No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Establishment of the Church of England: Its Constitutional and Legal Significance1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Abstract
Among American churchmen and statesmen, there has been a tendency to regard the Establishment of the Anglican Church entirely in the light of a privilege conferred by the State on one church to the exclusion of others. Where the idea of the Establishment has been derived from the sight of the immunities and official endowment enjoyed by the church of the colonial governor, this point of view is natural. It determined the early statesmen of the young republic to dispense with a luxury which appeared to them to be pregnant with oppression and arrogance. Externally there is little to criticize in the view for it represents fairly accurately the relative position of the Anglican Church both in colonial and English history in the eyes of non-Anglican communions. Internally, however, the case is not as simple, as the Free Churchman, whether within or without the Anglican fold, has been ready to detect, and Cartwright here is in complete accord with Newman. The conflict was brought to an issue when the House of Commons rejected the proposals for the revision of the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 in two consecutive years, 1927 and 1928.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1941
References
2 Cf. The Act of 06 2, 1692 (Maryland) ap. Mode, P. G., Source Bool and Bibliographical Guide for American Church History (Menasha, Wisconsin, 1921), 38f.Google Scholar: the opposition to the appointment of an Episcopate turned, to some extent, on the same point, v. Bishop Sherlock's report, Ibid., 251–255, particularly 253f.; for Jefferson's opposition to the Establishment, v. Mott, R. J. “Sources of Jefferson's Ecclesiastical Views,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, III (1934), 267–284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Church and State, Report of the Archbishops' Commission on the Relations between Church and State, (Church Assembly 523) (Westminster, 1935), 1Google Scholar; hereinafter cited as Church and State, 1935.
4 (London, S. P. C. K., 1935); cited hereafter as Church and Marriage, 1935.
5 Cf. The Bishop of Norwich (Pollock, B.), Church and State (London, 1936), 1ff. 59ff.Google Scholar
6 1 Edw. 8. 1 Geo. 6. Ch. 57.
7 “Hitherto you have been upheld by your birth, your education, your wealth, your connexions; should these secular advantages cease, on what must Christ's Ministers depend? Is not this a serious practical question? We know how miserable is the state of religious bodies not supported by the State. Look at the Dissenters on all sides of you, and you will see at once that their Ministers, depending simply upon the people, become the creatures of the people. Are you content that this should be your ease?” Newman, J. H., Tracts for the Times, I.Google Scholar
8 Stubbs, W., Select Charters (9th ed.) 40.Google Scholar The reference is to Justinian Cod. V, Tit. 59, 5 c. 3. Its use by Edward I may have been suggested by a decretal of Innocent III, in which it is cited; and in England during the thirteenth century, its associations are almost invariably ecclesiastical. (Clarke, M. V., Mediaeval Representation and Consent [London, 1936], 264ff.Google Scholar, for full references and discussion.)
9 Makower, F., The Constitutional History of the Church of England (London, 1895), 33ff.Google Scholar, noticed this parallel and develops his argument along these lines.
10 v. The Times (London, 11 19–20, 1937)Google Scholar; and The Chicago Daily Tribune (11 19, 1937); and Professor (now Bishop) N. P. Williams' warning to extremists.
11 SirBlackstone, William, Commentaries on the Laws of England, III. 101 f.Google Scholar; the parties would be entitled, legally, to refuse to submit to the Ordinary's citation (v. Hardwicke's judgment, infra,). Access to Communion is protected by law. (Jenkins v. Cook, 45 L. J. P. C. 1; L. R. 1, P. D. 80) Dale, v. J. M., The Clergyman's Legal Handbook, 7th. ed. by Risley, J. S. (London, 1898), 203Google Scholar; Blunt, J. H., The Book of Church Law, ed. SirPhillimore, W. G. F. Bt. and Jones, G. E. (London, 1901), 103–104.Google Scholar
12 Tanner, J. R., Constitutional Doouments of the Tudor Period (Cambridge), 12Google Scholar, note. The English Reformation began “not with the enunciation of some new truth but with an attack on clerical fees.” lb. 13. “The policy of the Tudors which struck at the liberties of overmighty subjects was now directed against the immunities of an overmighty corporation.” Ibid., 14. Cf. Pollard, A. F., Henry VIII (London, 1931), 249–271, 282–288.Google Scholar For a discussion of the fidelis legislator Robertson, v. A., Regmum Dei (London, 1901), 313–323.Google Scholar
13 For a full statement of the legal and constitutional controversy raised by James I's alliance with Bancroft v. Usher, R. G., The Reconstruction of the English Church (New York, 1910), I, 334–402Google Scholar; II, 74–153, 206–245. Cf. Blunt, J. H.,The Reformation of the Church of England (New York, 1882), II, 368–373, 598–603Google Scholar; and Hardwicke's judgment infra. For a convenient edition of the Canons, in both Latin and English, with introduction and notes, v. Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical, with notes by Bullard, J. V. (London and Milwaukee, 1934).Google Scholar
14 For the Respublica Christiana and the organic unity of Church and State see Gierke, O., Political Theories of the Middle Ages, tr. Maitland, F. W., (Cambridge, 1913), viii–xii, xxx–xlv, 9–21, 30–37Google Scholar, etc.; Figgis, J. N., Churches in the Modern State, (London, 1913)Google Scholar, Appendix I: Respublica Christiana.
