THE THREE ESTATES OF THE REALM.
(Vol. iv., pp. 115. 196. 278.; Vol. v., p. 129.)
The quotations I have produced on the question, Which are the Three Estates of the Realm? appear
to Canon. Ebor. "quite to support his own positions." I must therefore again ask leave to defend the view which I advanced in Vol. iv., p. 115., and will endeavour, whether it be a right or wrong one, to express my arguments in support of it so definitely and distinctly as not again to leave room for any misapprehension of them. To adopt Canon. Ebor.'s threefold division:—
1. The Three Estates of the Realm are the Nobility, the Clergy in Convocation, and the Commons. In this order they are ranked in the collect I quoted, and in which they are described as "assembled in parliament;" i. e. en plein parlement. The following extract plainly bears out my view:
"And that this doctrine (viz. that the Clergy are an extrinsic part of Parliament, or an Estate of the Realm) was still good, and the language much the same, as low as the Restoration of Charles II., the Office then anew set out for the 5th of November shews, where mention is made of 'the Nobility, Clergy, and Commons of this realm, then assembled in Parliament:' for to say that by 'the Clergy of this realm,' my Lords the Bishops only are intended, were so absurd a gloss, that even Dr. Wake's pen would, I believe, be ashamed of it. And if they were then rightly said to be 'assembled in Parliament,' they may as rightly be said to be so assembled still: and if 'assembled in Parliament,' why not 'a member of Parliament?' to those intents and purposes, I mean, for which they are assembled in it."—Atterbury's Rights, Powers, and Privileges of Convocation, 2nd edit., p. 305.
The same order is observed in Sir Edward Coke's speech on Garnet's trial:—
"For the persons offended, they were these:—the King ... the Queen ... the noble Prince; ... then the whole royal issue. The Council, the Nobility, the Clergy; nay, our whole religion itself," &c.
And if Canon. Ebor. wishes for a more decisive authority on the matter, he will find it in An Act for granting Royal Aid unto the King's Majesty, passed in 1664.
2. The Convocations of the Clergy ARE a part of the Parliament. This fact, and its importance, has been generally overlooked or disregarded by writers on Convocation. They have almost uniformly, while endeavouring to substantiate its synodical authority and purely ecclesiastical influence, omitted to point out its position as a part of our parliamentary constitution: the result has been a degree of vagueness and uncertainty on the subject.
The clearest and most distinct way of demonstrating this proposition, that the Convocation is a part of Parliament, will be, after noting that in our early historians Convocatio and Parliamentum are synonymous, first, to bring forward evidences that it was often regarded as being so somewhat late in our history, that is, just before its sessions were suppressed; and, in the next place, to produce facts, documents, and extracts which display this parliamentary character in the earlier stages of its existence. To begin, then, with Burnet, whose statements must be taken with allowance, as those of a hot anti-convocational partisan, as he had indeed good reasons for being:—
"When the Bill (Act of Comprehension) was sent down to the House of Commons, it was let lie on the table; and, instead of proceeding in it, they made an address to the King for summoning a Convocation of the Clergy, to attend, according to custom, on the session of Parliament. The party against the Government ... were much offended with the Bill of Comprehension, as containing matters relating to the Church, in which the representative body of the clergy had not been so much as advised with."—Burnet's History of his own Times, book v.
In his account of the Convocation of 1701, the facts which he details are important. After saying that "the clergy fancied they had a right to be a part of the Parliament," he continues:—
"The things the Convocation pretended to were, first, that they had a right to sit whenever the Parliament sate; so that they could not be prorogued, but when the two Houses were prorogued. Next they advanced that they had no need of a licence to enter upon debates and to prepare matters, though it was confessed that the practice for a hundred years was against them; but they thought the Convocation lay under no further restraint than that the Parliament was under; and as they could pass no Act without the Royal assent, so they confessed that they could not enact or publish a Canon without the King's licence. Antiently the Clergy granted their own subsidies apart, but, ever since the Reformation, the grant of the Convocation was not thought good till it was ratified in Parliament.... In the writ that the bishops had, summoning them to Parliament, the clause, known by the first word of it, 'Præmunientes,' was still continued. At first, by virtue of it, the inferior clergy were required to come to Parliament, and to consent to the aids there given: but after the archbishops had the provincial writ for a Convocation of the province, the other was no more executed, though it was still kept in the writ, and there did not appear the least shadow of any use that had been made of it, for some hundreds of years; yet now some bishops were prevailed on to execute this writ, and to summon the clergy by virtue of it."—Book vi.
