On the accession of James I. the Puritans expressed their desire for ecclesiastical change in the Millenary Petition which purported to come from 1000 clergy; their requests were moderate, a sign of the success of Whitgift’s The Puritan rebellion. policy, but some could not have been granted without causing widespread dissatisfaction. At a conference between divines of the two parties at Hampton Court in 1604, James roughly decided against the Puritans. Some small alterations were made in the prayer-book, and a new version of the Bible was undertaken, which appeared in 1611 as the “authorized version.” In 1604 convocation framed a code of canons which received royal authorization. Refusal to obey them was punished with deprivation, and, according to S. R. Gardiner, about 300 clergy were deprived, though a 17th century writer (Peter Heylyn) puts the number at 49 only, which W. H. Frere (History of the English Church, 1558-1625, p. 321) thinks more credible. Conformity could still be enforced, but before long the Puritan party grew in strength partly from religious and partly from political causes. They would not admit any authority in religion that was not based on the scriptures; their opponents maintained that the church had authority to ordain ceremonies not contrary to the scriptures. In doctrine the Puritans remained faithful to the Calvinism in which most Englishmen of the day had been brought up; they called the high churchmen Arminians, and asserted that they were inclined to Rome. The Commons became increasingly Puritan; they were strongly Protestant and demanded the enforcement of the laws against recusants, who suffered much, specially after the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, though they were sometimes shielded by the king. The Commons regarded ecclesiastical jurisdiction with dislike, specially the Court of High Commission, which had developed from the ecclesiastical commissions of Elizabeth and was hated as a means of coercion based on prerogative. The bishops derived their support from the king, and the church in return supported the king’s claim to absolutism and divine right. It suffered heavily from this alliance. As men saw the church on the side of absolutism, Puritanism grew strong both among the country gentry, who were largely represented in the Commons, and among the nation at large, and the church lost ground through the king’s political errors. A restoration of order and decency in worship and the introduction of more ceremonial begun in James’s reign were carried on by Laud (q.v.) under Charles I. Laud aimed at silencing disputes about doctrine and enforcing outward uniformity; the Puritans hated ceremonial and wished to make every one accept their doctrines. Many of the reforms introduced by Laud after he became archbishop in 1633 were needful, but they offended the Puritans and were enforced in a harsh and tyrannical manner, for he lacked wisdom and sympathy. Under his rule nonconforming clergy were deprived and sometimes imprisoned. The cruel punishments inflicted by the Court of Star Chamber of which he was a member, the unpopularity of the High Commission Court, his own harsh dealing, and the part which he took in politics as a confidential adviser of the king, combined to bring odium upon him and upon the ecclesiastical system which he represented. The church was weak, for the Laudian system was disliked by the nation. A storm of discontent with the course of affairs both in church and state gathered. In 1640 Charles, after dissolving parliament, prolonged the session of convocation, which issued canons magnifying the royal authority and imposing the so-called “et cetera oath” against innovations on all clergy, graduates and others. The Long Parliament voted the canons illegal; Laud was imprisoned, and in 1642 the bishops were excluded from parliament. The civil war began in 1642; in 1643 a bill was passed for the taking away of episcopacy, in 1645 Laud was beheaded, and parliament abolished the prayer-book and accepted the Presbyterian directory, and from 1646 Presbyterianism was the legal form of church government. Many, perhaps 2000, clergy were deprived; some were imprisoned and otherwise maltreated, though a fifth of their former revenues was assigned to the dispossessed. The king, who was beheaded in 1649, might have extricated himself from his difficulties if he had consented to the overthrow of episcopacy, and may therefore be held a martyr to the church’s cause. The victory of the army over the parliament secured England against the tyranny of Presbyterianism, but did not better the condition of the episcopal clergy; the toleration insisted on by the Independents did not extend to “prelacy.” Churchmen, however, occasionally enjoyed the ministrations of their own clergy in private houses, and though their worship was sometimes disturbed they were not seriously persecuted for engaging in it. Non-delinquent or non-sequestrated private patronage and the obligation of tithes were retained. Community of suffering and the execution of Charles I. brought the royalist country gentry into sympathy with the clergy, and at the Restoration the church had the hold upon the affection of the laity which it lacked under the Laudian rule.