15 Chadwick, H. M., The Cult of Othin, (Cambridge, 1899), 3–6, 26f.Google Scholaret passim; The Origin of the English Nation, (Cambridge, 1907), c. XIGoogle Scholar; The Heroic Age, (Cambridge, 1912), 337ff., 366–378Google Scholar, particularly, “We may note further that in the North there is no evidence of a specifically priestly class; temporal and spiritual power were apparently united in the same person. Among the Angli on the other hand there was such a class, though, in contrast with the Burgundians, the high-priest seems to have been subordinate to the king.” (367). Reference may also be made to an article by Grierson, P., “Election and Inheritance in Early Germanic Kingship,” Cambridge Historical Journal, VII (1941), pp. 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 Bright, W., Chapters in Early English Church History, 3rd ed., (Oxford, 1897), 145.Google Scholar
17 Kurth, G., Clovis, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1901), 318–321.Google ScholarBury, J. B., The Invasion of Enrope by the Barbarians, (London, 1928), 231–235, 239–247.Google Scholar I heard Bury give this reason for the conduct of Clovis in 1912. No reference of it however, appears in the manuscript from which Professor Hearnshaw printed this edition. There is nothing strange in this as Bury changed the course from year to year in order to include the more recent discussions of points.
18 Brooke, Z. N., The English Church and the Papacy (Cambridge, 1931), 215–217.Google Scholar
19 Cambridge Medieval History, V, 516. I am indebted to Professor J. T. McNeil for calling my attention to the excellent paper by Liehtenstein, W., “The Date of Separation of Ecclesiastical and Lay Jurisdiction in England,” Illinois Law Revisw, III, (1908-1909), 347–353Google Scholar, in which he shows, I think conclusively, “that there is considerable doubt whether the two jurisdictions were separate before Stephen, but at the end of his reign the courts Christian tried criminous clerks, and settled all civil cases in which the church was party. By the reign of Henry II, the two courts are sharply separated; their laws are different, and now that the secular law is wielded by the strong hand of the great king, both jurisdictions are prepared to struggle for every inch of ground.”
20 For the analysis of the system of Pseudo-Isidore, Fournier, P., “Étude sur les Pausses Décrétales,” Rev. d'Hist. Eccl., VIII (1906), 38–51.Google Scholar
21 On the influence of Anastasius on Nicholas I: v. Perels, E., Papst Nikolaus I und Anastasius Bibtiothecarius (Berlin, 1920), 271ff.Google Scholar; on Hincmar, Ibid., 283ff.
25 Brooke, Z. N., The English Church, 211–229.Google Scholar
26 Ibid., cap. I, for a discussion of the significance of the term Ecclesia Anglicana; cf. Maitland, , Canon Law and the Church of England, 113–4Google Scholar, for the constitutional and legal position; for instances of the use of the form in the thirteenth century v. Lunt, W. E., Papal Revenues in the Middle Ages (New York, 1934), I, 332Google Scholar; II, 178, 394; McKechnie, W. S., Magna Carta (2nd. ed., 1914), 38ff., 191–195, 211.Google Scholar
27 Gibbs, M. and Lang, J., Bishops and Reform, 1215–1272 (Oxford, 1934)Google Scholar, give a useful account of this period. Miss Lang's summary (174–179), which is sympathetic to Innocent III, suggests an echo of Bishop Stubbs (177), disguised under the waywardness of individual bishops.
