The passages, which contain the expressions referred to in the Service, are as under:—
"We yield Thee our unfeigned thanks and praise for the wonderful and mighty deliverance of our gracious Sovereign King James the First, the Queen, the Prince, and all the royal branches, with the Nobility, Clergy, and Commons of England, then assembled in Parliament, by popish treachery appointed as sheep to the slaughter, in a most barbarous and savage manner, beyond the examples of former ages."—The First Collect at Morning Prayer.
"By discovering and confounding their horrible and wicked enterprise, plotted and intended this day to have been executed against the King and the whole State of England, for the subversion of the government and religion established among us."—The Litany.
"Acknowledging Thy power, wisdom, and goodness in preserving the King, and the Three Estates of the Realm of England, assembled in Parliament, from the destruction this day intended against them."—The Communion Service.
"Who on this day didst miraculously preserve our Church and State from the secret contrivance and hellish malice of popish conspirators."—After the Prayer for the Church Militant.
CANON. EBOR. asserts that these Three Estates (the word "estates" being used of course in its second intention, as meaning the representatives, and not the orders en masse) are "the Lords Spiritual," "the Lords Temporal," and "the Commons," representing severally the clergy, the nobility, and the commonality. As "the Lords Spiritual" are always placed before "the Lords Temporal," he is obliged to rank the clergy before the nobility in spite of the order of precedency observed in the Collect. This seems to show that the clergy are not represented by the bishops. And in the Coronation Oath they are separately specified:
"And will you preserve unto the bishops and clergy of the realm, and to the churches committed to them, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them or any of them?"
This in an older oath ran thus:
"Et quil gardera le peas de seynt Eglise et al clergie et al people de bon accorde."
From these quotations it does not seem very faulty to infer, that the clergy as represented by Convocation are the second Estate of the realm; and are not, as represented by "the Lords Spiritual," the first, which is the Estate of the nobility represented by the Peers.