's attorney,' and, like it, to suggest that the advocate who resorts to it has in reality 'no case.' And in truth the advocates of the pre- Reformation clergy have no case. The evidence comes thick and from every source imaginable, from the grave records of Morton and his successors, from the fierce denunciations of Colet and other preachers, from the unimpassioned entries in Court records and law-books, no less than from the perpetual and constantly-repeated libels of the poets and lampooners from Walter de Map to Chaucer, from Chaucer to Simon Fish; and yet even the latter productions, little as they may be worth as evidence, cannot go for nothing. Our forefathers can hardly have listened, generation after generation, to an endless repetition of the same jokes and the same scurrilities, if in very deed they never had any point; and it is the coincidence of the reports of Cromwell's commissioners with, not one of the above, but with all of them, which serves to vindicate the truth and even the moderation of their statements, notwithstanding the occasional holes which a critic can pick in the individual characters of some of them.
There is one somewhat minute point which may not be unworthy of notice. The commissioners are constantly referring to the fact that they can get no evidence, though they are sure that irregularities exist; and this is naturally pointed to by the advocates of the monks as showing the determination of the visitors to tind the evils which they were sent to seek. It maybe so to some extent, but it is surely as well explained by the very simple facts that, as these visitors had no commission from any authority whom the monks acknowledged, the latter had every facility—and, as they might themselves fairly consider, every right, over and above the natural instinct of self-preservation—to conceal as much as they could; and the case of St. Alban's[37] rather suggests the probability of this explanation, since there the commissioners 'found little,' though, as we know, in the very same monastery, Cardinal Morton, fifty years before, being armed with an authority which the monks could not gainsay, 'found' a good deal. I have admitted above, possibly without clear proof, that it was but a minority of the pre-Reformation clergy who deserved the denunciations which Colet put in such general and trenchant terms. Indeed, we may believe, and be thankful to believe, that Chaucer's good and humble and gentle 'parson' was ever to be found more frequently than the opposite characters; but what are we to think of times in which the latter could exist in appreciable numbers at all 1 and what of the political effect which their existence must have had in an age when, after a slumber of many generations, a general uprising was at hand in which no belief, no institution, no class of men, could escape being called in question? To put the question in a practical shape, what would happen in the present day if an archbishop could state officially of any imaginable ecclesiastical institution one quarter of what Cardinal Morton stated against the greatest monastery of the fifteenth century?
One further question in conclusion. If the clergy were as immaculate as Canon Dixon and Father Gasquet will have them, how was it that they were so bitterly hated by the people, as is evidenced by the letter of Bishop Fitz-James's, and the despatches of Chapuy referred to in the text? It must be admitted that the tone of morality in the sixteenth century was, on the whole, low, and there is certainly evidence enough that among the clergy it was not higher than among the laity.
Over and above that which is contained in the authorities referred to above, I may cite a letter[38] from Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, to Wolsey, dated January 2, 1520-1. He expresses satisfaction at Wolsey's proposed reformation of the clergy, ' the day of which he had desired to see as Simeon desired to see the Messiah. As for himself, though within his own small jurisdiction he had given nearly all his study to the work for nearly three years, yet whenever he had to correct and punish, he found the clergy and particularly (what he did not at first suspect) the monks, so depraved, so licentious and corrupt, that he despaired of any proper reformation till the work was undertaken on a more general scale, and with a stronger arm.'
Again, in 1561 there are letters[39] from John Scory, Bishop of Hereford, to Cecil, in which he requests to have power to nominate impartial persons to survey his bishopric, and complains that he finds great disorder in his cathedral church, which he says is ' a very nursery of blasphemy, whoredom, pryde, superstition, and ignorance.'
Another bishop, John Best, of Carlisle, reporting[40] the state of his diocese, also to Cecil, a month later, says that the priests are 'wicked imps of antichrist, for the most part very ignorant and stubborn, past measure false and subtle.' The use of the word antichrist, and the general terms in which the accusation is couched, raises a doubt in this last case whether it may not be a mere charge of addiction to Popish practices, which, considering the date, and that many of the men so charged must have held their cures through Henry, Edward, and Mary's reigns, would hardly be surprising; but Bishop Scory's case cannot admit of the doubt—the charges are too specific.
