Thus, on filling up a vacancy on the Bench of Bishops, the first step, it seems, is that taken by the Crown Office, which confers upon Dean and Chapter the Sovereign’s congé d’élire, or leave to elect; not, be it said, the leave to elect whom they please, but permission to elect whomsoever it shall please the Sovereign (or the Prime Minister at the head of the Government at the time in power) to select, in place of the right reverend prelate recently gathered to Abraham’s bosom. The warrant for this humorous “leave” to elect is paid for by the Bishop who is presently elected. It costs £10, and is but the first of a series of complicated costs that come out of his pocket, and in the end total £423 19s. 2d.
The initial warrant is followed by a certificate, costing £16 10s., and that by letters patent, costing another £30, with 2s. for the “docquet.”
So far, your Bishop is only partly made. He is “elected by Dean and Chapter.” Thereupon, through the Crown Office, the assent of the Sovereign to the choice himself has made through his Prime Minister, is graciously signified, and the original costs are reimposed, plus 10s. The chapter-clerk of the Bishop’s own cathedral then requests fees totalling £21 6s. 8d.
A technical form of procedure, known as “restitution of temporalities,” has then to be enacted, not without its attendant fees, which include £10 for a warrant, £31 10s. 6d. for a certificate, £30 for letters patent, and 2s. for another “docquet.”
Next comes the Home Office, clamouring for Exchequer fees: £7 13s. 6d. for the original congé d’élire, and the like for letters recommendatory, Royal assent, and restitution of temporalities. The oath of homage costs £6 6s. 6d.
The new Bishop has then to reckon with the Board of Green Cloth, with its homage fees to the Earl Marshal and the heralds, totalling £15 0s. 2d.
Your Bishop is not yet, however, out of the wood of expenditure. When he takes his seat in the House of Lords the Lord Great Chamberlain’s Office wants £5—and gets it. When he is enthroned the precentor pockets £10 10s., and the chapter-clerk £9 14s. 8d., the bell-ringers of the Cathedral ring a merry peal—fee £10 10s. The choir then chorify at a further expense of £6 17s. 4d.
Have we now done? Not at all. The clerk of the Crown Office is tipped half a guinea, plus two guineas for “petty expenses”; and takes £14 when the Bishop takes his place among his brethren in the House of Lords.
When all these various officers of Church and State are busily picking the new Bishop’s pockets, in advance of their being filled, as an Irishman might say, the Archbishop himself is not behindhand. His turn comes when the archiepiscopal fees for confirmation are demanded; and they are heavy, costing in all £68 4s. 10d. These imposts are made up of the following items: Secretary, with Archbishop’s fiat for confirmation, £17 10s., Vicar-General, £31 0s. 10d., fees at church where confirmation is made, £10 5s., and to Deputy Registrar, for mandate of induction, £9 9s. To the Bishop’s own secretaries a sum of £36 5s. is then payable. The Bishop may then, surveying these devastations, at last consider himself elected, and in every way complete.
Let us hope that although the spreading tentacles of London town have enfolded Fulham and abolished its old market-gardens and numerous stately mansions in favour of commonplace streets, the evident episcopal wish to be rid of Fulham Palace will not lead to it being alienated. It remains one of the very few things that connect this now populous suburb with the village that many still remember; and the romantic-looking moat, often threatened to be filled up, is a relic of remote antiquity it would be vandalism to destroy. “No one,” as Sir Arthur Blomfield remarked in 1856, “could say that the Bishops of London had constructed that defence. We may well hesitate to believe that any prelate, however rich and powerful, would have in any age undertaken to dig round his house a moat of such extent that, if intended as a means of defence, it would require a very large force to render it effective; still less can we believe that it was ever dug with any other object than that of defence.” The Danes constructed it, and the bishops found it here when they came. It is fed by a sluice communicating with the river, and was until recent times a stagnant, malodorous place, owing to the sluice being rarely raised, the ditch cleansed, or the water changed. On the rare occasions when the mud was cleared away, the cost varied from £100 to £150, owing to the great accumulation of it. Those were the times when lilies grew in the moat. The Fulham people called them “Bishops’ wigs.” In 1886 the then Bishop of London received a communication from the Fulham Vestry, requiring him to fill up the evil-smelling moat, or to cleanse it. He had it cleaned out, and it looks no less a place of romance than before. It is too greatly overgrown with trees and brushwood to make a picture for illustration, but while it lasts, with the woodland park it encloses, Fulham will still keep some vestige of its olden condition of a Thames-side village.