28 Makower, The Constitutional History, 30–40; Stubbs, W., Constitutional History, II, 116–118, 130–136, 141–145Google Scholar; Maitland, , Canon Law and the Church of England (for Peckham) 20–37, 117–122Google Scholar; Cambridge Medieval History, VII, 397–400, 408. On the question of the conflict of Laws on bastardy which continued throughout this period, v. Makower, , The Constitutional History, 229, n. 10, 400–423Google Scholar, Maitland, op. cit. pp. 52–56.
29 Stubbs, , Select Charters, 450–2, 495–6Google Scholar; also for the Writ Circumspecte Agatis, 469f.; id., Constitntional History, II, 158–160; on the ultimate fate of Archbishop Winchelsea, 161; the Statute of Carlisle, 163; Cambridge Medieval History, VII, 410.Google Scholar
30 Barraclough, G., Papal Provisions (Oxford, 1935), 51–59.Google Scholar In this essay the author presents all that can be said in favour of the system but he does not take sufficient account of English opposition which led to the legislation against Provisors. His plea (124) might be met by Usus non tout abusum. Makower, , The Constitutional History, 41ff., 207Google Scholar, n. 31.
31 Cambridge Medieval History, VI, 483, 490–491Google Scholar; Gwatkin, H. M., Church and State in England to the Death of Queen Anne (London, 1917), 114–115.Google Scholar
32 Maitland, , Canon Law in the Church of England, 113–114.Google Scholar
33 Creighton, M., A History of the Papacy, V, 218.Google Scholar
34 Pickthorn, K. W. M., Early Tudor Government, II, 111.Google Scholar
35 Ibid., II, 116–117.
36 Pollard, A. F., Henry VIII, 172.Google Scholar The threat of a French Patriarchate at Rheims appears to have been a constant source of apprehension to Rome. Professor Previté Orton once suggested that it was this fear which accounted for Nicholas I's hostility to Hincmar.
37 Tanner, J. R., Constitutional Documents, 13.Google Scholar
38 Ibid., 14.
39 Gee, H. and Hardy, W. J., Documents illustrative of English Church History (London, 1910), 145–153Google Scholar; for the historical commentary and setting of the following documents v. Tanner, J. H., Constitutional Documents, 13–22Google Scholar; Makower, F., The Constitutional History, 48–58.Google Scholar
40 The term Praemunire is so frequently used merely as a species of clerical bogey that it may be well to point out its real significance. The Acts of Praemunire “fortified” the King “ahead of time” against excommunication by the Pope by placing at his mercy (in misericordia sua) anyone who exercised, without the royal permission, the functions of the Pope, or the Pope's agent, within the Kingdom. In other words, anyone offending under the act was ipso actu already an outlaw, and therefore an excommunicated person. The obsequious conduct of the Clergy was due to the knowledge of the vulnerability of their position.
41 Gee and Hardy, Documents, 154–176.
42 Tanner, J. R., Documents, 21–22.Google Scholar
43 Church and State, 1935, 18.
44 Tanner, J. R., Documents, 22.Google Scholar
45 Gee, and Hardy, , Documents, 176–178, 187–195Google Scholar, combined in 195–200; Tanner, J. R., Documents, 20–25, 40–46.Google Scholar Cf. Maitland's remark, “The Statutory Reformation of the English Church began with an act that was aimed not at Rome but at Canterbury.” (Canon Law in the Church of England, 120, 87ff.)
46 Tanner, J. R., Documents, 40, 359f.Google Scholar; Reichel, O. J., The Elements of Canon Law (London 1897), 287.Google Scholar
47 Gee, and Hardy, , Documents, 200Google Scholar, cf. 177f., 196–8.
48 Maitland, F. W., Canon Law and the Church of England, 92–95.Google Scholar
49 Cardwell, E., The Reformation of the Ecelestiastical Laws, (Oxford, 1850), vii–ix, xi–xii.Google Scholar “Hence the seventh clause of the ‘Act of Submission’ continues in its former force the whole of the Canon Law which is ‘not repugnant to the laws, statutes and customs of the realm nor to the damage and hurt’ of the royal prerogative.” J. H. Blunt, The Book of Church Law, revised by Sir W. G. Phillimore, Bart. and G. Edward Jones (1901), 23f. but cf. Coke on Cawdrey's Case (Tanner, J. R., Documents, 362, 372f.)Google Scholar, and Amos, A., Observations on the Statutes of the Reformation Parliament (London and Cambridge, 1859), 268–270.Google Scholar
50 Sir Robert Phillimore in Martin v. Mackonochie, L. R. 2. A and E 116 at p. 153 qu. in Dale, J. M., “The Clergyman's Legal Handbook, 7th ed., rev, by Risley, J. S. (London, 1898), 2.Google Scholar; but see Maitland, F. W., Canon Law, 40–50Google Scholar on Lyndwood.
