facilitated the publication of the first communion office of the reign of Edward VI. The archbishop was also able to prevail with the king to order the disuse of certain ceremonies which were shown to be superstitious, of the observance of vigils, the creeping to the cross, as well as the abolishing of such images in churches as could be shown to have been abused. The Church of England owes much to the archbishop's persevering devotion to reforming views when he stood absolutely alone. To this, and to the king's constant support of him (due probably to personal feelings of affection, but nevertheless having the important effect of influencing the action of Convocation), must be attributed, under God, the state of preparedness in which the Church of England found herself at the beginning of a new reign, to enter more vigorously on the path of reformation and improvement.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

(A) ATTAINDERS IN THE PARLIA- | of law; yet this I say of the proceeding,

MENT OF 1539.

Auferat oblivio si potest, si non utcunque silentium tegat." -(Amos, Statutes of Re formation Parliament.)

Attainders, or the condemnation of a person by Act of Parliament, with or without evidence adduced and reasons alleged, differ altogether from Impeachment, which is a trial of a person be(B) QUEEN CATHERINE PARR. fore Parliament sitting as judges. The The last queen of Henry VIII. was a essential injustice of an attainder is strong favourer of reforming views, and that it is ex parte. Of course any mem- certainly during the period of his union ber of Parliament might rise in his with her, the king appears better disposed place, and defend the person accused, towards reformation, than during the but the process would be equally valid previous period after the fall of Crumwell. were no defence offered, and the person She was the daughter of Sir Thomas accused absent, and even unaware that Parr, and was married first to Edward his attainder was being moved. It is Burghe, and then to the Lord Latimer. generally supposed that in the Parliament She was a person of great ability and of 1539, Crumwell moved that persons tact, and had improved her mind with might be attainted in their absence and much care, especially being versed in unheard, and that he took the opinions matters of religious controversy. She of the judges on this point. It is certain, often argued these matters with the king, however, that persons had been attainted who sometimes was unable to hold his previously to this, without hearing. This own against his wife, and in consequence Parliament has an evil prominence for lost his temper. After one of these disthe number of attainders passed by it. putes, Gardiner and Wriothesley the chanNo less than sixteen persons were con- cellor, taking advantage of the angry demned by its vote, Crumwell himself feelings of the king, persuaded him to being one. The strangest attainder pro- sign an order for her committal to the bably ever passed by Parliament was that Tower. This order fell accidentally from of Barnes, Gerard, and Jerome, for an un- the bosom of the chancellor's robe, was defined charge of heresy. "Parliamentary picked up, and brought to the queen. attainders," says Mr. Amos, "were very She very dexterously led the king to berare before the reign of Edward IV., but lieve that he had convinced her by his from the beginning of this reign to that arguments, and Henry, pleased at this, of James they entirely superseded im- was completely reconciled. When the peachments. The doctrine that a Parlia- chancellor came next day to remind him mentary attainder holds good in law, of his order, the king called him "knave, notwithstanding the violation of the first fool, and beast," and sent him away. principles of justice, is a corollary frm During the king's last illness, Catherine the truth, that so long as the constitution attended on him with the greatest care. of the state is maintained, a supreme and She was afterwards married to Sir Thomas legally irresponsible authority is vested Seymour, brother of the Lord Protector, in Parliament. On the moral responsi- but lived with him only for a short time, bility, however, of the king, lords, and dying in 1548. After her death a religious commons, with respect to attainders, work of her composition, called Queen some important remarks will be found in Catherine Parr's Lamentation of a Sinner, the Fourth Institute of Lord Coke. He was published by Lord Burleigh. In her there remarks-"Albeit I find an at-life-time (1545), she published a volume tainder of Parliament for high treason of of Prayers and Meditations. She favoured a subject never called to answer in either the reformers as far as she dared, and in House of Parliament; although I question | particular Mrs. Kyme (Anne Ayscough) not the power of Parliament, for without seems to have been secretly patronised question the attainder standeth in force by her.

CHAPTER XI.

THE PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION,

1547-1550.

§ 13.

§ 1. The Council appointed by King Henry's will. § 2. Omission of Gar diner's name. § 3. Bishops required to take licenses for jurisdiction. § 4. Spoliation of the Church determined on. § 5. Poverty of the clergy. § 6. Outbreak of fanaticism. § 7. The royal visitation. § 8. Bishop Gardiner opposes it. § 9. Conduct of Bonner. § 10. Of the Princess Mary. § 11. Holy communion ordered to be administered in both kinds. § 12. Other Acts of the first session of Parliament. The petition of the clergy to the Archbishop. § 14. First order for the communion published without Church authority. § 15. Preaching prohibited. § 16. Disturbed state of religion. § 17. Reforming party angry at the delay of the Prayer-book. § 18. Sacrilege prevalent. § 19. The Lord Protector tries to seize Westminster Abbey. § 20. Gardiner a second time sent to prison. § 21. Publication of the Catechism of Justus Jonas. § 22. The Book of Common Prayer published and authorised. § 23. The first Act of Uniformity. § 24. Character of the Prayer-book. § 25. Manner of its reception. § 26. Clerical matrimony legalised. § 27. Observance of Lent enacted. § 28. Second royal visitation. § 29. Bonner deprived and imprisoned. § 30. Burning of Joan Bucher. § 31. Fall of Somerset involves no change in religious policy. § 32. The letter to call in and deface old service-books. § 33. Act for appointing thirtytwo commissioners for Canon Law. § 34. The revised Ordinal. § 35. Character of the Reformation work up to this period.

