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Bishop Perry and Lay Representation in Colonial Synods
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
Extract
The changing situation of the Church of England in the first half of the nineteenth century raised numerous questions, not least of which was the proper place of the laity in Church government. The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts followed closely by the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill were tacit admissions that no longer could Hooker's ideal of a co-terminous Church and State be regarded as a reality. But, whilst the majority within the Established Church was quite ready to acknowledge the justice of the 1828–9 parliamentary measures, they were not quite so ready to deal with the legal anomalies of Royal Supremacy over a Church of which not all the queen's subjects were members. If the question was asked before 1829, ‘Where are the laity of the Church represented in deliberations on its temporal welfare?’ it was theoretically possible to answer ‘in parliament, and in particular in the House of Commons’. After 1829 it was no longer possible to maintain this position, even from a theoretical point of view. The renewed and vigorous campaigns for the revival of Convocation which followed in the next thirty years sprang both from a recognition that no longer could parliament be regarded in any sense as a representative voice of the Church of England, and the recognition of the necessity to have a proper and representative expression of opinion on matters relating to the temporalities and spiritualities of the Church.
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References
page 51 note 1 Kemp, E. W., Counsel and Consent, London 1961, 172–86Google Scholar.
page 51 note 2 The most notable cases were Rev. G. King v. Bishop of Sydney (1859) and Long v. Bishop of Capetown (1863) cf. Giles, R. A., The Constitutional History of the Australian Church, London 1929, 71 ffGoogle Scholar. But earlier cases are cited by Border, Ross, Church and State in Australia 1788–1872, London 1962, 108 ffGoogle Scholar.
page 51 note 3 The last bishop appointed thus was Mesac Thomas as bishop of Goulburn; cf. Clarke, H. Lowther, Constitutional Church Government, London 1924, 50Google Scholar.
page 52 note 1 The full Minutes of this Conference are given in Giles, op. cit. (Document K.), 237 ff.
page 52 note 2 Lowther Clarke, op. cit., 174.
page 52 note 3 Colonial Church Chronicle, ii (1849), 247Google Scholar.
page 52 note 4 Border, op. cit., 182–4. The Minutes of this Conference are given in Lowther Clarke, op. cit., 211–16.
page 52 note 5 George Goodman, The Church in Victoria during the Episcopate of the Rt. Rev. Charles Perry, London 1892, 221 ff. A full report of Perry's address to the Diocesan Society on this matter is given in The Melbourne Morning Herald, 3 August 1850.
page 53 note 1 Colonial Church Chronicle, v (1852), 161Google Scholar; cf. Lowther Clarke, op. cit., 174.
page 53 note 2 Minutes of Proceedings III (3), 1, 2; Giles, op. cit., 239.
page 53 note 3 See Broughton's address to the Assembly of Sydney clergy at St. Andrew's cathedral on 14 April 1852, reported in Sydney Morning Herald, 15 April 1852.
page 53 note 4 Border, op. cit., 242 (italics mine).
page 54 note 1 Goodman, op. cit., 124–7.
page 54 note 2 The Melbourne Morning Herald, 3 August 1850.
page 54 note 3 Ibid.
page 54 note 4 Perry to Broughton 4 June 1850 (Broughton Papers, St. Andrew's cathedral. Recorded on microfilm at Australian National Library, Canberra.)
page 55 note 1 Quoted by Goodman, op. cit., 223–4.
page 55 note 2 Ibid. Perry wrote: “It appears to me undeniable that the early constitution of the Church was a limited and not an absolute Episcopacy and the latter was the growth of a late and corrupt period. So likewise the constitution of the Anglican Church is obviously of the same character’.
page 55 note 3 Border (op. cit., 173) recognises that this conference must have been significant but still gives Broughton sole credit for promoting lay representation. Broughton told Rev. E. Coleridge of his intention to call a meeting in September or October 1848 (Broughton Letters: Broughton to Coleridge, 5 January 1848) but he did not in fact issue the invitations for the 1850 Conference until April 1850.
page 56 note 1 Cf. Austin, A. G., Australian Education 1788–1900, Melbourne 1961, 31–53Google Scholar.
page 56 note 2 Address to the Diocesan Society: Melbourne Morning Herald, 3 August 1850.
page 56 note 3 Broughton told Coleridge, in 1852, “I think the admission of the laity to deliberative functions will be hazardous’: Broughton Letters 1852, St. Andrew's cathedral. The page containing the date of the letter is missing but the context of the letter dates it in this year.
page 57 note 1 Goodman, op. cit., 239. The full report of the Meeting was printed separately: Minutes of a Conference of the Clergy and Laity of the United Church of England and Ireland in the colony of Victoria, June 24th-July 9th 1851, Melbourne (Mitchell Library, Sydney). The meeting is reported in the Church of England Messenger, August 1851.
page 57 note 2 On the Church: a Sermon preached at the Cathedral Church of St. James on June 24th 1851, (State Library of Victoria).
page 57 note 3 Cf. Goodman, op. cit., 230, 239–40 for a description of the Melbourne Conference from 24 June to 9 July 1851.
page 57 note 4 The text of Perry's letter to Broughton is in his Private Letter Book, i, 81–8 at the Diocesan Registry at Melbourne.
page 58 note 1 Ibid. The Adelaide Conference of the laity had requested that, in any future synod, clergy and laity should meet in one house under the bishop (and this in turn may have influenced the nature of the Assembly which Perry called in 1851 at Melbourne). For Minutes of the Adelaide Conference, cf. E. K. Miller, Reminiscences of Forty Seven Tears of Clerical Life in South Australia, Adelaide 1893, 126–44.
page 58 note 2 Cf. Goodman, op. cit., 240.
page 58 note 3 Colonial Church Chronicle, v (1852), 34Google Scholar. Cited by Border, op. cit., 237.
page 59 note 1 Border, op. cit., 238.
page 59 note 2 For Broughton's communication with the archbishop of Canterbury, cf. Lowther Clarke, op cit., 86.
page 59 note 3 Giles, op. cit., 87 ff.
page 59 note 4 Goodman, op. cit., 249–54.