_Precursors._--Christianity reached Britain during the 3rd century, and

perhaps earlier, probably from Gaul. An early tradition records the

death of a martyr Alban at Verulamium, the present St Albans. A fully

grown British Church existed in the 4th century: bishops of London, York

and Lincoln attended the council of Arles in 314; the church assented to

the council of Nicaea in 325, and some of its bishops were present at

the council of Rimini in 359. The church held the Catholic faith.

Britons made pilgrimages, to Rome and to Palestine, and some joined the

monks who gathered round St Martin, bishop of Tours. Among these was

Ninian, who preached to the southern Picts, and about 400 built a church

of stone on Wigton Bay; its whiteness struck the people and their name

for it is commemorated in the modern name Whithorn. From northern

Britain, St Patrick (see PATRICK, ST) went to accomplish his work as the

apostle of Ireland. Early in the 5th century Britain was infected by the

heresy of Pelagius, himself a Briton by birth, but in 429 Germanus,

bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus, bishop of Troyes, recalled the church to

orthodoxy and, according to tradition, led their converts to victory,

the "Hallelujah victory," over the Picts and Scots. When the Britons

were hard pressed by Saxon invaders large bodies of them found shelter

in western Armorica, in a lesser Britain, which gave its name to

Brittany. A British Church was founded there, and bishops, scholars and

recluses of either Britain seem constantly to have visited the other.

The Saxon invasion cut off Britain from communication with Rome; and the

British Church having no share in the progressive life of the Roman

Church, differences gradually arose between them. The organization of

the British Church was monastic, its bishops being members, usually

abbots, of monasteries, and not strictly diocesan, for the monasteries

to which the clergy were attached had a tribal character. The monastic

communities were large, Bangor numbered 2000 monks. From Gildas, a

British monk, who wrote about 550, we gather that the bishops were rich

and powerful and claimed apostolical succession; that though governed by

synods the church lacked discipline; that simony was rife, and that

bishops and clergy were neglectful. He evidently draws too dark a

picture, for religious activity was not extinct. Gildas himself and

others preached in Ireland, and from them the Scots, the dominant people

of Ireland, received a ritual. The organization of the Scotic Church in

Ireland was similar to that of the British Church. Its monastic

settlements or schools were many and large, and were the abodes of

learning. Bishops dwelt in them and were reverenced for their office,

but each was subject to the direction of the abbot and convent. In 565

(?) St Columba, the founder and head of several Scotic monasteries, left

Ireland and founded a monastery in Hii or Iona, which afforded gospel

teaching to the Scots of Dalriada and the northern Picts, and later did

a great work in evangelizing many of the Teutonic conquerors of Britain.

By 602 the British Church, in common with the Irish Scots, followed

practices which differed from the Roman use as it then was; it kept

Easter at a different date; its clergy wore a different tonsure, and

there was some defect in its baptismal rite. The conquerors of

Britain--Saxons, Angles and Jutes--were heathens; the Britons gradually

retreated before them to Wales, and to western and northern districts,

or dwelt among them either as slaves or as outlaws hiding in swamps and

forests, and they made no attempts to evangelize the conquering race.

Foundation of the English church.

About 587 a Roman abbot, Gregory, afterwards Pope Gregory the Great, is

said to have seen some English boys exposed for sale in Rome and asked

of what people they were, of what kingdom and who was their king. They

were "Angli," he was told, of Deira, the modern Yorkshire, and their

king was AElle. "Not 'Angli,'" said he, struck with the beauty of the

fair-haired boys, "but 'angeli' (angels), fleeing from wrath (_de ira_),

and AElle's people must sing Alleluia." He wished himself to go as a

missionary to the English, but was prevented. After he became pope he

sent a mission to England headed by Augustine. The way was prepared, for

AEthelberht, king of Kent, had married a Christian, a Frankish princess

Berhta, and allowed her to worship the true God. She brought with her a

bishop who ministered to her in St Martin's church outside Canterbury,

but evidently made no effort to spread the faith. Augustine and his band

landed probably at Ebbsfleet in 597. They were well received by

AEthelberht, who was converted and baptized. On the 16th of November

Augustine was consecrated by the archbishop of Arles to be the

archbishop of the English, and by Christmas had baptized 10,000 Kentish

men. Thus the fathers of the English Church were Pope Gregory and St

Augustine. Augustine restored a church of the Roman times at Canterbury

to be the church of his see. The mission was reinforced from Rome; and

Gregory sent directions for the rule of the infant church. There were to

be two archbishops, at London and York; London, however, was not fully

Christianized for some years, and the primatial see remained at

Canterbury. Augustine held two conferences with British bishops; he bade

them give up their peculiar usages, conform to the Roman ritual, and

join him in evangelizing the English. His haughtiness is said to have

offended them; they refused, and the English Church owes nothing to its

British predecessor. The mission prospered, and bishops were consecrated

for Rochester, and for London for the East Saxons. After Augustine and

AEthelberht died a short religious reaction took place in Kent, and the

East Saxons apostatized. In 627 Edwin, king of Northumbria, who had

married a daughter of AEthelberht, was converted and baptized with his

nobles by Paulinus, who became the first bishop of York. As Edwin's

kingdom extended from the Humber to the Forth and included the Trent

valley, while he exercised superiority over all the other English

kingdoms, except Kent, his conversion promised well for the church, but

he was slain and his kingdom overrun by Penda, the heathen king of

Mercia, the central part of England. Penda's victories endangered the

cause of Christianity. The Roman mission was dying out. Kent and East

Anglia, which was evangelized by Felix, a Burgundian bishop sent from

Canterbury, were settled in the faith. Though Bernicia, the northern

part of Northumbria, was little affected by the gospel, and after

Edwin's death heathenism became dominant in his kingdom, Christianity

did not die out in Northumbria. The East Saxons had heard the gospel,

and in 634 the conversion of the West Saxons was begun by Birinus, an

Italian missionary. Central England and the South Saxons, however, were

wholly untouched by Christianity.

The work of the Romans was taken up by Scotic missionaries. Oswald,

under whom the Northumbrian power revived, had lived as an exile among

the Scots, and asked them for a bishop to teach his people. Aidan was

sent to him by the monks of Iona in 635, and fixed his see in

Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, where he founded a monastery. Saintly,

zealous and supported by Oswald's influence, he brought Northumbria

generally to accept the gospel. The conversion of the Middle Angles and

Mercians, and the reconversion of the East Saxons, were also achieved by

Scots or by disciples of the Scotic mission. After Aidan's death in 651

the differences between the Roman and Scotic usages, and specially that

concerning the date of Easter, led to bitter feelings, were inconvenient

in practice, and must have hindered the church in its warfare against

heathenism. Oswio, who reigned over both the Northumbrian kingdoms, was,

like his brother Oswald, a disciple of the Scots, his son and his queen,

the daughter of Edwin, held to the Roman usages, and these usages were

maintained by Wilfrid, who on his return from Rome in 658 was appointed

abbot of Ripon. By Oswio's command a conference between the two parties

was held at the present Whitby in 664. Oswio decided in favour of the

Roman usages. This was the end of the Scotic mission. The Scots left

Lindisfarne, and their disciples generally adopted the Roman usages. The

Scots were admirable missionaries, holy and self-devoted, and building

partly on Roman foundations and elsewhere breaking new ground, they and

their English disciples, as Ceadda (St Chad), bishop of the Mercians,

and Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne, who were by no means inferior to

their teachers, almost completed the conversion of the country. But they

practised an excessive asceticism and were apt to abandon their work in

order to live as hermits. Great as were the benefits which the English

derived from their teaching, its cessation was not altogether a loss,

for the church was passing beyond the stage of mission teaching and

needed organization, and that it could not have received from the Scots.

Organization of the English Church.

Its organization like its foundation came from Rome. An

archbishop-designate who was sent to Rome for consecration having died

there, Pope Vitalian in 668 consecrated Theodore of Tarsus as archbishop

of Canterbury. The Scots had no diocesan system, and the English

bishoprics were vast in extent, followed the lines of the kingdoms and

varied with their fortunes. The church had no system of government nor

means of legislation. Theodore united it in obedience to himself,

instituted national synods and subdivided the over-large bishoprics. At

his death, in 690, the English dominions were divided into fourteen

dioceses. Wilfrid, who had become bishop of Northumbria, resisted the

division of his diocese and appealed to the pope. He was imprisoned by

the Northumbrian king and was exiled. While in exile he converted the

South Saxons, and their conversion led to that of the Isle of Wight,

then subject to them, in 686, which completed the evangelization of the

English. After long strife Wilfrid, who was supported by Rome, regained

a part of his former diocese. Theodore also gave the church learning by

establishing a school at Canterbury, where many gained knowledge of the

Scriptures, of Latin and Greek, and other religious and secular

subjects. In the north learning was promoted by Benedict Biscop in the

sister monasteries which he founded at Wearmouth and Jarrow. There Bede

(q.v.) received the learning which he imparted to others. In the year of

Bede's death, 735, one of his disciples, Ecgbert, bishop of York, became

the first archbishop of York, Gregory III. giving him the _pallium_, a

vestment which conferred archiepiscopal authority. He established a

school or university at York, to which scholars came from the continent.

His work as a teacher was carried on by Alcuin, who later brought

learning to the court and Frankish dominions of Charlemagne. The infant

church, following the example of the Irish Scots, showed much missionary

zeal, and English missionaries founded an organized church in Frisia and

laboured on the lower Rhine; two who attempted to preach in the old

Saxon land were martyred. Most famous of all, Winfrid, or St Boniface,

the apostle of Germany, preached to the Frisians, Hessians and

Thuringians, founded bishoprics and monasteries, became the first

archbishop of Mainz, and in 754 was martyred in Frisia. He had many

English helpers, some became bishops, and some were ladies, as Thecla,

abbess of Kitzingen, and Lioba, abbess of Bischofsheim. After his death,

Willehad laboured in Frisia, and later, at the bidding of Charlemagne,

among the Saxons, and became the first bishop of Bremen. Religion,

learning, arts, such as transcription and illumination, flourished in

English monasteries. Yet heathen customs and beliefs lingered on among

the people, and in Bede's time there were many pseudo-monasteries where

men and women made monasticism a cloak for idleness and vice. In the

latter part of the 8th century Mercia became the predominant kingdom

under Offa, and he determined to have an archbishop of his own. By his

contrivance two legates from Adrian I. held a council at Chelsea in 787

in which Lichfield was declared an archbishopric, and seven of the

twelve suffragan bishoprics of Canterbury were apportioned to it. In

802, however, Leo III. restored Canterbury to its rights and the

Lichfield archbishopric was abolished.

Later Anglo-Saxon times.

The rise of Wessex to power seems to have been aided by a good

understanding between Ecgbert and the church, and his successors

employed bishops as their ministers. AEthelred, who was specially under

ecclesiastical influence, went on a pilgrimage to Rome, and before his

departure made large grants for pious uses. His donation, though not the

origin of tithes in England, illustrates the idea of the sacredness of

the tenth of income on which laws enforcing the payment of tithes were

founded. His pilgrimage was probably undertaken in the hope of averting

the attacks of the pagan Danes. Their invasions fell heavily on the

church; priests were slaughtered and churches sacked and burnt. Learning

disappeared in Northumbria, and things were little better in the south.

