CONVOCATION.
Another source of discord was found in the quarrel between Burnet and Woodward the Prolocutor. Some members complained of a breach of privilege, and an indignity to Convocation offered to the Prolocutor by Burnet, his Diocesan, who was said to have required him to attend a visitation, while he was occupied with Convocational duties, and to have issued a process against him for non-compliance. Burnet was also charged by Woodward himself, with declaring that Convocation had no privileges which it could plead.[356]
On the 9th of February, Beveridge “made a long and pathetic speech upon the dispute at present depending between the two Houses.” “He earnestly exhorted both sides to union, and to think of such methods of healing the breach as might secure the Lower House’s liberty, and yet not entrench on the Archbishop’s authority.” He so influenced his brethren, that a committee was appointed to consider an expedient for composing the differences relative to prorogations.[357] But to this note of peace there speedily succeeded another outburst of war.
1702.
CONVOCATION.
Never, perhaps, did Convocation pass through a more tumultuous day than Thursday, the 12th of February, ushered in though it was by a circumstance adapted to calm the spirit of ever so excited an assembly. Between 9 and 10 o’clock, as the members of the Lower House were pacing up and down the nave of Westminster Abbey—not then crowded with monuments as it is now—waiting for the commencement of business, and eager to know what turn discussions were about to take, news came that Woodward, the Prolocutor, had been taken ill—very ill, and could not possibly attend to his duties. He must send a deputy, said his friends, and the deputy sent, turned out to be Aldrich, Dean of Christ Church, a man of like spirit with the Prolocutor himself. Upon proceeding to read prayers in the Lower House, this deputy was interrupted by a question, whether he ought to take the chair, without receiving the sanction of the Archbishop to his appointment. Kennet and Birch hastily departed to inform his Grace of what had been done; but on their way through the cloisters[358] to the yard, into which opened the principal door to the Jerusalem Chamber, they were stopped by another member, who proposed that they should return and wait until after prayers. They did so. As Aldrich, encouraged by Atterbury, ventured to take the chair, “a tumultuous noise” arose. Opposing members “persisted with vehemence in their demand, that the Dean of Christ Church should relinquish the chair.” They were “peremptory in their manner”—they came “prepared for a rupture,” says a nettled member on the other side.[359] In the midst of the disturbance, Wickart, Dean of Winchester, and Archdeacon Beveridge, removed the instrument of substitution from the table, and carried it to the Upper House, where they met with a gracious reception. After the two had ventured so far to take the matter into their own hands, the Lower House came to a resolution formally to depute certain others to go and wait upon their Lordships; but these messengers, unlike their predecessors, were not admitted. Instead, an order was despatched for the whole House to attend. Accordingly they left Henry the VII.’s Chapel, the Dean of Christ Church at their head “in his square cap and a verger before him,”[360] and crowded up the steps to the Jerusalem Chamber, where, face to face with those whom they regarded as their enemies, they heard from the lips of the Archbishop a simple acknowledgment of a paper of consequence having been received, in allusion to their choice of a deputy, as “an incident of great moment;” and, besides, a formal announcement of prorogation until February the 14th. This Atterbury and his friends confessed to be “every way a surprise to them;” yet, nothing daunted, the Corypheus of the party—as the members were struggling through the small room, and the narrow passage which formed the only outlet from what was the Prelates’ audience-room—pushed them on, crying, “Away to the Lower House—to the Lower House.” In accordance with this boisterous suggestion, about forty-two members rushed towards the steps of Henry the VII.’s Chapel, and there, in defiance of archiepiscopal authority, placed their sub-prolocutor in the chair, intending by this method to constitute a House. Having, as they considered, thus saved their rights, they then formally adjourned to the same day as the Upper House had fixed. Woodward died on the 13th of February. The House now destitute of a Prolocutor—a body without a head—became organically incomplete, and therefore incapable of constitutional action. The first object of desire with the members struggling for independence, was to supply the deficiency; but this was what the Archbishop and his friends in the Upper House were determined to prevent—being by this time tired out of all patience with their impracticable brethren. When, therefore, the Lower House, on the 14th, formally communicated intelligence of the death of Dr. Woodward, his Grace curtly expressed surprise at the news, and at once ordered a schedule of prorogation for the 19th, the day after Ash Wednesday. Tenison persevered in the policy of prorogation. On the 29th he told his brethren, in plain words, he meant to do so, assuring them, on the one hand, that they were mistaken who thought that he and the Bishops wished to bring Convocation into disuse; and remarking, on the other, that such heats as theirs had given great scandal to those who understood not the controversy, but were much concerned that there should be any differences among men, who were by profession ministers of the gospel of peace.
1702.
The party who sympathized with the Bishops felt satisfied; a great majority felt otherwise. They met of their own accord in Henry the VII.’s Chapel, and having chosen a Chairman or Moderator, marched up to the little old anteroom, which had become a sort of outpost for the episcopal garrison, where the invincible besiegers were ever pressing upon the trenches of the upper citadel. They were now met by the Bishop of Lincoln, whom they requested to convey a message to the other Bishops, expressing a desire to elect a Prolocutor. A new point of difference immediately arose. As amidst the confusion of the crowded apartments, some members began to dictate a message to the effect that the House wished to proceed to an election, Kennet interposed, saying he hoped the message would not be worded so, for they were not a House, and were unable to act as such; and, moreover, some of the members, he being one, did not agree to the proposed message. The Bishop wrote down the communication as coming from certain members of the Lower House—a form of expression vehemently opposed by several of the listening and agitated group, and bringing down hot indignation upon him who had suggested it.
DEATH OF WILLIAM III.
One death had already disabled the Lower House, another death suddenly and completely extinguished its paralyzed and convulsed existence.