The genuineness of these entries is beyond all suspicion. Had they been made for a controversial purpose, they would have been used earlier in the controversy. Although the diary contains various inaccuracies—e.g., the date assigned to Parker's election, which is before the real date of his congé d'elire, and the loose use of the term “mad,” which, in regard to the bishops at Bow Church, should stand for confirmation, and in Parker's case for consecration—still, it is evidence that on the date given in the Register something was done to Parker which could be described as “being made bishop.” Bow Church was the regular place for confirmation, Lambeth for consecration. The fact that the five, or rather six, bishops were consecrated on S. Thomas's day, on the eve of which they had been confirmed, although this last was at Lambeth, and not at Bow Church, makes the confusion in their case not unnatural.
4. There is a detailed memorandum of the consecration, in a contemporary hand, preserved among the MSS. of Foxe, who died in 1587, “probably nearly of the same age as the Register itself, perhaps even older”—i.e., older than the Register in the condition in which we now possess it. This document has been but recently introduced into the controversy, and will be again appealed to when the actual condition of the Register is under consideration.
5. Stapleton's assertion that “the Bishoppes were ordered, not according to the acte 28 (25) H. VIII., but according to an acte of Edw. VI., repealed by Queen Mary, and not revived in the first year of Q. Eliz.”
6. Act 8 Eliz., cap. 1, not only lays down the law for the future, but enacts that all acts done “about a confirmation or consecration, in virtue of the queen's letters-patent, were good and perfect; and that all persons consecrated bishops according to the order of 5 and 6 Edward VI. were rightly made and consecrated.” This is equivalent to an assertion that such consecration had actually taken place.
In addition to these proofs, there are various incidental references to Parker's consecration on the 17th in contemporary works and letters, which have been carefully collected by Mr. Bailey in his Defensio, p. 19.
Altogether, there is no gainsaying the evidence for the substantial correctness of the Lambeth Register. At the same time, Canon Estcourt shows, we think, conclusively that the existing Lambeth MS., as we have it, is not the original record of what took place, but rather a glossed version thereof, in which certain important and awkward facts are, without being denied, carefully suppressed. Besides the Lambeth MS., there are two others; one in the State Paper Office, the other in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The former, to judge by its corrections, would seem to have been a rough draft, and was probably submitted to Cecil for approval before the registration. Canon Estcourt thinks that the Cambridge MS. was a transcript from [pg 474] that in the State Paper Office, inasmuch as they agree in giving the form, “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,” in Latin, whereas that of Lambeth has it in English. Because of this and other variations, neither of these MSS. can be regarded as a transcript from that of Lambeth, or as tending to authenticate its present condition.
Canon Estcourt prints the Foxe MS., of which we have spoken, side by side with the Lambeth Register; and we see that, whilst in the former Barlow is distinctly stated to have been the consecrator, and the rite used that of Edward VI., the latter makes no distinction between Barlow and the other three, and makes no reference whatever to the ordinal of Edward VI.
Whether the Foxe MS. is a commentary upon the Register or upon the rough draft, or, as Canon Estcourt is inclined to think, is taken from the Register as it originally stood, it is, anyhow, the testimony of a contemporary ally of the parties concerned to the existence of important circumstances which the existing Register carefully suppresses.
It is difficult for us—as, indeed, it was for Catholics of the generation immediately succeeding that of Elizabeth's accession—to understand the nervous anxiety that possessed the Protestant party lest they should give their enemies the slightest legal pretext against them. The completeness of Elizabeth's triumph naturally tended to obliterate, in the minds of her victims, the precarious condition of parties in the beginning of her reign. There is, however, ample testimony that this nervousness did exist. When Horne, the Elizabethan Bishop of Winchester, tendered Bonner, a prisoner in the Marshalsea, the oath of supremacy, the latter demurred, on the ground that Horne was no bishop in the eye of the law, forasmuch as he had been consecrated according to the ordinal of Edward VI.—which had never been legalized after its proscription, 1 Mary, sess. 2, c. 2—and had also contravened the statute 25 Henry VIII., c. 20, requiring as consecrators either an archbishop and two bishops or four bishops. As it was notorious that Horne was consecrated by Parker and two other bishops, this last count was understood as tantamount to saying that Parker was not legally archbishop, on the ground that, of the bishops concerned in that ceremony, three had been deprived and the fourth deposed. This bold plea that, to use the words of one of Cecil's correspondents, quoted by Canon Estcourt, p. 119, “there was never a lawful bishop in England, so astonished a great number of the best learned that yet they knew not what to answer him; and when it was determined he should have suffered, he is remitted to the place from whence he came, and no more said unto him.”
After this we can understand the persistency with which controversialists like Jewel, who were in the secret, shirked the challenge, so frequently addressed them by Catholics, to show the steps of their succession.