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The Suppression of Convocation in the Church of England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Gerald B. Switzer
Gerald B. Switzer
Affiliation:
Oak Bay United Church, Victoria, B. C.
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Extract

“Let the Church be free and hold her rights and liberties inviolate.” Disregarding this opening dictum of England's time-honoured Magna Charta, Henry VIII stamped Erastianism lastingly upon the Church of England. By three epoch-making Acts of parliament, the second Tudor monarch established the judicial, legislative, and appointive supremacy of the crown in ecclesiastical affairs. Since his time the Church of England has known no hour of complete ecclesiastical autonomy. In recent years the Prayer Book controversy has brought this arresting circumstance clearly to the light. What is more important about a church than its Prayer Book. its forms of worship, its articles of faith, its liturgies? Yet in 1927 and again 1928 the world witnessed the strange spectacle of a British House of Commons comprising men of every faith, Roman Chatolic, Protestant, Christian Scientist, and even the Parsee Communist, Shapurji Saklatvala, carefully weighing and sifting theological niceties and in a single spectacular debate decisively rejecting the overwhelming opinion of the church courts, diocesan, provinical, and national.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , September 1932 , pp. 150 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1932

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References

1 25 Henry VIII (1533) c. 19Google Scholar; 25 Henry VIII (1533) c. 20Google Scholar; 26 Henry VIII (1534) c. 1.Google Scholar

2 See for instance: Abbey, J. and Overton, J. H., The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, London, 1877, pp. 283–4.Google ScholarHore, A. H., The Church in England from William III to Victoria, London, 1886, I, 327–8.Google ScholarPerry, C. G., A History of the English Church, New York, 1879.Google ScholarPhillimore, R., Ecclesiastical Law, 2nd ed., II, 1539–40.Google ScholarTrevor, G., The Constilutions of the Two Provinces, London, 1852, pp. 75–6.Google ScholarWakeman, H. O., An Introduction to the History of the Church of England, New York, 1896, pp. 423–4.Google Scholar

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4 Calamy, Edmund, An Historical Account of My Own Life, I, 211.Google Scholar

5 Lathbury, , History of Convocation, p. 342,Google Scholar calls it a “Scheme of Union”; Calamy, , An Historical Account, I, 408,Google Scholar terms it “the method of a better correspondence among dissenters throughout the Kingdom.”

6 Lathbury, in his History of Convocation, footnote, p. 345,Google Scholarsays, , “Dr. Binkes wrote it.” Biographia Britannica, article on Atterbury, London, 1778,Google Scholar says “Sir Bartholomew Shower, Atterbury, and a certain clergyman wrote it.” Gwatkin, Church and State in England, London, 1927, p. 388,Google Scholar assumes Shower was the author. DrSykes, , Edmund Gibson, Oxford, 1926, p. 27,Google Scholar footnote, attributes main responsibility to Atterbury.

7 London, 1697, p. 15.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., p. 17.

9 He won both the thanks of the Lower House and the degree of D. D. from Oxford for his staunch defence of spiritual autonomy.

10 The controversy is set forth at considerable length and in lamentably small print in the article on Francis Atterbury, Biographia Britannica, London, 1778, I, 333–48.Google Scholar The pamphlets, tracts and actual tomes written on one side or the other are almost innumerable and characterised by an unlovely acrimony and virulence. Burnet wrote of Atterbury's Rights: “He seems to have forgotten the common decencies of a man or a scholar.” Biog. Brit., art. Atterbury. Wake in his State of the Church and Clergy of England wrote of Atterbury: “I have here shown him to have deluded the world with a mere romance, and from one end of his discourse to the other to have delivered a history, not of what was really done, but of what it was his interest to make it believe had been done.” Preface, , State of Church and Clergy, London, 1703, p. vii.Google Scholar

11 Conc. Mag. Brit., II, 215Google Scholar. Trans. Gee, and Hardy, , Documents Illustrative of English Church History, London, 1896, pp. 85–6.Google Scholar

12 For exceptions see Atterbury's, Rights, addend. pp. 616–26, London, 1701.Google Scholar

13 See Phillimore, R.: Ecclesiastical Law, II, 1533–4, 2nd ed., London, 1895.Google Scholar

14 State of Church and Clergy, p. 464 ff. Wake devotes fifty folio pages to establish this proposition.

15 Ibid., p. 464.

16 Ibid., p. 436.

17 SirRobert, Phillimore, Bart., D. C. L., Member of the Privy Council, The Ecclesiastical Law of the Church of England, 2nd ed., II, 1553.Google Scholar

18 State of Church and Clergy, p. 85 f.Google Scholar

19 See The Present State of Convocation in a Letter giving the Full Relations of Proceedings in Several Late Sessions, Beginning from Wed., Jan. 28, Cont'd. Thurs., Feb. 19. London, 1702, p. 14.Google Scholar

20 Letter, Nicolson to Charlett, 6 May, 1700, cited in Sykes, , Edmund Gibson, London, 1926, p. 33.Google Scholar

21 Atterbury and Wake were eventually reconciled.

22 Printed in London, 1708, p. 15.Google Scholar

23 p. 77.

24 p. 94.

25 4th ed., London, 1717, pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., p. 8.

27 Ibid., p. 6.

28 Ibid., p. 42.

29 Ibid., p. 64.

30 The copy I have used in the British Museum was from the fifteenth ed., London, 1717Google Scholar.

31 Title page of Report of Committee, Dublin, 1717.Google Scholar

32 Ibid. This statement aroused the ire of Hoadley, who, in his reply to the report: An Answer to the Representation, London, 2nd ed., 1717Google Scholar, characterised it as an “Artifice” (preface, p. iii, A. 2), and charged that it was only the report of a committee of the Lower House and had never been approved by the whole House. Literally this was correct, but the report undoubtedly had the support of a large majority of the House.

33 I have used two editions; one, 4th, London, 1717Google Scholar; the other Dublin, 1717Google Scholar.

34 A Report of the Committee of the Lower House of Convocation Appointed to draw up a Representation to be laid before the Archbishop and Bishops of the Province of Canterbury, 4th ed., London. 1717, p. 4.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., p. 5. A Sermon Preached before the King, 15th ed., London, p. 11, Mar. 31, 1717.Google Scholar

36 Report, p. 5Google Scholar.

37 Ibid., p. 11, and Preservative, p. 58.Google Scholar

38 Report, p. 13Google Scholar, and Preservative, p. 54.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., p. 13.

40 Ibid., p. 19, and Sermon, p. 29.Google Scholar

41 Report, p. 9.Google Scholar

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43 Preservative, pp. 56–7.Google Scholar

44 Ibid., p. 49.

45 Ibid., pp. 56–7.

46 Ibid., p. 57.

47 An Answer to the Representation drawn up by the Committee of the Lower House of Convocation, 2nd ed., London, 1717, preface, p. iv, v.Google Scholar

48 In the editions I have used the Preservative is 64 pages, the Sermon in larger print, 31 pages, the Answer, 342 pages.

49 Archdeacon of Carmarthen—later Bishop of Ossory.

50 In 1728 and 1741 some minor business was transacted.

51 Unless the presence of bishops in the House of Lords be considered a measure of church self-government.