On the king’s restoration the survivors of the ejected clergy quietly regained their benefices. The Presbyterians helped to bring back the king and looked for a reward. Charles II. promised them a limited episcopacy and other The Restoration period. concessions, but his plan was rejected by the Commons. A conference at the Savoy between leading Presbyterians and churchmen in 1661 was ineffectual, and a revision of the prayer-book by convocation further discontented nonconformists. The parliament of 1661 was violently anti-Puritan, and in 1662 passed an Act of Uniformity providing that all ministers not episcopally ordained or refusing to conform should be deprived on St Bartholomew’s day, the 14th of August following. About 2000 ministers are said to have been ejected, and in 1665 ejected ministers were forbidden to come within five miles of their former cures. Though some bishops and clergy showed kindness to the ejected, churchmen generally approved of this oppressive legislation; they could not forget the wrongs inflicted on their church by the once triumphant Puritans. Nonconformist worship was made punishable by fine and imprisonment, and on the third offence by transportation. In 1672 Charles, who had secretly promised the French king openly to profess Roman Catholicism, issued a Declaration of Indulgence which applied both to Romanists and Protestant Nonconformists, but parliament compelled him to withdraw it, and, in 1673, passed a Test Act making reception of the holy communion and a denial of transubstantiation necessary qualifications for public office. Later, when the dissenters found friends among the party in parliament opposed to the crown, the church supported the king, and the doctrine of passive obedience was generally accepted by the clergy. The church was popular, and among the great preachers and theologians who adorned it in the Caroline period were Jeremy Taylor, Pearson, Bull, Barrow, South and Stillingfleet. The lower clergy were mostly poor, and their social position was consequently often humble, but the pictures of clerical humiliation after 1660 are generally overcoloured; the assertion that they commonly married servants or cast-off mistresses of their patrons has been disproved, and it is certain that men of good family entered holy orders. In accordance with an agreement between Archbishop Sheldon and Lord Chancellor Clarendon, the clergy ceased to tax themselves in convocation, and from 1665 have been taxed by parliament. James II., though a Romanist, promised to protect the church, and the clergy were on his side in the rebellion of the duke of Monmouth, who was supported by dissenters. The church and the nation, however, were strongly Protestant and were soon alarmed by his efforts to Romanize the country. James dispensed with the law by prerogative and appointed Romanists to offices in defiance of the Test Act. In 1688 he ordered that his declaration for liberty of conscience, issued in the interest of Romanism, should be read in all churches. His order was almost universally disobeyed. Archbishop Sancroft and six bishops who remonstrated against it were brought to trial, and were acquitted to the extreme delight of the nation. James’s attack on the church cost him his crown.
