assemble this council yearly, and also that he had omitted so to do for the last eight years, although doubtless, during the same period, he had often convened the clergy of his province to Parliament. But this distinction did not last long. The business of provincial councils in the course of time came to be transacted in the ordinary congregations of the clergy, and both the one and the other were styled convocations, until at last provincial councils, properly so called, ceased altogether, and parliamentary convocations succeeded in their place; the frequency and regular occurrence of which afforded the clergy an opportunity of transacting all those matters which had been done in the provincial synods. When Archbishop Warham, in 1509, called together a synod by his own authority, for the redress of abuses and reformation of manners, his mandate warned it to meet a few days after the Parliament, and styled it, not a provincial council, but a convocation of the clergy, and this term appears afterwards to have been strictly applied to signify the parliamentary meetings of the clergy. Camden describes this assembly thus:-"Synodus que Convocatio Cleri Dicitur, et semper simul cum Parliamento habetur." And to shew the customary nature of this assembly, we need only refer to the words in which the warrant to the keeper of the great zeal for issuing out writs for Parliament was expressed in the time of James I. "Whereas we are resolved to have a Parliament at These are to will and require you forthwith, upon receipt hereof, to issue forth our writs of summons to all the peers of our kingdom; and also all other usual writs for the electing of such knights, citizens, and burgesses, as are to serve therein; and withal to issue out all usual writs for the summoning of the clergy of both provinces in their Houses of Convocation."

Thus it appears, according to Bishop Atterbury—

"That, as far back as we have any memoirs of the civil or ecclesiastical affairs of this kingdom, it appears that the clergy and laity met together in the great councils of the realm: that this they did, in the Saxon times, and for some reigns after the conquest, nationally; joining closely with the laity in civil debates, and taking their sanction along with them in all ecclesiastical acts and ordinances; that they divided afterwards from the laity, and from one another, and attended the Parliament, not in one body, but in two provincial synods, held under their several archbishops. That though it does not clearly appear when this practice first had its rise, yet sure we are, that it is between four and five hundred years old, and has for so long at least regularly obtained; excepting only the interruption that was given to it by the premunitory clause, inserted into the bishop's writs; which once again warned, and brought the clergy nationally to Parliament: that a strict compliance with this clause was at first exacted by the crown, and paid by the clergy; but

that they soon found ways of being released from the rigor of it, and prevailed upon the king to accept of their former manner of assembling with the Parliament in two provincial synods, in lieu of that closer attendance which the pramunientes challenged; the forms, however, being still kept up, by which the king's right of summoning them immediately to Parliament was declared all along, and their obligation to obey his summons in the way it prescribed, was duly acknowledged. That these provincial assemblies, though held apart from the Parliament, yet belonged to it; met by the parliamentary, no less than the provincial writ, and were state-meetings as well as church synods: in them parliamentary matters were transacted, and parliamentary forms and methods observed; the members of them were entitled to parliamentary wages, and enjoyed parliamentary privileges. That the inferior clergy, though divided in place from the lower laity, yet joined with them often in the same acts and petitions, and were still esteemed and called the commons spiritual of the realm; and what they and the prelates in convocation did, was long after the separation spoken of in our records, as done in Parliament. That these parliamentory conventions of the clergy were held at first near the time at which the laity met; afterwards with a latitude: but that this irregularity was reformed before the Reformation of religion, and their meeting and departing fixed within a day of the assembling and dismission of the Parliament, and that this custom has now for above an age and a half continued that for so long, therefore (not to say how much longer), the convocation has been a word of art, which signifies a meeting of the clergy in time of Parliament: that such meetings have by all that understood our constitution been held necessary.

"The result of all is this, that, if some hundred years custom can make a law, then may we, without offence, affirm it to be law, that the convocation should sit with every new Parliament; if the true notion of a convocation be, that it is an assembly of the clergy always attending the Parliament, then is it no presumption to say, that we have the same law for the sitting of a convocation as we have for that of a Parliament."

Such was the condition in which the convocation stood until the reign of Henry VIII. During which, in consequence of the clergy having submitted to Cardinal Wolsey, in his legatine character, they incurred the displeasure of the sovereign to such a degree, that they were all involved in a premunire, and were not pardoned for their offence until they had paid a large sum to the crown, and had further acknowledged, in convocation, that the convocations of the clergy" are, always have been, and ought to be, assembled by the king's writ," and "promised in verbo sacerdotil," that they would not from henceforth make canons without the royal assent and license. This submission was embodied in an Act of Parliament passed in the 25th year of Henry VIII. But although the clergy were restrained by this act from making canons without the consent of the crown, it

appears that full liberty was left to them, to deliberate in convocation upon other matters connected with the church, to petition the crown with respect to alleged grievances, and even to petition that new canons might be made, and to suggest the manner in which these might be framed, and also to examine and censure heretical writings.

