By the Act of the 13th Charles II. cap. 12, which restored the jurisdiction of the ordinary Ecclesiastical Courts, but abolished that of the extraordinary High Commission Court, it was expressly provided that there should no longer be any administration of the ex-officio oath, by which persons were compelled to accuse, or to purge themselves of any criminal matter. But as it has been recently remarked, whilst the letter of this enactment seems to have been so far observed, that an accused clergyman or other person, liable to deprivation, could not be obliged to answer on oath as to the truth of the charge,—the spirit of the enactment, in certain other cases, was violated to a great extent. For, in the administration of articles to a defendant in a cause of correction, the practice was to charge the commission of the offence on the ground of public “fame,” without specific evidence, and to require the defendant to answer on oath, who, if he failed to do so, was treated as having admitted the truth of the allegation. Thus, instead of the burden of proving guilt being thrown on the accuser, the burden of establishing innocence seems to have rested on the accused, and he became liable to be called upon to make “canonical purgation;” i.e., “to declare on oath that he was not guilty of the offence, and to produce a certain number of witnesses, as ‘compurgators,’ to swear that they believed his declaration to be true.”[292] This circumstance shows, in what a limited degree the Act of Charles II., restoring the ecclesiastical courts, diminished even oppressive tendencies; how, whilst it altered them in form, it left scope for the exercise of their former spirit, and how they remained instruments of injustice and cruelty, to be used by those who were malignantly or resentfully disposed. At the same time we should carefully weigh the number and the nature of the appeals made from the judgment of the lower to the decision of the higher authority. To this I will presently direct attention.
The second circumstance is that the High Court of Delegates was restored upon the return of Charles II. This court, which had from ancient times received secular appeals, acquired, in the reign of Henry VIII., the power of deciding ecclesiastical appeals from all ordinary ecclesiastical tribunals in England and Wales.[293] It appears that the only court not within its appellate jurisdiction was the Court of High Commission. Cases of doctrine, and cases of discipline, unsatisfactorily litigated in the lower courts, came up before this tribunal of delegates for final review and decision. The constitution of the court was remarkable. Although exercising a supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the lay element preponderated. Of the fifty-one Commissions between 1660 and 1688, two were composed of Bishops and Civilians; eighteen included Bishops, Judges, and Civilians; one contained Peers, Bishops, Judges, and Civilians; eleven of the Commissions were directed to Civilians only, and nineteen to Judges and Civilians.[294] It may be added that soon after the Restoration the use of Latin was resumed in their proceedings. The fact, with regard to the strong infusion of laical power into the constitution of this important court, not only throws an instructive light upon the relations of Church and State, but it proves that for none of the acts of this court, at that time under consideration, whether righteous or unrighteous, are the clergy to be held entirely responsible; with some of them they had nothing whatever to do.
ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS.
It is to the Parliamentary Returns of the appeals made to the delegates, that we are indebted for the knowledge of the following ecclesiastical causes:—
A clergyman, named Slader, Rector of Birmingham, had been brought before the Court of Arches on an appeal from the Consistory of Lichfield, and finally his case came before the Court of Delegates, by which court he was decreed to be sequestered ab officio suo clericali. He stood charged with having forged letters of orders, with disaffection to the King, with preaching amongst the Quakers, railing in the pulpit at the parishioners, and indulging in swearing, gaming, perjury, and incest. Some of these charges were very scandalous, but to them were added others of a most curious and extraordinary description,—for this man was accused of practising jugglery, of pretending, on one occasion, to cut off his son’s head, and to set it on again, and of “taking money for the sight thereof.” One Dr. Meades was deprived, on an appeal from the Arches, and from the Consistory of Winchester, for non-residence, neglect of duty, allowing the vicarage to fall into decay, and for not having read the Thirty-Nine Articles within the time prescribed by law, after his institution and induction. William Woodward, Rector of Trotterscliffe, Kent, was charged with “having uttered various profane and blasphemous speeches, e.g., that the Lord’s Prayer was not commanded to be used; that the Church of England might as well be called the Church of Rome; that he had attained such perfection that he could not sin; and that one William Francklin, a ropemaker, who had lived with him, was the Christ and Saviour.” Sentence of deprivation was ultimately pronounced in this case.