Bishops fought and fell in battle, the clergy lived as laymen, the

monasteries were held by married canons, heathen superstitions and

immorality prevailed among the laity. Besides bringing the Danish

settlers in East Anglia to profess Christianity in 878, Alfred set

himself to improve the religious and intellectual condition of his own

people (see ALFRED). The gradual reconquest of middle and northern

England by his successors was accompanied by the conversion of the

Danish population. A revival of religion was effected by churchmen

inspired by the reformed monasticism of France and Flanders, by Odo,

archbishop of Canterbury, Oswald, archbishop of York, and Dunstan (see

DUNSTAN), who introduced from abroad the strict life of the new

Benedictinism. King Edgar promoted the monastic reform, and by his

authority Bishop AEthelwold of Winchester turned canons out of the

monasteries and put monks in their place. Dunstan sought to reform the

church by ecclesiastical and secular legislation, forbidding immorality

among laymen, insisting on the duties of the clergy, and compelling the

payment of tithes and other church dues. After Edgar's death an

anti-monastic movement, chiefly in Mercia, nearly ended in civil war. In

this strife, which was connected with politics, the victory on the whole

lay with the monks' party, and in many cathedral churches the chapters

remained monastic. The renewed energy of the church was manifested by

councils, canonical legislation and books of sermons. In the homilies of

Abbot AElfric, written for Archbishop Sigeric, stress is laid on the

purely spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but his words do

not indicate, as some have believed, that the English Church was not in

accord with Rome. The ecclesiastical revival was short-lived. Renewed

Danish invasions, in the course of which Archbishop Alphege was martyred

in 1012, and a decline in national character, injuriously affected the

church and, though in the reign of Canute it was outwardly prosperous,

spirituality and learning decreased. Bishoprics and abbacies were

rewards of service to the king, the bishops were worldly-minded,

plurality was frequent, and simony not unknown. Edward the Confessor

promoted foreign ecclesiastics; the connexion with Rome was

strengthened, and in 1062 the first legates since the days of Offa were

sent to England by Alexander II. A political conflict led to the

banishment of Robert, the Norman archbishop of Canterbury. An Englishman

Stigand received his see, but was excommunicated at Rome, and was

regarded even in England as schismatical. When William of Normandy

planned his invasion of England, Alexander II., by the advice of

Hildebrand, afterwards Gregory VII., moved doubtless by this schism and

by the desire to bring the English Church under the influence of the

Cluniac revival and into closer relation with Rome, gave the duke a

consecrated banner, and the Norman invasion had something of the

character of a holy war.

Norman times.

Before the Norman Conquest the church had relapsed into deadness:

English bishops were political partisans, the clergy were married, and

discipline and asceticism, then the recognized condition of holiness,

were extinct. The Conqueror's relations with Rome ensured a reform; for

the papacy was instinct with the Cluniac spirit. In 1070 papal legates

were received and held a council by which Stigand was deposed. Lanfranc,

abbot of Bec, was appointed archbishop of Canterbury and worked

harmoniously with the king in bringing the English Church up to the

level of the church in Normandy. Many native bishops and abbots were

deposed, and the Norman prelates who succeeded them were generally of

good character, strict disciplinarians, and men of grander ideas. A

council of 1075 decreed the removal of bishops' sees from villages to

towns, as on the continent; the see of Sherborne, for example, was

removed to Old Sarum, and that of Selsey to Chichester, and many

churches statelier than of old were built in the Norman style which the

Confessor had already adopted for his church at Westminster. In another

council priests and deacons were thenceforward forbidden to marry.

William and Lanfranc also worked on Hildebrandine lines in separating

ecclesiastical from civil administration. Ecclesiastical affairs were

regulated in church councils held at the same time as the king's

councils. Bishops and archdeacons were no longer to exercise their

spiritual jurisdiction in secular courts, as had been the custom, but in

ecclesiastical courts and according to canon law. The king, however,

ruled church as well as state; Gregory granted him control over

episcopal elections, he invested bishops with the crozier and they held

their temporalities of him, and he allowed no councils to meet and no

business to be done without his licence. Gregory claimed homage from

him; but while the king promised the payment of Peter's pence and such

obedience as his English predecessors had rendered, he refused homage;

he allowed no papal letters to enter the kingdom without his leave, and

when an anti-pope was set up, he and Lanfranc treated the question as to

which pope should be acknowledged in England as one to be decided by the

crown. The Conquest brought the church into closer connexion with Rome

and gave it a share in the religious and intellectual life of the

continent; it stimulated and purified English monasticism, and it led to

the organization of the church as a body with legislative and

administrative powers distinct from those of the state. The relations

established by the Conqueror between the crown, the church and the pope,

its head and supreme judge, worked well as long as the king and the

primate were agreed, but were so complex that trouble necessarily arose

when they disagreed. William Rufus tried to feudalize the church, to

bring its officers and lands under feudal law; he kept bishoprics and

abbacies vacant and confiscated their revenues. He quarrelled with

Anselm (q.v.) who succeeded Lanfranc. Anselm while at Rome heard the

investiture of prelates by laymen denounced, and he maintained the papal

decree against Henry I. Bishops were vassals of the king, holding lands

of him, as well as officers of the church. How were they to be

appointed? Who should invest them with the symbols of their office? To

whom was their homage due? (see INVESTITURE). These questions which

agitated western Europe were settled as regards England by a compromise:

Henry surrendered investiture and kept the right to homage. The

substantial gain lay with the crown, for, while elections were

theoretically free, the king retained his power over them. Though Henry

in some degree checked the exercise of papal authority in England,

appeals to Rome without his sanction were frequent towards the end of

his reign. Stephen obtained the recognition of his title from Innocent

II., and was upheld by the church until he violently attacked three

bishops who had been Henry's ministers. The clergy then transferred

their allegiance to Matilda. His later quarrel with the papacy, then

under the influence of St Bernard, added to his embarrassments and

strengthened the Angevin cause.

The Angevin kings.

During Stephen's reign the church grew more powerful than was for the

good either of the state or itself. Its courts encroached on the sphere

of the lay courts, and further claimed exclusive criminal jurisdiction

over all clerks whether in holy or minor orders, with the result that

criminous clerks, though degraded by a spiritual court, escaped temporal

punishment. Henry II., finding ecclesiastical privileges an obstacle to

administrative reform, demanded that the bishops should agree to observe

the ancient customs of the realm. These customs were, he asserted,

expressed in certain constitutions to which he required their assent at

a council at Clarendon in 1164. In spirit they generally maintained the

rights of the crown as they existed under the Conqueror. One provided

that clerks convicted of temporal crime in a spiritual court and

degraded should be sentenced by a lay court and punished as laymen.

Archbishop Becket (see BECKET) agreed, repented and refused his assent.

The king tried to ruin him by unjust demands; he appealed to Rome and

fled to France. A long quarrel ensued, and in 1170 Henry was forced to

be reconciled to Becket. The archbishop's murder consequent on the

king's hasty words shocked Christendom, and Henry did penance publicly.

By agreement with the pope he renounced the Constitutions, but the

encroachments of the church courts were slightly checked, and the king's

decisive influence on episcopal elections and some other advantages were

secured. The church in Wales had become one with the English Church by

the voluntary submission of its bishops to the see of Canterbury in 1192

and later. The Irish Church remained distinct, though the conquest of

Ireland, which was sanctioned by the English pope Adrian IV. (Nicholas

Breakspear), brought it into the same relations with the crown as the

English Church and into conformity with it. Under the guidance of

ecclesiastics employed as royal ministers, the church supported the

crown until, in 1206, Innocent III. refused to confirm the election of a

bishop nominated by King John to Canterbury; and representatives of the

monks of Christ Church, in whom lay the right of election, being at his

court, the pope bade them elect Stephen Langton whom he consecrated as

archbishop. John refused to receive Langton and seized the estates of

Christ Church. Innocent laid England under an interdict in 1208; the

king confiscated the property of the clergy, banished bishops and kept

sees vacant. Papal envoys excommunicated him and declared him deposed in

1211. Surrounded by enemies, he made his peace with the pope in 1213,

swore fealty to him before his envoy, acknowledged that he held his

kingdom of the Roman see, and promised a yearly tribute for England and

Ireland. Finally he surrendered his crown to a legate and received it

back from him. The banished clergy returned and an agreement was made as

to their losses. Langton guided the barons in their demands on the king

which were expressed in Magna Carta. The first clause provided, as

charters of Henry I. and Stephen had already provided, that the English

Church should be "free," adding that it should have freedom of election,

which John had promised in 1214. As John's suzerain, Innocent annulled

the charter, suspended Langton, and excommunicated the barons in arms

against the king. On John's death, Gualo, legate of Honorius III., with

the help of the earl marshal, secured the throne for Henry III., and he

and his successor Pandulf, as representatives of the young king's

suzerain, largely directed English affairs until 1221, when Pandulf's

departure restored Langton to his rightful position as head in England

of the church. Reforms in discipline and clerical work were inculcated

by provincial legislation, and two legates, Otho in 1237 and Ottoboni in

1268, promulgated in councils constitutions which were a fundamental

part of the canon law in England. Religious life was quickened by the

coming of the friars (see FRIARS). Parochial organization was

strengthened by the institution of vicars in benefices held by religious

bodies, which was regulated and enforced by the bishops. It was a time

of intellectual activity, in character rather cosmopolitan than

national. English clerks studied philosophy and theology at Paris or law

at Bologna; some remained abroad and were famous as scholars, others

like Archbishops Langton, and Edmund Rich, and Bishop Grosseteste

returned to be rulers of the church, and others like Roger Bacon to

continue their studies in England. The schools of Oxford, however, had

already attained repute, and Cambridge began to be known as a place of

study. The spirit of the age found expression in art, and English Gothic

architecture, though originally, like the learning of the time, imported

from France, took a line of its own and reached its climax at this

period. Henry's gratitude for the benefits which in his early years he

received from Rome was shown later in subservience to papal demands.

Gregory IX., and still more Innocent IV., sorely in need of money to

prosecute their struggle with the imperial house, laid grievous taxes on

the English clergy, supported the king in making heavy demands upon

them, and violated the rights of patrons by appointing to benefices by

"provisions" often in favour of foreigners. Churchmen, and prominently

Grosseteste, the learned and holy bishop of Lincoln, while recognizing

the pope as the divinely appointed source of all ecclesiastical

jurisdiction, were driven to resist papal orders which they held to be

contrary to apostolic precepts. Their remonstrances were seldom

effectual, and the state of the national church was noted by the

Provisions of Oxford in 1258 as part of the general misgovernment which

the baronial opposition sought to remedy. The alliance between the crown

and the papacy in this reign diminished the liberties of the church.

13th and 14th centuries.

