280 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 102. 



judges that the King may hold a parliament with- 

 out'^my Spiritual lords ; and, in fact, the first two 

 parliaments of Charles IF. were so holden. 



I ^vill presume Canon. Ekor. intended to say 

 that Prelates do not sit in the Upper House as 

 Peers, otherwise the charge of " mistake" will fall 

 upon Blackstone, Comm. book i. ch. 2. : 



" The next in order are the Spiritual lords. These 

 consist of two arehbisliops and twtnty-four bishops ; 

 and at tlie dissolution of monasteries by Henry VIII. 

 consisted likewise of twenty- six mitred abbots, and two 

 priors : a very considerable body, and in those times 

 equal in number to the temporal nobility. All these 

 hold, or are supposed to liold, certain ancient baronies, 

 under the king: for William the Conqueror thought 

 proper to change the spiritual tenure of frank-almoign, 

 or free alms, under which the bishops held their lands 

 during the Saxon government, into the feodal or Nor- 

 man tenure hy barony ; which subjected their estates 

 to all civil charges and assessments from which they 

 were before exempt: and in right of succession to those 

 baronies, which were imalJenable from their respective 

 dignities, the bishops and abbots were allowed their 

 seats in the House of Lords." 



Sir Matthew Hale divides the king's extra- 

 ordinary councils into two khids : I. Secular or 

 temporal councils ; 2. Ecclesiastical or s])iritual : 

 the king's extraordinary secular councils being 

 the Houles of the Peers and of the Commons ; and 

 the extraordinary ecclesiastical, the Upper and 

 Lower Houses of Convocation. 



Some illustration of this may be perhaps found 

 in the following extract from an appendix to A 

 Narrative of the Proceedings of the Lower House 

 of Convocation, published by T. Bennet, London, 

 1701, in which Prelates are Spiritual Lords, 

 whether Bishops or Abbots ; and the phrase " full 

 Parliament" seems equivalent to the ones used 

 in the Gunpowder Treason Service : — 



" When the several Estates were assembled in full 

 Parliament, and received the King's commands concern- 

 ing the business which they were to consider, and 

 were adjourned by him to another day of full Parlia- 

 ment, in which they were to meet, and give their 

 answer : the Clergy, and Lords, and Commons con- 

 sulted in the mean time separately, .... Instances 

 of this are not necessary, but one may be seen among 

 the Records in the appendix to a late book call'd 

 Essays concerning the Balance of Power, &c., and 'lis 

 this:' C Edw. HI. Part .S. N. L, on Tuesday in Full 

 Parliament the King charged the Prelates, Earls, 

 Barons, and other Great Men, and the Knights of the 

 Shires, and the Commons, that having regard to the 

 honor and profit of bis Realm, they should give him 

 tlieir counsel. The which Prelates with the Clergy 

 by themselves, and the Earls and Barons by them- 

 selves, and the knights and others of the counties and 

 the Commons by themselves, treated and consulted 

 till Friday next, the day assigned for the next session, 

 and there in full Parliament, each by themselves and 

 afterward all in common, answered." 



The formation and development of Convocation, 

 at least that of Canterbury, presents a great ana- 

 logy to the English Parliament; as that of York 

 does to the Scottish Parliament. 



We must remember that before the Norman 

 times, the clergy were exempt from ail taxation ; 

 inasmuch as " they held in Frankalmoigne," that 

 is, held their lands, &c., on free alms " in liberain 

 eleemosynam." Littleton (lib. ii. c. 6. s. 135.) 

 says : 



" And they which bold in Frankalmoigne are bound 

 of right before God to make orisons, prayers, masses. 

 and other divine services for the soul of their grantor 

 or feoffer, and for the souls of their heirs which are 

 dead," &c. 



The kings succeeding William the Conqueror 

 tried to make the clergy contribute to the public 

 exche(juer, but were efFectually resisted. In order 

 to surmount the difficulty, King John (a.d. 1206) 

 summoned all the priors and abbots to parliament, 

 and obtained from them a vote of a thirteenth : 

 and then wrote to the archdeacons to get the same 

 from the clergy generally. Edward I. rendered 

 this scheme for the taxation of the clergy com- 

 plete. He applied to the Archbishops of Canter- 

 bury and York to assemble, by their canonical 

 authoritij, the convocations of each province ; and 

 these Metropolitans, moved Iry the King's writ 

 (the same practice is settled now), summoned 

 these bishops and clergy. 



The earliest royal writ, summoning a provin- 

 cial synod, is dated Nov. 24, 1282, and calling 

 them to meet at Northampton : " Venire . . . coram 

 nobis apud Northampton." 



This Convocation assembled at Northampton ; 

 and we find another mandate from the Archbishop 

 to the dean of the province, directing him to sum- 

 mon the bishops and clergy to a Convocation for 

 the 9th of I\Iay, 1283, at the New Temple (now 

 the Inner and Middle Temples), pursuant to a 

 resolution of the Convocation of Northampton. 

 At this Convocation, the proctors of the clergy 

 refused to pay the tenth. Eleven years after, we 

 find Edward summoning the whole body of the 

 bishops and clergy to Westminster on St. Matthew's 

 day, 1294. His writ orders " The dean and 

 archdeacon to appear in their proper persons, the 

 chapter by one, and the clergy of the diocese by 

 two procurators." The clergy objected to this 

 writ as uncanonical, and claimed to be convoked 

 only by their Metropolitans ; as tending to abolish 

 their provincial synods convened by regular eccle- 

 siastical authority, and to establish in their place 

 a parliamentary chamber under secular authority. 

 The King, finding them so opposed to his project 

 of thus making them a part of the Third Estate, 

 reverted to the established practice, and ad- 

 dressed his writs to the Archbishops ; whereupon 

 the Metropolitans issued their mandates, Convo- 

 cations met, and subsidies were voted. 



