Convocation having solemnly assembled, and the usual preliminaries being accomplished, Atterbury was intent on going to work; but his correspondence indicates that he moved too fast to please some of his brethren, and that he had reason to apprehend they meant to reject his leadership. They had not proceeded many steps, when Dr. Ashurst and Dr. Freeman incurred Atterbury’s censure, because after the Archbishop’s form of prorogation had come down, and the Prolocutor had informed the House they were not to regard themselves as being prorogued until he told them they were, these two gentlemen, as the Archdeacon states, were very noisy, insisting upon it that they were actually prorogued, and that it was a dangerous thing for them, under such circumstances, to sit any longer. The Prolocutor immediately arose, and said, as these gentlemen were fidgeting about in their scarlet robes, that if they thought they were incurring any risk, they were at liberty to depart. They immediately rose, with the hope of a respectable following, but as they vanished, they were, if we may depend on an opponent’s report, followed only by a general smile, and the condemnation of their own party.[339]
Another question agitated the House the same day. Complaints were made of episcopal interference with the election of clergymen, and accordingly a resolution to that effect passed the House, supported by a large number, says one authority—by a small number, says another.[340] The same day a committee was appointed to investigate disputed elections—a step which, in the estimation of Low Churchmen encroached upon the episcopal prerogative, for they maintained that the Bishop with his suffragans must be the final judge of all such matters.[341]
CONVOCATION.
1701.
Robing themselves on the 28th of February, the members glided along the aisles of the Abbey up the steps of Henry the VII.’s Chapel, when they proceeded to business, without taking any notice of their right reverend superiors, who had also robed themselves that same morning, and sat down within the Jerusalem Chamber. It plainly appeared that the two ecclesiastical conclaves were becoming hostile camps. A message from the Archbishop soon reached the Lower House, asking for an explanation, why they went to prayers before the Bishops came. The question at issue now formally arose, and then began a lengthened contest, as to whether the Lower House had self-contained rights, like those of the Commons—a right of self-adjournment and prorogation, and a right to meet, consult, and resolve, without being dependent from step to step upon the will of Prelates. The High-Church party, so zealous in theory for episcopal order, thus in practice broke with their right reverend fathers. In the controversy was mixed up also an obstinate contention on the part of the Prolocutor about what was meant by the words, in hunc locum in the Archbishop’s schedule; to settle this point were added the words, vulgo vocatum Jerusalem Chamber. For a little while, some semblance of union continued. Each party treated the other with punctilious respect. Atterbury, indeed, at the commencement anticipated, in the matter of the address, a “tough dispute,” and, as he said this, resembled a war-horse snorting on the edge of a battle-field. He pressed the Lower House not to wait for the Lords, but to prepare an address of its own; yet, when an address came down to them, the Lower House heartily joined in it, only proposing a slight alteration, which the Prelates approved. Ripples quickly rose on the surface of debate. According to Atterbury, upon the 8th of March, the Dean of Peterborough, Dr. Freeman, already mentioned, behaved amiss, and threw out words reflecting on the Prolocutor, for which a censure was demanded, and would have followed, had the offender not begged pardon. The confused statement made to this effect, indicates that some of the Clergy resisted the highflown policy of their brethren; two days afterwards, however, we find both Houses amicably taking a journey to the pleasant village of Kensington, where stood His Majesty’s favourite palace. At half-past two on Monday afternoon, March the 10th, the Archbishop and Bishops, in their distinctive attire, and the Prolocutor in his cap and hood, and the rest of the Clergy following, took coach at the west end of the Abbey. They proceeded by Knightsbridge and the side of the Park—the trees beginning to bud with early spring, the people by the way watching the dignitaries as their faces peered through the windows of the lumbering vehicles—until, arriving at the Dutch-looking palace, with its prim gardens, the procession of the Clergy reached the Royal presence—the Bishops going to the right hand of the throne, the Prolocutor and the rest to the left. A loyal address was presented, and a gracious reply returned.
The tug of war, of which there had been omens before that pleasant excursion, began in earnest soon afterwards.
CONVOCATION.
The Lower House asserted its claim to independent action, to adjourn itself when and where it pleased, to originate and transact any business whatsoever and howsoever it pleased; always, it should be distinctly stated, choosing its time of sitting according to the time fixed by his Grace of Canterbury’s schedule. To accomplish what was designed, committees of the whole House were appointed, who claimed a right to sit, in this form at least, upon intermediate days, when many did so assemble under cover of a strict adherence to admitted rules; but others would not, counting it a breach of law in substance, if not in form. A matter of business, originating in the Lower House, without consultation with the Upper, and in known opposition to its wishes, was the examination of a certain heretical book—namely, Toland’s Christianity not Mysterious—the object of which is explained on the title page, “A Treatise showing that there is nothing in the Gospel contrary to Reason, nor above it, and that no Christian Doctrine can be called a Mystery.”
It should be stated, that at the same time another book, entitled, Essays on the Balance of Power, in which the author asserted, that men had been promoted in the Church who were remarkable for nothing but their disbelief in the Divinity of Christ—a statement intended to bring certain Bishops into disrepute—attracted the attention of the Upper House; upon which their Lordships caused to be affixed to the Abbey doors a paper calling upon the author, whoever he might be, to make good his assertions or to submit to punishment for so base and public a scandal. This was an extraordinary plan, reminding one—chiefly, however, by contrast as to importance—of Luther’s doctrinal theses affixed to the church gates at Wittenberg; and also recalling—more in the way of resemblance—how Archbishop Arundel’s citation of Lord Cobham was stuck on the entrance to Rochester Cathedral, to be defied by him to whom it was addressed.
1701.