Edward I., who was a strong king, checked an attempt to magnify the

spiritual authority by the writ _Circumspecte agatis_, which defined the

sphere of the ecclesiastical courts, put a restraint on religious

endowments by the Statute of Mortmain, and desiring that every estate in

the realm should have a share in public burdens and counsels, caused the

beneficed clergy to be summoned to send proctors to parliament. The

clergy preferred to make their grants in their own convocations, and so

lost the position offered to them. For some years clerical taxation by

the crown was carried on with the good-will of the papacy; it was not

oppressive for unbeneficed clergy and incomes below ten marks were

exempt, and in theory the clergy were celibate. Papal demands, however,

were additional burdens. In 1296 Boniface VIII., by his bull _Clericis

laicos_, forbade the clergy to grant money to lay princes, and Edward's

request for a clerical subsidy was in 1297 refused by convocation led by

Archbishop Winchelsea. The king thereupon outlawed the clergy. The

northern province yielded, the southern held out longer; but finally the

clergy made their peace severally, each paying his share, and the royal

victory was complete. Winchelsea joined the baronial opposition which

forced Edward to grant the "Confirmation of the Charters." Edward

procured his disgrace from Clement V., and in return allowed Clement to

exact so much from the church that the doings of the papal agents

provoked an indignant remonstrance from parliament in 1307. With that

exception the king's dealings with the church were statesmanlike. He

employed clerical ministers and paid them by church preferments, but his

nominations to bishoprics did not always receive papal confirmation

which had become recognized as essential. His weak son Edward II.

yielded readily to papal demands. The majority of the bishops of the

reign, and specially those engaged in politics, were unworthy men;

religion was at a low ebb; plurality and non-residence were common. By

the constitution _Execrebilis_ John XXII. ordered that all cures held in

plurality save one should be vacated, and, which was not so well,

"reserved" all benefices so vacated for his own appointment. As the

residence of the popes at Avignon from 1308 to 1377 brought them under

French influence, Englishmen during the war with France were specially

displeased that large sums should be drawn from the kingdom for them and

that they should exercise patronage there. In the reign of Edward III.

the popes, though appointing to bishoprics by provision, did not give

them to foreigners, but they appointed foreigners, enemies of England,

to lesser preferments, deaneries and prebends. In 1351 the Statute of

Provisors declared provisions unlawful. Capitular elections, however,

remained mere forms; the king nominated, and the popes provided, and

took advantage of their claim to appoint to sees vacant by translation.

Papal interference in suits concerning temporalities was checked by a

law of 1353 (the first statute of _Praemunire_), which made punishable

by outlawry and forfeiture the carrying before a foreign tribunal of

causes cognizable by English courts. This measure was extended in 1365,

and in 1393 by the great statute of _Praemunire_. Indignant at the law

of 1365, Urban V. demanded payment of the tribute promised by John,

which was then thirty-three years in arrear, but parliament repudiated

the claim. The Black Death disorganized the church by thinning the ranks

of the clergy, who did their duty manfully during the plague. In the

diocese of Norwich, for example, 800 parishes lost their incumbents in

1349, 83 of them twice over (Jessopp). Large though insufficient numbers

were instituted to benefices and unfit persons received holy orders. The

value of livings decreased and many lay vacant. Some incumbents deserted

their parishes to take stipendiary work in towns or secular

employments, and unbeneficed clergy demanded higher stipends.

Greediness infected the church in common with society at large. Yet

Chaucer's ideal parish priest must have represented a familiar type, so

that we may believe that much good work was here and there unobtrusively

done by the clergy. Prominent among abuses were the sale of pardons, and

the extortions of the ecclesiastical courts; their decrees were enforced

by excommunication, and on a writ issued to the sheriff an

excommunicated person would be imprisoned until he satisfied the demands

of the church. The state needed money and attacks were made in

parliament on the wealth of the church. Already, in 1340, Edward III.,

who quarrelled with Archbishop Stratford on political grounds, had

appointed lay ministers, and in 1371 William of Wykeham, bishop of

Winchester, and other clerical ministers were turned out of office and

succeeded by laymen. A political crisis in 1376 was followed by a

struggle between the bishops and John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, the

head of the anticlerical party, who allied himself with John Wycliffe

(q.v.). He was unpopular, and when the bishops cited Wycliffe before

them in St Paul's, the duke's conduct provoked a riot and the

proceedings ended abruptly. Wycliffe held that the church was corrupted

by wealth; that only those in grace had a right to God's gifts, and that

temporal power belonged only to laymen and not to popes nor priests.

Later he attacked the papacy itself, which in 1378 was distracted by the

great schism; by 1380 he condemned pilgrimages, secret confession and

masses for the dead. While holding the presence of Christ in the

Eucharist, he denied a change of substance in the elements, arguing that

accidents or qualities, such as form and colour, could not exist without

substance. He taught that Holy Scripture was the only source of

religious truth, to the exclusion of church authority and tradition, and

he and his followers made the first complete English version of the

Bible. His opinions were spread by the poor priests whom he sent out to

preach and by his English tracts. That his teaching had any direct

effect on the insurrection of 1381, though commonly believed, appears to

be an unfounded idea; many priests were concerned in the rising, and

specially the mendicant orders, Wycliffe's bitter enemies, but the

motives of the insurrection were essentially secular (Oman, _The Great

Revolt of 1381_). The reaction which followed extended to religion, and

Wycliffe's doctrines were condemned by a church council in 1382.

Nevertheless he died in peace. He had many disciples, especially in

Oxford and in industrial centres. The Lollards, as his followers were

called, had supporters in parliament and among people of high rank in

the court of Richard II., and the king's marriage to Anne of Bohemia

brought about the importation of Wycliffe's writings into Bohemia, where

they had a strong influence on the religious movement led by Hus. At

first the bishops were not inclined to persecute, and the earlier

Lollards mostly recanted under pressure, but their number increased.

The 15th century.

With the accession of the Lancastrian house the crown allied itself with

the church, and the bishops adopted a repressive policy towards the

Lollards. By the canon law obstinate heretics were to be burnt by the

secular power, and though England had hitherto been almost free from

heresy, one or two burnings had taken place in accordance with that law.

In 1401 a statute, _De heretico comburendo_, ordered that heretics

convicted in a spiritual court should be committed to the secular arm

and publicly burned, and, while this statute was pending, one Sawtre was

burned as a relapsed heretic. Henry V. was zealous for orthodoxy and the

persecution of Lollards increased; in 1414 Sir John Oldcastle, Lord

Cobham, who had been condemned as a heretic, escaped and made an

insurrection; he was taken in 1417 and hanged and burned. Lollardism was

connected with an insurrection in 1431; it then ceased to have any

political importance, but it kept its hold in certain towns and

districts on the lower classes; many Lollards were forced to recant and

others suffered martyrdom. The church was in an unsatisfactory state. As

regards the papacy, the crown generally maintained the position taken up

in the previous century, but its policy was fitful, and the custom of

allowing bishops who were made cardinals to retain their sees

strengthened papal influence. The bishops were largely engaged in

secular business; there was much plurality, and cathedral and collegiate

churches were frequently left to inferior officers whose lives were

unclerical. The clergy were numerous and drawn from all classes, and

humble birth did not debar a man from attaining the highest positions in

the church. Candidates for holy orders were still examined, but clerical

education seems to have declined. Preaching was rare, partly from

neglectfulness and partly because, in 1401, in order to prevent the

spread of heresy, priests were forbidden to preach without a licence.

While the marriage of the clergy was checked, irregular and temporary

connexions were lightly condoned. Discipline generally was lax, and

exhortations against field-sports, tavern haunting and other unclerical

habits seem to have had little effect. Monasticism had declined. Papal

indulgences and relics were hawked about chiefly by friars, though these

practices were discountenanced by the bishops. On the other hand, all

education was carried on by the clergy, and religion entered largely

into the daily life of the people, into their gild-meetings,

church-ales, mystery-plays and holidays, as well as into the great

events of family life--baptisms, marriages and deaths. Many stately

churches were built in the prevailing Perpendicular style, often by

efforts in which all classes shared, and many hamlet chapels

supplemented the mother church in scattered parishes. The revival of

classical learning scarcely affected the church at large. Greek learning

was regarded with suspicion by many churchmen, but the English humanists

were orthodox. The movement had little to do with the coming religious

conflicts, which indeed killed it, save that it awoke in some learned

men like Sir Thomas More a desire for ecclesiastical, though not

doctrinal, reform, and led many to study the New Testament of which

Erasmus published a Greek text and Latin paraphrases.

The Reformation era.

During the earlier years of the 16th century Lollardism still existed

among the lower classes in towns, and was rife here and there in country

districts. Persecution went on and martyrdoms are recorded. The old

grievances concerning ecclesiastical exactions remained unabated and

were further strengthened by an ill-founded rumour that Richard Hunne, a

Londoner who had refused to pay a mortuary, was imprisoned for heresy in

the Lollards' tower, and was found hanged in his cell in 1514, had been

murdered. Lutheranism affected England chiefly through the surreptitious

importation of Tyndale's New Testament and heretical books. In 1521

Henry VIII. wrote a book against Luther in which he maintained the papal

authority, and was rewarded by Leo X. with the title of Defender of the

Faith. Henry, however, whose will was to himself as the oracles of God,

finding that the pope opposed his intended divorce from Catherine of

Aragon, determined to allow no supremacy in his realm save his own. He

carried out his ecclesiastical policy by parliamentary help. Parliament

was packed, and was skilfully managed; and he had on his side the

popular impatience of ecclesiastical abuses, a new feeling of national

pride which would brook no foreign interference, the old desire of the

laity to lighten their own burdens by the wealth of the church, and a

growing inclination to question or reject sacerdotal authority. He used

these advantages to forward his policy, and when he met with opposition,

enforced his will as a despot. The parliament of 1529 lasted until 1536;

it broke the bonds of Rome, established royal supremacy over the English

Church, and effected a redistribution of national wealth at the expense

of the spirituality. It began by acts abolishing ecclesiastical

exactions, such as excessive mortuaries and fees for probate, and by

prohibiting pluralities except in stated cases, application to Rome for

licence to evade the act being made penal. Henry having crushed his

minister Cardinal Wolsey, archbishop of York, declared the whole body of

the clergy involved in a _praemunire_ by their submission to Wolsey's

legatine authority, and ordered the convocation to purchase pardon by a

large payment, and by acknowledging him as "Protector and Supreme Head

of the English Church and Clergy." After much debate, the acknowledgment

was made in 1531, with the qualification "so far as the law of Christ

allows." A "supplication" against clerical jurisdiction and legislation

by convocation was obtained from the Commons in 1532, and Henry received

from convocation the "submission of the clergy," surrendering its

legislative power except on royal licence, and consenting to a revision

of the canon law by commissioners to be appointed by the king. A bill

for conditionally withholding the payment of _annates_, or first-fruits,

to Rome was passed, and Henry took advantage of the fear of the Roman

court lest it should lose these payments, to obtain without the usual

fees bulls promoting Cranmer to the see of Canterbury in 1533, and thus

was enabled to gain his divorce. Cranmer pronounced his marriage to

Catherine null, and declared him lawfully married to Anne Boleyn.