Sancroft and eight bishops would not belie their belief in the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience by swearing allegiance to William and Mary, and the archbishop, five bishops and over 400 clergy were deprived. Revolution period. Certain of these nonjuring bishops consecrated others and a schism ensued. The loss to the church was heavy; for among the nonjurors were many men of holy lives and eminent learning, and the fact that some suffered for conscience’ sake seemed a reproach on the rest of the clergy. After 1715 the secession became unimportant. Protestantism was secured from further royal attack by the Bill of Rights; and in 1701 the Act of Succession provided that all future sovereigns should be members of the Church of England. That the king’s title rested on a parliamentary decision was destructive of the clerical theory of divine right, and encouraged Erastianism, then specially dangerous to the church; for William, a Dutch Presbyterian, gave bishoprics to men personally worthy, but more desirous of union with other Protestant bodies than jealous for the principles of their own church. A bill for union was rejected in the Commons, where the church party had a majority, though one for toleration of Protestant dissenters became law. William, anxious for concessions to dissenters, appointed a committee of convocation for altering the liturgy, canons and ecclesiastical courts, but the Tory party in the lower house of convocation was strong and the scheme was abortive. A long controversy began between the two houses: the bishops were mostly Whigs with latitudinarian tendencies, the lower clergy Tories and high churchmen. During most of the reign convocation was suspended and the church was governed by royal injunctions, a system injurious to its welfare. It had been the bulwark of the nation against Romanism under James II., and the affection of the nation enabled it to preserve its distinctive character amid dangers of an opposite kind under William III. Its religious life was active; associations for worship and the reformation of manners led to more frequent services, the establishment of schools for poor children, and the foundation of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (S.P.C.K.) and for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (S.P.G.). This activity and the discord between the two houses of convocation continued during Anne’s reign. Anne was a strong church-woman, and under her the church reached its highest point of popularity and influence. Its supposed interests were used by the Tories for political ends. Hence the Occasional Conformity Act, to prevent evasion of the Test Act, and a tyrannical Schism Act, both repealed in 1718, belong rather to the history of parties than to that of the church. So, too, does the case of Dr Sacheverell, who was prosecuted for a violently Tory sermon. His trial, in 1710, caused much excitement; mobs shouted for “High Church and Dr Sacheverell,” and the lightness of his sentence was hailed as a Tory victory. Queen Anne is gratefully remembered by the church for her “Bounty,” which gave it the first-fruits and tenths (see [Annates] and [Queen Anne’s Bounty]).
With the accession of the Hanoverian line the church entered on a period of feeble life and inaction: many church fabrics were neglected; daily services were discontinued; holy days were disregarded; Holy Communion was The 18th century. infrequent; the poor were little cared for; and though the church remained popular, the clergy were lazy and held in contempt. In accepting the settlement of the crown the clergy generally sacrificed conviction to expediency, and their character suffered. Promotion largely depended on a profession of Whig principles: the church was regarded as subservient to the state; its historic position and claims were ignored, and it was treated by politicians as though its principal function was to support the government. This change was accelerated by the silencing of convocation. A sermon by Hoadly, bishop of Bangor, impugned the existence of a visible church, and the “Bangorian controversy” which ensued threatened to end in the condemnation of his opinions by convocation, or at least by the lower house. As this would have weakened the government, convocation was prorogued, letters of business were withheld, and from 1717 until 1852 convocation, the church’s constitutional organ of reform, existed only in name. Walpole during his long ministry, from 1721 to 1742, discouraged activity in the church lest it should become troublesome to his government. Preferment was shamelessly sought after even by pious men, and was begged and bestowed on the ground of political services. In this the clergy, apart from the sacredness of clerical office, were neither better nor worse than the laity; in morality and decency they were better even at the lowest point of their decline, about the middle of the century. While the church was inactive in practical work, it showed vigour in the intellectual defence of Christianity. Controversies of earlier origin with assailants of the faith were ably maintained by, among others, Daniel Waterland, William Law, a nonjuror, Bishop Butler, whose Analogy appeared in 1736, and Bishop Berkeley. A revival of spirituality and energy at last set in. Its origin has been traced to Law’s Serious Call, published in 1728. Law’s teaching was actively carried out by John Wesley (q.v.), a clergyman who from 1739 devoted himself to evangelization. Though his preaching awoke much religious feeling, specially among the lower classes, the excitement which attended it led to a horror of religious enthusiasm, and his methods irritated the parochial clergy. Some of them seconded his efforts, but far more regarded them with violent and often unworthily expressed dislike. While he urged his followers to adhere to the church, he could not himself work in subordination to discipline; the Methodist organization which he founded was independent of the church’s system and soon drifted into separation. Nevertheless, he did much to bring about a revival of life in the church. Several clergy became his allies, and some preached in Lady Huntingdon’s chapels before her secession. These were among the fathers of the Evangelical