A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



one side and gradually usurped all their prescriptive rights in the visitation of the clergy. But 

 in the diocese of Carlisle the archdeacons had a poor chance in the competition. The chan- 

 cellors, as the delegated officers of the bishops, held correctional courts in various centres for 

 the transaction of the legal business of the diocese. These courts were held not only when 

 the bishop visited, but when they did not visit. For two centuries after the Reformation, 

 the clergy were not much troubled with episcopal visitation. Matters were worse in the case 

 of the archdeacons. We have not noticed a single record of archidiaconal visitation from the 

 Submission of the Clergy in 1534 until the new departure of recent years. Throughout the 

 long period of three hundred and fifty years, the visitorial power of the archidiaconate had 

 been suspended. 



After the Restoration in 1660, when the bishops began to hold their triennial visitations 

 with more frequency, their chancellors followed their example in holding chapters for the 

 hearing of causes. As time rolled on, the chapters held by the chancellors came to be regarded 

 in the nature of a visitation. In due course they utilized those occasions,in the years when 

 the bishops did not visit, for the delivery of homilies to the clergy and churchwardens. Dr. 

 Paley, who had been appointed archdeacon in 1782 and chancellor in 1785, at once detected 

 the incongruity of visitorial charges as delivered by the bishop's legal adviser. In speaking of 

 ' the discourses ' usually delivered at a chancellor's visitation, he remarked, ' I embrace the 

 only opportunity afforded me of submitting to you that species of counsel and exhortation, 

 which, with more propriety perhaps, you would have received from me in the character of 

 your archdeacon, if the functions of that office had remained entire.' l Still the custom went 

 on. When a new archdeaconry was added to the diocese in 1856, the chancellor, relying on 

 his letters patent, undertook its oversight. Bishop Goodwin, however, on the death of Chan- 

 cellor Burton, made a new arrangement whereby he appointed a layman to the chancellorship 

 and invested his archdeacons with as much authority in visitation as the law of the land and 

 the custom of the diocese allowed them. Dr. Prescott now unites in his own person the 

 offices of archdeacon of Carlisle a and chancellor of the diocese. When the diocese was 

 extended, the new portion, consisting of the barony of Coupland or Egremont in Cumberland, 

 the barony of Kendal in Westmorland, and Lancashire north of the Sands, was constituted 

 into the archdeaconry of Westmorland by Order in Council, dated to August 1847, which 

 order was to come into force with consent of Bishop Percy or on the next avoidance of the 

 see. As the bishop withheld his consent, the new archdeaconry did not come into being till 

 after his death in 1856, when his successor, Bishop Villiers, appointed the first archdeacon of 

 Westmorland in that year. 3 



The formation of the archdeaconry of Furness in 1884 occasioned some difference of 

 opinion. Bishop Goodwin explained his action in these words : ' Great changes have taken 

 place in this diocese in the course of the last thirty years in consequence of the development 

 of industries connected with our rich possessions of iron ore. Large towns have sprung up 

 where small villages alone existed, or perhaps not even villages ; and the whole of the western 

 side of the diocese has a new and immensely multiplied population.' This consideration, 

 however, did not cause the bishop to apply to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for the pur- 

 pose of creating a new archdeaconry till the Duke of Devonshire and the Duke of Buccleuch. 

 offered to provide 200 a year for its endowment. 4 The archdeaconry of Furness was con- 

 stituted to consist of the rural deaneries of Gosforth in Cumberland, and of Cartmel, Dalton, 

 and Ulverston in Lancashire, by Order in Council dated 19 May 1884, and the first arch- 

 deacon was appointed on 29 May following. 5 



In order to carry out the new scheme no regard was paid to historic boundaries, and the 

 ancient landmarks were obliterated. Twelve parishes in the south-east of Cumberland were 

 dissevered from the archdeaconry of Carlisle and added to that of Westmorland ; the ancient 

 deanery of Coupland was split in two and divided between Westmorland and Furness. After 

 an unbroken continuity of seven and a half centuries the archdeaconry of Carlisle was muti- 



Works of William Paley (ed. E. Paley, 1830), vi. 61. 



2 The first ' charge, delivered to the clergy and churchwardens of the archdeaconry of Carlisle ' by 

 Archdeacon Prescott, took place ' at his ordinary visitation in May, 1888,' the subject being ' Visitations 

 in the ancient diocese of Carlisle.' The charge, which has been printed, contains a scholarly survey of 

 past visitations. It is the first of its kind on record. 



> Carl. Epis. Reg. Villiers, f. 81. 



4 Bishop Goodwin, Charge (1884), pp. 22-3. 



6 Carl. Epis. Reg. Goodwin, ff. 391-2. 