With this last extract from Burnet, let the following from Lathbury be compared:—
"This clause, it appears, was inserted in the bishops' writ in the twenty-third year of Edward I. When assembled by this writ, the Clergy constituted a State Convocation, not the Provincial Synod. When the clause was inserted, there was a danger of invasion from France; and it is clear that the Clergy were not assembled by this clause as an Ecclesiastical Council, but to assist the King in his necessities. This is evident from the words 'hujus modi periculis et excogitatis malitiis obviandum.' The clause was, however, continued in the writ after the cause for its insertion had ceased to exist: but whenever they were summoned by virtue of this writ, they constituted a part of the Parliament. The clause, with a slight variation, is still retained in the writ by which the bishops are summoned to Parliament."—Lathbury's History of the Convocation of the Church of England, p. 121.
It will be obvious, then, and plain to the reader of the above passage, that when the clergy were summoned by this clause Præmunientes, in the writ directed to the archbishops, they were summoned to be a part of Parliament; but the King's writ was that which made Convocation what it was—which made it a legal, constitutional, parliamentary assembly, with definite power and authority—instead of a simple synodical meeting of the clergy, whose influence would be solely moral or ecclesiastical. Convocation, from the time of Edward I., that is, from its first beginning, has been a part of parliament, being "an assembly of ecclesiastics for civil purposes, called to parliament by the King's writ" to the archbishops; and before the time of Henry VIII. it voted subsidies to the King independently of the Houses of Lords and Commons. Of this clause Præmunientes, Canon. Ebor. has taken no notice whatever, although in the extract from Collier it was expressly stated that the proctors of the clergy were "summoned to parliament" and "sent up to parliament" by it, and, when assembled in the Lower House of Convocation, they were esteemed the Spiritual Commons of the realm, and a constituent part of "the great Council of the nation assembled in parliament." But as mere assertions, or even uncorroborated deductions, are but of little value without facts, I must establish this much by producing authorities.
The design of Edward I. for reducing the clergy to be a part of the Third Estate, by means of this præmunitory clause, is sufficiently known, as is also the fact that the clergy were unwilling to give up their own synods; and though, in obedience to the King's summons, they came to parliament from both provinces, yet shortly after they met by themselves, and constituted a body which was at once synodical and parliamentary.
"Now, then, though the Præmunientes was obeyed nationally, yet the clergy that met with the Parliament acted provincially, i. e. the clergy of that province where the Parliament was held acted as a Synod convened by their metropolitan, and the clergy of the other province sent their deputies to the Lay Assembly to consult for them; but taxed themselves, and did all manner of ecclesiastical business, at home in their own province. And this was pitched upon as a means of complying with the Canons of the Church, which required frequent Provincial Councils, and yet paying their attendance in Parliament; the Archbishop's mandate summoned them to the one, and the præmunitory clause to the other, and both were obeyed."—Atterbury on Convocation, p. 243.
The same view is taken by Kennet in his Ecclesiastical Synods and Parliamentary Convocations in the Church of England.
Here, then, is the origin of Convocation, strictly so called, viz. the Clergy withdrawing themselves from the Commons into a separate chamber for purposes of debate, and for transacting their own business independently, but yet not ceasing thereby at all to be a part of that parliament, to their being summoned to which they owed the opportunity of meeting in their provincial synod, which was Congregatio tempore Parliamenti.
We hear of the clerical proctors being occasionally present in the House of Commons in the earlier part of our history; and we may reasonably infer that they would not have been so present unless they had a right to have been there. If they had that right, then they were a part of parliament. They certainly had that right by the clause Præmunientes so often referred to, "according to antient usage;" but they waived the exercise of it, on finding it more advantageous to deliberate by themselves. At a later period they wished to resume their right, and therefore petitioned "to be admitted to sit in parliament WITH the House of Commons, according to antient usage," of which Commons they had of usage considered themselves the spiritual part. An instance in point we shall find in a petition of Parliament to Henry IV.:—
"Supplient humblement les Communes de vostre Roialme, sibien Espirituelz come Temporelz."—Rot. Parl. 7 & 8 Henry IV. n. 128.
And again, in a proclamation of the 35 Henry VIII.:—
"The Nobles and Commons both Spirituall and Temporall, assembled in our Court of Parliament, have, upon good, lawful, and virtuous grounds," &c.
And "Direction to Justices of Peace," by the same King:—
"Henry R.
"Trusty and right well-beloved,—We grete you well ... and also by the deliberate advice, consultation, consent, and agreement, as well of the Bishops and Clergie as by the Nobles and Commons Temporal of this our Realme assembled in our High Courte of Parliament, and by authoritie of the same, the abuses of the Bishop of Rome, ... but also the same our Nobles and Commons bothe of the Clergie and Temporaltie, by another several acte," &c.—Weever's Fun. Mon., p. 83., quoted by Atterbury.