Clement VII. retorted by excommunicating the king, but for that Henry

cared not. Appeals to Rome were forbidden by statute, and the council

ordained that the pope should thenceforth only be spoken of as bishop of

Rome, as not having authority in England. In 1534 the restraint of

annates was confirmed by law, all payments to Rome were forbidden, and

it was enacted that, on receiving royal licence to elect, cathedral

chapters must elect bishops nominated by the king. The papal power was

extirpated by statute, parliament at the same time declaring that

neither the king nor kingdom would vary from the "Catholic faith of

Christendom." The submission of the clergy was made law. Appeals from

the archbishops' courts were to be to the king in chancery, and were to

be heard by commissioners, whence arose the Court of Delegates as the

court of final appeal in ecclesiastical cases. The first-fruits and

tenths of benefices were given to the king, and his title as "Supreme

Head in earth of the Church of England" was declared by parliament

without the qualification added by convocation. Fisher, bishop of

Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, lately chancellor, the two most eminent

Englishmen, were beheaded in 1535 on an accusation of attempting to

deprive the king of this title, and some Carthusian monks suffered a

more cruel martyrdom in the same cause. Meanwhile New Testaments were

burnt, and heretics, or reformers, forced to abjure or, remaining

steadfast, were sent to the stake, for though the heresy law of Henry

IV. was repealed, heresy was still punishable by death, and persecution

was not abated. By breaking the bonds of Rome Henry did not give the

church freedom; he substituted a single despotism for the dual authority

which pope and king had previously exercised over it. In 1535 Cromwell,

the king's vicar-general, began a visitation of the monasteries. The

reports (_comperta_) of his commissioners having been delivered to the

king and communicated to parliament in 1536, parliament declared the

smaller monasteries corrupt, and granted the king all of less value than

L200 a year. A rebellion in Lincolnshire and another in the north, the

formidable Pilgrimage of Grace, followed. The suppression of the greater

houses was effected gradually, surrenders were obtained by pressure, and

three abbots who were reluctant to give up the possessions of their

convents for confiscation were hanged. Monastic shrines and treasuries

were sacked and the spoil sent to the king, to whom parliament granted

all the houses, their lands and possessions. Of the enormous wealth thus

gained Henry spent a part on national defence, a little on the

foundation of the bishoprics of Westminster, dissolved in 1550, Bristol,

Chester, Gloucester, Oxford and Peterborough, and gave the lands to men

either useful to or favoured by himself, or sold them to rich

purchasers. In 1536 he dictated the belief and ceremonial of the church

by issuing Ten Articles which were subscribed by convocation. This first

formulary of the English Church as separate from Rome did not contravene

Catholic doctrine, though it showed the influence of Lutheran models.

Another exposition of Anglican doctrine was made in the _Institution of

a Christian Man_ or "Bishops' book," in some respects more likely to

satisfy those attached to the tenets of Rome, in others, as in the

distinct repudiation of purgatory and the declaration that salvation

depended solely on the merits of Christ, showing an advance. It was

published in 1537 with Henry's sanction but not by authority. In that

year licence was granted for the sale of a translation of the Bible, and

in 1538 another version called Matthew's Bible, was ordered to be kept

in all churches (see BIBLE). Pilgrimages were suppressed and images

used for worship destroyed. Denial of the king's supremacy, denial of

the corporal presence in the Eucharist, and insults to Catholic rites

were alike punished by cruel death. The publication abroad of the king's

excommunication rendered an assertion of orthodoxy advisable for

political reasons, and in 1539 came the Act of the Six Articles

attaching extreme penalties to deviations from Catholic doctrines. The

backward swing of the pendulum continued; Cromwell was beheaded and

three reforming preachers were burnt in 1540. Prosecutions for heresy

under the act were fitful: four gospellers were burnt in London in 1546,

of whom the celebrated Anne Askew was one. Cranmer, however, did not

lose the king's favour. A fresh attempt to define doctrine was made in

the _Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of a Christian Man_, the "King's

Book," published by authority in 1543, which, while repudiating the

pope, was a declaration of Catholic orthodoxy. A _Primer_, or private

prayer-book, of which parts were in English, as the litany composed by

Cranmer, and virtually the same as at present, was issued in 1546, and

further liturgical change seemed probable when Henry died in 1547.

Henry, while changing many things in the church, would not allow any

deviation in essentials from the religion of Catholic Europe, which was

not then so dogmatically defined as it was later by the council of

Trent. Edward VI. was a child, and the Protector Somerset and the

council favoured further changes, which were carried out with Cranmer's

help. They issued a book of _Homilies_ and a set of injunctions which

were enforced by a royal visitation. Pictures and much painted glass

were destroyed in churches, frescoed walls were whitewashed, and in

1548, the removal of all images was decreed. Parliament ordered that

bishops should be appointed by letters patent and hold their courts in

the king's name. An act of the last reign granting the king all

chantries and gilds was enlarged and enforced with cruel injustice to

the poor. On the petition of convocation parliament allowed the marriage

of priests; and it further ordered that the laity should receive the cup

in communion. A communion book was issued by the council in English, the

Latin mass being retained for a time. Many German reformers came to

England, were favoured by the council, and gained influence over

Cranmer. The first Book of Common Prayer was authorized by an Act of

Uniformity in 1549; it retained much from old service books, but the

communion office is Lutheran in character. It excited discontent, and a

serious insurrection broke out in the West, the insurgents demanding the

revival of the Act of the Six Articles and the withdrawal of the new

service as "like a Christmas game." After Somerset's fall the government

rapidly pushed forward reformation. A new _Ordinal_ issued with

parliamentary approval in 1550 was significant of the change in

sacramental doctrine, and the four minor orders disappeared. Altars were

destroyed and tables substituted. Five bishops, Bonner of London,

Gardiner of Winchester, and Heath of Worcester, then already in prison,

and two others, were deprived; and the Lady Mary, who would not give up

the mass, was harshly treated. The reformers were not tolerant; for a

woman was burnt for Arianism in 1550 and a male Anabaptist in 1551.

Under the influence of foreign reformers, who took a lower view of the

Eucharist than the Lutheran divines, Cranmer soon advanced beyond the

prayer-book of 1549. A second prayer-book, departing further from the

old order, appeared in 1552, and without being accepted by convocation

was enforced by another Act of Uniformity, and in 1553 a catechism and

forty-two articles of religion were authorized by Edward for

subscription by the clergy, though not laid before convocation. A

revision of the canon law in accordance with the act for "submission of

the clergy" was at last undertaken in 1551, but the only result was a

document entitled _Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum_, which never

received authority. Edward died in 1553. Apart from matters of faith,

the church had fared ill under a royal supremacy exercised by

self-seeking nobles in the name of the boy-king. Convocation lost all

authority and bishops were treated as state officials liable to

deprivation for disobedience to the council. Means of worship were

diminished, and the poor were shamefully wronged by the suppression of

chantries, gilds and holy days; even the few sheep of the poor brethren

of a gild were seized to swell a sum which from 1550 was largely

diverted from public purposes to private gain. Churches were despoiled

of their plate; the old bishops were forced, the new more easily

persuaded, to give up lands belonging to their sees, and rich men grew

richer by robbing God.

When Mary succeeded her brother, the deprived bishops were restored,

some reforming bishops were imprisoned, and Cranmer, who was implicated

in the plot on behalf of Lady Jane Grey, was attainted of treason. As

regards doctrine, religious practices and papal supremacy, Mary was set

on bringing back her realm to the position existing before her father's

quarrel with Rome. Her first parliament repealed the ecclesiastical

legislation of Edward's reign, and convocation formally accepted

transubstantiation. Seven bishops were deprived in 1554, four of them as

married, and about a fifth of the beneficed clergy, though some received

other benefices after putting away their wives. Apparently Mary at first

believed that her authority would be accepted in religious matters; but

she met with opposition, partly provocative, for Wyat's rebellion

consequent on her intended marriage to Philip of Spain was closely

connected with religion, and more largely passive in the noble

resolution of those who chose martyrdom rather than denial of their

faith. To the nation at large, though not averse from the old doctrines

and practices of the church, a return to the Roman obedience was

distasteful. Nevertheless, Cardinal Pole was received as legate, and the

title of Supreme Head of the Church having been dropped, a parliament

carefully packed, and the fears of the rich appeased by the assurance

that they would not have to surrender the monastic lands, he absolved

the nation in parliament and reunited it to the Church of Rome on

November 30, 1554, the clergy being absolved in convocation. Parliament

repealed all acts against the Roman see since the twentieth year of

Henry VIII. The heresy laws were revived, and a horrible persecution of

those who refused to disown the doctrines of the prayer-book began in

1555, and lasted during the remainder of the reign. Nearly 300 persons

were burned to death as heretics in these four years, among them being

five bishops: Hooper of Gloucester, Ferrar of St David's, Ridley of

London, and Latimer (until 1539) of Worcester in 1555, and Archbishop

Cranmer in 1556. The chief responsibility for these horrors rests with

the queen; the bishops who examined the accused were less zealous than

she desired. The most prominent among them in persecution was Bonner of

London. The exiles for religion were received at Frankfort, Strassburg

and Zurich. At Frankfort a party among them objected to the ceremonies

retained in the prayer-book, and, encouraged by Calvin and by Knox, who

came to them from Geneva, quarrelled with those who desired to keep the

book unchanged. Mary died in 1558. Her reign arrested the rapid

spoliation of the church and possibly prevented the adoption of

doctrines which would have destroyed its apostolic character; the

persecution by which it was disgraced strengthened the hold of the

reformed religion on the people and made another acceptance of Roman

supremacy for ever impossible.

Elizabethan settlement.

Elizabeth's accession was hailed with pleasure; she was known to dislike

her sister's ecclesiastical policy, and a change was expected. An Act of

Supremacy restored to the crown the authority over the church held by

Henry VIII., and provided for its exercise by commissioners, whence came

the court of High Commission nominated by the crown, as a high

ecclesiastical court; but Elizabeth rejected the title of Supreme Head,

and used that of Supreme Governor, as "over all persons and in all cases

within her dominions supreme." An Act of Uniformity prescribed the use

of the prayer-book of 1552 in a revised form which raised the level of

its doctrine, and injunctions enforced by a royal visitation

re-established the reformed order. All the Marian bishops save two

refused the oath of supremacy and were deprived, and eight were

imprisoned. Of the clergy generally few refused it; for only some 200

were deprived for religion during the first six years of the reign.

Bishops for the vacant sees were nominated by the crown and elected by

their chapters as in Henry's reign; Matthew Parker was canonically

consecrated archbishop of Canterbury. The orthodoxy of the church was

vindicated by Bishop Jewel's _Apologia ecclesiae Anglicanae_. Adherents

to Rome vainly tried to obtain papal sanction for attending the church

services, and were forced either to disobey the pope or become

"recusants"; many were fined, and those who attended mass were

imprisoned. Meanwhile a party, soon known as Puritans, rebelled against

church order; the exiles who had come under Genevan influence objecting

on their return to vestments and ceremonies enjoined by the prayer-book.

There was much nonconformity in the church which the queen ordered the

bishops to correct. Parker, though averse to violent measures, insisted

on obedience to his "Advertisements" of 1566, which, though not formally

authorized by the queen, expressed her will, and became held as

authoritative, and some of the refractory were punished. A company

engaged in irregular worship was discovered in London in 1567 and a few

persons were imprisoned by the magistrate. Active opposition to the

government was stirred up by Pius V., and in 1569 a rebellion in the

north, where the old religion was strong, was aided by papal money and

encouraged by hopes of Spanish intervention. In 1570 Pius published a

bull excommunicating and deposing the queen. Thenceforward recusants had

to choose between loyalty to the queen and loyalty to the pope. They lay

under suspicion, and severe penal laws were enacted against Romish

practices. About 1579 many seminary priests and Jesuits came over to

England as missionaries; some actively engaged in treason, all were

legally traitors. The country was threatened with foreign invasion,

plots against the government were detected, and the queen's life was

held to be endangered. The council hunted down these priests and their

abettors, and many were executed, martyrs to the doctrine of the pope's

power of deposition. The number put to death in this reign under the

penal laws was 187. The papal policy defeated itself; a large number of

the old religion while retaining their faith chose to be loyal to the

queen rather than lend themselves to the designs of her enemies. From

1571 recusants can no longer be reckoned as nonconforming members of the

English Church: the law recognized them as separate from it. The

church's doctrine was defined in the catechism of 1570, and in the

revised articles of religion which appeared as the XXXIX. Articles in

1571, and its law by a body of canons published with authority in 1576,

the attempt at codification made in the _Reformatio legum_ having been

laid aside.

The Nonconformists.

