History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1 of 3

by Henry Thomas Buckle

[726] Sharon Turner, describing the state of things in England in the fifteenth century, says, ‘Clergymen were secretaries of government, the privy seals, cabinet councillors, treasurers of the crown, ambassadors, commissioners to open parliament, and to Scotland; presidents of the king's council, supervisors of the royal works, chancellors, keepers of the records, the masters of the rolls, and even the physicians, both to the king and to the duke of Gloucester, during the reign of Henry VI. and afterwards.’ Turner's Hist. of England, vol. vi. p. 132. On their enormous wealth, see Eccleston's English Antiquities, p. 146: ‘In the early part of the fourteenth century, it is calculated that very nearly one-half of the soil of the kingdom was in the hands of the clergy.’

[727] In 1625, Williams bishop of Lincoln was dismissed from his office of lord-keeper; and Lord Campbell observes (Lives of the Chancellors, vol. ii. p. 492): ‘This is the last time that an ecclesiastic has held the great seal of England; and, notwithstanding the admiration in some quarters of mediæval usages, I presume the experiment is not likely to be soon repeated.’

[728] Monk (Life of Bentley, vol. i. p. 222) says, that Dr. John Robinson, bishop of Bristol, was ‘lord privy seal, and plenipotentiary at the treaty of Utrecht; and is the last ecclesiastic in England who has held any of the high offices of state.’ A high-church writer, in 1712, complains of the efforts that were being made to ‘thrust the churchmen out of their places of power in the government.’ Somers Tracts, vol. xiii. p. 211.

[729] In and after the reign of Henry III. ‘the number of archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and ecclesiastical persons was for the most part equal to, and very often far exceeded, the number of the temporal lords and barons.’ Parry's Parliaments and Councils of England, London, 1839, p. xvii. Of this Mr. Parry gives several instances; the most remarkable of which is, that ‘in 49 Henry III., 120 prelates, and only 23 temporal lords, were summoned.’ This, of course, was an extreme case.

[730] See an analysis of the House of Lords, in 1713, in Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. i. pp. 43–45; from which it appears that the total was 207, of whom 26 were spiritual. This includes the Catholics.

[731] By the returns in Dod for 1854, I find that the House of Lords contains 436 members, of whom 30 belong to the episcopal bench.

[732] For different accounts, and of course different views, of this final expulsion of the clergy from the House of Commons, see Pellew's Life of Sidmouth, vol. i. pp. 419, 420; Stephens's Mem. of Tooke, vol. ii. pp. 247–260; Holland's Mem. of the Whig Party, vol. i. pp. 178–180; Campbell's Chancellors, vol. vii. p. 148; Twiss's Life of Eldon, vol. i. p. 263; Adolphus's Hist. of George III., vol. vii. p. 487.

[733] That the banishment of the clergy from the lower house was the natural prelude to the banishment of the bishops from the upper, was hinted at the time, and with regret, by a very keen observer. In the discussion ‘on the Bill to prevent Persons in Holy Orders from sitting in the House of Commons,’ Lord Thurlow ‘mentioned the tenure of the bishops at this time, and said, if the bill went to disfranchise the lower orders of the clergy, it might go the length of striking at the right of the reverend bench opposite to seats in that house; though he knew it had been held that the reverend prelates sat, in the right of their baronies, as temporal peers.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xxxv. p. 1542.

[734] It is impossible now to ascertain the full extent to which the Church of England, in the seventeenth century, persecuted the dissenters; but Jeremy White is said to have had a list of sixty thousand of these sufferers between 1660 and 1688, of whom no less than five thousand died in prison. Bogue and Bennett's Hist. of the Dissenters, vol. i. p. 108. On the cruel spirit which the clergy displayed in the reign of Charles II. compare Harris's Lives of the Stuarts, vol. v. p. 106; Orme's Life of Owen, p. 344; Somers Tracts, vol. xii. p. 534. Indeed, Harwood frankly said in the House of Commons, in 1672, ‘Our aim is to bring all dissenting men into the Protestant church, and he that is not willing to come into the church should not have ease.’ Parl. Hist. vol. iv. p. 530. On the zeal with which this principle was carried out, see an account, written in 1671, in Somers Tracts, vol. vii. pp. 586–615; and the statement of De Foe, in Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. ii. pp. 443–444.

[735] Besides the correspondence which the Duchess of Marlborough preserved for the instruction of posterity, we have some materials for estimating the abilities of Anne in the letters published in Dalrymple's Memoirs. In one of them Anne writes, soon after the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience was issued, ‘It is a melancholy prospect that all we of the Church of England have. All the sectaries may now do what they please. Every one has the free exercise of their religion, on purpose, no doubt, to ruin us, which I think to all impartial judges is very plain.’ Dalrymple's Memoirs, appendix to book v. vol. ii. p. 173.