1558-9. amongst our lawyers, could not be questioned at that present. AN. REG. 1, 108 And possible it is that he conceived it better for the mar280 riage of the Queen's mother to pass unquestioned, as a matter justly subject unto no dispute, than to build the validity of it on no better ground than an Act of Parliament, which might be as easily reversed as it was agreed to. There passed an Act also for restoring to the Crown the tenths and firstfruits', first settled thereon in the time of King Henry the Eighth, and afterwards given back by Queen Mary, as before was said. For the better drawing on of which concession, it was pretended that the patrimony of the Crown had been much dilapidated, and that it could not be supported with such honour as it ought to be, if restitution were not made of such rents and profits as were of late dismembered from it. Upon which ground they also passed an Act for the dissolution of all such monasteries, convents, and religious orders, as had been founded and established by the Queen deceased3. By virtue of which Act the Queen was repossessed again of all those lands which had been granted by her sister to the Monks of Westminster and Shene, the Knights Hospitalers, the Nuns of Sion, together with the mansion-houses re-edified for the Observants at Greenwich, and the Black Friars in Smithfield. Which last, being planted in a house near the dissolved Priory of Great St Bartholomew's, had again fitted and prepared the church belonging thereunto for religious offices; but had scarce fitted and prepared it when dissolved again, and the church afterwards made a parochial church for the use of the Close and such as lived within the verge and precincts thereof. How she disposed of Sion House, hath been shewn already1; and what she did with the rich Abbey of Westminster, we shall see hereafter. 3 1 Eliz. c. 24. Stow, 640. Holinshed, iv. 185. 4 Sup. 191. The nuns of Sion retired to the continent, and, after various movements, settled at Lisbon. Fuller, iii. 493. There the convent was kept up until 1810, when its members were driven from Portugal by the war, and sought a refuge in England. "Two or three, advanced in years, were in 1825 living in the vicinity of the Potteries in Staffordshire, the last remnant of an English community dissolved in the reign of Henry VIII." Monast. Angl. vi. 540. 5 Eliz. ii. 26. AN. REG. 1, 1558-9. Act of Su premacy. 12. In the passing of these Acts there was little trouble; in the next, there was. For when the Act of the Supremacy1 came to be debated, it seemed to be a thing abhorrent even in nature and polity, that a woman should be declared to be the Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England. But those of the reformed party meant nothing less than to contend about words and phrases, so they might gain the point they aimed at, which was the stripping of the Pope of all authority within these dominions, and fixing the supreme power over all persons and estates, of what rank soever, in the Crown Imperial, -not by the name of Supreme Head, which they perceived might be made liable to some just exceptions; but, which comes all to one, of the Supreme Governess. Which, when it gave occasion of discourse and descant amongst many of the captious Papists, Queen Mary helped her sister unto one good argument for her justification, and the Queen helped herself to another, which took off the cavil. In the third Session of Parliament in Queen Mary's time, there passed an Act declaring, "That the Regal power was in the Queen's Majesty, as fully as it had been in any of her predecessors3." In the body whereof it is expressed and declared, “That the law of the realm is, and ever hath been, and ought to be, understood, that the kingly or regal office of the realm, and all dignities, prerogatives royal, power, preeminences, privileges, authorities, and jurisdictions thereunto annexed, united, or belonging, being invested either in male or female, are, be, and ought to be, as fully, wholly, absolutely and entirely, deemed, adjudged, accepted, invested, and taken, in the one as1 in the other. So that whatsoever statute or law doth limit or appoint that the King of this realm may or shall have, execute, and do any thing as King, &c., the same the Queen (being Supreme Governess, possessor, and inheritor to the Imperial Crown of this realm) may by the same power have and execute, to all intents, constructions, and purposes, without 1 1 Eliz. c. 1. Fuller, iv. 264. Rishton (in Sanders, 275) will not admit that there was any real amendment. Sandys states, in a letter to Parker, that a scruple as to the title of 'Supreme Head' was put into the Queen's mind by Lever. Burnet, 11. ii. 465. Edd. 1, 2, "or." 31 Mar. Sess. iii. c. 1. 1559. doubt, ambiguity, scruple, or question, any custom, use, or any AN. REG. 1, other thing to the contrary notwithstanding." By the very tenor of which Act Queen Mary grants unto her sister as much authority in all Church-concernments as had been exercised and enjoyed by her father and brother according to any Act or Acts of Parliament in their several times. Which Acts of Parliament, as our learned lawyers have declared upon these occasions, were not to be considered as introductory of a new power which was not in the Crown before, but only declaratory 109 of an old, which naturally belonged to all Christian princes, and 281 amongst others to the Kings and Queens of the realm of England'. 