party: they differed from the Methodists in not forming an organization, remaining in the church, working on the parochial system, and generally holding Calvinistic doctrine, being so far nearer to Whitfield than to Wesley, though Calvinism gradually ceased to be a mark of the party. The Evangelicals soon grew in number, and their influence for good was extensive. They laid stress on the depravity of human nature, and on the importance of conscious conversion, giving prominence to the necessity of personal salvation rather than of incorporation with, and abiding in, the church of the redeemed. Prominent among their early leaders after they became distinct from the Methodists were William Romaine, Henry Venn and John Newton. Bishop Porteus of London sympathized with them, Lord Dartmouth was a liberal patron, and Cowper’s poetry spread their doctrines in quarters where sermons might have failed to attract. Religion was also forwarded in the church by the example of George III. During his reign the progress of toleration, though slow and fitful, greatly advanced both as regards Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters. The spirit of rationalism, which had been manifested earlier in attacks on revelation, appeared in a movement against subscription to the Articles demanded of the clergy and others which was defeated in parliament in 1772. The alarm consequent on the French Revolution checked the progress of toleration and was temporarily fatal to free-thinking; it strengthened the position of the church, which was regarded as a bulwark of society against the spread of revolutionary doctrines; and this caused the Evangelicals to draw off more completely from the Methodists. The church was active: the Sunday-school movement, begun in 1780, flourished; the crusade against the slave-trade was vigorously supported by Evangelicals; and the Church Missionary Society (C.M.S.), a distinctly Evangelical organization, was founded. Excellent as were the results of the revival generally, the Evangelicals had defects which tended to weaken the church. Some characteristics of their teaching were repellent to the young; they were deficient in theological learning, and often in learning of any kind; they took a low view of the church, regarding it as the offspring of the Protestant reformation; they expounded the Bible without reference to the church’s teaching, and paid little heed to the church’s directions. Dissent consequently grew stronger. By the Act of Union with Ireland the Churches of England and Ireland were united from the 1st of January 1801, and the continuance of the united church was declared an essential part of the union. No provision, however, was made giving the Irish clergy a place in convocation, which was evidently held unlikely to revive. The union of the churches was dissolved in 1871 by an act of 1869 for disestablishing the Irish Church.
Apart from the Evangelical revival, religion was advanced in the church. In 1811 the education of the poor was provided for on church principles by the National Society; the Church Building Society was founded in 1818; and the The Oxford Movement. colonial episcopate was started by the establishment of bishoprics in Calcutta in 1814, and in Jamaica and Barbados in 1824. Yet reforms were urgently needed. In 1813, out of about 10,800 benefices, 6311 are said to have been without resident incumbents (The Black Book, p. 34); the value of some great offices was enormous, while many of the parochial clergy were wretchedly poor. The repeal of the Test Act, long practically inoperative, in 1828, and Catholic emancipation in 1829, mark a change in the relations of church and state; and the Reform Bill of 1832 transferred political power from a class which generally supported the church to classes in which dissent was strong. The national zeal for reform was directed towards the church, not always in a friendly spirit. Yet wholesome changes were effected by legislation: dioceses were rearranged and two new bishoprics founded at Manchester and Ripon, the bishopric of Bristol, however, being suppressed; plurality and non-residence were abolished; tithes were commuted, and the Ecclesiastical Commission, which has effected reforms in respect of endowments, was permanently established in 1836. Some changes and proposals alarmed churchmen, specially as legislation for the church proceeded from parliament, while convocation remained silenced. Latitudinarian opinions revived, and the church was regarded merely as a human institution. Among the clergy generally ritual observance was neglected and rubrical directions disobeyed. A few churchmen, including Keble and Newman, set themselves to revive church feeling, and Oxford became the centre of a new movement. The publication of Keble’s Christian Year prepared its way, and its aims were declared in his assize sermon at Oxford on “National Apostasy” in 1833. Its promoters urged their views in Tracts for the Times, and were strengthened by the adhesion of Pusey. Hence they were nicknamed Tractarians or Puseyites. Their cardinal doctrine was that the Church of England was a part of the visible Holy Catholic Church and had unbroken connexion with the primitive church; they inculcated high views of the sacraments, and emphasized points of agreement with those branches of the Catholic Church which claim apostolic succession. Their party grew in spite of the opposition of low and broad churchmen, who, specially on the publication of Tract XC. by Newman in 1841, declared that its teaching was Romanizing. In 1845 Newman and several others seceded to Rome. Newman’s apostasy was a severe blow to the church, though permanent injury was averted by the steadfastness of Pusey. The Oxford movement was wrecked, but its effect survived both in the new high church party and in the church at large. As a body the clergy rated more highly the responsibilities and dignity of their profession, and became more zealous in the performance of its duties and more ecclesiastically minded. High churchmen carried out rubrical directions, and after a while began to introduce changes into the performance of divine service which had not been adopted by the early leaders of the party, were deprecated by many bishops, and excited opposition.
