1559. Exeter; John Hodgskins, Suffragan of Bedford; John, Suffragan AN.REG.2, of Thetford; and John Bale, Bishop of Osserie in the realm of Ireland --requiring them, or any four1 of them at the least, to proceed unto the Consecration of the Right Reverend Matthew Parker, lately elected to the Metropolitical See of Canterbury. The first and the two last, either hindered by sickness or by some other lawful impediment, were not in a condition to attend the service; which notwithstanding was performed by the other four on Sunday the seventeenth of that month, according to the Ordinal of King Edward the Sixth, then newly printed for that purpose. The ceremony performed in the Chapel at Lambeth House', the east end whereof was hanged with rich tapestry, and the floor covered with red cloth; the morning service read by Pearson, the Archbishop's chaplain, the sermon preached by Doctor Scory, Lord Elect of Hereford, on those words of St Peter, "The elders which are among you I exhort," &c. (1 Pet. v. 1); the Letters Patents for proceeding to the Consecration publicly read by Doctor Yale3, the act of Consecration legally performed by the imposition of the hands of the said four Bishops, according to the ancient Canons and King Edward's Ordinal; and after all, a plentiful dinner for the entertainment of the company which resorted thither: amongst whom, Charles Howard, eldest son of William Lord Effingham, created afterwards Lord Admiral and Earl of Nottingham1, happened to be one, and after testified to the truth of all these particulars", when the reality and form of this consecration was called in question by some captious sticklers for the Church of Rome. Head Fable. 4. For so it was, that some sticklers for the Church of Rome, having been told of the dinner which was made at the The Nag's Nag's-head Tavern at such time as the election of the new Archbishop was confirmed in the Arches, raised a report that the Nag's-head Tavern was the place of the consecration. And this report was countenanced by another slander, causing it to be noised abroad and published in some seditious pamphlets, that the persons designed by the Queen for the several Bishopricks, being met at a tavern, did then and there lay 1 Edd. 1, 2, or any of them;" Ed. 3, 2 Wilkins, iv. 188. Bramhall, iii. 203. 3 Edd. 1, 2. "Dale." Ed. 3. "Vale." 5 or any two of them." * Sup. p. 127. Mason de Minist. Anglic. 1. iii. c. 8. p. 339. Bramhall, iii. 151. AN. REG. 2, hands upon one another, without form or order. 1559. The first 122 calumny fathered on one Neale1, once Hebrew Reader in the 294 University of Oxford, and Chaplain unto Bishop Bonner; which last relation were sufficient to discredit the whole tale, if there were no other evidence to disprove the same. And yet the silence of all Popish writers concerning this Nag's-head consecration during the whole reign of Queen Elizabeth, when it had been most material for them to insist upon it, as much discrediteth the whole figment as the author of it. The other published by Dr Nicholas Sanders, (never more truly Dr Slanders than in that particular), in his pestilent and seditious book entitled "De Schismate Anglicano3;" whose frequent falsehoods make him no fit author to be built upon in any matter of importance. Yet on the credit of these two, but on the first especially, the tale of the Nag's-head consecration, being once taken up, was generally exposed to sale as one of the most vendible commodities in the writings of some Romish Priests and Jesuits, as Champneys, Fitzsimons, Parson3, Kellison, &c. They knew right well that nothing did more justify the Church of England in the eye of the world than that it did preserve a succession of Bishops, and consequently of all other sacred orders, in the ministration. Without which, as they would not grant it to be a Church, so could they prove 1 Edd. 1, 2. "Keale." Ed. 3. "Weale." 2 Fuller styles him, "lying Slanders,” iii. 235; but it is not probable that this so obvious and so well deserved variation on the name remained for Fuller to discover. It ought to be observed that the account of the reign of Elizabeth is not by Sanders, but by a worthy continuator, Rishton. This might lead us to suppose that Sanders (or Rishton) asserted the Nags Head consecration; which is not the case. The form which the falsehood bears in the book De Schismate Anglicano is, that after an imprisoned Irish archbishop had in vain been urged to consecrate, the Protestant Bishops entered on their office without any consecration whatever (298). It is shewn in Bramhall, iii. 47, that there was no Romish archbishop of Ireland with whom there could have been a negociation ; and that, if necessary, consecrators could readily have been procured from the Irish Church. Parsons did not maintain the story in print, although it is possible that he may have privately expressed a belief in it, as he lived six years after it had been first published by Holywood (or Sacrobosco) at Antwerp, in 1604. Note in Bramhall, iii. 39. 1559. it to be none by no stronger argument than that the Bishops AN. REG. 2, (or the pretended Bishops rather, in their opinion) were either not consecrated at all, or not canonically consecrated as they ought to be. And for the gaining of this point, they stood most pertinaciously on the fiction of the Nag's-head Tavern, which if it could be proved, or at least believed, there was an end of the episcopal succession in the Church of England, and consequently also of the Church itself. 5. For the decrying of this clamour, and satisfying all opponents in the truth of the matter, it was thought fit by Dr George Abbot, then Archbishop of Canterbury, to call before him some of the Priests and Jesuits, that is to say, Fairecloth, Leake, Laithwait, and Collington', being then prisoners in the Clink. Who being brought to Lambeth on the 12th of May, 1613, were suffered in the presence of divers Bishops to peruse the public registers, and thereby to satisfy themselves in all particulars concerning the confirmation and consecration of Archbishop Parker, according to the circumstances and punctilioes before laid down. This stilled the clamour for the present, though it brake out again forty years after, and was again stilled by the care and industry of the Right Reverend Dr Bramhal, Lord Bishop of Derry, in a book entituled, "The Church of England defended against some scandalous and fabulous imputations cast upon her, &c.3" Which cavil (for is no better) being thus refelled, the other objections of the adversaries will be easily answered. Though Barlow and Scory were deprived of their episcopal sees, yet, first, the justice and legality of their deprivation was not clear in law; and secondly, they neither were nor could be deprived 2 Godwin, 163. 