when a copy was remitted to the royal council. In their custody it seems to have continued till the meeting of the southern convocation in the March of 1553. If discussed at this time either in one or both houses, the debate must have been speedily concluded; for on the 1st day of the following month the synod was itself dissolved, and royal orders for the printing of the articles appeared on the 20th of May. They would thus have been 'prepared by the authority of the king and council, agreed to in convocation, and there subscribed by both houses; and so presently promulgated by the king's authority, according to law.""1 After the death of Edward the articles passed into an obscurity from which they did not emerge at the accession of Elizabeth. Not until five years after that event were they submitted for revision to the convocation that met in January, 1563, at which time, after reduced to certain omissions and additions, the completed work appeared as the famous Thirty-nine Articles, which then became by the joint action of church and state 2 the standard of doctrine of the Church of England; and as such, since the final revison of 1571,3 they have remained unaltered during the three centuries that have elapsed since that time. not until 1563 were the Fortytwo Articles Thirtynine; the final revision of 1571. Abortive attempt made to codify the ecclesias tical laws; ancient canons not The attempt made in Edward's reign to codify the ecclesiastical laws of the realm, which the religious revolution had left in a state of great confusion, proved abortive. When the church entered into new relations with the state by virtue of "The Submission of the Clergy," which took place in 1532in conflict 33, it was agreed (1) that where they did not conflict with the royal supremacy or with the laws of the realm, the ancient canons of the church should remain in full force; (2) that convocation should not discuss the enactment of new canons without a license from the crown; (3) that no new canons should have any force until ratified by the crown. To remove the great uncertainty which naturally existed as to what canons actually remained in force after the passage of the Act of Sub with the Reformation stat utes continued in force; 1 Hardwick's Hist. of the Articles, pp. 111, 112, citing Wake, State of the Church, pp. 598–600. 2 As to their adoption by convocation, see Wilkins, Conc., vol. iv. p. 237; Gibson's Synod. Anglic., p. 145, ed. 1854. They were then submitted to the crown for ratification, according to the Act of Submission, and were so ratified under the great seal. Coke's Inst., vol. iv. p. 74. 3 As to the nature of the alterations made in 1571, and as to the authenticity of the English and Latin versions, see Hardwick, pp. 154-156. 4 See above, p. 69. ful attempt Henry's vived by ment of a mission, provision was made, not only in that act but in two others passed during the reign of Henry VIII., for a codification of the canon law.1 As no action was taken prior to Henry's death, the subject was renewed in the first year of Edward's reign in a petition from the clergy of the lower house of convocation to the archbishop, in which they asked that a commission should be appointed to establish ecclesiastical laws "so that all judges ecclesiastical, proceeding after these laws, may be without danger or peril." 2 In response to unsuccessthat petition was finally passed 3 & 4 Edw. VI. c. 11, pro- to codify viding for the appointment by the king of such a commission made in as his father had been authorized to appoint. Accordingly reign rein October, 1551, the council ordered the chancellor to issue 3 & 4 Edw. a commission to thirty-two persons, who were named, which VI. c. 11 ; order was superseded a month later by another, limiting the appointcommission to eight. In February, 1552, still another order commisappears for "a letter to the lord chancellor to make out a sion; commission to the Archbishop of Canterbury and other bishops, learned men, civilians, and lawyers of the realm, for the establishment of the Ecclesiastical Laws, according to the act of parliament made the last session." The dead fruit of this refusal of commission, which failed to receive parliamentary sanction, is to approve parliament embalmed in a manuscript volume in Latin,3 embracing not a codification of the ancient canon law as it remained in force labors; after the Reformation, but a new creation composed in a narrow and inquisitorial spirit, which went so far as to provide among its many severe penalties that of death for obstinate heretics. This still-born production, known to the learned as "The Reformation of the Ecclesiastical Laws," could not be since the resuscitated by the effort made to that end in 1571. After failure to the utter failure thus made by the crown and the parliament code convoto provide a comprehensive ecclesiastical code which, like the enacted Prayer-book and the Thirty-nine Articles, might have stood as such canons an enduring monument, convocation contented itself with the pline of the enactment from time to time of such canons as the discipline required; 127 Hen. VIII. c. 15; 35 Hen. VIII. c. 16. 2 See Cardwell's Synodalia, vol. ii. p. 420; Wilkins, Conc., vol. iv. p. 15. 8 Harl. MSS., p. 426. This volume was printed by Foxe in 1571, and by Cardwell in 1850, with additions made 4 See Blount, Reform. of the Church the results of its make a cation has as the disci church Elizabeth; made by convoca reign of James I. canons of of the church most urgently required. In that way three1 sets of canons were promulgated during the reign of Elizabeth. But as the sanctions for the enactment of these canons did not extend beyond the reign of the sovereign by whom they were compilation granted,2 it became necessary at the accession of James I. to deal anew with the whole subject. Availing itself of the option in the portunity thus offered, convocation in reënacting the canons of the preceding reign undertook to expand them into something like a code of church discipline, based of course upon the principles of the Reformation. The one hundred and forty canons thus compiled remained unaltered down to the year 1865, when material changes were made in four of them. No change has, however, taken