Perhaps it may be asked, why, if this assembly possesses such powers and privileges, does it remain at the present day scarcely more than a dead letter? We will endeavour to explain the reason, after first stating the mode in which the convocation is now summoned, and of whom it consists. The convocation, as our readers are perhaps aware, is still summoned with every new Parliament, and this is done in the following mode: the king's writ is directed to the archbishop of each province, requiring him to summon all bishops, deans, archdeacons, cathedral and collegiate churches, &c. upon which the archbishop directs his mandate to his dean províncial, first citing him peremptorily, then willing him in like manner, to cite all the bishops, deans, &c. and all the clergy of his province, but directing at the same time, that one proctor sent from each cathedral and collegiate church, and two from the body of the inferior clergy of each diocese, may suffice. The upper house in the province of Canterbury consists of the bishops of the province, with the archbishop as president, who prorogues and dissolves the convocation by mandate from the crown. The lower house consists (at least before the late alterations in the dioceses, and we are not aware that any change has been made by them) of twenty-two deans, fifty-four archdeacons, twenty-four proctors from the chapters, and forty-four proctors representing the parochial clergy. Each house has a prolocutor, chosen from among themselves. All members of both houses possess the same privilege of freedom from arrest as members of parliament, by 8th of Henry VI. In the province of York the convocation consists only of one house, and each archdeaconry elects two proctors.

The convocation continued not only to meet, but also to deliberate, so late as the year 1717. In that year the proceedings of this assembly turned upon two works by Bishop Hoadley, one of which was entitled A Preservative against the Principles and Practices of the Non-jurors; and the other, a sermon, called, The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ. The convocation appointed a committee to examine these two performances, and thus commenced the celebrated Bangorian controversy, in the course of which William Law published his justly famous three Letters to Hoadley, which should be read and studied by every churchman. The convocation drew up a representation, in which

the "Preservative" and the "Sermon" were censured, as tending to subvert all government and discipline in the Church of Christ, to reduce his kingdom to a state of anarchy and confusion, to impugn and impeach the royal supremacy in causes ecclesiastical, and the authority of the legislature to enforce obedience in matters of religion by civil sanctions. Before, however, this representation could be brought into the upper house, the whole assembly was prorogued by a special order from the king. From that period to the present, the convocation has never transacted any business, but after meeting with each new Parliament, and going through certain forms, has adjourned sine die.

That the party at present in power in this country should not wish this assembly to sit and deliberate, is not perhaps surprising, when we observe them on every occasion so desirous to lower the persons of whom this assembly would consist in the estimation of the public, to deprive them of their rights and privileges, to harass and annoy them by vexatious measures, and to insult their feelings and sympathies as a class, through the medium of their organs of the press. But that, in the period intervening from the time when this assembly last transacted business until the present day, during which that sound and constitutional party which is at once friendly to the rights and authority of the crown and the privileges of the Church has been so frequently in power, the convocation should never have been encouraged to act in its proper character as the representative of the Church, we own, does excite some astonishment in our minds. However, we are not to suppose that this conduct proceeded from any unfriendly feelings. It was caused most probably by an ignorance or misapprehension of the real nature and powers of such an assembly, by an unconsciousness of the wants and necessities of the Church requiring its sitting, or else perhaps by an expectation, that those who were most interested ought to be the first to urge such a subject. Meanwhile, the Church has suffered, and is still suffering, from the want of such a public organ for the expression of its opinion on matters of faith and discipline, and on those questions where its temporal possessions and privileges are at issue. Deprived continually of some right or immunity, hemmed in by harrassing and vexatious restrictions invented only to gratify the malice of her foes, she has no persons immediately interested in pleading her cause and in guarding her welfare, except her prelates; whilst those of the laity, who, when they need her aid, scruple not to court her ministers, and to overwhelm them with professions of zeal and veneration for her cause, when the hour of trial arrives, either stand by with

a cold and heartless indifference, when matters involving her institutions in the most imminent hazard are being agitated; or else, to their shame be it spoken, are not unwilling to lend their aid to her enemies for reasons of expediency forsooth! As if expediency-that most pernicious of all rules of human actionshould be the standard by which those who profess a regard for religion should permit themselves to be guided! Yes! it is very lamentable, but not the less true, we fear, that certain men, who are eager to avow their friendship for the Church on many occasions, consider her, at least if we are to judge by their conduct, as a mere engine of state policy, a sort of political shuttlecock, which is to be bandied about by them exactly in that manner which may best promote their own interests.

ART. IV.-The Works of Bishop Hall. Oxford: Talboys.

SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH distinguished three great periods and divisions in the character and history of English style: the first extending from Sir Thomas More to Lord Clarendon; the second from the restoration to the middle of the eighteenth century; the third, which he called the Rhetorical, and which has derived a peculiar physiognomy, from the prevalence of the Johnsonian school of writers. An uncertainty and variety of opinion has long prevailed, respecting the formation and progress of our Prose, which has never attached to the history of our Poetry. Every eye turns, without hesitation, to the morning star of Chaucer; the luminous genius of Shakespeare; the richly-coloured visions of Beaumont or of Marlowe; and the resplendent learning of Milton. These names are the lights that guide the critic's footsteps through the paths of our earlier literature. He beholds the torch of allegory transmitted, in succession, from the hand of Spenser to Fletcher and Henry More sees it rekindled by the breath of Thomson and Beattie. The advance of the Drama is marked in his investigations by circumstances of equal precision, the rude Morality or Miracle Play glimmers, by faint degrees, into the dawn of legitimate invention; and the Castle of Perseverance and the Cradle of Security* brighten at length into The Merry Wives of Windsor, or Romeo and Juliet.

Burnet pronounced Bacon the first correct writer of our language, "and considered him our best author;" even after the

* See Collier's History of Dramatic Poetry,