1559. say, first, for the Popish party, Dr White, Bishop of Win- AN. REG. 1, chester, Dr Bayne, Bishop of Lichfield, Dr Scot, Bishop of Chester, and Dr Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, Dr Fecknam, Abbot of Westminster, Dr Henry Cole, Dean of St Paul's, Dr Harpsfield, Archdeacon of Canterbury, Dr Chadsey, Prebendary 1 of St Paul's, and Dr Langdale, Archdeacon of Lewis in Sussex. For those of the Protestant persuasion appeared Dr Scory, the late Bishop of Chichester, Dr Cox, the late Dean of Westminster, Dr Sandys, late Master of Katherine Hall, Mr Horn, the late Dean of Durham, Mr Elmar, late Archdeacon of Stow, Mr Whitehead, Mr Gryndal, Mr Guest, and Mr Jewel; all of which, except only Whitehead, attained afterwards to some eminent place in the sacred hierarchy. 18. The day being come, and the place fitted and accommodated for so great an audience, the Lord Keeper Bacon takes the chair as Moderator,-not for determining anything in the points disputed, but for seeing good order to be kept, and that the Disputation might be managed in the form agreed on. When, contrary to expectation, the Bishops and their party brought nothing in writing to be read publicly in the hearing of all the auditors, but came resolved to try it out by word of mouth, and to that end appointed Cole to be their spokesman. For which neglect being reproved by the Lord Keeper, they promised a conformity on the Monday following, being the second day of April; but would not stand unto it then, because they would not give their adversaries so much leisure as a whole night's deliberation to return an answer. Desired and pressed by the Lord Keeper to proceed according to the form agreed on, for the better satisfaction and contentment of so great an audience, it was most obstinately denied ; Watson and White behaving themselves with so little reverence (or so much insolency rather), as to threaten the Queen with excommunication in that public audience2; for which they were are seven other names attached to the paper, that of Sandys being the one which does not appear. On the whole, there seems to be good ground for believing that eight was the number on each side; and of the names mentioned in the various lists, we may perhaps do best by omitting Sandys of the Protestant party, and Oglethorpe and Langdale of the Romanists. 1 Edd. 1, 2, "Prebend." 2 They were disposed to excommunicate her (Camd. 29, ed. 1615); but it does not appear that they uttered any threat at the Conference, although they behaved violently. U [HEYLYN, II.] 1559. AN. REG. 1, committed to the Tower on the fifth of April. The rest of the Bishops were commanded to abide in London, and to give bond for their appearance at the Council-table whensoever they should be required. And so the whole assembly was dismissed, and the conference ended before it had been well begun,-the Lord Keeper giving to the Bishops this sharp remembrance, "Since," (said he) "you are not willing that we should hear you, you shall very shortly hear from us1." Which notwithstanding produced this good effect in the Lords and Commons, that they conceived the Bishops were not able to defend their doctrine in the points disputed; which made the way more easy for the passing of the public Liturgy, when it was brought unto the vote. Two speeches there were made against it in the House of Peers, by Scot and Fecknam, and one against the Queen's supremacy by the Archbishop of York; but they prevailed as little in both points by the power of their eloquence, as they had done in the first by their want of arguments. 19. It gave much matter of discourse to most knowing men, that the Bishops should so wilfully fall from an appointment to which they had before agreed, and thereby forfeit their whole cause to a condemnation. But they pretended for themselves that they were so straitened in point of time that they could not possibly digest their arguments into form and order; that they looked upon it as a thing too much below them to humble themselves to such a conference or disputation, in which Bacon, a mere layman and of no great learning, was to sit as judge; and finally, that the points had been determined already by the Catholic Church, and therefore were not to be called in question without leave from the Pope 2. Which 113 last pretence if it were of any weight and moment, it must be 285 utterly impossible to proceed to any Reformation in the state of the Church by which the power and pride of the Popes of Rome may be any thing lessened, or that the corruptions of the Church should be redressed, if it consist not with their profit. For want of time they were no more straitened than the opposite party,-none of them knowing with what arguments the other side would fortify and confirm their cause, nor in what forms they would propose them, before they had perused their reciprocal papers. But nothing was more weakly urged 1559. than their exception against the presidency of Sir Nicholas AN.REG. 1, Bacon, which could not be considered as a matter either new or strange. Not strange, because the like presidency had been given frequently to Cromwel, in the late reign of King Henry the Eighth, and that not only in such general conferences, but in several convocations and synodical meetings'. Not new, because the like had been frequently practised by the most godly Kings and Emperors of the Primitive times; for in the Council of Chalcedon the Emperor appointed certain noblemen to sit as judges, whose names occur in the first action of that Council. The like we find exemplified in the Ephesine Council, in which, by the appointment of Theodosius and Valentinian, then Roman Emperors, Candidianus3, a Count Imperial, sat as Judge or President, who in the managing of that trust over-acted anything which was done by Cromwel, as Vicar-General to that King, or Bacon was empowered to do as the Queen's Commissioner. No such unreasonable condescension to be found in this as was pretended by the Bishops and the rest of that party, to save themselves from the guilt and censure of a tergiversation; for which and other their contempts we shall find them called to a reckoning within few months after. in Convoca 20. In the Convocations which accompanied the present Proceedings Parliament there was little done, and that little which they did tion. was to little purpose. Held under Bonner, in regard of the vacancy of the see of Canterbury, it began without the ordinary preamble of a Latin Sermon, all preaching being then prohibited by the Queen's command. The Clergy for their Prolocutor made choice of Doctor Nicholas Harpsfield, Archdeacon of Canterbury, a man of more ability (as his works declare) than he had any opportunity to make use of in the present service. The Act of the submission of the Clergy to King Henry the Eighth and his successors Kings of England, had been repealed in the first year of Queen Mary, so that the Clergy might have acted of their own authority, without any license from the Queen; and it is much to be admired that Bonner, White, or 1 Sup. i. 10. 