CHURCH OF ENGLAND 307 



Welsh Disestablishment. Without waiting for this report the Government in 1909 

 brought in a bill for the disestablishment and disendowment of the church in the four 

 Welsh dioceses and the county of Monmouth, generally similar in its provisions to the 

 bill of 1895, but withdrew it after the first reading. The date after which private 

 benefactions were to be exempt from the operation of the measure was fixed at 1662, in- 

 stead of 1703 as in the former bills. It was argued on the side of the Church that the 

 bill would take away eighteen-and-sixpence in the pound of the endowments. These 

 funds were to be used for the provision of libraries, technical institutes, public halls, 

 hospitals, dispensaries, convalescent homes, etc., for which no provision is made from 

 public funds. In April 1912 a fresh disestablishment and disendowment bill was intro- 

 duced which admittedly took away thirteen-and-fourpence in the pound of the endow- 

 ments. Under this measure the vested interests of incumbents were preserved for 

 their lives, instead of during their tenure of office, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners 

 and Queen Anne's Bounty were empowered to continue paying to the Welsh Church 

 their existing allowances of 68,600 a year, which the bill of 1909 forbade them to do. 

 A representative body was to be formed to receive and administer the whole of the 

 property left to the church. The parliamentary proceedings in connection with the bill 

 are dealt with elsewhere (Part II. UNITED KINGDOM: History). 



Prayer-book- Revision. The Royal Letters of Business first issued in 1906 and since 

 renewed to the two Convocations enjoining them to consider " the desirability and the 

 form and contents of a new rubric regulating the vesture of the ministers of the Church 

 at the times of their ministrations, and also of any modification of the existing law relat- 

 ing to the conduct of divine service, and to the ornaments and fittings of churches " 

 were still under consideration at the end of 1912. The proceedings under these injunc- 

 tions are necessarily slow and complicated. Each of the four Houses of Convocation 

 has appointed a committee to draw up proposals, each of which has to be debated 

 in public session; the two primates have, moreover, undertaken that the proposals finally 

 accepted by the Convocations of the Clergy shall be submitted in the end to the Repre- 

 sentative Church Council, which consists of the four Houses of Convocation and the 

 two Houses of Laymen. Thus six bodies, four of them with powers of legislation depend- 

 ent upon Parliamentary sanction, and two which have no power to do anything but 

 debate, have to accept every proposed emendation of the Prayer-book. Many of these 

 emendations are merely verbal; others raise questions the most sharply controverted 

 between sections of opinion in the Church. The recommendations reached by the 

 Convocations can therefore be regarded only as provisional, since alterations supported 

 by the whole body of the Church must necessarily be regarded by Parliament with far 

 greater respect than those upon which there'is acute controversy. The sharpest of these 

 controversies has raged round the Athanasian Creed, of which a new translation, pre- 

 pared at the request of the Archbishop of Canterbury, was published in 1909. In the 

 same year Canterbury Lower House resolved that the Creed should be retained in the 

 Prayer-book without the existing rubric, and that provision should be made for its use 

 without the warning clauses. York Lower House decided that no change ought to be 

 made in the use of the Quicunque Vult. York Upper House, on the other hand, favours 

 the retention of the Creed in the Prayer-book but desires that it should no longer be 

 recited in public worship, and that if its public use be continued it should be obligatory 

 only on Trinity Sunday. The question of vestments has caused an almost equally 

 definite division of opinion. In 1909 the York Upper House recommended that the 

 bishop should have power, under safeguards, and in parishes where it was thought 

 desirable, to sanction the use of alternative vestments in the Holy Communion, provided 

 that they should all be white, and in 1912 the House voted equally for and against this 

 arrangement, the Archbishop of York refraining from giving a casting vote in favour on 

 the ground that the final step had not been reached. The Committee of York Lower 

 House has also reported in favour of alternative vestments, but without limitation of 

 colour. York Upper House has decided in favour of a book supplementary to the Prayer- 

 book containing alternative lessons and psalms, forms of prayer and thanksgivings for 



