The next year we are told that, in a (national) council at Westminster, the Pope's legate presiding, the Archbishop of York, "disdaining to sit at the left hand of the legate, forced himself into the lap of the Archbishop of Canterbury, but was immediately knocked down by the other bishops and clergy, severely beaten, and thrust out of the council!" (Hoveden ap. Wilkins, vol. i. p. 485.) How far the Northern Convocation supported their burly prelate in these claims I do not know; but I note that in those days the disorderly conduct of the clergy was not made a pretext for the indefinite suspension of synodical functions; and I query whether the clergy might not be trusted to behave quite as well in the nineteenth century.
But to return to the Convocation of York. There is a curious letter, A.D. 1661, from Accepted Frewen, Archbishop of York, to the Convocation, desiring them to send up to London some of their members duly commissioned on their part to sit with the Lower House of Canterbury for the review of the Liturgy. In this letter the archbishop says that himself and the other bishops of the province were sitting with the bishops of the southern province in their House. A similar expedient for constituting a quasi-national synod seems to have been resorted to upon some earlier occasions; but the Convocation of York still passed in due form by their own separate decree what was so agreed upon. The Articles were thus subscribed by our Convocation in 1571, and the Canons in 1604 and 1640.
Since then the Convocation of York has been regularly summoned, met, adjourned, and been prorogued, without even the dutiful address to the crown, which is regularly discussed and adopted in Canterbury. In the year 1847, a spasmodic attempt at life was manifested in this venerable and ill-used institution. Archbishop Harcourt had consented that an address to the crown should be adopted, and himself procured a draft to be approved by the bishops. His grace however died before the day of meeting. Some difficulty was experienced by the officials, both in York and London, as to the course to be pursued; but a precedent having been pointed out in the reign of James I., when Archbishop Hutton died after summoning the Convocation and before its assembly, a writ was issued from the crown to the dean and chapter at York to elect a præses for the Convocation during the vacancy of the archbishoprick. They appointed the canon who happened to be in residence; an unusually large attendance was given; the Convocation was opened, the names called over, and then the officials had reached the limit of their experience; according to their precedents we ought all to have been sent away. The address however was called on by the præses, being apparently quite unaware that a prolocutor should be chosen by the clergy before they proceeded to business. Such an officer probably seemed to the dignitary already in the chair like a second King of Brentford "smelling at one rose," and the demand was refused. Further difficulties ensued, of course, the moment the debate was opened; and finally, the præses, determined not to be tempted out of his depth, rose all at once, and read the fatal formula which restored our glorious Chapter House to its silent converse with the ghosts. The Convocation has never since been heard of.
CAN EBOR.
THE OLD COUNTESS OF DESMOND.
(Vol. iv., p. 305.)
If your correspondent A. B. R. will refer to Walpole's Fugitive Pieces he will find a minute inquiry into the person and age of this long-lived lady. This is doubtless the dissertation alluded to by C. (Vol. ii., p. 219.) Pennant has two notices of the countess in his Scotch tours. In that of 1769 (which somewhat strangely follows the one of 1772), he gives at p. 87. the engraving spoken of (Vol. iv., p. 306.), apparently taken from the original at Dupplin Castle. It differs a little from R's. description of another portrait, as the cloak is strapped over the chest, not held by a button. In 1772 Pennant again describes this portrait in his Tour in Scotland, vol. ii. p. 88., and speaks of four others, viz., first, at Devonshire House; second, at the Hon. John Yorke's seat, near Cheltenham; third, at Mr. Scott's, printer; and the fourth, in the Standard Closet, Windsor Castle. At the back of the last is written with a pen "Rembrandt." "A mistake (says P.) as Rembrandt was not fourteen years of age (he was indeed only eight) in 1614, at which time it is certain the countess was not living."
In my copy of the Fugitive Pieces (the Strawberry Hill edition, presented by Walpole to Cole), I find the following manuscript note by Cole; an amplification of the passage from Walpole's letters quoted at p. 306.:—
"Being at Strawberry Hill in April, 1773, I saw there a copy of the picture commonly attributed to the old Countess of Desmond; but Mr. Walpole told me that there is sufficient proof that it is a painter's mother, I think Rembrandt's. However, by a letter from Mr. Lort, April 15, 1774, he assures me that on Mr. Pennant's calling at Strawberry Hill to see this picture, he was much chagrined at having a print of it engraved for his book, till Mr. Lort revived him by carrying him to a garret in Devonshire House, where was a picture of this same countess with her name on it, exactly corresponding to his engraved print. I remember a tolerable good old picture of her at Mr. Dicey's, prebendary of Bristol, at Walton in Bucks."
Walpole could not dismiss Pennant without a disparaging remark. He is "a superficial man, and knows little of history or antiquity; but he has a violent rage for being an author." Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones: Pennant would not have displayed the ignorance which Walpole exhibits in the instance before us. In an inscription, which the latter gives, on a Countess of Desmond buried at Sligo, occurs the following contraction: "Desmoniæ Noie Elizabetha." Walpole says (Fugitive Pieces, p. 204.), "This word I can make no sense of, but sic originale; I take it to be redundancy of the carver. It seems to be a repetition of the last three syllables of Desmoniæ!"
The sarcastic observations which Walpole passes on the Society of Antiquaries, its members, and its publications, are so frequent and so bitter, that they must have been founded on some offence not to be pardoned. Were the remarks on the "Historic Doubts" by the president, Dean Milles, and by the Rev. Robert Masters (printed in the first two volumes of the Archæologia), regarded as satisfactorily confuting Walpole's arguments; or did he aim, but unsuccessfully, at the president's chair?