From 1574 the Protestant Nonconformists strove to introduce

Presbyterianism. Cause for grievance existed in the state of the church

which had suffered from the late violent changes. Elizabeth plundered

it, and laymen who owned the rectories formerly held by monasteries

followed her example; bishoprics were impoverished by the queen and

parish cures by her subjects, and the reform of abuses was checked by

self-interest. As bishops, along with some able men, Elizabeth chose

others of an inferior stamp who consented to the plunder of their sees

and whom she could use to report on recusants and harry nonconformists.

Separation, or Independency, began about 1578 with the followers of

Robert Browne, who repudiated the queen's ecclesiastical authority; two

Brownists were executed in 1583. The nonconformists remained in the

church and continued their efforts to subvert its episcopal system.

Elizabeth, though personally little influenced by religion, understood

the political value of the church, and would allow no slackness in

enforcing conformity. Archbishop Grindal was sequestrated for defending

"prophesyings," or meetings of the Puritan clergy for religious

exercises. The House of Commons, in which there was a Puritan element,

repeatedly attempted to discuss church questions and was sharply

silenced by the queen, who would not allow any interference in

ecclesiastical matters. Whitgift, who succeeded Grindal in 1583, though

kind-hearted, was strict in his administration of the law. Violent

attacks were made upon the bishops in the Martin Marprelate tracts

printed by a secret press; their author is unknown, but some who were

probably connected with them were executed for publishing seditious

libels. Whitgift's firmness met with success. During the last years of

the reign the movement towards Presbyterianism was checked and

nonconformity was less prominent. The church regained a measure of

orderliness and vigour; its claims on allegiance were advocated by

eminent divines and expounded in the stately pages of Hooker. The queen,

who had so vigorously ordered ecclesiastical affairs, died in 1603.

The Puritan rebellion.

On the accession of James I. the Puritans expressed their desire for

ecclesiastical change in the Millenary Petition which purported to come

from 1000 clergy; their requests were moderate, a sign of the success of

Whitgift's policy, but some could not have been granted without causing

widespread dissatisfaction. At a conference between divines of the two

parties at Hampton Court in 1604, James roughly decided against the

Puritans. Some small alterations were made in the prayer-book, and a new

version of the Bible was undertaken, which appeared in 1611 as the

"authorized version." In 1604 convocation framed a code of canons which

received royal authorization. Refusal to obey them was punished with

deprivation, and, according to S. R. Gardiner, about 300 clergy were

deprived, though a 17th century writer (Peter Heylyn) puts the number at

49 only, which W. H. Frere (_History of the English Church, 1558-1625_,

p. 321) thinks more credible. Conformity could still be enforced, but

before long the Puritan party grew in strength partly from religious and

partly from political causes. They would not admit any authority in

religion that was not based on the scriptures; their opponents

maintained that the church had authority to ordain ceremonies not

contrary to the scriptures. In doctrine the Puritans remained faithful

to the Calvinism in which most Englishmen of the day had been brought

up; they called the high churchmen Arminians, and asserted that they

were inclined to Rome. The Commons became increasingly Puritan; they

were strongly Protestant and demanded the enforcement of the laws

against recusants, who suffered much, specially after the Gunpowder Plot

of 1605, though they were sometimes shielded by the king. The Commons

regarded ecclesiastical jurisdiction with dislike, specially the Court

of High Commission, which had developed from the ecclesiastical

commissions of Elizabeth and was hated as a means of coercion based on

prerogative. The bishops derived their support from the king, and the

church in return supported the king's claim to absolutism and divine

right. It suffered heavily from this alliance. As men saw the church on

the side of absolutism, Puritanism grew strong both among the country

gentry, who were largely represented in the Commons, and among the

nation at large, and the church lost ground through the king's political

errors. A restoration of order and decency in worship and the

introduction of more ceremonial begun in James's reign were carried on

by Laud (q.v.) under Charles I. Laud aimed at silencing disputes about

doctrine and enforcing outward uniformity; the Puritans hated ceremonial

and wished to make every one accept their doctrines. Many of the reforms

introduced by Laud after he became archbishop in 1633 were needful, but

they offended the Puritans and were enforced in a harsh and tyrannical

manner, for he lacked wisdom and sympathy. Under his rule nonconforming

clergy were deprived and sometimes imprisoned. The cruel punishments

inflicted by the Court of Star Chamber of which he was a member, the

unpopularity of the High Commission Court, his own harsh dealing, and

the part which he took in politics as a confidential adviser of the

king, combined to bring odium upon him and upon the ecclesiastical

system which he represented. The church was weak, for the Laudian system

was disliked by the nation. A storm of discontent with the course of

affairs both in church and state gathered. In 1640 Charles, after

dissolving parliament, prolonged the session of convocation, which

issued canons magnifying the royal authority and imposing the so-called

"_et cetera_ oath" against innovations on all clergy, graduates and

others. The Long Parliament voted the canons illegal; Laud was

imprisoned, and in 1642 the bishops were excluded from parliament. The

civil war began in 1642; in 1643 a bill was passed for the taking away

of episcopacy, in 1645 Laud was beheaded, and parliament abolished the

prayer-book and accepted the Presbyterian directory, and from 1646

Presbyterianism was the legal form of church government. Many, perhaps

2000, clergy were deprived; some were imprisoned and otherwise

maltreated, though a fifth of their former revenues was assigned to the

dispossessed. The king, who was beheaded in 1649, might have extricated

himself from his difficulties if he had consented to the overthrow of

episcopacy, and may therefore be held a martyr to the church's cause.

The victory of the army over the parliament secured England against the

tyranny of Presbyterianism, but did not better the condition of the

episcopal clergy; the toleration insisted on by the Independents did not

extend to "prelacy." Churchmen, however, occasionally enjoyed the

ministrations of their own clergy in private houses, and though their

worship was sometimes disturbed they were not seriously persecuted for

engaging in it. Non-delinquent or non-sequestrated private patronage and

the obligation of tithes were retained. Community of suffering and the

execution of Charles I. brought the royalist country gentry into

sympathy with the clergy, and at the Restoration the church had the hold

upon the affection of the laity which it lacked under the Laudian rule.

The Restoration period.

On the king's restoration the survivors of the ejected clergy quietly

regained their benefices. The Presbyterians helped to bring back the

king and looked for a reward. Charles II. promised them a limited

episcopacy and other concessions, but his plan was rejected by the

Commons. A conference at the Savoy between leading Presbyterians and

churchmen in 1661 was ineffectual, and a revision of the prayer-book by

convocation further discontented nonconformists. The parliament of 1661

was violently anti-Puritan, and in 1662 passed an Act of Uniformity

providing that all ministers not episcopally ordained or refusing to

conform should be deprived on St Bartholomew's day, the 14th of August

following. About 2000 ministers are said to have been ejected, and in

1665 ejected ministers were forbidden to come within five miles of their

former cures. Though some bishops and clergy showed kindness to the

ejected, churchmen generally approved of this oppressive legislation;

they could not forget the wrongs inflicted on their church by the once

triumphant Puritans. Nonconformist worship was made punishable by fine

and imprisonment, and on the third offence by transportation. In 1672

Charles, who had secretly promised the French king openly to profess

Roman Catholicism, issued a Declaration of Indulgence which applied both

to Romanists and Protestant Nonconformists, but parliament compelled him

to withdraw it, and, in 1673, passed a Test Act making reception of the

holy communion and a denial of transubstantiation necessary

qualifications for public office. Later, when the dissenters found

friends among the party in parliament opposed to the crown, the church

supported the king, and the doctrine of passive obedience was generally

accepted by the clergy. The church was popular, and among the great

preachers and theologians who adorned it in the Caroline period were

Jeremy Taylor, Pearson, Bull, Barrow, South and Stillingfleet. The lower

clergy were mostly poor, and their social position was consequently

often humble, but the pictures of clerical humiliation after 1660 are

generally overcoloured; the assertion that they commonly married

servants or cast-off mistresses of their patrons has been disproved, and

it is certain that men of good family entered holy orders. In accordance

with an agreement between Archbishop Sheldon and Lord Chancellor

Clarendon, the clergy ceased to tax themselves in convocation, and from

1665 have been taxed by parliament. James II., though a Romanist,

promised to protect the church, and the clergy were on his side in the

rebellion of the duke of Monmouth, who was supported by dissenters. The

church and the nation, however, were strongly Protestant and were soon

alarmed by his efforts to Romanize the country. James dispensed with the

law by prerogative and appointed Romanists to offices in defiance of

the Test Act. In 1688 he ordered that his declaration for liberty of

conscience, issued in the interest of Romanism, should be read in all

churches. His order was almost universally disobeyed. Archbishop

Sancroft and six bishops who remonstrated against it were brought to

trial, and were acquitted to the extreme delight of the nation. James's

attack on the church cost him his crown.

Revolution period.

Sancroft and eight bishops would not belie their belief in the doctrines

of divine right and passive obedience by swearing allegiance to William

and Mary, and the archbishop, five bishops and over 400 clergy were

deprived. Certain of these nonjuring bishops consecrated others and a

schism ensued. The loss to the church was heavy; for among the nonjurors

were many men of holy lives and eminent learning, and the fact that some

suffered for conscience' sake seemed a reproach on the rest of the

clergy. After 1715 the secession became unimportant. Protestantism was

secured from further royal attack by the Bill of Rights; and in 1701 the

Act of Succession provided that all future sovereigns should be members

of the Church of England. That the king's title rested on a

parliamentary decision was destructive of the clerical theory of divine

right, and encouraged Erastianism, then specially dangerous to the

church; for William, a Dutch Presbyterian, gave bishoprics to men

personally worthy, but more desirous of union with other Protestant

bodies than jealous for the principles of their own church. A bill for

union was rejected in the Commons, where the church party had a

majority, though one for toleration of Protestant dissenters became law.

William, anxious for concessions to dissenters, appointed a committee of

convocation for altering the liturgy, canons and ecclesiastical courts,

but the Tory party in the lower house of convocation was strong and the

scheme was abortive. A long controversy began between the two houses:

the bishops were mostly Whigs with latitudinarian tendencies, the lower

clergy Tories and high churchmen. During most of the reign convocation

was suspended and the church was governed by royal injunctions, a system

injurious to its welfare. It had been the bulwark of the nation against

Romanism under James II., and the affection of the nation enabled it to

preserve its distinctive character amid dangers of an opposite kind

under William III. Its religious life was active; associations for

worship and the reformation of manners led to more frequent services,

the establishment of schools for poor children, and the foundation of

the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (S.P.C.K.) and for the

Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (S.P.G.). This activity and

the discord between the two houses of convocation continued during

Anne's reign. Anne was a strong church-woman, and under her the church

reached its highest point of popularity and influence. Its supposed

interests were used by the Tories for political ends. Hence the

Occasional Conformity Act, to prevent evasion of the Test Act, and a

tyrannical Schism Act, both repealed in 1718, belong rather to the

history of parties than to that of the church. So, too, does the case of

Dr Sacheverell, who was prosecuted for a violently Tory sermon. His

trial, in 1710, caused much excitement; mobs shouted for "High Church

and Dr Sacheverell," and the lightness of his sentence was hailed as a

Tory victory. Queen Anne is gratefully remembered by the church for her

"Bounty," which gave it the first-fruits and tenths (see ANNATES and

QUEEN ANNE'S BOUNTY).

The 18th century.