1 Edd. "Collins." 3 "The Consecration of Protestant Bishops Vindicated, and the Fable of the Nag's Head Ordination refuted." This treatise has been elaborately edited in the " Anglo-Catholic Library" edition of Bramhall, vol. iii.; to which the reader may be referred for a history of the controversy on the subject. See also Courayer's work on English Ordinations, ed. Oxf. 1844. The Nag's Head story, although it would seem to be still maintained by some of the lower Romish writers, is now abandoned by all respectable Romanists, including Dr Lingard, vii. 380. The late editor of Dodd's Church History (Mr Tierney) also professes himself "compelled to adopt the opposite opinion" to his author, who " was inclined to favour the story." ii. Append. p. 277. 1559. AN. REG. 2, of their episcopal character, which remained in them undefaced, as before it was. And whilst the character remained, they were in a capacity of performing all episcopal offices to which they should be called by their Metropolitan, or any higher power directing and commanding in all such matters as concerned the Church. And as for Suffragans, by which title Hodgskins is commissionated for the consecration, they were no other than the Chore-Episcopi of the primitive times,— subsidiary Bishops, ordained for easing the Diocesan of some part of his burden; by means whereof they were enabled to perform such offices belonging to that sacred function, not limited to time and place by the ancient Canons, by which a Bishop was restrained in some certain acts of jurisdiction to his proper diocese. Of this sort there were twenty-six in the realm of England, distinguished by the names of such principal towns as were appointed for their title and denomination. The names and number whereof, together with the jurisdiction and preheminences proportioned to them, the reader may peruse in the Act of Parliament made in the 26th year of King Henry the Eighth1. Sees filled up. 6. No sooner was this solemnity ended, but a new man- 123 date comes for the confirmation of Dr Barlow in the See of 295 Chichester, and Dr Scory to the See of Hereford, to which they had been severally elected in August last. And though the not restoring of them to their former Sees might seem to justify the late Queen Mary in their deprivation, yet the Queen wanted not good reasons for their present removal; not that she did consult therein her own power and profit, (as is thought by some) but studied rather their content and satisfaction than her own concernments. For Barlow, having wasted the revenue of the Church of Wells3, could not with any comfort behold a place which he had so spoiled; and Scory, having been de 1 c. 14. But it is incorrect to say that there ever were twenty-six" suffragans in England. The statute named that number of towns which should be the seats of suffragans; but it was only partially and occasionally acted on. The suffragans, who were not uncommon in England before the date of this act, usually took their titles from places in partibus infidelium. See Gibson, Codex, 155–7. He mentions Dr Stern, suffragan of Colchester, circa 1606, as "one of the last" of those appointed under the act; which, however, is still unrepealed. 2 3 prived of the See of Chichester under pretence of wanting a just title to it, desired not to be put upon the hazard of a second ejection'. But as for Coverdale, he did not only waive the acceptation of Exon, but of any other Church then vacant. He was now seventy-two years old, and desired rather to enjoy the pleasure of a private life than be disquieted in his old age with the cares of government. And somewhat might be also in it of a disaffection, not to the calling but the habit; which is to be believed the rather, because he attended not at the Consecration in his cope and rochet, as the others did, but in a plain black coat reaching down to his ankles2. And now the rest of the Episcopal Sees begin to fill; for on the 21st of the same December, Dr Edmond Grindall was consecrated to the See of London, Dr Richard Cox to that of Ely, Dr Edwin Sandys to the Church of Worcester, Dr Rowland Merick unto that of Bangor. On the 21st of January then next following, Dr Nicholas Bullingham was by the like consecration made Bishop of Lincoln, the right learned Mr John Jewel, (who afterwards accepted the degree of Doctor), Bishop of Sarisbury, Dr Thomas Young, Bishop of St David's, and Mr Richard Davis, Bishop of St Asaph1. The 24th of March was honoured with the consecration of three other Bishops; that is to say, of Mr Thomas Bentham to the See of Coventry and Lichfield, of Mr Gilbert Barclay to the See of Wells, and of Dr Edmond Guest to that of Rochester5. On the 14th of July comes the consecration of Dr William Alley to the Church of Exon; and that of Mr John Parkhurst to the Church of Norwich, on the first of September. By which 'The reasons here given are merely conjectural. Mr Brewer, in a note on Fuller, iv. 298, quotes from Harrington's Nuge Antiquæ, a strange statement of a superstitious motive for Barlow's having declined his old see. Burnet suggests, with great probability, that the remembrance of the lapse mentioned in p. 98, note 5 (of which Heylyn had no knowledge), may have rendered Scory unwilling to return to Chichester, I. 553. The like might, indeed, be said of Barlow. See p. 99. 2 "Non nisi toga lanea talari utebatur." Record of the Consecration, in Bramhall, iii. 211, and Wilkins. Comp. Strype, Ann. i. 425. Coverdale afterwards obtained the rectory of St Magnus, near London Bridge, the first-fruits being remitted on account of his poverty. He died in 1569, aged 81. Strype, Parker, 149. 6 Ib. 223. 3 Bramh. iii. 218-9. 4 Ib. 220-1. 5 Ib. 222. AN. REG. 2, 1559-60. |