BISHOP. 



BISHOPRIC. 



charged with a capital offence, the bishops withdraw, it being held 

 unsuitable to the character of ministers of mercy and peace to inter- 

 meddle in affairs of blood. 



For the execution of many of the duties belonging to their high 

 function they have officers, as chancellors, judges, and officials, who 

 hold courts in the bishop's name. 



The election of bishops is supposed, by those who regard the order 

 as not distinguished originally from the common presbyter, to have 

 been in the people who constituted the Christian church in the city to 

 which they were called ; afterwards, when the number of Christiana 

 was greatly increased, and there were numerous assistant presbyters, in 

 the presbyters and some of the laity conjointly. But after a time the 

 presbyters only seem to have possessed the right, and the bishop was 

 elected by them assembled in chapter. The nomination of such an 

 important officer was, how.ever, an object of great importance to the 

 temporal sovereigns ; and they so far interfered, that at length they 

 virtually obtained the nomination. In England there is still the 

 shadow of an election by the chapters in the cathedrals. When a 

 i dies, the event is certified to the king by the chapter. The 

 king writes to the chapter that they proceed to elect a successor. This 

 letter is called the conyt iff (lire. The king, however, transmits to them 

 at the same time the name of some person whom he expects them to 

 elect. If within a short time they do not proceed to the election, the 

 king may nominate by his own authority ; if they elect any other than 

 the person named in the king's writ, they incur the severe penalties of 

 a pncmunire, which includes forfeiture of goods, outlawry, and other 

 evils. The bishop thus elected is confirmed in his new office under a 

 royal commission, when he takes the oaths of allegiance, supremacy, 

 r;umiiical obedience, and against simony. He is next installed, and 

 finally consecrated, which is performed by the archbishop or some 

 other bishop named in a commission for the purpose, assisted by two 

 i 'ishops. No person can be elected a bishop who is under thirty 

 years of age. 



The bishops in England have fixed salaries assigned to them, arising 

 from their original endowments; but in some cases the estates are left 

 in tli- hands <>f the bishops, who pay over the surplus, if any, to 

 commissioners who have the management of others, paying the salary 

 to the bishop. Their churches, which are called cathedrals, (from 

 cathedra, a seat of dignity,) are noble and splendid edifices, the unim- 

 peachable witnesses remaining among us of the wealth, the splendour, 

 and the architectxiral skill of the ecclesiastics in England in the middle 

 ages. The cathedral of the Bishop of London is the only modern 

 edifice. 



For other information on this subject, see ABCIIBJSHOP and Ancn- 



DEAfO.V. 



Bit/irift in parlilias. This is an elliptical phrase, and is to be supplied 

 with the word fi>ji<lftium. These are bishops who have no actual see, 

 but who are consecrated as if they had, under the fiction that they are 

 bishops in succession to those who were the actual bishops in cities 

 where Christianity is extinct. Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and the 

 northern coast of Africa, present many of these extinct sees, some of 

 them the most ancient and most interesting in the history of Christianity. 

 A\'h. 11 a Christian missionary is to be sent forth in the character of a 

 bishop into a country imperfectly Christianised, and where the converts 

 are not brought into any regular church order, the Pope does not 

 consecrate the missionary as the bishop of that country in which his 

 services are required, but as the bishop of one of the extinct sees, who 

 is supposed to have left his diocese and to be travelling in those parts. 

 ngan Biihtpi. In England, every bishop is, in certain views of 

 hi* character and position, regarded as a suffragan of the archbishop in 

 whose province he is. But the suffragan bishop is rather to be under- 

 stood as a bishop in partibue, who was admitted by the English bishops 

 before the Reformation to assist them in the performance of the duties 

 of their office. When a bishop filled some high office of state, the 

 uuBtance of a suffragan was almost essential, and was probably usually 

 conceded by the Pope, to whom such matters belonged, when asked 

 for. A catalogue of persons who have been suffragan bishops in 

 ud was made by Wharton, a great ecclesiastical antiquary, and is 

 I in au appendix to a Dissertation on bishops in partibus, pub- 

 lished in 1784 by another distinguished church-antiquary, Dr. Samuel 



At the Reformation, provision was made for a body of suffragans. 

 Tin A*'t ji; Henry VIII. c. 14, is expressly on this subject. It autho- 

 rises each archbishop and bishop to name a suffragan, which is to be 

 i n this manner : he is to present the names of two clerks to the 

 king, one of whom the king is to select. He was no longer to be 

 i some extinct ee, but from some town within the realm. 

 ' 1 -twi.-nty places are named as the seats (nominally) of the suffragan 

 . They were these which follow : 



Thetford, 



Ipswich, 



Colcbeiter, 



DOTCT, 



Guildford, 



Southampton, 



Taunton, 



Shafteabury, 



Mult, 



Marlborough, 



Bedford, 



Leicester, 



Gloucester, 



8hrewbury, 



Bristol, 



Penrith, 



Bridgewater, 



Nottingham, 



Grantham, 



Hull, 



Huntingdon, 



Cambridge, 

 Perctli, 

 Berwick, 

 St. Germain*, 

 and the 

 Isle of Wight. 



Thin wag before the establishment of the six new bishoprics. 



Very few persons were nominated suffragan bishops under this Act. 

