I LEFT off, in my first paper, with the meeting of the Convocation in the last year of William, the immediate subject of dispute between the two Houses being as to the power of the Lower to adjourn itself independently of the Upper. It may seem surprising, at first sight, that there should be room for dispute, where an appeal to usage might settle the matter at once. But the genius of the union of Church and State had been opposed to frequent meetings of the clergy, who had been called together for business only on especial occasions; and a good part of the records of Convocation had been lost in the fire of London. On the other hand, there had been so many alterations in the constitution of the country in the foregoing two hundred years, that it seemed hardly safe or fair to rest upon precedents of a very remote date. And there was certainly a close analogy between the actual origin and formation of the Parliament, and the assumed history and state of the Convocation on Atterbury’s theory, which seemed to render recent precedents scarcely necessary. In truth, the ecclesiastical system which the Reformation undertook was never completed; and, much as Laud did for the Church, there was no call upon him in his day, with such a king as Charles, to place its synods on an intelligible and consistent footing.
However, there was, after all, sufficient information to be had as regarded the general relation of the Lower House to the Upper, which nothing but the impetuosity of faction could obscure; especially a memorandum of Archbishop Parker’s, which seems entirely to bear out the bishops in their resistance to what were dangerous innovations on the part of the inferior clergy. Indeed, that, on the whole, the Upper House was in the right, and the Lower in the wrong, is sufficiently clear to my mind, first, from Bull and others, who were members of the Lower House, taking the side of the bishops; next, from the indecency of the Lower House deciding by themselves in favour of their pretended rights, and, acting on their own decision, considering that the existing usage was on the side of the bishops.
1.
The Convocation took its rise in the course of the fourteenth century, between three and four hundred years before the controversy which I am employed in relating, under circumstances which shall be mentioned at another time. At present, I will but describe its internal structure, by way of throwing light upon the question of “Adjournments,” which was immediately in dispute. Originally, it consisted, as the Parliament itself, only of one House, the inferior clergy being rather assistants to the bishops than possessed of co-ordinate authority, and being allowed a place in it principally on account of those money-questions which interested lower as well as superior ecclesiastics. It was called by the Archbishop’s mandate, directed to the Bishop of London as Dean of the Province; to the Archbishop the returns of members were made, and before him, as President of Convocation, the members appeared on the day fixed for assembling. The members thus convened representing different interests, it was natural that, from time to time, they should, for dispatch of business, be divided into several committees, that the whole meeting might be enabled the better to ascertain and to forward the views of each section of their constituents. Hence, it is said, there were sometimes as many as four separate assemblies transacting business in the Convocation; the Bishops, the regulars, the deans and chapters, and the parochial clergy. In process of time, however, these settled into the two main divisions of the bishops and the inferior clergy, at present called, as in Parker’s “Descriptio,” the two Houses of Convocation. Thus, the Lower House, in its origin, had no independent existence, being a mere appendage to the Upper, separated off from it for convenience, sent out from it to debate on this or that question specially submitted to it, and recalled at the President’s pleasure to report the opinions and advice of its members. Accordingly, at first it had no separate place of meeting, but merely retired to a distant part of the room where the Bishops assembled. Though, however, originally merely a committee of the Convocation, in process of time it gained powers by the force of custom, which, in consequence, it was very difficult to distinguish from legal rights. Usage is a sufficient sanction, whether in civil or ecclesiastical matters, where antecedent principles, moral or religious, do not stand in the way. In the quarrel before us, there was the twofold controversy—first, what the usage was? next, whether, granting it to emancipate the Lower House as fully as the clergy of the day maintained, such usage was not counter to the principles of the episcopal regimen, and therefore invalid as an authority? It had long been the custom for the inferior clergy to hold their meetings in a separate room, though in the same place with the Bishops. They had long received and reported business through one of their number, called the Prolocutor, Referendary, or, “organum vocis Domus Inferioris,” who also presided at their debates. Such was the received usage; but, owing to the infrequency of the meetings of Convocation, and to the absence of a jealous accuracy in the proceedings of an assembly of men who were in the mutual relation of fathers and sons in the ministerial office, it was scarcely possible to decide exactly the limit of the power possessed by the Lower House, especially considering there was the parallel and complete history of the two Houses of Parliament, (which also originally formed but one House,) to supply and comment upon the deficient precedents of the Convocation. Accordingly, to this parallel the champions of the Lower House had recourse, in order to establish their independence; while the Bishops appealed first to the original state of the Convocation, next to the principles of episcopacy and the precedents of primitive Synods.