With the accession of the Hanoverian line the church entered on a period

of feeble life and inaction: many church fabrics were neglected; daily

services were discontinued; holy days were disregarded; Holy Communion

was infrequent; the poor were little cared for; and though the church

remained popular, the clergy were lazy and held in contempt. In

accepting the settlement of the crown the clergy generally sacrificed

conviction to expediency, and their character suffered. Promotion

largely depended on a profession of Whig principles: the church was

regarded as subservient to the state; its historic position and claims

were ignored, and it was treated by politicians as though its principal

function was to support the government. This change was accelerated by

the silencing of convocation. A sermon by Hoadly, bishop of Bangor,

impugned the existence of a visible church, and the "Bangorian

controversy" which ensued threatened to end in the condemnation of his

opinions by convocation, or at least by the lower house. As this would

have weakened the government, convocation was prorogued, letters of

business were withheld, and from 1717 until 1852 convocation, the

church's constitutional organ of reform, existed only in name. Walpole

during his long ministry, from 1721 to 1742, discouraged activity in the

church lest it should become troublesome to his government. Preferment

was shamelessly sought after even by pious men, and was begged and

bestowed on the ground of political services. In this the clergy, apart

from the sacredness of clerical office, were neither better nor worse

than the laity; in morality and decency they were better even at the

lowest point of their decline, about the middle of the century. While

the church was inactive in practical work, it showed vigour in the

intellectual defence of Christianity. Controversies of earlier origin

with assailants of the faith were ably maintained by, among others,

Daniel Waterland, William Law, a nonjuror, Bishop Butler, whose

_Analogy_ appeared in 1736, and Bishop Berkeley. A revival of

spirituality and energy at last set in. Its origin has been traced to

Law's Serious Call, published in 1728. Law's teaching was actively

carried out by John Wesley (q.v.), a clergyman who from 1739 devoted

himself to evangelization. Though his preaching awoke much religious

feeling, specially among the lower classes, the excitement which

attended it led to a horror of religious enthusiasm, and his methods

irritated the parochial clergy. Some of them seconded his efforts, but

far more regarded them with violent and often unworthily expressed

dislike. While he urged his followers to adhere to the church, he could

not himself work in subordination to discipline; the Methodist

organization which he founded was independent of the church's system and

soon drifted into separation. Nevertheless, he did much to bring about a

revival of life in the church. Several clergy became his allies, and

some preached in Lady Huntingdon's chapels before her secession. These

were among the fathers of the Evangelical party: they differed from the

Methodists in not forming an organization, remaining in the church,

working on the parochial system, and generally holding Calvinistic

doctrine, being so far nearer to Whitfield than to Wesley, though

Calvinism gradually ceased to be a mark of the party. The Evangelicals

soon grew in number, and their influence for good was extensive. They

laid stress on the depravity of human nature, and on the importance of

conscious conversion, giving prominence to the necessity of personal

salvation rather than of incorporation with, and abiding in, the church

of the redeemed. Prominent among their early leaders after they became

distinct from the Methodists were William Romaine, Henry Venn and John

Newton. Bishop Porteus of London sympathized with them, Lord Dartmouth

was a liberal patron, and Cowper's poetry spread their doctrines in

quarters where sermons might have failed to attract. Religion was also

forwarded in the church by the example of George III. During his reign

the progress of toleration, though slow and fitful, greatly advanced

both as regards Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters. The spirit of

rationalism, which had been manifested earlier in attacks on revelation,

appeared in a movement against subscription to the Articles demanded of

the clergy and others which was defeated in parliament in 1772. The

alarm consequent on the French Revolution checked the progress of

toleration and was temporarily fatal to free-thinking; it strengthened

the position of the church, which was regarded as a bulwark of society

against the spread of revolutionary doctrines; and this caused the

Evangelicals to draw off more completely from the Methodists. The church

was active: the Sunday-school movement, begun in 1780, flourished; the

crusade against the slave-trade was vigorously supported by

Evangelicals; and the Church Missionary Society (C.M.S.), a distinctly

Evangelical organization, was founded. Excellent as were the results of

the revival generally, the Evangelicals had defects which tended to

weaken the church. Some characteristics of their teaching were

repellent to the young; they were deficient in theological learning, and

often in learning of any kind; they took a low view of the church,

regarding it as the offspring of the Protestant reformation; they

expounded the Bible without reference to the church's teaching, and paid

little heed to the church's directions. Dissent consequently grew

stronger. By the Act of Union with Ireland the Churches of England and

Ireland were united from the 1st of January 1801, and the continuance of

the united church was declared an essential part of the union. No

provision, however, was made giving the Irish clergy a place in

convocation, which was evidently held unlikely to revive. The union of

the churches was dissolved in 1871 by an act of 1869 for disestablishing

the Irish Church.

The Oxford Movement.

Apart from the Evangelical revival, religion was advanced in the church.

In 1811 the education of the poor was provided for on church principles

by the National Society; the Church Building Society was founded in

1818; and the colonial episcopate was started by the establishment of

bishoprics in Calcutta in 1814, and in Jamaica and Barbados in 1824. Yet

reforms were urgently needed. In 1813, out of about 10,800 benefices,

6311 are said to have been without resident incumbents (_The Black

Book_, p. 34); the value of some great offices was enormous, while many

of the parochial clergy were wretchedly poor. The repeal of the Test

Act, long practically inoperative, in 1828, and Catholic emancipation in

1829, mark a change in the relations of church and state; and the Reform

Bill of 1832 transferred political power from a class which generally

supported the church to classes in which dissent was strong. The

national zeal for reform was directed towards the church, not always in

a friendly spirit. Yet wholesome changes were effected by legislation:

dioceses were rearranged and two new bishoprics founded at Manchester

and Ripon, the bishopric of Bristol, however, being suppressed;

plurality and non-residence were abolished; tithes were commuted, and

the Ecclesiastical Commission, which has effected reforms in respect of

endowments, was permanently established in 1836. Some changes and

proposals alarmed churchmen, specially as legislation for the church

proceeded from parliament, while convocation remained silenced.

Latitudinarian opinions revived, and the church was regarded merely as a

human institution. Among the clergy generally ritual observance was

neglected and rubrical directions disobeyed. A few churchmen, including

Keble and Newman, set themselves to revive church feeling, and Oxford

became the centre of a new movement. The publication of Keble's

_Christian Year_ prepared its way, and its aims were declared in his

assize sermon at Oxford on "National Apostasy" in 1833. Its promoters

urged their views in _Tracts for the Times_, and were strengthened by

the adhesion of Pusey. Hence they were nicknamed Tractarians or

Puseyites. Their cardinal doctrine was that the Church of England was a

part of the visible Holy Catholic Church and had unbroken connexion with

the primitive church; they inculcated high views of the sacraments, and

emphasized points of agreement with those branches of the Catholic

Church which claim apostolic succession. Their party grew in spite of

the opposition of low and broad churchmen, who, specially on the

publication of Tract XC. by Newman in 1841, declared that its teaching

was Romanizing. In 1845 Newman and several others seceded to Rome.

Newman's apostasy was a severe blow to the church, though permanent

injury was averted by the steadfastness of Pusey. The Oxford movement

was wrecked, but its effect survived both in the new high church party

and in the church at large. As a body the clergy rated more highly the

responsibilities and dignity of their profession, and became more

zealous in the performance of its duties and more ecclesiastically

minded. High churchmen carried out rubrical directions, and after a

while began to introduce changes into the performance of divine service

which had not been adopted by the early leaders of the party, were

deprecated by many bishops, and excited opposition.

The church and the law courts.

In 1833 the supreme jurisdiction of the Court of Delegates was

transferred to the judicial committee of the privy council. Before this

court came an appeal by a clerk named Gorham, whom the bishop of Exeter

refused to institute to a benefice because he denied unconditional

regeneration in baptism, and in 1850 the court decided in the

appellant's favour. The decision was followed by some secessions to

Rome, and high churchmen were dissatisfied that spiritual questions

should be decided by a secular court. The "papal aggression" of that

year, by which Pius IX. appeared to claim authority in England, roused

violent popular indignation which was used against the high church

party. However, it afforded an argument for the revival of convocation,

and, chiefly owing to the exertions of Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford,

convocation again met in 1852 (see CONVOCATION). Meanwhile broad church

opinions were gaining ground to some extent owing to a reaction from the

Oxford movement. Among the clergy the broad church party was

comparatively small, but it included some men of mark. In 1860 appeared

_Essays and Reviews_, a volume of essays by seven authors, of whom six

were in orders. The book as a whole had a rationalistic tendency and was

condemned by convocation: two of the essayists were suspended by the

Court of Arches, but its judgment was reversed by the judicial

committee. Crude attacks on the authority of the Scriptures and the

position of the English Church with respect to it having been published

by Colenso, bishop of Natal, he was deposed by his metropolitan, Bishop

Gray of Cape Town, in 1863, but the judicial committee decided that the

bishop of Cape Town had no coercive jurisdiction over Natal. Convocation

declared Colenso's books erroneous, abstaining in face of this judgment

from acknowledging as valid the excommunication which Bishop Gray

pronounced against him. It followed from the decision of the council

that the English Church in a self-governing colony is a voluntary

association. Opposition to the dogmatic principle in the church was

maintained. Some practices introduced by clergy desirous of bringing the

services of the church to a higher level came before the judicial

committee in the case of _Westerton_ v. _Liddell_ in 1857, with a result

encouraging to the ritualists, as they then began to be called. An

increase in ritual usages, such as eucharistic vestments, altar lights

and incense, followed. In 1859-1860 disgraceful riots took place at St

George's-in-the-East, London, where an advanced ritual was used. In 1860

the English Church Union was formed mainly to uphold high church

doctrine and ritual, and assist clergy prosecuted for either cause, and

in 1865 the Church Association, mainly to put down such doctrine and

ritual by prosecution. A royal commission appointed in 1867 recommended

that facilities should be granted for enabling parishioners aggrieved by

ritual to gain redress, and in 1870 that a revised lectionary and a

shortened form of service should be provided. A new lectionary was

approved by the two convocations and enacted, and convocation having

received letters of business in 1872 and 1874 drew up a shortened form

of prayer which was also enacted, but the commission had no further

direct results. Between 1867 and 1871 two decisions of the judicial

committee were adverse to the ritualists, and by exciting dislike to the

court among high churchmen indirectly led to an increase in ritual

usages. Among those who adopted them were many self-devoted men; their

practices, which they believed to be incumbent on them, were condemned

as illegal, yet they saw the rubrics daily disregarded with impunity by

others who trod the easy path of neglect. In 1873 a declaration against

sacramental confession received the assent of the bishops, and in 1874

Archbishop Tait of Canterbury introduced a bill for enforcing the law on

the ritualist clergy; it was transformed in committee, and was enacted

as the Public Worship Regulation Act. It provided for the appointment of

a new judge in place of the old ecclesiastical judges, the officials

principal, of the two provinces. Litigation increased, the only check on

prosecutions being the right of the bishop to veto proceedings, and in

1878-1881 four clergymen were imprisoned for disobedience to the orders

of courts against whose jurisdiction they protested. In consequence of

the scandal raised by this mode of dealing with spiritual causes, a

royal commission on ecclesiastical courts was appointed in 1881, but

its report in 1883 led to no results, and the bishops strove to mend

matters by exercising their veto. Advanced and illegal usages became

more frequent. Proceedings in respect of illegal ritual having been

instituted against Bishop King of Lincoln, the archbishop of Canterbury

(Benson) personally heard and decided the case in 1890, and his judgment

was upheld by the judicial committee (see LINCOLN JUDGMENT). The

spiritual character of the tribunal and the authority of the judgment

which sanctioned certain usages and condemned others, had a quieting

effect. Increase in ritualism, however, caused agitation in 1898, and in

1899 and 1900 the two archbishops, Temple of Canterbury and Maclagan of

York, delivered "opinions" condemning the use of incense and

processional lights, and the reservation of the consecrated elements.