In 1833 the supreme jurisdiction of the Court of Delegates was transferred to the judicial committee of the privy council. Before this court came an appeal by a clerk named Gorham, whom the bishop of Exeter refused to institute to a benefice The church and the law courts. because he denied unconditional regeneration in baptism, and in 1850 the court decided in the appellant’s favour. The decision was followed by some secessions to Rome, and high churchmen were dissatisfied that spiritual questions should be decided by a secular court. The “papal aggression” of that year, by which Pius IX. appeared to claim authority in England, roused violent popular indignation which was used against the high church party. However, it afforded an argument for the revival of convocation, and, chiefly owing to the exertions of Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford, convocation again met in 1852 (see [Convocation]). Meanwhile broad church opinions were gaining ground to some extent owing to a reaction from the Oxford movement. Among the clergy the broad church party was comparatively small, but it included some men of mark. In 1860 appeared Essays and Reviews, a volume of essays by seven authors, of whom six were in orders. The book as a whole had a rationalistic tendency and was condemned by convocation: two of the essayists were suspended by the Court of Arches, but its judgment was reversed by the judicial committee. Crude attacks on the authority of the Scriptures and the position of the English Church with respect to it having been published by Colenso, bishop of Natal, he was deposed by his metropolitan, Bishop Gray of Cape Town, in 1863, but the judicial committee decided that the bishop of Cape Town had no coercive jurisdiction over Natal. Convocation declared Colenso’s books erroneous, abstaining in face of this judgment from acknowledging as valid the excommunication which Bishop Gray pronounced against him. It followed from the decision of the council that the English Church in a self-governing colony is a voluntary association. Opposition to the dogmatic principle in the church was maintained. Some practices introduced by clergy desirous of bringing the services of the church to a higher level came before the judicial committee in the case of Westerton v. Liddell in 1857, with a result encouraging to the ritualists, as they then began to be called. An increase in ritual usages, such as eucharistic vestments, altar lights and incense, followed. In 1859-1860 disgraceful riots took place at St George’s-in-the-East, London, where an advanced ritual was used. In 1860 the English Church Union was formed mainly to uphold high church doctrine and ritual, and assist clergy prosecuted for either cause, and in 1865 the Church Association, mainly to put down such doctrine and ritual by prosecution. A royal commission appointed in 1867 recommended that facilities should be granted for enabling parishioners aggrieved by ritual to gain redress, and in 1870 that a revised lectionary and a shortened form of service should be provided. A new lectionary was approved by the two convocations and enacted, and convocation having received letters of business in 1872 and 1874 drew up a shortened form of prayer which was also enacted, but the commission had no further direct results. Between 1867 and 1871 two decisions of the judicial committee were adverse to the ritualists, and by exciting dislike to the court among high churchmen indirectly led to an increase in ritual usages. Among those who adopted them were many self-devoted men; their practices, which they believed to be incumbent on them, were condemned as illegal, yet they saw the rubrics daily disregarded with impunity by others who trod the easy path of neglect. In 1873 a declaration against sacramental confession received the assent of the bishops, and in 1874 Archbishop Tait of Canterbury introduced a bill for enforcing the law on the ritualist clergy; it was transformed in committee, and was enacted as the Public Worship Regulation Act. It provided for the appointment of a new judge in place of the old ecclesiastical judges, the officials principal, of the two provinces. Litigation increased, the only check on prosecutions being the right of the bishop to veto proceedings, and in 1878-1881 four clergymen were imprisoned for disobedience to the orders of courts against