In the twelfth century, the sovereign drew his supernatural quality from his consecration by the priesthood; in the seventeenth century, money had already come to represent a force so predominant that the process had become reversed, and the priesthood attributed its prerogative to speak in the name of the Deity, to the interposition of the king. This was the substance of the Reformation in England. Cranmer taught that God committed to Christian princes “the whole cure of all their subjects, as well concerning the administration of God’s word ... as ... of things political”; therefore bishops, parsons, and vicars were ministers of the temporal ruler, to whom he confided the ecclesiastical office, as he confided the enforcement of order to a chief of police.[296] As a part of the secular administration, the main function of the Reformed priesthood was to preach obedience to their patrons; and the doctrine they evolved has been thus summed up by Macaulay:—
“It was gravely maintained that the Supreme Being regarded hereditary monarchy, as opposed to other forms of government, with peculiar favour; that the rule of succession in order of primogeniture was a divine institution, anterior to the Christian, and even to the Mosaic dispensation; that no human power ... could deprive a legitimate prince of his rights; that the authority of such a prince was necessarily always despotic....”[297]
In no other department of public affairs did the landed gentry show particular energy or ability. Their army was ineffective, their navy unequal to its work, their finances indifferently handled, but down to the time of their overthrow, in 1688, they were eminently successful in ecclesiastical organization. They chose their instruments with precision, and an oligarchy has seldom been more adroitly served. Macaulay was a practical politician, and Macaulay rated the clergy as the chief political power under Charles II:—
“At every important conjuncture, invectives against the Whigs and exhortations to obey the Lord’s anointed resounded at once from many thousands of pulpits; and the effect was formidable indeed. Of all the causes which, after the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, produced the violent reaction against the exclusionists, the most potent seems to have been the oratory of the country clergy.”[298]
For country squires a wage-earning clergy was safe, and although Macaulay’s famous passage describing their fear of an army has met with contradiction, it probably is true:—
“In their minds a standing army was inseparably associated with the Rump, with the Protector, with the spoliation of the Church, with the purgation of the Universities, with the abolition of the peerage, with the murder of the King, with the sullen reign of the Saints, with cant and asceticism, with fines and sequestrations, with the insults which Major Generals, sprung from the dregs of the people, had offered to the oldest and most honourable families of the kingdom. There was, moreover, scarcely a baronet or a squire in the parliament who did not owe part of his importance in his own county to his rank in the militia. If that national force were set aside, the gentry of England must lose much of their dignity and influence.”[299]
The work to be done by the Tudor hierarchy was mercenary, not imaginative; therefore pastors had to be chosen who could be trusted to labour faithfully for wages. Perhaps no equally large and intelligent body of men has ever been more skilfully selected. The Anglican priests, as a body, have uniformly been true to the hand which fed them, without regard to the principles they were required to preach. A remarkable instance of their docility, where loss of income was the penalty for disobedience, was furnished at the accession of William and Mary. Divine right was, of course, the most sacred of Anglican dogmas, and yet, when the clergy were commanded to take the oath of allegiance to him whom they held to be an usurper, as Macaulay has observed, “some of the strongest motives which can influence the human mind, had prevailed. Above twenty-nine thirtieths of the profession submitted to the law.”[300] Moreover, the landlords had the economic instinct, bargaining accordingly, and Elizabeth bluntly told her bishops that they must get her sober, respectable preachers, but men who should be cheap.
“Then spake my Lord Treasurer.... Her Maty hath declared unto you a marvellous great fault, in that you make in this time of light so many lewd and unlearned ministers.... It is the Bishop of Litchfield ... that I mean, who made LXX. ministers in one day for money, some taylors, some shoemakers, and other craftsmen, I am sure the greatest part of them not worthy to keep horses. Then said the Bp. of Rochester, that may be so, for I know one that made 7 in one day, I would every man might beare his own burthen, some of us have the greatest wrong that can be offred.... But my Lord, if you would have none but learned preachers to be admitted into the ministery, you must provide better livings for them....
“To have learned ministers in every parish is in my judgmt impossible (quoth my Ld. of Canterbury) being 13,000 parishes in Ingland, I know not how this realm should yield so many learned preachers.
“Jesus (quoth the Queen) 13,000 it is not to be looked for, I thinke the time hath been, there hath not been 4. preachers in a diocesse, my meaning is not you should make choice of learned ministers only for they are not to be found, but of honest, sober, and wise men, and such as can reade the scriptures and homilies well unto the people.”[301]