Finding himself unable to put down illegal practices, Bishop Creighton

of London adopted a policy of compromise which was followed by other

bishops, and encouraged illegality. Disregard of law both in excess and

defect of ritual being common, a royal commission on ecclesiastical

discipline was appointed in 1904. The commissioners presented a

unanimous report in 1906, its chief recommendations being, briefly, that

practices significant of doctrines repugnant to those of the English

Church should be extirpated; that the convocations should prepare a new

ornaments rubric, and frame modifications in the conduct of divine

service; that the diocesan and provincial courts and the court of final

appeal should be reformed in accordance with the recommendations of

1883, the last to consist of a permanent body of lay judges who on all

doubtful questions touching the doctrine or use of the church should be

bound by the decision of an episcopal assembly; that the Public Worship

Regulation Act should be repealed, and the bishops' power of veto

abolished.

Present life.

Since the Oxford movement the church has developed wonderful energy. Yet

it is beset with difficulties and dangers both from within and without.

Within, besides difficulties as regards ritual, it has to contend

against rationalism, which has been stimulated by scientific discoveries

and speculations, and far more by Biblical criticism. While this

criticism has been used by many as a means to a fuller comprehension of

divine revelation, much of it is simply destructive, and has led to

ill-considered expressions of opinion adverse to the doctrine of the

church. From without, the church has been threatened with

disestablishment both wholly and as regards the dioceses within the

Welsh counties; and the education of the poor, which from early days

depended on its care, has largely been taken out of its hands (see

EDUCATION). The amount contributed by the church to elementary

education, including the maintenance of Sunday schools, in 1907-8 was

L576,012. During the last sixty years the church has strengthened its

hold on the loyalty of the nation by its increased efficiency. Its

bishops are laborious and active. Since 1876 the home episcopate has

been increased by the creation of the dioceses of Truro, St Albans,

Liverpool, Newcastle, Southwell, Wakefield, Bristol, Southwark and

Birmingham, so that there are now (1910) thirty-seven diocesan bishops,

aided by twenty-eight suffragan and eight assistant bishops, and a

further subdivision of dioceses is contemplated. At no other time

probably have the clergy been so industrious. As a rule they are far

better instructed in theology than forty years ago, but they have not

advanced in secular learning. Changes in the university system have

contributed to draw off able young men to other professions which offer

greater worldly advantages. The poverty of many of the clergy stands in

strong contrast to the wealth around them. Of 14,242 benefices 4704 are

said to be below L200 a year net value. The value of L100 tithe rent

charge has sunk (1909) to L69: 18 : 5-1/4, the average value since the

Commutation Act of 1836 being L94 : 3 : 2-3/4. The number of assistant

clergy is (1910) about 7500, in spite of the hardships often attending

clerical life, the supply of men being kept up. The Queen Victoria

Clergy Fund and other voluntary associations and various educational

institutions have been founded to relieve clerical distress. In the

church at home there is much energy in numberless directions: cathedral

churches have become centres of religious activity, and in parish

churches the administration of the Holy Communion and weekday services

are frequent. Many of the laity co-operate in church work and liberally

support it. During the years 1898-1907 598 churches were built or

rebuilt, and during twenty-four years, 1884-1907, the voluntary

offerings for church building were L27,612,709, and for endowments and

parsonages L6,116,592, yet church extension fails to keep pace with the

increase of the population. Evangelistic efforts, the relief of the sick

and poor, and the inculcation of temperance are zealously carried on.

Good work is done by twenty-six sisterhoods and several institutions of

deaconesses, and one or two communities of celibate clergy. In the

British colonies and India the episcopate consists (1909) of seven

archbishops with two coadjutors; there are also seventy diocesan

bishops, and in other parts of the world thirty missionary bishops. The

S.P.G. has 847 ordained ministers, including thirty chaplains in Europe,

besides many female missionaries; the C.M.S. has 793 ordained ministers,

and many other missionaries of both sexes; the Zenana Missionary Society

has a staff of 1288; other church societies for foreign missions are

vigorous, and the S.P.C.K. in addition to its work at home spends large

sums in furthering the church abroad. The benefits arising from

conference have increasingly been valued since the revival of

convocation. Appreciation of the importance of lay support and counsel

has led to the institution of two voluntary elective assemblies called

Houses of Laymen, one for each province, and in 1905 an association of

the four houses of convocation and the two lay assemblies was formed

with the name of the Representative Church Council. During the last

forty years diocesan conferences, in which the laity are represented,

have become universal, while ruridecanal and other meetings of a like

kind are general. An annual church congress, established in 1861, held

its forty-ninth meeting in 1909. Of wider importance are the Lambeth

conferences, held since 1878 at intervals of ten years, to which the

bishops of the English Church and the churches in communion with it are

invited, and meet under the presidency of the archbishop of Canterbury.

The first of these conferences, which illustrate the dignity of the see

founded by St Augustine and now the head of a vast quasi-patriarchate,

was held under the presidency of Archbishop Longley in 1867 (see LAMBETH

CONFERENCES and ANGLICAN COMMUNION).

AUTHORITIES.--General Histories, Narrative: J. Collier,

_Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain_ (to 1685), ed. T. Lathbury

(9 vols., London, 1852); T. Fuller, _Church History_ (to 1648), ed. J.

S. Brewer (Oxford, 1845), valuable near the author's own time; C.

Dodd, _Church History of England_ (to 1625, by a Roman Catholic), ed.

M. A. Tierney (5 vols., London, 1839-1843); Dean W. F. Hook, Lives of

the _Archbishops of Canterbury_ (to 1663) (12 vols., London,

1860-1879); G. G. Perry, _Students' English Church History_ (to 1884)

(London, 1887), a carefully written book; _A History of the English

Church_, ed. Stephens and Hunt, in 8 vols., noticed below under

various periods; H. O. Wakeman, _An Introduction to the History of the

Church of England_ (London, 1896), a brightly written manual by a

pronounced high churchman. Documents: D. Wilkins, _Concilia_

(446-1717) (4 vols. fol., London, 1737), a splendid work; A. W. Haddan

and Bishop W. Stubbs, _Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents_ (3

vols., Oxford, 1869-1873), supersedes Wilkins so far as it goes, but

deals with English Church only to 870, with Welsh, Scottish and

Cumbrian churches to later dates; H. Gee and W. J. Hardy, _Documents

of English Church History_ (to 1700) (London, 1896), useful for

students. Constitutional: Bishop W. Stubbs, _Constitutional History of

England_ (parts of) (3 vols., revised ed., Oxford, 1895-1897), a work

of great learning; F. Makower, _Constitutional History of the Church

of England_, from the German (London, 1895); F. W. Maitland, _Roman

Canon Law in the Church of England_ (London, 1898), authoritative.

(See under CONVOCATION.)

From 597: Bede, _Historia ecclesiastica_, ed. C. Plummer (2 vols.,

Oxford, 1896), the primary authority to 731, trans. by J. A. Giles

(Bohn's Library) and others; see also Eddi's contemporary "Vita

Wilfridi," in _Historians of York_, ed. James Raine, Rolls series (3

vols., 1879-1894); W. Bright, _Early English Church History_ (to 709)

(3rd ed., Oxford, 1897), a learned and beautiful book; articles in

_Dictionary of Christian Biography_ (to 9th century), ed. W. Smith and

H. Wace (4 vols., London, 1877-1887). Later Anglo-Saxon: In Chronicles

and biographies, as _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Two of the Saxon

Chronicles_, ed. C. Plummer (2 vols., 1892), trans. by B. Thorpe,

Rolls series (1861), and others; Asser, _Life of Alfred_, ed. W. H.

Stevenson (Oxford, 1904), trans. by Giles; _Memorials of Dunstan_,

ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls series (1874). Modern: J. Lingard, _History of

the Anglo-Saxon Church_ (2 vols., London, 2nd ed., printed 1858); W.

Hunt, _History of the English Church_, 597-1066, ed. Stephens and Hunt

(London, revised ed., 1901).

For later medieval times: (1) Chroniclers, &c., after 1066, as

Florence of Worcester, ed. B. Thorpe, Eng. Hist. Soc. (2 vols., 1878),

trans. by J. Stevenson in _Church Historians_ (London, 1853); Symeon

of Durham, ed. T. Arnold, Rolls series (2 vols., 1882); Eadmer (for

Archbishop Anselm), ed. M. Rule, Rolls series (1884); William of

Malmesbury, _Gesta regum_, &c. (to 1152), ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls series

(2 vols., 1887), and _Gesta pontificum_, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton,

Rolls series (1870); (John of Salisbury?) _Historia pontificalis_ (for

Archbishop Theobald, 1139-1161), ed. Pertz, _Rerum Germ. scriptt._

xx.; _Materials for the Life of Archbishop Becket_, ed. J. C.

Robertson, Rolls series (7 vols., 1875-1885); Giraldus Cambrensis

(12th century), _Gemma ecclesiastica and Speculum ecclesiae_, Works

ii. and iv., ed. J. S. Brewer, Rolls series (1862, 1873); Matthew

Paris, _Chronica majora_ (to 1259), ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls series (7

vols., 1880-1883), and many more. (2) Letters, as Archbishop Lanfranc,

_Epistolae_, ed. Giles (Oxford, 1844); Archbishop Anselm, _Epistolae_,

ed. Migne (Paris, 1863); Robert Grosseteste, _Epistolae_, ed. H. R.

Luard, Rolls series (1861), and others. (3) Bishops' Registers, as

_Registrum J. Peckham_ (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1279-1292), ed. C.

T. Martin, Rolls series (3 vols., 1882-1886); _Exeter Registers_, ed.

Hingeston-Randolph (5 vols., 1889); _Registers_ of Bishops Drokensford

and Ralph of Shrewsbury, ed. W. H. Dickinson and T. S. Holmes,

Somerset Record Soc. (3 vols., 1887, 1895-1896), and others. For

Wycliffe and early Lollards see WYCLIFFE. R. Pecock, _Repressor of

Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy_, ed. C. Babington, Rolls series (2

vols., 1860); and T. Gascoigne, _Loci e libro veritatum_, ed. J. T.

Rogers (Oxford, 1881), which gives ample notices of abuses, should be

consulted for 15th century. Modern books: W. R. W. Stephens, _The

English Church, 1066-1272_ (revised edition, 1904), and W. W. Capes,

_The English Church in the 14th and 15th Centuries_ (1900), both ed.

Stephens and Hunt (London); J. Raine, _Archbishops of York_ (ends at

1373) (London, 1863); F. A. Gasquet, _Henry III. and the Church_

(London, 1905). Biographical: Dean R. W. Church, _Anselm_ (London,

1870); M. Rule, _Life and Times of St Anselm_ (written from a Roman

Catholic standpoint) (2 vols., London, 1883); C. de Remusat, _Vie de

S. Anselme_ (Paris, 1868); G. G. Perry, _St Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln_

(London, 1879); F. S. Stevenson, _Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of

Lincoln_ (London, 1899), and others.

