"HENRY R.
"Trusty and right well-beloved,--We grete you well ... and also by the
deliberate advice, consultation, consent, and agreement, _as well of
the_ Bishops _and Clergie_ as by the Nobles and Commons Temporal of
this our Realme _assembled in our High Courte of Parliament_, and by
authoritie of the same, the abuses of the Bishop of Rome, ... but also
the same our Nobles and _Commons_ bothe of _the Clergie_ and
Temporaltie, by another several acte," &c.--Weever's _Fun. Mon._, p.
83., quoted by Atterbury.
For multitudinous examples of the Convocation Clergy, "Prælati et clerus,"
being spoken of as not only of the parliament, but present _in_ it, I must
refer CANON. EBOR. to Atterbury's work, pp. 61, 62, 63.
And it is certain that, before the Commons can be proved to have been
summoned to parliament at all, the inferior clergy sat there. In the
parliament of Henry III. held at Westminster, 1228, there sat "the
Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Priors, Templars, Hospitallers, Earls,
Barons, {542} _Rectors of churches_, and they that held of the King in
chief" (_Mat. Paris_, p. 361.), in which the order of precedence is worth
observing.
One more argument of CANON. EBOR.'s has to be met. He says (Vol. iv., p.
197.), "The Convocation of the Clergy never met either the sovereign or the
parliament." The following quotations will destroy this position:--
"Though sometimes the King himself has vouchsafed to appear and sit in
Convocation, when it was called for some extraordinary cause; as in
Arundel's Register _Henry IV. is remembered to have done_ (in Conv.
habitâ 23 Jul. 1408, causâ Uniones)."--_Atterbury_, p. 20.
Also:
"'Until the reign of Henry VII., there is a doubt whether the
Convocation of the Clergy, then in separate existence from the
Parliament since Edward I., had transacted purely ecclesiastical
business not connected with the Government, or where the King was not
present in person. (Henry IV., _Wilkins_, p. 310.) In the reign of
Henry VIII., _who also sat in Convocation_, no Church Provincial Synod
was held, and the House of Lords met and adjourned on the days on which
Convocation transacted business in consideration to the bishops, who
were barons of Parliament, and also members of the Upper House of
Convocation. (_Wake._)'"--_Diocesan Synods_, by Rev. W. Pound, M.A.
3. _The Clergy were not, and are not, represented in parliament by the
Spiritual Lords._ The bishops are called to the House of Lords as barons;
just in the same manner as the abbots and priors were formerly summoned,
_not as representing any body of men_, but as holding _in capite_ of the
King. The prelates have sat in the House of Lords since William I., not as
peers or nobles by blood, nor as representatives, but by virtue of this
tenure. They certainly were not considered as _representatives_ before the
Reformation; and that the same opinions respecting them prevailed still
later, will appear from the decision of the House of Commons in 1 Mary,
that a clerk could not be chosen into that House, "because he was
_represented_ already in another House;" and again, from a speech in the
Commons by Mr. Solicitor St. John on the "Act to take away Bishops' Votes
in Parliament:"
"1. Because they have no such inherent right and liberty of being there
as the Lords Temporal and Peers of the Realm have; _for they are not
there representative of any body else; no, not of the clergy_; for if
so, then the clergy were twice represented by them, viz. the Lords'
House and in the Convocation; for their writ of election is to send two
clerks _ad consentiendum_, &c. Besides, none are there representative
of others, but those that have their suffrages from others; _and
therefore only the clerks in Convocation do represent them_.
* * * * *
"3. If they were representative of the clergy, as a third estate and
degree, no act of parliament could be good if they did wholly
disassent; and yet they have disassented, and the law good and in
force, as in the Act for establishing the Book of Common Prayer in
Queen Elizabeth's time. They did disassent from the confirming of that
law, which could not have been good if _they_ had been a third estate,
and disassented."--Rapin's _History of England_, book xx.