whose jurisdiction they protested. In consequence of the scandal raised by this mode of dealing with spiritual causes, a royal commission on ecclesiastical courts was appointed in 1881, but its report in 1883 led to no results, and the bishops strove to mend matters by exercising their veto. Advanced and illegal usages became more frequent. Proceedings in respect of illegal ritual having been instituted against Bishop King of Lincoln, the archbishop of Canterbury (Benson) personally heard and decided the case in 1890, and his judgment was upheld by the judicial committee (see [Lincoln Judgment]). The spiritual character of the tribunal and the authority of the judgment which sanctioned certain usages and condemned others, had a quieting effect. Increase in ritualism, however, caused agitation in 1898, and in 1899 and 1900 the two archbishops, Temple of Canterbury and Maclagan of York, delivered “opinions” condemning the use of incense and processional lights, and the reservation of the consecrated elements. Finding himself unable to put down illegal practices, Bishop Creighton of London adopted a policy of compromise which was followed by other bishops, and encouraged illegality. Disregard of law both in excess and defect of ritual being common, a royal commission on ecclesiastical discipline was appointed in 1904. The commissioners presented a unanimous report in 1906, its chief recommendations being, briefly, that practices significant of doctrines repugnant to those of the English Church should be extirpated; that the convocations should prepare a new ornaments rubric, and frame modifications in the conduct of divine service; that the diocesan and provincial courts and the court of final appeal should be reformed in accordance with the recommendations of 1883, the last to consist of a permanent body of lay judges who on all doubtful questions touching the doctrine or use of the church should be bound by the decision of an episcopal assembly; that the Public Worship Regulation Act should be repealed, and the bishops’ power of veto abolished.
Since the Oxford movement the church has developed wonderful energy. Yet it is beset with difficulties and dangers both from within and without. Within, besides difficulties as regards ritual, it has to contend against Present life. rationalism, which has been stimulated by scientific discoveries and speculations, and far more by Biblical criticism. While this criticism has been used by many as a means to a fuller comprehension of divine revelation, much of it is simply destructive, and has led to ill-considered expressions of opinion adverse to the doctrine of the church. From without, the church has been threatened with disestablishment both wholly and as regards the dioceses within the Welsh counties; and the education of the poor, which from early days depended on its care, has largely been taken out of its hands (see [Education]). The amount contributed by the church to elementary education, including the maintenance of Sunday schools, in 1907-8 was £576,012. During the last sixty years the church has strengthened its hold on the loyalty of the nation by its increased efficiency. Its bishops are laborious and active. Since 1876 the home episcopate has been increased by the creation of the dioceses of Truro, St Albans, Liverpool, Newcastle, Southwell, Wakefield, Bristol, Southwark and Birmingham, so that there are now (1910) thirty-seven diocesan bishops, aided by twenty-eight suffragan and eight assistant bishops, and a further subdivision of dioceses is contemplated. At no other time probably have the clergy been so industrious. As a rule they are far better instructed in theology than forty years ago, but they have not advanced in secular learning. Changes in the university system have contributed to draw off able young men to other professions which offer greater worldly advantages. The poverty of many of the clergy stands in strong contrast to the wealth around them. Of 14,242 benefices 4704 are said to be below £200 a year net value. The value of £100 tithe rent charge has sunk (1909) to £69: 18 : 5¼, the average value since the Commutation Act of 1836 being £94 : 3 : 2¾. The number of assistant clergy is (1910) about 7500, in spite of the hardships often attending clerical life, the supply of men being kept up. The Queen Victoria Clergy Fund and other voluntary