A Second Letter to the Bishop of Exeter

by Sir Edward Hall Alderson

Now to understand this properly, it will be well to divide this Supremacy both in Church and State into its two main branches—executive and legislative. Unless we do this, we shall fall into much error.

But before we discuss this question, let me call your attention to the important negative words of the Article and Oath of Supremacy, which in fact were the main reasons for framing it, and constitute its most important provision. We thereby deny all Supremacy, whether spiritual, ecclesiastical, or temporal, to any external power. In this all true members of the Church of England agree without any restriction whatever. I regret, however, to be obliged to add that some of our soi-disant members seem disposed (as extremes are always found to meet) to attribute an absolute Supremacy to the Crown—as absolute in fact as that claimed by the Bishop of Rome over his subjects—and if established, as fatally leading to the corruption of our beloved Church, as it has already done to the corruption of the Church of Rome. If any one person is to exercise absolute power in the Church of Christ, it matters not much whether it be the King or the Pope. Indeed, if antiquity is to decide it, the latter would have the better claim. But both are contrary, as I believe, to primitive antiquity. Let us proceed then to examine in detail the true executive and legislative Supremacy of the Crown in this country.

The executive supremacy of the king over the Church gives him full power, as our Article expresses it, of “restraining with the civil sword all wrong doers,” but no power of interfering in the ministrations of the Church. It is well put thus by the 25th of Henry VIII., c. 21, s. 19: “Provided always, That this Act, nor any thing or things therein contained, shall be hereafter interpreted or expounded, that your Grace, your nobles and subjects, intend by the same” (i.e., by denying the Pope’s power in England), “to decline or vary from the congregation of Christ’s Church in any things concerning the very Articles of the Catholic Faith of Christendom, or in any other things declared by Holy Scripture and the Word of God, necessary for your and their salvations, but only to make an ordinance by policies necessary and convenient to repress vice, and for good conservation of this realm in peace, unity, and tranquillity, from ravin and spoil, insuing much the old ancient customs of this realm in that behalf; not minding to seek for any relief, succours, or remedies, for any worldly things and human laws, in any cause of necessity, but within this realm at the hands of your highness, your heirs and successors, kings of this realm, which have and ought to have an imperial power and authority in the same, and not obliged in any worldly causes to any other superior.” These are plain and true words. No doubt King Henry and his successors claimed and exercised the complete executive power and judicial superintendence of the Church: in fact, all executive power, with one exception, mentioned in the Article on the supremacy, and which in a lively manner shows the limits. The ministry of God’s Word and the Sacraments is a part of the executive duties of the Church. These the Article expressly excepts, showing that even in executive matters the king does not interfere where they are purely spiritual.

He claims to appoint the Bishops; but this is, I conceive, according to the truth of the law, subject to examination as to fitness in some specific points and confirmation by the Church in the Archbishop’s Court. If the Archbishop or the guardian of the spiritualities refused this confirmation, or refused to consecrate, or do any other ecclesiastical act, wilfully and unjustly toward the Bishop elect or towards any other persons entitled to have these ecclesiastical acts performed, the king, through his chancellor, was by a commission of delegates to examine judicially into the question of right, and if after deciding the question against the Archbishop and enjoining him to do the act, that prelate still refused to obey, the king punished him for his disobedience, but did not himself proceed to do the act. He then deputed the power of doing it to two other spiritual prelates, to be specially named for the purpose. This jurisdiction is even now occasionally exercised when upon the accidental incapacity of the Archbishop a commission is granted by the Crown to Bishops to consecrate a Bishop elect here, or as it may be now, in the colonies. For the act being spiritual, seems to have been thought ultra vires of the king himself. So little did the king ever dream of exercising personally or by lay judges what some ill-informed people have since ascribed to him, pontifical or spiritual power.

The executive ecclesiastical power, however, he did claim and did exercise. But this also he did only in the same way as he proceeds in civil matters. He acted not personally, but by deputed judges. He determines ecclesiastical matters by ecclesiastical judges, as he does civil matters by civil judges. In both it is done by the law, a rule by which the king as well as the Church is bound. If it be a case of heresy, these judges are to ascertain what the law of the Church calls heresy and how it is to be punished. If they find the law, they apply it to the facts. But they do not make or pretend to alter the law: they have no power to do this. If they made as well as administered it, no man would be safe for a moment. To live subject to that would be to live under a pure despotism.

The only ground of complaint here is, if any, that unskilful and unlearned judges may be appointed. That is, if well founded, to be cured by appointing better. If laymen, from their course of reading and study or for any other reason, are unfit to be judges, then ecclesiastics should be selected for this purpose, as in former times they were, there being many instances in the books of Bishops sitting as delegates on ecclesiastical appeals. But the theory of the law is right, as it stands, as to the executive supremacy of the king.

