One hears it so often repeated, that Convocation was finally suppressed in
1717, in consequence of the accusations brought by the Lower House against
Bishop Hoadley, that it seems worth while noting in correction of this,
that though no licence from the Crown to make canons has ever been granted
since that time, yet that Convocation met and sat in 1728, and again for
some sessions in the spring of 1742, when several important subjects were
brought before it; among which was the very interesting question of
curates' stipends, in these words:
"VIIth. That much reproach is brought upon the beneficed, and much
oppression upon the unbeneficed, clergy, by curates accepting too
scanty salaries from incumbents."
and which was really the last subject that was ever brought before
Convocation. On Jan. 27, 1742, it was unanimously agreed, that "the motion
made by the Archdeacon of Lincoln concerning ecclesiastical courts and
clandestine marriages, the qualifications of persons to be admitted into
holy orders, and the salaries and titles of curates," should be "reduced
into writing, and the particulars offered to the House at their next
assembly." But in the next session, on March 5, 1742, the Prolocutor, Dr.
Lisle, was afraid to go on with the business before the House, and after
"speaking much of a _praemunire_," and "echoing and reverberating the word
from one side of good King Henry's Chapel to the other," the whole was let
drop; and Convocation was fully consigned to the silence and the slumber of
a century. The whole of these transactions are detailed in a scarce
pamphlet, _A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Lisle, Prolocutor of the Lower House_,
by the Archdeacon of Lincoln (the Venerable G. Reynolds).