associations and various educational institutions have been founded to relieve clerical distress. In the church at home there is much energy in numberless directions: cathedral churches have become centres of religious activity, and in parish churches the administration of the Holy Communion and weekday services are frequent. Many of the laity co-operate in church work and liberally support it. During the years 1898-1907 598 churches were built or rebuilt, and during twenty-four years, 1884-1907, the voluntary offerings for church building were £27,612,709, and for endowments and parsonages £6,116,592, yet church extension fails to keep pace with the increase of the population. Evangelistic efforts, the relief of the sick and poor, and the inculcation of temperance are zealously carried on. Good work is done by twenty-six sisterhoods and several institutions of deaconesses, and one or two communities of celibate clergy. In the British colonies and India the episcopate consists (1909) of seven archbishops with two coadjutors; there are also seventy diocesan bishops, and in other parts of the world thirty missionary bishops. The S.P.G. has 847 ordained ministers, including thirty chaplains in Europe, besides many female missionaries; the C.M.S. has 793 ordained ministers, and many other missionaries of both sexes; the Zenana Missionary Society has a staff of 1288; other church societies for foreign missions are vigorous, and the S.P.C.K. in addition to its work at home spends large sums in furthering the church abroad. The benefits arising from conference have increasingly been valued since the revival of convocation. Appreciation of the importance of lay support and counsel has led to the institution of two voluntary elective assemblies called Houses of Laymen, one for each province, and in 1905 an association of the four houses of convocation and the two lay assemblies was formed with the name of the Representative Church Council. During the last forty years diocesan conferences, in which the laity are represented, have become universal, while ruridecanal and other meetings of a like kind are general. An annual church congress, established in 1861, held its forty-ninth meeting in 1909. Of wider importance are the Lambeth conferences, held since 1878 at intervals of ten years, to which the bishops of the English Church and the churches in communion with it are invited, and meet under the presidency of the archbishop of Canterbury. The first of these conferences, which illustrate the dignity of the see founded by St Augustine and now the head of a vast quasi-patriarchate, was held under the presidency of Archbishop Longley in 1867 (see [Lambeth Conferences] and [Anglican Communion]).
Authorities.—General Histories, Narrative: J. Collier, Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain (to 1685), ed. T. Lathbury (9 vols., London, 1852); T. Fuller, Church History (to 1648), ed. J. S. Brewer (Oxford, 1845), valuable near the author’s own time; C. Dodd, Church History of England (to 1625, by a Roman Catholic), ed. M. A. Tierney (5 vols., London, 1839-1843); Dean W. F. Hook, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury (to 1663) (12 vols., London, 1860-1879); G. G. Perry, Students’ English Church History (to 1884) (London, 1887), a carefully written book; A History of the English Church, ed. Stephens and Hunt, in 8 vols., noticed below under various periods; H. O. Wakeman, An Introduction to the History of the Church of England (London, 1896), a brightly written manual by a pronounced high churchman. Documents: D. Wilkins, Concilia (446-1717) (4 vols. fol., London, 1737), a splendid work; A. W. Haddan and Bishop W. Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents (3 vols., Oxford, 1869-1873), supersedes Wilkins so far as it goes, but deals with English Church only to 870, with Welsh, Scottish and Cumbrian churches to later dates; H. Gee and W. J. Hardy, Documents of English Church History (to 1700) (London, 1896), useful for students. Constitutional: Bishop W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England (parts of) (3 vols., revised ed., Oxford, 1895-1897), a work of great learning; F. Makower, Constitutional History of the Church of England, from the German (London, 1895); F. W. Maitland, Roman Canon Law in the Church of England (London, 1898), authoritative. (See under [Convocation].)
