It may be recollected that I proposed three questions for consideration on the subject of Convocation:—what was its real nature and history relatively to the Church? what was the principle, and what the actual extent of the civil governor’s jurisdiction over it and assumption of its powers? and, thirdly, what was the place which the Lower House held in its constitution? The last of these three has now been discussed, as far as is necessary to illustrate the history of its suspension in the beginning of the eighteenth century. And for any other purpose, one may hope it ever will be unnecessary; for it was (to say the least) a heavy calamity that members of the Lower House should have felt it their duty, from the circumstances of the times, to stand upon their rights against the authority of their Bishops. Not to dwell on the unbecoming appearance of such an opposition, it must be borne in mind that the privilege actually conceded on all hands to the Lower House, the Veto on the proceedings of the Upper, is in itself almost too liberal a grant of power for the episcopal principle; and is only defensible (I suppose) on the ground of the size of the dioceses, and the Crown’s prerogative in the choice of Bishops. “Maximo enim,” says Wilkins, “præ aliis nationibus presbyteri synodi Anglicanæ fruuntur privilegio in concilio provinciali, ut dissensus eorum universa domûs superioris decreta irrita reddere valeat.” Having the Veto upon all proceedings of their superiors, surely the clergy should have been satisfied. But perhaps those of them who had released themselves from their pledge of canonical obedience to their deprived Bishops, might consider lightly of the obligation which subjected them to those who had come into their place; perhaps, also, there was reasonable ground of jealousy as regards such as William’s government had promoted. But, though much might have been said in their defence had they refused altogether to recognize the new prelates, one does not see the consistency of taking them for their rulers and then not submitting to them. But enough on this unpleasant subject. Now let us pass to the consideration of a second of the questions originally proposed—viz., the nature and history of Convocation relatively to the Church. And first a few words in statement of the controversy respecting it.
1.
Atterbury, Binckes, and their party, maintained, in the pamphlets mentioned in my first paper, that the Convocation was an essential part of the constitution, established by law, “by the same law as the gentleman receives his rent, or the member enjoys his privilege.” When required to produce the particular law which makes its assembling imperative on the sovereign, instead of its being (as the court party maintained) at his option, they allowed as much as this—viz., that his writ was absolutely necessary for its assembling, but they maintained, at the same time, that it was absolutely necessary that he should grant that writ, and that for two reasons: first, if the meeting of Convocation were a privilege or liberty of the English Church (which no one could deny), the King was by his coronation oath bound in two ways to issue his writ according to custom. For Magna Charta (they argued), to which the King had sworn, pronounced “quod Ecclesia Anglicana libera sit, et habeat omnia jura et libertates illæsas;” and again one especial part of the oath administered to him by the Archbishop, contained a promise on his part to “preserve to the Bishops and clergy of this realm, and to the churches committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain to them or any of them;” so that, since the assembly of the clergy in Convocation was, beyond dispute, a privilege recognized by the law, no particular law was necessary to bind the sovereign, who was bound in a more solemn manner by his express oath, which the law imposed.
Secondly, they maintained that their assembling was matter of constitutional right; for the Convocation, they said, was a member or a necessary adjunct of Parliament; so that, independently of law or promise, it could not constitutionally be abolished or suspended. They showed from history that from the earliest Saxon times the clergy had been summoned with the laity to the King’s great Council; that, as time went on, the mode of their assembling, from being indeterminate, became definite and regular; then again, from circumstances, was varied; and lastly became fixed in the particular form which had then for centuries been matter of usage; that, on the other hand, during this process and ultimate settlement, the ordinary annual Church Synods gradually came into disuse, so that the Convocation, as then constituted, was the representative both of an important political privilege, and a standing ecclesiastical ordinance of the Church; that at first they met in one body with the Laity, or Parliament (as it is now called), afterwards separated from it, and then again themselves divided into two provincial Synods; that this arrangement was for awhile interrupted by a new writ from the King (the præmunientes clause inserted into the Bishops’ writ), summoning them to Parliament, which was a fresh evidence of their constitutional right, but that the former custom was again restored and had so continued to that day, the above-mentioned clause being still retained in the Bishops’ writ, though not acted on, in token that their right remained where it was; that under all these changes, under whatever irregularities of time, place, and form of meeting, the great rule obtained that they met in connexion with Parliament, as belonging to it, (closer or more detached, as the case might be,) but still as constitutionally annexed to it; lastly, that since the Reformation the Convocation had invariably met with the Parliament and been dissolved with it, except in the solitary and extraordinary instance of 1640, when it sat after the Parliament was dissolved, and which no one would urge as a precedent, though after all, even as such, it only affected the question of the termination of Convocation, not of its assembling. They added, that anciently the same general appellation was given to both meetings, the Parliament being called a Wittena Gemote, the Convocation a Church Gemote, and that in various modern documents (besides the præmunientes clause above noticed) the Parliament was said to include the clergy, as in a mandate of Bonner’s, 1543, which has the words “prelati et clerus Prov. Cant. in parl.,” in a petition to the Pope in Henry the Eighth’s time, speaking of the “milites et doctores in parl.,” and in the phrase in the 5th of November Service, “the nobility, clergy, and commons of this land, then assembled in Parliament;” this being the reason why a clergyman could not be a member of the House of Commons. They proceeded to argue, that, if the Convocation was thus an adjunct to the Parliament, the King’s writ was but the formal instrument, necessary indeed (as a license of marriage may be), but not to be refused without leading to grave political consequences.