§ 1. KING HENRY VIII. had been allowed by the third Act of Succession to regulate finally the succession to the throne by his last will, and great anxiety was felt, as soon as his death was disclosed, to know the contents of this document. It was a matter of course that his son should be next in order of succession, though only now a boy under ten years of age. His eldest daughter came next, and then her half-sister Elizabeth, though each of them had been declared illegitimate by previous Acts. The descendants of his younger sister Mary were then placed before those of his elder sister Margaret. But the part of the will about which there was most anxiety was the nomination of the councillors who were to guide and act for the young king until he was eighteen years of age. Those who were speculating on the future of the Church looked anxiously to see what names of churchmen were to be found in the list of the sixteen councillors. There were only two

bishops nominated. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the great upholder of the reforming movement, was balanced by Tonstal, Bishop of Durham, if not the most zealous, yet the most popular and the most learned of the bishops of the "old learning." In like manner Lord Hertford, the king's uncle, a pronounced reformer, was opposed to Lord Wriothesley, the chancellor, a zealous anti-reformer. It would seem as if King Henry had carefully provided for the continuance of that special phase of opinion which prevailed at his death.

§ 2. But there was one remarkable omission from the council which seemed to indicate the contrary to this. Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, was not in the list. He had been an able and trusted servant of the king's for more than twenty years, and since the fall of Crumwell, Henry's chief adviser; yet he was now excluded from all share of power. Whatever was the reason for which the king acted thus,1 the effect of it was of no small importance. It enabled the reforming party quickly to gain the entire ascendant, as there was no man of ability and vigour to withstand them, and it placed Gardiner in strong opposition to the measures taken by the authorities. He professed now to take up the position of a conscientious opponent of the reforming movement, although during the reign of King Henry he had accepted every phase of his policy, had signed his divorce from Catherine, agreed to the spoliation of the monasteries, written in the most exaggerated strain to defend the supremacy, and held his episcopal jurisdiction on a license from the Crown. The council having assumed the character of a decidedly reforming body by the election of Lord Hertford as Lord Protector, and the exclusion of Lord Wriothesley and Bishop Tonstal, must henceforth reckon on the decided opposition of Bishop Gardiner.

§ 3. The first act connected with ecclesiastical matters performed by the council was to require the bishops to take out anew licenses from the Crown to exercise their jurisdiction. These licenses were a device invented by Crumwell, Leighton, and ApRice, in order to guard the supremacy of the Crown. There was a special clause inserted in them to declare that they did not in any way profess to touch the divine authority which bishops had by the sacred Scriptures; but inasmuch as bishops had not only spiritual functions simply, but had also mixed functions, such as granting probates and faculties, judging in their courts, licensing, instituting, etc., and inasmuch as all jurisdiction 2 proceeded

1 See the whole question fully discussed in Maitland's Essays on the Reformation, Essays xv. xvi.

2 Jurisdiction does not imply the right of personal direction or deciding

from the Crown, the license committed to the bishop, as from the Crown, this power to be exercised during pleasure. This, if properly explained and understood, was no intrusion on the episcopal office; but there is good reason to believe that those who upheld the policy of granting these licenses did so upon Erastian grounds, that the Crown, namely, was competent to do all ecclesiastical acts, though for convenience sake it deputed the bishops to do them.

§ 4. Another precedent of King Henry's reign was also now quickly followed. An Act of Parliament had given to him the lands of the Chantries, Hospitals, and Guilds. It was determined to bring in a Bill conferring the same rights on the present king, and by the sale of these lands to pay the legacies which had been left in King Henry's will. This was the beginning of a continued series of acts of spoliation of the Church which prevailed throughout this reign, yet the Church could ill afford this alienation of its property.

3

§ 5. Poverty had already begun to press heavily on the parochial clergy. The alienation of the impropriate tithes held by the monasteries into lay hands, had created a class of poor vicars, who were only able to eke out a bare subsistence by holding the vicariates of two or three parishes together. When the stipends of these clergy depended on a payment to be made by the impropriator, they were often miserably small and very irregularly paid.3 Yet the impropriators being the powerful and legislative class, were never called to account, and the flagrant injustice continues until this day. The small vicarages, which had been served from the monasteries before the Dissolution, continued very generally to be in the hands of men who had been monks. This arrangement was eagerly sought after by the holders of monastic lands, inasmuch as any Church preferment took the monk off the list of those to whom stipends were payable. The effect of it was that there was a large class of incumbents in England to whom reformation was absolutely hateful. They performed their prescribed functions more or less from fear of the law, but they would not or could a cause. The king has no right to take the place of a secular judge and administer justice; neither has he the right to take the place of an ecclesiastical officer or synod and give orders in Church matters. This was the great mistake which ran through all the Reformation proceedings. The supremacy of the Crown is a corrective and regulative function, not a function of directing, guiding, and ordering matters independently of the proper legal tribunals. 1 See Dr. Hook's Life of Cranmer, p. 236.

2 37 Henry VIII. c. 4.

3 The monasteries had always resisted forming vicarages in the parishes, the tithes of which they had got into their hands, and had frequently succeeded. In these cases there was no fixed payment, and the curate was entirely dependent on the good will of the impropriator.