From 597: Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. C. Plummer (2 vols., Oxford, 1896), the primary authority to 731, trans. by J. A. Giles (Bohn’s Library) and others; see also Eddi’s contemporary “Vita Wilfridi,” in Historians of York, ed. James Raine, Rolls series (3 vols., 1879-1894); W. Bright, Early English Church History (to 709) (3rd ed., Oxford, 1897), a learned and beautiful book; articles in Dictionary of Christian Biography (to 9th century), ed. W. Smith and H. Wace (4 vols., London, 1877-1887). Later Anglo-Saxon: In Chronicles and biographies, as Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Two of the Saxon Chronicles, ed. C. Plummer (2 vols., 1892), trans. by B. Thorpe, Rolls series (1861), and others; Asser, Life of Alfred, ed. W. H. Stevenson (Oxford, 1904), trans. by Giles; Memorials of Dunstan, ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls series (1874). Modern: J. Lingard, History of the Anglo-Saxon Church (2 vols., London, 2nd ed., printed 1858); W. Hunt, History of the English Church, 597-1066, ed. Stephens and Hunt (London, revised ed., 1901).
For later medieval times: (1) Chroniclers, &c., after 1066, as Florence of Worcester, ed. B. Thorpe, Eng. Hist. Soc. (2 vols., 1878), trans. by J. Stevenson in Church Historians (London, 1853); Symeon of Durham, ed. T. Arnold, Rolls series (2 vols., 1882); Eadmer (for Archbishop Anselm), ed. M. Rule, Rolls series (1884); William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum, &c. (to 1152), ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls series (2 vols., 1887), and Gesta pontificum, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, Rolls series (1870); (John of Salisbury?) Historia pontificalis (for Archbishop Theobald, 1139-1161), ed. Pertz, Rerum Germ. scriptt. xx.; Materials for the Life of Archbishop Becket, ed. J. C. Robertson, Rolls series (7 vols., 1875-1885); Giraldus Cambrensis (12th century), Gemma ecclesiastica and Speculum ecclesiae, Works ii. and iv., ed. J. S. Brewer, Rolls series (1862, 1873); Matthew Paris, Chronica majora (to 1259), ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls series (7 vols., 1880-1883), and many more. (2) Letters, as Archbishop Lanfranc, Epistolae, ed. Giles (Oxford, 1844); Archbishop Anselm, Epistolae, ed. Migne (Paris, 1863); Robert Grosseteste, Epistolae, ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls series (1861), and others. (3) Bishops’ Registers, as Registrum J. Peckham (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1279-1292), ed. C. T. Martin, Rolls series (3 vols., 1882-1886); Exeter Registers, ed. Hingeston-Randolph (5 vols., 1889); Registers of Bishops Drokensford and Ralph of Shrewsbury, ed. W. H. Dickinson and T. S. Holmes, Somerset Record Soc. (3 vols., 1887, 1895-1896), and others. For Wycliffe and early Lollards see [Wycliffe]. R. Pecock, Repressor of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy, ed. C. Babington, Rolls series (2 vols., 1860); and T. Gascoigne, Loci e libro veritatum, ed. J. T. Rogers (Oxford, 1881), which gives ample notices of abuses, should be consulted for 15th century. Modern books: W. R. W. Stephens, The English Church, 1066-1272 (revised edition, 1904), and W. W. Capes, The English Church in the 14th and 15th Centuries (1900), both ed. Stephens and Hunt (London); J. Raine, Archbishops of York (ends at 1373) (London, 1863); F. A. Gasquet, Henry III. and the Church (London, 1905). Biographical: Dean R. W. Church, Anselm (London, 1870); M. Rule, Life and Times of St Anselm (written from a Roman Catholic standpoint) (2 vols., London, 1883); C. de Rémusat, Vie de S. Anselme (Paris, 1868); G. G. Perry, St Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln (London, 1879); F. S. Stevenson, Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (London, 1899), and others.