51 Mackonochie v. Lord Penrance (1881), 6 App. Cos., 446.
52 Cf. SirHales, Matthew, The History of the Common Law (1713), 27.Google Scholar
53 Infra, pp. 340f.
54 Church and State, 1935, 6, 10, 12–13, 26–29, 36, 41f., 57–60 etc.
55 Philip Yorke, 1st. Lord Hardwicke, (Lord Chancellor, 1737–1756). For particulars of his life Dictionary of Nationai Biography, lxiii, 346–353 (J. M. Rigg); Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed.), (B. J. MacNeill). Harris, G., Life of Lord Hardwicke, I, 292Google Scholar; II, 484ff., records his hostility to clandestine marriages, against which he was the author of the Act (26 Geo. II, c. 33) which bears his name.
56 John Middleton and his wife, v. Thomas Crofts, 1736, Str. 1056, 2 Atk. 650; confirmed, , Bishop of Exeter v. Marshall, 1866–1867–1868Google Scholar, L. R. 3 H. L. 17; followed R. v. Allen, 1872, L. R. 8 Q. B. 75; distinguished Jenkins v. Cook, 1875, L. R. 4 Ad. & Ecc. 489; see Mackonochie v. Lord Penrance 1881, 6 App. Cas. 445; followed R. v. Archbishop of York, 20 Q. B. D. 747. For the general setting of the controversy in 1603ff. v. supra n. 13.
57 On the process and writs of prohibition, v. Makower, , The Constitutional History, 238Google Scholar, nn. 7–8, 242, n. 4, 244 n. 10, 435, n. 153; SirPollock, Frederick and Maitland, F. W., The History of English Law 2nd ed., (Cambridge, 1911), I, 251, 479Google Scholar; II, 199–202, 596, 665; Holdsworth, W. W., History of English Law, (3rd ed., (1922), 553–559, 610–611Google Scholar; Adams, , “The Writ of Prohibition to Courts Christian ” (1936) 20. Minnesota Law Rev., 272.Google Scholar Writs of Prohibition have been abolished under the Administration of Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1938, 1 “the Court may make an order”… to “be called … an order of prohibition.” By sub-section (14) “No return shall be made to any such order and pleadings in prohibition shall be allowed, but the order shall be final, subject to any right to appeal therefrom.” I am indebted for the lust two references to the kindness of Professor E. N. Griswold of Harvard University; and to Dr. E. C. Wade for calling my attention to the change in the writ system contemplated under the statute.
58 4 Inst. 322.
59 For penalties of Excommunication, v. Blacketone, , Commentaries, III, 101f.Google Scholar
60 The reference is to the tests of legitimacy, v. supra, n. 28.
61 25 H. 8. c. 19, continued in 27 H. 8. c. 15, 35 H. 8. c. 16, 3 & 4 E. 6. e. 11.
62 Compare the statement up to this point with Jefferson's views, R. J. Mott, “Jefferson's Ecclesiastical Views,” n. 44.
63 A Consultation, is “a writ in the nature of a procedendo, whereby a cause, having been removed by prohibition from the Ecclesiastical Court to the King's Court, is returned thither again; for if the judges of the King's Court, upon comparing the Libel with the suggestion of the party, find the suggestion false or not proved, and therefore the cause to be wrongfully removed from the Ecclesiastical Court, then upon this consultation or deliberation they decree it to be returned, whereupon the writ in this ease obtained is called a consultation.” Wharton's Law Lexicon (14th ed. 1938), 243.
64 Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity Book, VIII, with an introduction by B. A. Honk (New York, 1931), 68–70, 73–76, 80, 153–167Google Scholar; Calvin's view of the relations of Church and State, v. Mackinnon, J., Calvin and the Reformation (London, 1936), 251–261, 265–270.Google Scholar The reference to Calvin's debt to Civil Law recalls a remark made by Figgis: “What I have tried to show is that this error is not of modern origin, that it did not come into our world at the Renaissance, though it may have been accentuated then, but that it is part of the damnosa hereditas from the Civil Law of the Roman Empire, of whieh Stubbs once said that, whenever it had been dominant, it destroyed any real idea of civil and religious freedom.” Churches in the Modern State, 226.