For multitudinous examples of the Convocation Clergy, "Prælati et clerus," being spoken of as not only of the parliament, but present in it, I must refer Canon. Ebor. to Atterbury's work, pp. 61, 62, 63.
And it is certain that, before the Commons can be proved to have been summoned to parliament at all, the inferior clergy sat there. In the parliament of Henry III. held at Westminster, 1228, there sat "the Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Priors, Templars, Hospitallers, Earls, Barons,
Rectors of churches, and they that held of the King in chief" (Mat. Paris, p. 361.), in which the order of precedence is worth observing.
One more argument of Canon. Ebor.'s has to be met. He says (Vol. iv., p. 197.), "The Convocation of the Clergy never met either the sovereign or the parliament." The following quotations will destroy this position:—
"Though sometimes the King himself has vouchsafed to appear and sit in Convocation, when it was called for some extraordinary cause; as in Arundel's Register Henry IV. is remembered to have done (in Conv. habitâ 23 Jul. 1408, causâ Uniones)."—Atterbury, p. 20.
Also:
"'Until the reign of Henry VII., there is a doubt whether the Convocation of the Clergy, then in separate existence from the Parliament since Edward I., had transacted purely ecclesiastical business not connected with the Government, or where the King was not present in person. (Henry IV., Wilkins, p. 310.) In the reign of Henry VIII., who also sat in Convocation, no Church Provincial Synod was held, and the House of Lords met and adjourned on the days on which Convocation transacted business in consideration to the bishops, who were barons of Parliament, and also members of the Upper House of Convocation. (Wake.)'"—Diocesan Synods, by Rev. W. Pound, M.A.
3. The Clergy were not, and are not, represented in parliament by the Spiritual Lords. The bishops are called to the House of Lords as barons; just in the same manner as the abbots and priors were formerly summoned, not as representing any body of men, but as holding in capite of the King. The prelates have sat in the House of Lords since William I., not as peers or nobles by blood, nor as representatives, but by virtue of this tenure. They certainly were not considered as representatives before the Reformation; and that the same opinions respecting them prevailed still later, will appear from the decision of the House of Commons in 1 Mary, that a clerk could not be chosen into that House, "because he was represented already in another House;" and again, from a speech in the Commons by Mr. Solicitor St. John on the "Act to take away Bishops' Votes in Parliament:"
"1. Because they have no such inherent right and liberty of being there as the Lords Temporal and Peers of the Realm have; for they are not there representative of any body else; no, not of the clergy; for if so, then the clergy were twice represented by them, viz. the Lords' House and in the Convocation; for their writ of election is to send two clerks ad consentiendum, &c. Besides, none are there representative of others, but those that have their suffrages from others; and therefore only the clerks in Convocation do represent them.
"3. If they were representative of the clergy, as a third estate and degree, no act of parliament could be good if they did wholly disassent; and yet they have disassented, and the law good and in force, as in the Act for establishing the Book of Common Prayer in Queen Elizabeth's time. They did disassent from the confirming of that law, which could not have been good if they had been a third estate, and disassented."—Rapin's History of England, book xx.
And in the same parliament Lord Falkland—
"Had heard many of the clergy protest, that they could not acknowledge that they were represented by the bishops. However, we might presume that, if they could make that appear, that they were a third estate, the House of Peers, amongst whom they sat, and yet had their votes, would reject it."—Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, book iii.
That the Clergy in Convocation make statements to the House of Peers through the bishops, only proves that the latter were a medium of communication between the two; as does also, that on March 18th, 1662, "the President informed the Convocation that the Lord Chancellor had desired the Bishops to thank them in the name of the Peers." Canon. Ebor. admits that the bishops do not represent the clergy, except by a fiction; the Canons declare that Convocation does represent them. His position therefore falls at once to the ground.
I have set down the arguments necessary for maintaining my first position against Canon. Ebor., whether they be good or bad, with sufficient positiveness and distinctness to prevent their being again mistaken. I would close the subject with the words of Atterbury:
"If I should affirm that the Convocation attended the Parliament as One of the Three States of the Realm, I should say no more than the Rolls have in express terms said before me; where the King is mentioned as calling Tres status Regni ad Palatium suum Westm., viz. Prælatos et Clerum, Nobiles et Magnates, necnon Communitates dicti Regni."—Rot. Parl. 9 Henry V. n. 15.
William Fraser, B.C.L.