Next we come to his legislative supremacy, which is not expressly touched at all by the oath of supremacy or the article on that subject. But it is understood no doubt in both. Here the supremacy is simply of order and rank, with one exception only (common to both civil and ecclesiastical supremacy), the power of the initiative as well as the veto. No law can be discussed in convocation at all without the initiative of the Crown first granted. This prerogative exists, but is not universal, in civil matters. In them it is confined to particular subjects when brought before the parliament. The difference however is one of degree and not of principle. Subject to this exception the king has the very same and no greater power in convocation than in parliament. He has no power of making or changing laws in either, but he has the power in both of preventing by his veto any change from being made. By his coronation oath he binds himself expressly to observe this and all other privileges of the Church faithfully, and it would be a clear breach of that oath to assent in parliament to a law altering the doctrines or ritual of the Church, unless such alteration had been previously submitted to convocation for their assent, or the law itself made expressly subject to their subsequent approbation. Both parliament and convocation must unite as they did when the Act of Uniformity was passed, to make according to our constitution in Church and State such a law.

It is probable indeed that the discipline of the Church also falls within the same rule, and it may be well doubted, whether in propriety the Crown or the Bishops should ever assent to such bills unless subject to the same assent of Convocation, and in the late somewhat arbitrary powers given to the Bishops over Curates, it is at least clear that it would have been but just if such powers had in some way been submitted to the judgment of the inferior Clergy in their lower House of Convocation, before they passed into a law. No doubt Parliament is unlimited in its power of legislation, but the true, and I trust real, security that in cases like these, it shall be obliged to proceed constitutionally, is the Coronation Oath of the King, which binds in these cases his conscience as to the exercise of his parliamentary veto.

Here then is the real legislative Supremacy of the King over the Church—as unobjectionable in reality, if exercised faithfully, as any law can be.

But there is an evil no doubt—and the real evil is this. The legislative power of the Church since Bishop Hoadley’s days has fallen into complete abeyance. I do not stop to inquire whether there were not then good reasons for suspending it. Probably there were. But it is a necessary branch of our constitution, and the Crown ought to be advised occasionally to suffer the Convocation to deliberate on Church matters. There is no fear of abuse so long as the Crown retains the initiative as to all the subjects of debate. But no system of law can well stand which is not accompanied by a power of amending from time to time those errors to which all human institutions are liable, and which from changes of manners and habits become in time more and more apparent. A qualified employment of the Church Legislature is essential to the healthy action of the English Church. Let me take the Gorham controversy as an instance. There was a decision of five Judges and two Archbishops, with one Judge and the Bishop of London dissenting, which overruled the opinion of the Bishop of Exeter, the diocesan, and that of the Judge of the Arches, Sir Herbert Jenner Fust. Surely that was a case in which the expressions of the written law were so doubtful, that a declaratory Act of Convocation to avoid such doubts in future, was, to say the least of it, very desirable. Again, with respect to discipline. Would it not be reasonable and decent at this moment for the Crown to ask the advice of the whole body of the Clergy as to the proper limits of Episcopal power over themselves, and the best mode of enforcing discipline and faithful obedience to the ritual of the Church? Would not this be far better, to say the least of it, than the late somewhat irregular proceeding of the majority of the Bishops in giving opinions without any jurisdiction to enforce them, and offering advice which every one is at liberty to follow or reject at his pleasure? And why might not her Majesty have been advised instead of sending a letter respecting Lord Ashley’s monster petition to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to have referred that petition in a constitutional manner to Convocation, whose decision would have been of real value, inasmuch as it would have bound the Clergy by laying down a proper rule for their obedience? And how would Parliament be the worse for a little information on such subjects from those best acquainted with their details? The absence of this proper action of the Church renders indeed the presence of the Bishops in the Upper House, which impedes their usefulness as residents within their respective dioceses, imperatively necessary; and I will add, that until this is altered, the presence of the inferior Clergy in the Lower House ought not to have been prohibited, as it was within our own recollection. Perhaps however it would be better for both if they confined themselves to a healthy action in Convocation, and if both Houses consisted of laymen alone, and as a substitute for Ecclesiastical Peers or Members adopted as a standing order that no laws, relating to the doctrine, ritual, or discipline of the Church directly, should be passed until after or subject to the approval of Convocation. In this way both Bishops and Clergy would give to Cæsar, by abstaining from political questions altogether, the things of Cæsar, and to God, by retaining in spiritual matters the complete power of preventing all improper alterations in the Church—the things of God. On the other hand, the Parliament would not abdicate its supreme functions of legislation.