65 Houk, , Hooker's Polity, 63Google Scholar; cf. 235–6.
66 Tanner, J. R., Documents, 373.Google Scholar
67 Cardwell, E., The Reformation, xiiGoogle Scholar; Mactear, G. F. and Williams, W. W., An Introduction to the Articles of the Church of England (London, 1909) 21–22.Google Scholar
68 Hooker, VIII, (Ed. Houk), 187–206.
69 Ibid., cf. 158, 176, 177.
70 Allen, J. W., A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1928), 182.Google Scholar
71 Cf. Adair, E. R., “Laud and the Church of England,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture V (1936), 129, 131f.Google Scholar
72 14 C. 2. cap. 4. (Gee and LHardy, , Documents, 601–2).Google Scholar
73 Sykes, Norman, Edmund Gibson (London), 144–173.Google Scholar
74 v. Church and State, 1935, 13, 15–17, for a modern statement of the “Act of Toleration” in terms of disadvantage to the Church. Gwatkin points out the attempts of the Tories to take the virtue out of the Act (Church and State to the Death of Queen Anne, 378f., 385f., 390; Cambridge Modern History, V, 336f.Google Scholar). Henson, H. Hensley, Anglicanism (London, 1921), 97.Google Scholar Even Catholic Emancipation was a stumbling block; Stewart, H. L., A Century of Anglo- Catholicism (New York, 1929), 83.Google Scholar The best criticism yet written on the Report is by ProfessorSykes, Norman: “The fundamental weakness of the Report lies precisely in the lack of any evidence of appreciation of the responsihility and duty of the Church of England towards the Nation.” The Church and the Twentieth Century (London, 1936), 45.Google Scholar
75 Sykes, Norman, The Church of England in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1933), 310ff.Google Scholar
76 Maitland, F. W., Canon Law in the Church of England, 81–83, 97Google Scholar; Sykes, N., Edmund Gibson, 68–71.Google Scholar
77 v. Brilioth, Y., The Anglican Revival (London, 1933), 96–97.Google Scholar
78 v. supra n. 46.
79 Henson, H. Hensley, Anglicanism, 228–230.Google Scholar For a fuller account of succeeding events v. Buckler, F. W., “Church and State in England since the war 1919–1935,” The Episcopal Pulpit, I 1936, 77–85.Google Scholar
80 The Church and Marriage, 1935, 24. The sectarian character of this document is revealed by the paragraph “The Church and its own members” (italics mine) 17f., and the appeal to Canon Law, which precedes it. For a sketch of English opinion on divorce by a lawyer, v. Kitchin, S. B., A History of Divorce (London, 1912), 171–208Google Scholar; for the Pre-Reformation position, 59–88. This may be the proper place to point out that, mutatis mutanilis, Mr. A. P. Herbert's Holy Deadlock is the masculine counterpart of Mt. V. 32, which appears to be, likewise, a reductio ad absurdum of the “one cause.”
81 The Matrimonial Causes Act, 1937 [1 Edw. 8 ]
82 Ibid., sec. 12.
83 Drs. Forse and Hayward.
84 “The Times” (London, 11 20, 1937)Google Scholar. Contrast with the views expressed by Archbishop Lang the late Professor J. M. Creed's review of the Report on Church and State, 1935, J. T. S., xxxvii, (1936), 302–3.Google Scholar As an instance of the opportunities of a “free ehurch” to violate its own constitutional limitations with apparent impunity, owing to the impotence of the lower clergy to act in face of probable penalization, I might quote the action of the House of Bishops in the Church of England in Canada. I have been credibly informed by a layman that the House resolved that the marriage of a party to divorce proceedings during the lifetime of the other party, should not be permitted to be celebrated in an Anglican Church, or by an Anglican clergyman. The Lower House was not consulted. A more flagrant instance of hyper-Pseudo-Isidorian episcopocratic usurpation it is hard to find outside the annals of Rome or Laudian England.
85 Quoted from Angoff, Charles, A Litcrary History of the American People (New York, 1935), I, 320–1.Google Scholar