"For the persons offended, they were these:--the King ... the Queen ...
the noble Prince; ... then the whole royal issue. The Council, _the
Nobility_, _the Clergy_; nay, our whole religion itself," &c.
And if CANON. EBOR. wishes for a more decisive authority on the matter, he
will find it in _An Act for granting Royal Aid unto the King's Majesty_,
passed in 1664.
2. _The Convocations of the Clergy_ ARE _a part of the Parliament._ This
fact, and its importance, has been generally overlooked or disregarded by
writers on Convocation. They have almost uniformly, while endeavouring to
substantiate its synodical authority and purely ecclesiastical influence,
omitted to point out its position as a part of our parliamentary
constitution: the result has been a degree of vagueness and uncertainty on
the subject.
The clearest and most distinct way of demonstrating this proposition, that
the Convocation is a part of Parliament, will be, after noting that in our
early historians _Convocatio_ and _Parliamentum_ are synonymous, first, to
bring forward evidences that it was often regarded as being so somewhat
late in our history, that is, just before its sessions were suppressed;
and, in the next place, to produce facts, documents, and extracts which
display this parliamentary character in the earlier stages of its
existence. To begin, then, with Burnet, whose statements must be taken with
allowance, as those of a hot anti-convocational partisan, as he had indeed
good reasons for being:--
"When the Bill (Act of Comprehension) was sent down to the House of
Commons, it was let lie on the table; and, instead of proceeding in it,
they made an address to the King for summoning a Convocation of the
Clergy, _to attend, according to custom, on the session of Parliament_.
The party against the Government ... were much offended with the Bill
of Comprehension, as containing matters relating to the Church, _in
which the representative body of the clergy had not been so much as
advised with_."--Burnet's _History of his own Times_, book v.
In his account of the Convocation of 1701, the facts which he details are
important. After saying that "the clergy fancied they had _a right to be a
part of the Parliament_," he continues:--
"The things the Convocation pretended to were, first, that they had a
right to sit whenever the Parliament sate; so that they could not be
prorogued, but when the two Houses were prorogued. Next they advanced
that they had no need of a licence to enter upon debates and to prepare
matters, though it was confessed that the practice for a hundred years
was against them; but they thought the Convocation lay under no further
restraint than that the Parliament was under; and as they could pass no
Act without the Royal assent, so they confessed that they could not
enact or publish a Canon without the King's licence. _Antiently the
Clergy granted their own subsidies apart_, but, ever since the
Reformation, the grant of the Convocation was not thought good till it
was ratified in Parliament.... _In the writ that the bishops had,
summoning them to Parliament, the clause, known by the first word of
it,_ 'Præmunientes,' _was still continued. At first, by virtue of it,
the inferior clergy were required to come to Parliament, and to consent
to the aids there given_: but after the archbishops had the provincial
writ for a Convocation of the province, the other was no more executed,
_though it was still kept in the writ_, and there did not appear the
least shadow of any use that had been made of it, for some hundreds of
years; _yet now some bishops were prevailed on to execute this writ,
and to summon the clergy by virtue of it_."--Book vi.
With this last extract from Burnet, let the following from Lathbury be
compared:--
"This clause, it appears, was inserted in the bishops' writ in the
twenty-third year of Edward I. When assembled by this writ, the Clergy
constituted a State Convocation, not the Provincial Synod. When the
clause was inserted, there was a danger of invasion from France; and it
is clear that the Clergy were not assembled by this clause as an
Ecclesiastical Council, but to assist the King in his necessities. This
is evident from the words '_hujus modi periculis et excogitatis
malitiis obviandum_.' The clause was, however, continued in the writ
after the cause for its insertion had ceased to exist: _but whenever
they were summoned by virtue of this writ, they constituted a part of
the {541} Parliament_. The clause, with a slight variation, _is still
retained_ in the writ by which the bishops are summoned to
Parliament."--Lathbury's _History of the Convocation of the Church of
England_, p. 121.
It will be obvious, then, and plain to the reader of the above passage,
that when the clergy were summoned by this clause _Præmunientes_, in the
writ directed to the archbishops, they were summoned _to be a part of
Parliament_; but the King's writ was that which made Convocation what it
was--which made it a legal, constitutional, parliamentary assembly, with
definite power and authority--instead of a simple synodical meeting of the
clergy, whose influence would be solely moral or ecclesiastical.
Convocation, from the time of Edward I., that is, from its first beginning,
has been a part of parliament, being "an assembly of ecclesiastics for
civil purposes, called to parliament by the King's writ" to the
archbishops; and before the time of Henry VIII. it voted subsidies to the
King independently of the Houses of Lords and Commons. Of this clause
_Præmunientes_, CANON. EBOR. has taken no notice whatever, although in the
extract from Collier it was expressly stated that the proctors of the
clergy were "summoned to parliament" and "sent up to parliament" by it,
and, when assembled in the Lower House of Convocation, they were esteemed
_the Spiritual Commons_ of the realm, and a constituent part of "the great
Council of the nation assembled in parliament." But as mere assertions, or
even uncorroborated deductions, are but of little value without facts, I
must establish this much by producing authorities.
The design of Edward I. for reducing the clergy to be a part of the Third
Estate, by means of this præmunitory clause, is sufficiently known, as is
also the fact that the clergy were unwilling to give up their own synods;
and though, in obedience to the King's summons, they came to parliament
from both provinces, yet shortly after they met by themselves, and
constituted a body which was at once synodical and parliamentary.
"Now, then, though the _Præmunientes_ was obeyed nationally, yet the
clergy that met with the Parliament acted provincially, _i. e._ the
clergy of that province where the Parliament was held acted as a Synod
convened by their metropolitan, and the clergy of the other province
sent their deputies to the Lay Assembly to consult for them; but taxed
themselves, and did all manner of ecclesiastical business, at home in
their own province. _And this was pitched upon as a means of complying
with the Canons of the Church, which required frequent Provincial
Councils, and yet paying their attendance in Parliament; the
Archbishop's mandate summoned them to the one, and the præmunitory
clause to the other_, and both were obeyed."--_Atterbury on
Convocation_, p. 243.
The same view is taken by Kennet in his _Ecclesiastical Synods and
Parliamentary Convocations in the Church of England_.
Here, then, is the origin of Convocation, strictly so called, viz. the
Clergy withdrawing themselves from the Commons into a separate chamber for
purposes of debate, and for transacting their own business independently,
but yet not ceasing thereby at all to be a part of that parliament, to
their being summoned to which they owed the opportunity of meeting in their
provincial synod, which was _Congregatio tempore Parliamenti_.
We hear of the clerical proctors being occasionally present in the House of
Commons in the earlier part of our history; and we may reasonably infer
that they would not have been so present unless they had _a right_ to have
been there. If they had that right, then they were a part of parliament.
They certainly had that right by the clause _Præmunientes_ so often
referred to, "according to antient usage;" but they waived the exercise of
it, on finding it more advantageous to deliberate by themselves. At a later
period they wished to resume their right, and therefore petitioned "to be
admitted to sit in parliament WITH _the House of Commons_, according to
antient usage," of which Commons they had of usage considered themselves
the _spiritual_ part. An instance in point we shall find in a petition of
Parliament to Henry IV.:--
"Supplient humblement _les Communes_ de vostre Roialme, sibien
_Espirituelz_ come _Temporelz_."--_Rot. Parl._ 7 & 8 Henry IV. n. 128.