2 Concilia Maxima, edd. Labbe et Cossart, iv. 78. 3 Baronius, v. 587, 593, ed. Antverp. 1658. 4 Comp. Sarpi, 136; Heylyn's Tracts, 43; Field "Of the Church," b. v. c. 53. 5 Wilkins, iv. 179. Fuller, iv. 169. See p. 108, note 2. 1559. AN. REG.1, Watson did not put them to it; but such was either their fear or modesty, or a despair of doing any good to themselves and the cause, that there was nothing done by the Bishops at all, and not much more by the lower Clergy than a declaration of their judgment in some certain points which at that time were conceived fit to be commended to the sight of the Parliament: that is to say, "1. That in the sacrament of the altar, by virtue of Christ's assisting, after the word is duly pronounced by the Priest1, the natural body of Christ, conceived of the Virgin Mary, is really present under the species of bread and wine, as also his natural blood. 2. That after the consecration there remains not the substance of bread and wine, or any substance save the substance of God and man. 3. That the true body of Christ and his [true] blood is offered for a propitiatory sacrifice for the quick and the dead. 4. That the supreme power of feeding and governing the militant Church of Christ, and of confirming their brethren, is given to Peter the Apostle, and to his lawful successors in the see Apostolic, as unto the vicars of Christ. 5. That the authority to handle and define such things which belong to faith, the sacraments, and discipline ecclesiastical, hath hitherto ever belonged, and only ought to belong, unto the pastors of the Church whom the Holy Spirit hath placed in the Church2, and not unto lay-men." These Articles 114 they caused to be engrossed, and so commended them to the 286 care and consideration of the higher house. By Bonner afterwards, that is to say on the third of March, presented to the hands of the Lord Keeper Bacon, by whom they were candidly received3. But they prevailed no further with the Queen or the House of Peers when imparted to them, but that possibly The Bishops they might help forward the disputation which not long after was appointed to be held at Westminster, as before was said. 21. It was upon the eighth of May that the parliament ended, and on the 24th of June that the public Liturgy was to be officiated in all the Churches of the kingdom. In the 1 This is Fuller's translation of the Latin which he gives,-" Virtute Christi, verbo et a sacerdote debite prolato, assistentis." The words in Wilkins are virtute verbi Christi, a sacerdote debite prolati existentis." 26 "Quos Spiritus Sanctus in hoc in ecclesia Dei posuit." all but one refuse the oath of Supremacy, "Qui articulos prædictos, ut apparebat, gratanter accepit, sed nullum omnino responsum dedit." Mr Brewer erroneously substitutes the name of Archbishop Heath, the Chancellor, for that of Bacon, the Keeper. See above, p. 269. 1559. performance of which service the Bishops giving no encourage- AN. REG. 1, ment, and many of the Clergy being backward in it, it was thought fit to put them to the final test, and either to bring them to conformity, or to bestow their places and preferments on more tractable persons. The Bishops at that time had been reduced into a narrower number than at any other time before. The sees of Salisbury and Oxon had been made vacant in the year 1557, by the death of Capon in the one, and of King in the other; neither of which Churches had since been filled, and that of Oxon not in ten years after1. Purefew of Hereford, Holyman of Bristow, and Glyn of Bangor, died some few weeks before the Queen; Cardinal Pole of Canterbury on the same day with her; Hopton of Norwich, and Brooks of Glocester, within few weeks after3. Griffin of Rochester departed this life about the beginning of the parliament1; about which time also Pates of Worcester forsook the kingdom, and was followed by Goldwel of St Asaph in the end of May; so that there were no more than fifteen5 living of that sacred order. And they, being called in the beginning of July by certain of the Lords of the Council, commissionated thereunto in due form of law, were then and there required to take the oath of Supremacy, according to the law made in that behalf. Kitchin of Landaff only takes it, who, having formerly submitted unto every change, resolved to shew himself no changeling in not conforming to the pleasure of the higher powers. By all the rest it was refused; that is to say by Dr Heath, Archbishop of York, Bonner of London, Tonstall of Durham, White of Winchester, Thirlby of Ely, Watson of Lincoln, Pool of Peterborough, Christopherson of Chichester, Bourn of Wells, Turbervile of Exeter, Morgan of St David's, Bayne of Lichfield, Scot of Chester, and Oglethorp Bishop of Carlisle. And yet these men (which makes it seem the greater wonder) had either taken the like oath as Priests or Bishops in some part or other of the reign of the two last Kings. 1 The delay as to Salisbury has been explained, p. 215. King having died Dec. 4, 1557, Bishop Goldwell, of St Asaph, was nominated to Oxford in the reign of Mary, and received the temporalities, Oct. 25, 1558. Thomas Wood was nominated as his successor in St Asaph, Nov. 5, 1558. Richardson, Notes on Godwin, 545, 642. The death of the Queen interfered with the execution of these arrangements. Edd. 1, 2. "Pacefew." 3 Sup. p. 227 |