[295] Theophilus Hart, in the diocese of Peterborough, was corrected, punished, and condemned in costs, for not conforming in the exercise of his clerical office: he did not baptize infants with the sign of the cross, he did not catechise the young, and he omitted many parts of the services prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer. Woodward and Hart seem to be the only clergymen during this period who appealed to the delegates in proceedings carried on against false doctrine. One Clewer, Vicar of Croydon, figures in local history as a very disgraceful person; he was tried and burnt in the hand at the Old Bailey for stealing a silver cup. His case came before the Court of Appeal, and the deprivation previously pronounced by the Court of Arches received confirmation.[296]
The laity, as well as the clergy, being subject to the ecclesiastical tribunals, causes relating to the former, after being tried elsewhere, were finally adjudicated by the delegates. One man was proceeded against for having three children unbaptized, and for not receiving the Lord’s Supper; a second, for absence from public worship; a third, for not keeping in repair the chancel of the parish church; and a fourth, for contempt of the law, and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, in teaching boys without having obtained any faculty or license.[297] Ancient forms of Church discipline sometimes followed conviction. A party, charged in the Consistory Court of Norwich with defamation, was sentenced to do penance in the parish church of Darsham, by repeating, after the minister, words of confession and contrition.[298]
ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS.
As to the number of appeals there may be reckoned up forty-five during a little more than a century, between the year 1533—the date of the commencement of the ecclesiastical power of the court—and the year 1641, the period of its temporary suppression. There were forty-six between the date of its re-establishment, in 1660, and the year of the Revolution, 1688. This would look as if more dissatisfaction was felt with the judgment of the lower ecclesiastical authority during this twenty-eight years after the Restoration, than during the hundred and eight years before the outbreak of the Parliament struggle with Charles I. Hence it might be inferred that the grievances of ecclesiastical rule increased in the reign of Charles II.; but this would not be a fair deduction, because the High Commission Court, which had been by far the most oppressive tribunal for spiritual causes, and which had been exempted from the supervision of the Court of Delegates, remained no longer in existence; and thereby a large amount of injustice was prevented. Forty-five appeals in twenty-eight years from all the ecclesiastical courts of England and Wales do not form a large number, and would seem to show that trials in ecclesiastical cases must have been much less numerous than when the High Commission existed in full play. Very few cases of appeal touching Dissenters appear in the records of the Court of Delegates. Dissenters, of course, were subject to trouble and annoyance from Archidiaconal and Consistorial authorities, but the main sorrows of Nonconformity, under the last two Stuarts’ reign, arose from the operation of Statute Law, as found in the Uniformity, Conventicle, and Five Mile Acts.
Amongst instances of discipline exercised by Bishops upon the clergy, there occurred one so striking and curious that it deserves particular mention. Dr. Lloyd, who held the see of Peterborough from 1679 to 1685, and was thence transferred to Norwich, seems to have been extraordinarily strict in the discharge of his episcopal functions, and to have visited offending ministers with public punishment. In accordance with his habitual zeal for purity in the faith and morals of the Church, he required the following recantation to be read in his cathedral by the person whose name is mentioned, and whose case is thus described:—“I, Thomas Ashenden, being deeply sensible of the foul dishonour I have done to our most holy religion, and the great scandal I have given by a late profane abuse of the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments, which I wrote and caused to be published, do here, in the presence of God, and of His ministers, and of this congregation, most heartily bewail, with unfeigned sorrow, both that notorious offence, and also all my other sins, which betrayed me into it, most humbly begging forgiveness of God, and of his Church, whose heaviest censures I have justly deserved. And as I earnestly desire that none of my brethren (much less our holy function or the Church) may be the worse thought of by any, by reason of my miscarriages, so I do faithfully promise, by God’s grace, to endeavour to behave myself hereafter so religiously in my place and calling, that I may be no more a discredit to them. In which resolution that I may persist, I beg and implore the assistance of all your prayers, and desire withal, that this my retractation and sincere profession of repentance, may be made as public as my crimes have been, that none may be tempted hereafter to do evil by my example.”[299]
NONCONFORMIST PLACES OF WORSHIP.