nods. In the time of the Saxons it has already been shown that there were two kinds of councils,-exclusively ecclesiastical synods, employed chiefly in the despatch of current and ordinary business, convened by episcopal and metropolitan authority; and councils of the clergy and laity conjointly, called and presided over by the king, at which the more important affairs connected with the administration of the Church and ecclesiastic legislation were transacted. To these two kinds of ecclesiastical councils, the royal and the episcopal, a third was added after the Conquest; viz. the legatine. By this addition, and by the consolidation of the metropolitan and the legatine powers already noticed, the provincial synods lost their former importance and independence, being subordinate to the legatine synods; and as the diocesan synods had never been otherwise than ancillary to the provincial, the synodical power of the Church had, at the time when the Reformation altered the entire aspect of affairs, fallen into a state of total subserviency to the Papal jurisdiction. In the management of the substantial business of the Church, the provincial synod of Canterbury, called and presided over by the Primate, who was also legatus natus of the Pope, took the lead; and the provincial synod of York generally concurred in its determinations in such matters as concerned the Church at large, unless indeed these were settled in a legatine synod which bound both provinces. As for the king's power in regard to ecclesiastical councils, it scarcely bore upon the affairs of the Church; the Church synods proper had, under

the auspices of the Papacy, become too strong for royal control; the kings were obliged to have recourse to parliamentary legislation for the protection of their own and the nation's rights against the encroachments of the ecclesiastical power; and the probability is, that the royal prerogative to call councils of the clergy would have fallen into disuse then, as it has done since, but for one circumstance, which rendered its exercise necessary.

That circumstance was the exemption of Church property from the system of civil taxation; an immunity which was too ancient, and too effectually protected, both by the Papal power and by the veneration, bordering on superstition, with which the popular mind regarded not only the Church, but the goods and chattels of the Church, to admit of any attempt to assimilate the taxation of Church property with that of all other property. The only way, therefore, of obtaining from the clergy, who were in possession of a very large proportion of the taxable property of the country, a suitable contribution towards the public expenditure, was an application to them for subsidies, which, according to the circumstances of the times, were more or less voluntary, and more or less liberal. It was for the grant of these subsidies that the clergy began to be summoned by royal writ, in the reign of King Edward I., to an ecclesiastical State convocation, in which representatives, regularly chosen by the inferior clergy, were comprehended by virtue of the royal summons, conveyed to them by the archbishop. And as the business of granting a subsidy

was a matter which might be disposed of in a very short time, it was found most convenient by the two archbishops, to issue their writs for their provincial convocations at such times as they were called upon to issue the king's writs for the State convocations; so that the clergy, brought together at one and the same time by two different authorities, and for the transaction of two different kinds of affairs, acted in a twofold capacity, as a state convocation, and as an ecclesiastical synod. This appears to have been the origin of the customary attendance of the inferior clergy by their representatives upon ecclesiastical synods, in which, whatever might have been the case in the mixed national Church councils of the Saxon period, they certainly had neither seat nor vote in the beginning of the Norman period. And as the bishops, who were members of the ecclesiastical synod by ancient right, whereas the inferior clergy were so only by courtesy,—had frequently occasion to take counsel together apart from the rest of the clergy, the practice grew up for the two bodies of which the convocation was composed, to form themselves, at first pro re nata, and afterwards permanently, into separate assemblies, distinguished, in imitation of the two houses of parliament, by the appellation of the upper and the lower houses of convocation 105

105 For the details of the history of these changes, and the many intricate questions connected with the subject, the reader is referred to the learned and elaborate work of Dr., afterwards Archbishop, Wake "The State of the Church and Clergy of England, &c.," especially to ch. i. and ii.; ch. vi. from sec. 112 to the end, and ch. vii. and viii.

CHAPTER IV.

HISTORY OF THE SUPREMACY OVER

THE

ENGLISH CHURCH, FROM THE ACT OF SUBMISSION TO THE PRESENT TIME.

AFTER tracing the various modifications which the relations between Church and State underwent in this country from the earliest times downwards, it will be useful briefly to recapitulate the result of that inquiry, and to present under a few concise heads the form which those relations had assumed at the time when, by the concurrence of private and personal motives with a State necessity which had been long and often felt before, the Sovereign of England was urged to the adoption of those decisive, and in more than one respect arbitrary, measures, which delivered the English Church from Papal usurpation, and placed her in the position in which she stands to this day towards the Crown of England. The following propositions will be found to contain the sum of the argument, as far as it has proceeded.

The spiritual power of the Church, derived from the commission which Christ gave to His Apostles, and which they transmitted to their successors, the bishops, was established in this country in the earliest ages of Christianity.

Its first introduction into this country was altogether

G

independent of the Roman Church, whose mission, sent several centuries later, to the south-eastern part of the island, was incorporated in course of time with the original establishment, at a date anterior to the rise of the Papal usurpation.

From the earliest times the spiritual power of the Church entered into close alliance with the temporal power of the State; Christianity was the national faith; the Church, a State establishment, acknowledging the supremacy of the head of the State.

During the British and the Anglo-Saxon periods, the constitution of the Church as a State establishment partook in a great measure of the character of the civil constitution with which it was amalgamated, the popular element predominating in the British, the monarchical in the Anglo-Saxon times.

The Norman Conquest, bringing in civil despotism under cover of Papal usurpation, gave to that usurpation a footing in this country which it had never had before, and caused the English Church to fall, for a time, under the supremacy of the Pope.

Among the results of this supremacy the following points are particularly to be noticed.

The Roman canon law was the law of the English Church. That was the rule. If any laws or customs peculiar to the kingdom modified the Roman canon law in any respect, that was an exception from the rule.

The supreme legislative and administrative power of the Church rested with the national synod, called and presided over by the Papal legate; the provincial synods, called and presided over by the metropolitans, were