Finally, the case of Nicholas Udal already referred to (see p. 54, above—note) shows that the general tone of morality of the period was a very low one.
That the low tone was not confined to the Catholic clergy is unhappily proved by Latimer's reproofs of it, by the history of Bishop Ponet, and by the constant complaints of the covetousness of the Elizabethan bishops, and their unscrupulous dealing with the property of their sees.
In this, as in the last two notes, I do not profess more than to have given a few samples of the prevailing opinion of the times on the subject with which they deal,
- ↑ Burnet, vol, i. p. 461, and vol. iv. p. 471.
- ↑ Quoted in Hunt, Religious Thought in England, vol. i. p. 43, note.
- ↑ Strype, Memorials, vol. ii. pt. ii. pp. 275-6.
- ↑ Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, January 1890, p. 146.
- ↑ Cosin's Works, vol. iv. p. 403.
- ↑ Quoted in Hunt's Religious Thought in England, vol. i. p. 298.
- ↑ Strype, Whitgift, vol. iii. pp. 222-3.
- ↑ Letters, ii. p. 24.
- ↑ Ibid. i. p. 16.
- ↑ Birch, Life of Tillotson, prefixed to his works (1820), p, cxxii.
- ↑ Longmans, 1870.
- ↑ Works, vol. iv. pp. 419-50.
- ↑ Dean Perowne, in article above quoted, p. 150.
- ↑ Keble, Hooker, vol. i. p. 85.
- ↑ For the particulars above given in the case of Peter du Moulin the younger, and partly also of those of his father and of Saravia, I am indebted to 'Cantab's ' pamphlet above referred to.
- ↑ Bacon, Ellis and Spedding, vol. viii. p. 75.
- ↑ Zurich Letters, ser. i. p. 4.
- ↑ State Papers, April 14, 1563, vol. xx iii. 30.
- ↑ Ibid. Feb. 1570, vol. lxvi. 54.
- ↑ Ibid. May 1580, vol. cxxxviii. 37.
- ↑ Ibid. Dec. 12, 1580, vol. cxliv. 49.
- ↑ State Papers (Dom., Addenda Elizabeth), May 1574, vol. xxiii. 59.
- ↑ Ibid. Eliz. cclxxiii. 55.
- ↑ State Papers, Eliz. Addenda, vol. xix. .54.
- ↑ Ibid. Eliz. Addenda, vol. xxi. 111.
- ↑ Ibid. Eliz. Addenda, vol. xxi. 121
- ↑ Ibid. Eliz. Addenda, vol. xxiii. 9.
- ↑ State Papers, Eliz. Addenda, vol. xxv. 65.
- ↑ Arber's edition, p. 75.
- ↑ Strype, Annals, vol. iv. p. 241.
- ↑ Strype, Whitgift, vol. ii. pp. 160, 173.
- ↑ Jewell to Peter Martyr, Zurich Letters, series i. p. 34.
- ↑ Cox to Weidner, Zurich Letters, series i. p. 28. Parkhurst also to Bullinger, on the next page.
- ↑ History of the Church of England, vol. i. p. 23.
- ↑ A good example is to be found in the State Papers, Sept. 27, 1535, in which Tregonwell writes to Cromwell his account of the visitation of nine religious houses—viz., Godstow, Eynsham, Bruern, Wroxton, Clattercot, Catesby, Canons Ashby, Chacombe, and Bicester. He gives very scanty particulars, but some are commended, some the reverse. The whole letter has a genuine look, not at all as if the visitor went with a ready-formed intention of only finding fault.
- ↑ Gasquet, vol. i. p. 352.
- ↑ Gasquet, vol. i. p. 328.
- ↑ In the National Biography, article 'Foxe,' by the President of C. C. C, Oxford.
- ↑ State Papers, Eliz. vol. xvii. 32.
- ↑ State Papers, Eliz. vol. xviii. 21.