"Lastly, the non-jurant party of the nation may be thought of, though not numerous enough without the Catholics to make any considerable strength or appearance in the field. These, however, are respected as men of honour, that the penitent or discontented may safely open their minds to, and can confide in; so that properly instructed, they are safe agitators dispersed in every corner of the nation, who too, upon occasion, will, to a man, appear in the field for your Majesty's service.

"As for the Catholics, though I am sorry to say it, they seem the most desponding and least useful party in the kingdom; nay, which is worse, they are the only people who encourage the interested and atheistical to stick to the Prince of Orange, though they both despise and hate him as much as any; for the avowed despair the priests have brought those to is so universally owned, that it discourages the waverers from declaring themselves to be for their duty, and confirms the malicious in their insolence, so that some course must be taken for altering their conduct and conversation, or they will prove the greatest remora to any good design which may be set on foot."1

We are apt to read History amidst mental illusions. We unconsciously transfer our knowledge of results to those who were living amidst antecedents. Hence, sometimes we credit Englishmen of William's reign with a sense of security which could only arise from a defeat of plots, which then appeared by no means certain. Indeed, the stability of the Revolution Settlement was not assured until the middle of the next century. Up to that time moments occurred when Government knew it sat upon barrels of gunpowder. William's throne to the last

1

1702, January. Macpherson's Original Papers, i. 602.

remained in a shaky condition. The end alone prevents our recognizing the obvious parallel between his reign and that of Louis Philippe in France. A counter-Revolution was imminent throughout; and to our fathers in those days we must not attribute the lordly conviction of permanence which we cherish with so much pride. People in London under William could count on things lasting as then they were, with almost as little confidence. as people in Paris during the last forty years. But powerful elements blended with changes in Great Britain such as have not influenced those of our Gallic neighbours. With them Revolutions have been politicalwith us religious. Puritanism and Anglo-Catholicism -factors both for good and evil-we find at work on this side the channel, not on the other.

As Parliament was framing oaths, and Jacobites were brewing plots, Convocation, being restored to activity, plunged itself into new controversies, the outgrowths of old ones, which require to be recorded with some minuteness, in spite of their being as dry as withered thorns.

CONY

CHAPTER XII.

|ONVOCATIONAL history in the reign of William III., from the year 1689 to the year 1700, is simply a history of writs and prorogations. During that period no business was ever transacted, the Lower House never met. Tillotson and Tenison, knowing the temper prevalent in the Church, aware of the influence of the nonjuring Clergy, sensible of the wide diffusion of sympathy with them, and alive to the fact of an extensive revival of High-Church principles, were apprehensive of a collision between the two Houses in case they proceeded to business. They therefore thought it prudent to hold in abeyance the right of meeting, until some exigency rendered their coming together indispensable. Indignant murmurs at this state of things freely escaped the lips of many a Dean, Prebendary, Archdeacon, and Rector; and at length found utterance in a publication, which produced a wonderful impression, and led to important results. Few pamphlets have been more famous in their day than the Letter to a Convocation Man, published in the year 1697. It was widely circulated, read by all sorts of people, canvassed in City coffee-houses, discussed in country inns, talked of by parishioners under church porches, and pondered in rectories, vicarages, and quiet homes all over England. It made, says Nicholson, “a

considerable noise and pother in the kingdom." "1 The Letter insisted upon the state of the country-so marked by false and pernicious principles, by irreligious indifference, and by immoral conduct as a reason why the representatives of the Church should assemble in their legal capacity. The constitutional right of Convocation. was strongly urged, the Royal writ needful for it being, as the writer alleged, no more a sign of precariousness in this case, than is a Royal writ in any other. A resemblance was traced between Convocation and Parliament, and curious antiquarian and legal questions were reviewed. The author touched on the mode of summoning Convocation-a subject which requires to be explained, not only on account of the use which he made of it, but on account of a use to which it was put by another advocate on the same side.

English Convocations, since the 25th of Henry VIII.— when an Act was passed depriving Archbishops of the right to call those assemblies at pleasure-came to be convoked exclusively by writs addressed to the Archbishops, who were authorized, under their scals, to summon for business the Clergy of their province. The Archbishop of Canterbury addressed his mandate to the Bishop of London, to be executed by him as his provincial Dean, and the Bishop of each diocese to whom the immediate execution of such a mandate belongs, received directions to make a proper return to his Grace or his Commissary-such return, when made, being entered in the Register of the Archiepiscopal See. But, as early as the reign of Edward I., there was introduced into the writ summoning a Bishop to Parliament a clause-called the pramonentes or præmunientes clause, from its beginning with that word-requiring him

to give notice of such writ to the Prior and Chapter, and to the Archdeacon and Clergy, so as to cause the Prior and the Archdeacon, in their own persons, and the Chapter and Clergy by their Procurators, or proxies-one for the Chapter, and two for the Clergy-to be present with him at Westminster, there to attend to public affairs. After the Reformation, Deans were substituted for Priors; and, with that alteration, the writ continued to run in its ancient form. The writ indicated exactly the same kind of representatives to be summoned as did the Archbishop's mandate; and, upon this ground, the author of the Letter insisted upon the right of the Lower Clergy to assemble for deliberation as being no less inalienable than the right of the House of Commons-the premonition, or warning, to be delivered to the Clergy being, as he says, "an argument of invincible strength to establish the necessity of Convocations meeting as often as Parliaments."

The author of this famous pamphlet maintained that Convocation had the power of determining its own matters of debate; but in the maintenance of this position, he had to explain away the sense of the words employed in the writ of summons, super præmissis, et aliis quæ sibi clarius exponentur ex parte Domini Regiswords which limit Convocational discussions to topics proposed by Royal authority.2

To this anonymous publication, which roused High Churchmen to activity and filled Low Churchmen with

See in Appendix the form of Correspondence (ii. 25, iii. 71), to Dr. writ now issued.

2 The letter has been attributed, on the authority of the editor of the Somers' Tracts (last edit., xi. 363), to Sir Bartholomew Shower; on the authority of the editor of Atterbury's

Binckes, Vicar of Leamington at the time, and in 1703 made Dean of Lichfield. I cannot ascertain the evidence on which either of them proceeds.