It is convenient in this connection to allude to a change in certain privileges which indirectly affected, to some extent, the revenues of the Church. Amongst feudal rights were those of tenures by Knight's-service, including the benefits of marriages, reliefs, and wardships. Though the profits derived from the Court of Wards were casual, they amounted sometimes to a considerable sum, but these and other contingent revenues were, by a Parliamentary arrangement, withdrawn from the Sovereign, and in lieu of the income thus forfeited, one moiety of the excise became settled on the Crown. The Act affected the revenues of the Church, and of this circumstance a remarkable illustration is afforded by a paper in the Record Office, in which the Bishop of Durham complains of a loss of £2,000 through the abolition of these courts.[123]
1660.
In connection with this reference to Episcopal revenues, it may be stated that at the Restoration nine Bishops of the old ecclesiastical régime were still alive. These were—Juxon, Bishop of London; Wren, of Ely; Piers, of Bath and Wells; Skinner, of Oxford; Roberts, of Bangor; Warner, of Rochester; King, of Chichester; Duppa, of Salisbury; and Frewen, of Lichfield and Coventry. They considered themselves, and, by their own Church they were regarded, as having a title to resume the episcopates from which they had been ejected. But whilst things remained in a transition state they seem to have acted with caution. Without a repeal of the Act of Charles I., which disqualified them for sitting in the House of Lords, they could not resume their seats. Nor until the purchasers of their episcopal estates were dispossessed, could they recover their property; nor, for a while, could they obtain possession of their palaces, or enter upon the possession of their sees. Those who were boldest in maintaining the theory, that the Episcopal Church at the Restoration resumed its rights and prerogatives, could not at once reduce that theory to practice.
It may be added that new Bishops were appointed to vacant sees; some account of their consecration, their history, and character, will be given hereafter.
PREFERMENTS.
Throughout the latter half of the year 1660 and onwards, applications by Episcopalian clergymen to be restored to their benefices, or to be favoured with higher preferment, were as numerous as they were urgent. They occur amongst the State Papers of that period, in all sorts of connections; and one volume of them alone—assigned in the Calendar to the month of August, 1660—contains no less than 143 documents of this description. One clergyman beseeches the King to recommend him to the Dean and Chapter of York, as Vicar-General of the diocese during a vacancy, the petitioner having suffered by resisting both the Covenant and the Engagement. A second begs the Deanery of Lichfield, he having lost a valuable living given him at Oxford by the late King as a reward for his loyalty. A third applies for the Archdeaconry of Hereford. A fourth prefers his claim to the Archdeaconry of Chester, on the ground of having been deprived and plundered for constancy in maintaining the doctrine and discipline of the Church.
There are many petitions for prebends, one from a clergyman who appears to have been a wit, for he begs the reversion of the next stall in Worcester Cathedral; only excepting that connected with the Margaret Professorship of Divinity—saying, that "though not likely to receive benefit thereby on account of his age, yet having long waited, as the cripple at the pool of Bethesda, it will comfort him to think that he dies cousin-german to some preferment." Another pleads, with some humour, that having sacrificed liberty to duty, he must now forfeit it in another way, even for debt, unless aided by His Majesty's generosity.[124] To most of these forms of application there are annexed certificates from various persons, particularly Dr. Sheldon, who seems to have taken a great deal of trouble to promote the interests of his clerical brethren. The hopes and fears which at other times agitate two or three candidates are, at a general election, multiplied by hundreds all over the kingdom; so at the Restoration,—what commonly is a flutter amongst a few aspirants after ecclesiastical promotion, was then the experience of multitudes at the same moment; and perhaps there never were before or since, within the same compass of time, so many clergymen on the tip-toe of expectation, doomed of course, in many cases, to utter disappointment.