 One, whose name was Robert Pursglove, who had been an abbot, and 

 who was a friend to education, was suffragan bishop of Hull. He died 

 in 1579, and lies interred in the church of Tideswell in Derbyshire, 

 under a sumptuous tomb, on which is his effigy in the episcopal 

 costume with a long rhyming inscription presenting an account, curioim 

 as being contemporary, of the places at which he received his education, 

 and the ecclesiastical offices which in succession he filled. 



Boy-bishop. In the cathedral and other greater churches, it was 

 usual on St. Nicholas-day to elect a child, usually one of the children 

 of the choir, bishop, and to invest him with the robes and other insignia 

 of the episcopal office ; and he continued from that day (Dec. 6), to the 

 feast of the Holy Innocents (Dec. 28), to practise a kind of mimicry of 

 the ceremonies in which the bishop usually officiated, more for the 

 amusement than to the edification of the people. The custom, strange 

 as it was, existed in the churches on the continent as well as in England. 

 It may be traced to a remote period. It was countenanced by the 

 great ecclesiastics themselves, and in their foundation they sometimes 

 even made provision for these ceremonies. This was the case with the 

 archbishop of York in the reign of Henry VII., when he founded his 

 college at Rotherham. Little can be said in favour of such exhibitions, 

 but that they served to abate the dreariness of mid- winter. Much may 

 be found collected on this sxibject in EUis's edition of Brand's ' Popular 

 Antiquities," vol. i. The custom was finally suppressed by a procla- 

 mation of Henry VIII., in 1542. 



like manner into the composition of one or two other words. 



In England there are two archbishoprics and twenty-one bishoprics ; 

 in Wales four bishoprics ; the Isle of Man forms also a bishopric, but 

 the bishop has no seat in the English Parliament. 



The basis of the present diocesan distribution of England was laid 

 in the times of the Saxon Heptarchy. At the Conquest there weiv 

 two archbishoprics and thirteen bishoprics, namely, 



Canterbury, 



York, 



London, 



Winchester, 



Chichester, 



Uochester, 

 Salisbury, 

 Bath and Wells, 

 Exeter, 

 "SYorces ter, 



Hereford, 



Coventry and Liclifleld, 



Lincoln, 



Noiwicb, 



Durham. 



The first innovation on this arrangement was made by King Henry I., 

 who, to gratify the abbot of the ancient Saxon foundation at Ely, and 

 to free him from the superintendence of .the Bishop of Lincoln, in 

 whose diocese he was, erected Ely into a bishopric, the church of the 

 monastery being made the cathedral. He assigned to it as its diocese 

 the county of Cambridge and some portion of Norfolk, perhaps as 

 much as had formerly been comprehended within Mercia ; for we have 

 no better guide to the exact limits of the ancient Saxon kingdoms than 

 the limitations of the ancient dioceses. This was effected in 1109. 



The second was in 1133, near the end of the reign of Henry I., when 

 the see of Carlisle was founded. The diocese consists of portions of 

 the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland, perhaps not before 

 comprehended within any English diocese. 



No other change took place till 1541, when King Henry VIII. 

 erected six new bishoprics, facilities for doing so being afforded by the 

 dissolution of the monastic establishments, which placed at the king's 

 disposal large and splendid churches, and great estates, out of which to 

 make a provision for the support of the bishops. These were : 

 1. Oxford, having for its diocese the county of Oxford, which had 

 previously been included within the diocese of Lincoln. 2. Peter- 

 borough : this diocese was also taken out of that of Lincoln, and com- 

 prises the county of Northampton and the greater portion of Rutland. 

 3. Gloucester, having for its diocese the county of Gloucester, which 

 had been previously in the diocese of Worcester. 4. Bristol, to which 

 the city of Bristol, and the whole county of Dorset heretofore belong- 

 ing to the diocese of Salisbury, were assigned. 5. Chester : to this a 

 very large tract was assigned, namely, the county of Chester, heretofore 

 part of the diocese of Lichfield and Coventry, and the whole county of 

 Lancaster, part of Cumberland, and the archdeaconry of Richmond, all 

 of which were before in the diocese of York. 6. Westminster, the 

 county of Middlesex, which before had belonged to the diocese of 

 London, being assigned to it as its diocese. This last bishopric how- 

 ever soon fell. In about nine years, Thirlby, the first and only bishop, 

 was translated to the see of Norwich, and the county of Middlesex was 

 restored to the diocese of London. 



Since the year 1541 no change took place in the diocesal distribution 

 of England until 1836, when, in order to lessen the great disproportion 

 of the sees, the bishopric of Ripon was formed under the 6 & 7 Wm. IV. 

 c. 77, consisting of detached parts of the dioceses of York and Chester, 

 and the bishoprics of Gloucester and Bristol were united. Provision 

 was also made for the creation of a bishopric of Manchester, for which 

 room was to be made by uniting the sees of Bangor and St. Asaph. 

 This part of the plan was subsequently abandoned, and in 1847 Man- 

 chester was erected into a bishopric, with a provision that no greater 

 number of bishops should have a seat in the House of Lords, and, 

 therefore, that the junior bishop (except of the bishoprics of London, 

 Winchester or Durham) should be the one without a seat. The 



