fourth period extends from the third year of the reign of George
I. (1716) to the fifteenth year of the reign of Queen Victoria.
This was a period of torpid inactivity, during which it was
customary for convocation to be summoned and to meet pro
forma, and to be continued and prorogued indefinitely. The
fifth period may be considered to have commenced in the fifteenth
year of the reign of Queen Victoria (1852).
During the first of the five periods above mentioned, it would
appear from the records preserved at Lambeth and at York that
the metropolitans frequently convened congregations
(so called) of their clergy without the authority of a
First
period.
royal writ, which were constituted precisely as the
convocations were constituted, when the metropolitans were
commanded to call their clergy together pursuant to a writ from
the crown. As soon, however, as King Henry VIII. had obtained
from the clergy their acknowledgment of the supremacy of the
crown in all ecclesiastical causes, he constrained the spirituality
to declare, by what has been termed the Act of Submission on
behalf of the clergy, that the convocation “is, always has been,
and ought to be summoned by authority of a royal writ”; and
this declaration was embodied in a statute of the realm (25 Henry
VIII. c. 19), which further enacted that the convocation “should
thenceforth make no provincial canons, constitutions or ordinances
without the royal assent and licence.” The spirituality was
thus more closely incorporated than heretofore in the body
politic of the realm, seeing that no deliberations on its part can
take place unless the crown has previously granted its licence for
such deliberations. It had been already provided during this
period by 8 Henry VI. c. 1, that the prelates and other clergy,
with their servants and attendants, when called to the convocation
pursuant to the king’s writ, should enjoy the same liberty
and defence in coming, tarrying and returning as the magnates
and the commons of the realm enjoy when summoned to the
king’s parliament.
The second period, which dates from 1533 to 1664, has been
distinguished by four important assemblies of the spirituality
of the realm in pursuance of a royal writ—the two
first of which occurred in the reign of Edward VI.,
Second
period.
the third in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and the
fourth in the reign of Charles II. The two earliest of these
convocations were summoned to complete the work of the
reformation of the Church of England, which had been begun
by Henry VIII.; the third was called together to reconstruct
that work, which had been marred on the accession of Mary (the
consort of Philip II. of Spain), whilst the fourth was summoned
to re-establish the Church of England, the framework of which
had been demolished during the great rebellion. On all of these
occasions the convocations worked hand in hand with the
parliament of the realm under a licence and with the assent
of the crown. Meanwhile the convocation of 1603 had framed
a body of canons for the governance of the clergy. Another
convocation requires a passing notice, in which certain canons
were drawn up in 1640, but by reason of an irregularity in the
proceedings of this convocation (chiefly, on the ground that
its sessions were continued for some time after the parliament
of the realm had been dissolved), its canons are not held to have
any binding obligation on the clergy. The convocations had
up to this time maintained their liberty of voting the subsidies
of the clergy in the form of “benevolences” separate and apart
from the “aids” granted by the laity in parliament, and one
of the objections taken to the proceedings of the convocation
of 1640 was that it had continued to sit and to vote its subsidies
to the crown after the parliament itself had been dissolved.
It is not, therefore, surprising on the restoration of the monarchy
in 1661 that the spirituality was not anxious to retain the liberty
of taxing itself apart from the laity, seeing that its ancient liberty
was likely to prove of questionable advantage to it. It voted,
however, a benevolence to the crown on the occasion of its first
assembling in 1661 after the restoration of King Charles II.,
and it continued so to do until 1664, when an arrangement was
made between Archbishop Sheldon and Lord Chancellor Hyde,
under which the spirituality silently waived its long-asserted
right of voting its own subsidies to the crown, and submitted itself
thenceforth to be assessed to the “aids” directly granted to the
Sheldonian compact.
crown by parliament. An act was accordingly passed
by the parliament in the following year 1665, entitled
An act to grant a Royal Aid unto the King’s Majesty,
to which aid the clergy were assessed by the commissioners
named in the statute without any objection being
raised on their part or behalf,[1] there being a proviso that in so
contributing the clergy should be relieved of the liability to pay
two subsidies out of four, which had been voted by them in the
convocation of a previous year. In consequence of this practical
renunciation of their separate status, as regards their liability
to taxation, the clergy have assumed and enjoyed in common
with the laity the right of voting at the election of members of
the House of Commons, in virtue of their ecclesiastical freeholds.
The most important and the last work of the convocation during this second period of its activity was the revision of the Book of Common Prayer which was completed in the latter part of 1661.
The Revolution in 1688 is the most important epoch in the
third period of the history of the synodical proceedings of the
spirituality, when the convocation of Canterbury,
having met in 1689 in pursuance of a royal writ,
Third
period.
obtained a licence under the great seal, to prepare
certain alterations in the liturgy and in the canons, and to
deliberate on the reformation of the ecclesiastical courts. A
feeling, however, of panic seems to have come over the Lower
House, which took up a position of violent antagonism to the
Upper House. This circumstance led to the prorogation of
the convocation and to its subsequent discharge without any
practical fruit resulting from the king’s licence. Ten years
elapsed during which the convocation was prorogued from time
to time without any meeting of its members for business being
allowed. The next convocation which was permitted to meet
for business, in 1700, was marked by great turbulence and insubordination
on the part of the members of the Lower House,
who refused to recognize the authority of the archbishop to
prorogue their sessions. This controversy was kept up until
the discharge of the convocation took place concurrently with
the dissolution of the parliament in the autumn of that year.
The proceedings of the Lower House in this convocation were
disfigured by excesses which were clearly violations of the
constitutional order of the convocation. The Lower House
refused to take notice of the archbishop’s schedule of prorogation,
and adjourned itself by its own authority, and upon the demise
of the crown it disputed the fact of its sessions having expired,
and as parliament was to continue for a short time, prayed
that its sessions might be continued as a part of the parliament
under the “praemunientes” clause. The next convocation was
summoned in the first year of Queen Anne, when the Lower
House, under the leadership of Dean Aldrich, its prolocutor,
Claim of Lower House to
sit inde-
pendently.
challenged the right of the archbishop to prorogue it,
and presented a petition to the queen, praying her
majesty to call the question into her own presence.
The question was thereupon examined by the queen’s
council, when the right of the president to prorogue
both houses of convocation by a schedule of prorogation was held
to be proved, and further, that it could not be altered except
by an act of parliament. During the remaining years of the
reign of Queen Anne the two Houses of convocation were engaged
either in internecine strife, or in censuring sermons or books, as
teaching latitudinarian or heretical doctrines; and, when it had
been assembled concurrently with parliament on the accession
of King George I., a great breach was before long created between
the two houses by the Bangorian controversy. Dr Hoadly,
bishop of Bangor, having preached a sermon before the king,
in the Royal Chapel at St James’s Palace in 1717, against the
principles and practice of the nonjurors, which had been printed
- ↑ It had always been the practice, when the clergy voted their subsidies in their convocation, for parliament to authorize the collection of each subsidy by the same commissioners who collected the parliamentary aid.