For the Reformation Period: Documentary: Notices in Letters and

Papers, Henry VIII., ed. J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, R. H. Brodie,

Record Publ. (19 vols., 1862-1905), and _Calendars of State Papers_

for Henry VIII., Edward VI., ed. R. Lemon (1856) and M. A. Green

(1870), for Mary, ed. Lemon (1856), Record Publ., and for Elizabeth,

Hatfield MSS., Hist. MSS. Comm.; _Acts of the Privy Council_, ed. J.

R. Dasent (1890), in progress; _Records of the Reformation_, ed. N.

Pocock (2 vols., Oxford, 1870); E. Cardwell, _Documentary Annals_

(Oxford, 1839); _Original Letters_, ed. H. Ellis (11 vols.,

1824-1846); _Zurich Letters_ (2 vols.), _Original Letters_ (2 vols.),

ed. Robinson (1842-1847); Latimer's _Sermons_ (1844), and _Archbishop

Parker's Correspondence_, ed. J. Bruce and T. T. Perowne, all Parker

Soc. Publ., Cambridge; see also _General Index to Parker Soc.'s Publ._

(1855); R. Pole (Cardinal), _Epistolae_, ed. Quirini (5 vols.,

Brescia, 1744-1757); G. W. Prothero, _Select Statutes_, &c.;

_Elizabeth and James I._ (3rd ed., Oxford, 1906). Supplementary:

Strype, _Ecclesiastical Memorials_ (6 vols., 1513-1556); _Annals_

(Elizabeth) (7 vols.); _Memorials of Cranmer_ (2 vols.); _Lives_ of

Parker (3 vols.), Grindal, Whitgift (3 vols.), all with a large

repertory of documents, also of Cheke, T. Smith and Aylmer (all

Oxford, 1820-1824); Burnet, _History of the Reformation_, ed. N.

Pocock (7 vols., Oxford, 1865), with many documents. Chronicles and

early Histories: W. Camden, _Annales_ (Elizabeth), ed. T. Hearne (3

vols., 1717); _Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary_, ed. J. G.

Nichols (Camden Soc., 1850); E. Hall, _Chronicle_ (Henry VIII.), ed.

C. Whibley (2 vols., London, 1904); N. Harpsfield, _Treatise on the

Pretended Divorce of Henry VIII._, ed. N. Pocock (Camden Soc., 1878);

J. Foxe, _Acts and Monuments_ (often called "The Book of Martyrs"),

ed. S. R. Cattley and G. Townsend (a book with many facts

industriously gathered, many documents and some errors) (8 vols.,

London, 1843-1849); H. Machyn, _Diary_ (1550-1563), and _Narratives of

the Reformation_, both ed. J. G. Nichols (Camden Soc., 1854, 1859); W.

Roper, _The Life of Sir Thomas More_, ed. S. Singer (1817), and other

editions, a beautiful book by More's son-in-law; N. Sander, _De

origins ac progressu schismatis Anglicani_, continued by E. Rishton

(Rome, 1586), translated by D. Lewis (London, 1877) (Sander was a

Roman Catholic priest who wrote in 1576; his language is violent but

the narrative generally trustworthy); _The Presbyterian Movement in

the Reign of Queen Elizabeth_, ed. R. G. Usher (R. Hist. Soc., 1905).

Modern histories: J. H. Blunt, _History of the English Reformation_

(London, 1878), a careful work, though of no great historical

importance; T. E. Bridgett, _Life of Blessed John Fisher_ (London,

1888); R. W. Dixon, _History of the Church of England from the

Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction_ (5 vols., London, 1878-1892), a

book showing great knowledge and insight; V. M. Doreau, _Henry VIII et

les martyres de la Chartreuse_ (Paris, 1890); H. Fisher, _History of

England 1485-1547_, presents a brilliant and trustworthy narrative of

ecclesiastical affairs during the reign of Henry VIII., and forms

vol. v. of the _Political History of England_, ed. W. Hunt and R. L.

Poole (London, 1906); P. Friedmann, _Anne Boleyn_ (London, 1884), an

important work; W. H. Frere, _History of the English Church,

1558-1625_, ed. W. R. W. Stephens and W. Hunt (1904), scholarly; J. A.

Froude, _History of England_ (1527-1588), a work of literary beauty,

research and historical grasp, from an anti-ecclesiastical standpoint,

with some blemishes, but of increasing value after the reign of Henry

VIII. (12 vols., London, 1856-1870, cheap editions, 1881-1882, 1893);

J. Gairdner, _History of the English Church_, Henry VIII. to Mary, ed.

Stephens and Hunt (London, 1902), by the highest authority on the

period; H. E. Jacobs, _The Lutheran Movement in England_

(Philadelphia, 1890), chiefly on progressive doctrinal change; A. F.

Pollard, _Henry VIII._ (London, with illustrations 1902, with

references 1905), an excellent general history of the reign, _England

under Protector Somerset_ (London, 1900), and _Life of Cranmer_

(London, 1904). For Rebellion Period: Contemporary and early: _State

Papers_, Domestic, 1625-1649, ed. J. Bruce, W. D. Hamilton, Mrs S. C.

Lomas (23 vols.), from 1649, ed. E. Green (13 vols.), and _Calendars

of Committees for Plundered Ministers_, &c., all Record Publ.;

_Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution_, ed. S. R.

Gardiner (Oxford, 1899); J. Evelyn, _Diary_, ed. A. Dobson (3 vols.,

London, 1906); also ed. W. Bray and ed. H. B. Wheatley; J. Hacket,

_Scrinia reserata_, Life of Archbishop Williams (London, 1715); P.

Heylyn, _Cyprianus Anglicanus_, Life of Archbishop Laud (Dublin,

1668); W. Laud, Works, ed. W. Scott and W. Bliss, Library of

Anglo-Catholic Theology (7 vols., Oxford, 1847-1860); J. Milton,

various _Prose Works_, ed. C. Symmons (7 vols., London, 1806);

_Puritan Visitations of Oxford_, ed. M. Burrows (Camden Soc., 1881).

Later: W. H. Hutton, _History of the English Church_, 1625-1714, ed.

Stephen and Hunt (London, 1903), and _William Laud_ (London, 1895); S.

R. Gardiner, _History of England_, under various titles, _1603-1657_

(London, 1863-1903), and cr. 8vo edition begun 1883, a work of vast

research and learning, contains fair and careful accounts of religious

matters; D. Masson, _Life of Milton_ (7 vols., London, 1859-1894); D.

Neal, _History of the Puritans_, ed. J. Toulmin (3 vols., 1837); W. A.

Shaw, _The English Church, 1640-1660_ (2 vols., London, 1900), and on

the Westminster Assembly, _Cambridge Modern History_, iv. c. 12

(Cambridge, 1906); J. Stoughton, _Ecclesiastical History of England_,

_Civil Wars_, &c. (4 vols., London, 1867-1870), by a dissenting

divine, a careful and unprejudiced history; J. Walker, _Sufferings of

the Clergy_ (London, 1714). For Restoration and Revolution Period: R.

Baxter, _Reliquiae Baxterianae_, ed. M. Sylvester (London, 1696); and

E. Calamy, _Abridgment of Life of Baxter_ (2 vols., 1713); R. Bentley,

_Life of Bishop Stillingfleet_, with _Works_ in 6 vols. (London,

1710); Bishop G. Burnet, _History of his Own Time_ (6 vols., Oxford,

1783); G. Doyly, _Life of Archbishop Sancroft_ (2 vols., London,

1821); W. Kennett (Bishop), _Compleat History_, vol. iii. (London,

1710); T. Lathbury, _History of the Nonjurors_ (London, 1843); T. B.

Macaulay, _History of England_ (5 vols., London, 1858-1861); _Magdalen

College and James II._, ed. J. R. Bloxam, Oxford Historical Society

(Oxford, 1886); R. Nelson, _Life of Bishop Bull_, ed. Burton (Oxford,

1827); J. H. Overton, _The Nonjurors_ (London, 1902), and _Life in the

English Church, 1660-1714_ (2 vols., London, 1885); E. H. Plumptre,

_Life of Bishop Ken_ (2 vols., London, 1888); I. Walton, _Lives_

(Bishop G. Morley and others) (London, 1898, and frequently). For 18th

century: C. J. Abbey, _The English Church and its Bishops, 1700-1800_

(2 vols., London, 1887); C. J. Abbey and J. H. Overton, _The English

Church in the 18th Century_ (London, revised ed., 1887), a pleasant

and useful book; R. Cecil, _Life of John Newton_ (London, 1827); A.

C. Fraser, _Life of Bishop Berkeley_, vol. iv. of _Works_ (Oxford,

1871); Lord Hervey, _Memoirs of the Reign of George II._, ed. J. W.

Croker (3 vols., London, 1884); A. H. Hore, _The Church of England

from William III. to Victoria_ (2 vols., Oxford, 1886); J. Hunt,

_Religious Thought in England_ (3 vols., London, 1873); _Huntingdon,

Selina, Countess of, Life and Times_ (2 vols., London, 1839-1840); J.

Keble, _Life of Bishop Wilson_ (Oxford, 1863): W. E. H. Lecky,

_History of England in the 18th Century_, vols. i.-iii. and v. (8

vols., London, 1879-1890); Bishop T. Newton, _Autobiography_, with

_Works_ (6 vols., London, 1787); J. H. Overton and F. Relton, _History

of the English Church, 1714-1800_, ed. Stephens and Hunt (London,

1906); W. Roberts, _Memoir of Hannah More_ (4 vols., London, 1834); W.

A. Spooner, _Bishop Butler_ (London, 1891); Sir J. Stephen, _Essays in

Ecclesiastical Biography_ (2 vols., London, 1853), for an account of

the Evangelicals early in the 19th century; Sir L. Stephen, _English

Thought in the 18th Century_ (2 vols., London, 1881), for theological

controversies; H. Thompson, _Life of Hannah More_ (London, 1838); R.

Watson, _Anecdotes of the Life of Bishop R. Watson_ (2 vols., London,

1818), presents a curious picture of a bishop's life 1782-1816; R. and

S. Wilberforce, _Memoir of W. Wilberforce_ (5 vols., London, 1838).

See under METHODISM; WESLEY (family); and WHITEFIELD, GEORGE.

For the Oxford Movement and onwards: A. W. Benn, _English Rationalism

in the 19th Century_ (2 vols., London, 1906); A. C. Benson, _Life of

Archbishop E. W. Benson_ (2 vols., London, 1899); J. W. Burgon, _Lives

of Twelve Good Men_ (2 vols., London, 1888); R. W. Church, _History of

the Oxford Movement_ (London, 1891); J. T. Coleridge, _Life of Keble_

(Oxford, 1869); R. T. Davidson and W. Benham, _Life of Archbishop A.

C. Tait_ (2 vols., London, 1892); H. P. Liddon and J. O. Johnston,

_Life of Pusey_ (4 vols., London, 1893-1895); T. Mozley,

_Reminiscences of Oriel and the Oxford Movement_ (2 vols., London,

1882); J. H. Newman, _Apologia pro Vita sua_ (London, 1864); R.

Prothero, _Correspondence of Dean A. P. Stanley_ (2 vols., London,

1893); R. G. Wilberforce and A. Ashwell, _Life of Bishop S.

Wilberforce_ (3 vols., London, 1879) _Report of the Royal Commission

on Ecclesiastical Courts_ (1883), and _Report of the Royal Commission

on Ecclesiastical Discipline_ (1906), both H.M. Stationery Office;

_Official Year Book of the Church of England_, S.P.C.K. (1906).

(W. HU.)