13. And to this purpose it is pleaded by the Queen in her own behalf. Some busy and seditious persons had dispersed a rumour, that by the Act for recognizing of the Queen's supremacy there was something further ascribed unto the Queen, her heirs, and successors, a power of administering divine service in the Church, which neither by any equity or true sense of the words could from thence be gathered; and thereupon she makes this declaration unto all her subjects:-" That nothing was or could be meant or intended by the said Act, than was acknowledged to be due to the most noble King of famous memory, King Henry the Eighth, her Majesty's father, or King Edward the Sixth, her Majesty's brother." And further she declareth, "That she neither doth nor will challenge any other authority by the same than was challenged and lately used by the said two Kings, and was of ancient time due unto the Imperial Crown of this realm; that is, under God to have the sovereignty and rule over all persons born within her realms or dominions, of what estate (either ecclesiastical or temporal) soever they be, so as no other foreign power shall or ought to have any superiority over them." Which explication, published in the Queen's Injunctions, anno 15592, not giving such a general satisfaction to that groundless cavil as was expected and intended, the Bishops and Clergy in their Convocation of the year 1562, by the Queen's authority and consent, declared more plainly; that is to say, "That they gave not to their Princes3, 1 Coke's 5th Report, p. 8. ed. 1727. (Cawdrey's case.) Comp. Gibson, Codex, p. 48. 2 Wilkins, iv. 188. 3 Edd. "Princess." 1559. AN. REG. 1, by virtue of the said Act or otherwise, either the ministering of God's word or sacraments, but that only prerogative which they saw to have been given always to all godly Princes in holy Scripture by God himself; that is to say, that they should rule all estates and degrees committed to their charge by God, whether they be ecclesiastical or temporal, and restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and evildoers1." 14. 2By all which if the cavils of the adversary be not fully answered, it would be known upon what reason they should question that in a sovereign Queen which they allow in many cases to a Lady Abbess. For that an Abbess may be capable of all and all manner of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, even to the denouncing of that dreadful sentence of excommunication, and that they may lawfully exercise the same upon all such as live within the verge of their authority, is commonly acknowledged by their greatest canonists. First, for suspension, it is affirmed by their Gloss that an Abbess may suspend such clerks as are subject to her, both from their benefice and office3. And questionless either to suspend a Clerk, or to bring his Church under the sentence of an interdict, is one of the chief parts of ecclesiastical or spiritual censures. Nor have they this authority only by way of delegation from the Pope in some certain cases, as is affirmed by Aquinas, Durandus, Sylvester, Dominicus Soto, and many other of their schoolmen,-but in an ordinary way, as properly and personally invested in them,—which is the general opinion of their greatest canonists. Next, for the Sacraments, it is sufficiently known that the ministration of Baptism is performed by midwives and many other women, as of common course; not only as a thing connived at in extreme necessity, but as a necessary duty, in which they are to be instructed against all emergencies by their parish priests; for which we have the testimony of the late Lord Legate, in the articles published by him for his visitations. And finally, for excommunication, it is affirmed by Paludanus and Navarre Articles of Religion, No. xxxvii. It is probable that the substance of this section is taken from some treatise, according to our author's practice in similar cases. Some of the matter may be found in Andrewes' "Tortura Torti," p. 151. 3 Decretal. Gregorii, 1. i. tit. 33. c. 12. Cf. Andrewes, 151. 1559. (none of the meanest in the pack), that the Pope may grant AN.REG. 1, And if a Pope may grant these powers unto a woman, as to a Prioress or Abbess or to any other, there can be then no incapacity in the sex for exercising any part of that jurisdiction which was 110 restored unto the Crown by this Act of Parliament. And if 282 perhaps it be objected that a Lady Abbess is an ecclesiastical or spiritual person in regard of her office, which cannot be affirmed of Queens, Pope Gregory himself will come in to help us, by whom it was not thought unfit to commit the cognizance of a cause concerning the purgation of a Bishop who stood charged with some grievous crime to Brunichildis, or Brunholt, Queen of France; of which although the Gloss upon the Decretals be pleased to say2, That the Pope stretched his power too far in this particular, yet Gregory did no more therein but what the Popes may do, and have done of late times by their own confession; so little ground there is for so great a clamour as hath been made by Bellarmine and other of the popish Jesuits upon this occasion. premacy. 15. Now for the better exercising and enjoying of the juris- Oath of Sudiction thus recognized unto the Crown, there are two clauses in the Act of great importance; the first whereof contains an oath, for the acknowledgement and defence of the Supremacy, not only in the Queen, but her heirs and successors; the said oath to be taken by all Archbishops, Bishops, and all other ecclesiastical persons, and also by all temporal judges, justiciaries, mayors, or any other temporal officers, &c. For the refusal whereof, when lawfully tendered to them by such as were 1 Andrewes, 151. "Fuit hic nimium populariter [papaliter] dispensatum." Author. [Gratiani Decretum, Causa ii. Quæst. 5, "Mennam." Dr Jelf states that "the latter part of the section is not found in the Epistle of Gregory referred to, nor does Gratian hint at the place whence he takes it." (Note on Jewel, ii. 238.) The note on the Decretum strongly denies the alleged fact, and refers the error to an oversight supposed to be made in reading a part of something else as a continuation of St Gregory's Epistle to Brunichildis. But Dr Jelf, in a note on another place where Jewel quotes the passage (vi. 318), says, that "there seems some mystery to hang over the subject, as both the Decretum and the Gloss are ancient ; and it is not impossible that the passage was fraudulently expunged from St Gregory's Epistles."]' |