place in the relations between the crown and the clerical legislatures as fixed by the concordant of 1532-33. The canons of 1865, like those of 1603, were enacted by the convocations, after license first granted by the crown, by whose authority they were afterwards ratified and confirmed. by letters patent under the great seal, prior to their promulgation, "to be diligently observed, executed, and equally kept by all our loving subjects of this our kingdom, within the provinces of Canterbury and York, in all points wherein they do or may concern every or any of them." remained unaltered until 1865. Great administrative the end of Edward's reign; The last year of Edward's reign, marked by the promulgation of the revised Prayer-book and the Forty-two Articles, disorder at found the realm in a state of great administrative disorder. In spite of the vast sums which had accrued to the crown through appropriations of ecclesiastical property, the greed of the courtiers, the growing expenses of the court, and the cost of military enterprises had produced an oppressive debt and an empty treasury.5 Northumberland, treading in the footsteps of his father, first attempted in the fall of 1552 to supply the 1 As to the canons of 1575, 1585, and 1597, see Cardwell's Synodalia, vol. i. pp. 133, 139, 147. 2 Gibson's Codex, p. 994. which in that respect, and by virtue of such ancient allowance, will bind the laity." - Middleton v. Croft, Str. Rep. 1056; 2 Atkyn's Rep. 650. 5 For a full statement of the financial situation as taken from the State Papers, see Froude, Hist. Eng., vol. v. pp. 110-112. "The expenses of the household, which in 1532 were nineteen thousand pounds, in 1549 were more than a hundred thousand."Ibid., vol. iv. p. 397. met in influence the lower deficit by the creation of all kinds of commissions to raise money,1 and when that expedient failed he was driven, in January, 1553, to issue writs for a parliament that met on the parliament 1st of March, memorable by reason of the measures which March, the council deemed it expedient to employ in order to check 1553; the growing spirit of independence by dictating the election memorable of such members to the lower house as would be subservi- attempt to ent to its will. In that way a practice, which had prevailed elections to to a greater or less extent since the days of Henry VII., was house; emphasized by a flagrant interference with elections by means of circulars sent directly to the sheriffs of counties or to the the system of royal mayors of towns naming the persons to be chosen, or by royal nominaorders sent to the favored candidates indicating the wish of the crown that they should be elected, or by directions to the electors themselves from individual members of the council.2 Although the nomination parliament thus assembled granted the subsidy asked after much debate, the spirit of resistance spirit of manifested was so marked that it was dissolved on the last so great day of the month in which it met. Edward was able to dis- that parliasolve parliament in person, but immediately thereafter he was dissolved in removed on account of his rapidly increasing infirmity to in which Greenwich, and by the 1st of May it was clear that he was slowly dying. Thus was Northumberland brought face to face Edward's with a catastrophe that threatened not only his personal for- death tunes, but those of the Reformation. The problem was, how forces to provide an heir to the throne who would be propitious to berland to both. The legal difficulties to be overcome were certainly seri- regulate the ous. By Henry's third and last succession act first Mary and succession; the legal then Elizabeth had been put in the entail in default of issue of difficulties Edward, with a proviso that the succession should be subject come; to such further arrangements as the king by his last will might appoint. Under the power thus given Henry simply supple- claims of mented the parliamentary entail by providing that on failure Elizabeth; 1 During the fall and winter of 155253, there were no less than nine such commissions. As to the visitation to glean the last spoils from the churches, see Burnet, Hist. Reform., vol. i. p. 450. 2 See first draft of a circular in British Museum, Lansdowne MSS., p. 3; letter to a candidate, Sir P. Hoby, Harleian MSS., p. 523; Froude, Hist. Eng., vol. v. pp. 125, 126; Hallam, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 46, citing Strype, resistance ment was the month it met; approach ing Northum attempt to to be over Mary and claims of the house of Suffolk; the marriage be Grey and Guildford Dudley; set aside all claim of issue of his three children, the crown should pass to the heirs of his younger sister Mary, duchess of Suffolk, to the detriment of the heirs of his older sister Margaret of Scotland.1 The representative of the Suffolk claim was Frances, the daughter of Mary, who was herself the mother of three daughters2 by her marriage with Grey, Lord Dorset, a zealous protestant. Northumberland's complicated conspiracy began with a marriage between Lady Jane Grey, the eldest daughtween Lady ter of Frances, and his fourth son Guildford Dudley. Having thus engrafted a branch of the Suffolk house upon his own stock, the next step was to remove the three prior claimants Edward's who stood before Jane in the line of succession. The means illegal attempt to determined upon for the accomplishment of this end was a will to be made by Edward, without parliamentary authority, naming Lady Jane as his immediate successor. This grossly illegal attempt to set aside the succession as settled by parliament by a king still in his minority was earnestly opposed by the judges, the law officers of the crown, and the archbishop, as a desperate measure which would involve all concerned in it in the guilt of treason. But boy as he was, and dying as he was, Edward was immovable. His zeal for the "religion" was such that he felt that everything must yield to the necessities of "his device for the succession," through which he confidently believed he could transmit the crown to a protestant successor. On the 21st of June all the formalities incident to cuted June the execution of the will or letters patent were completed, and on July 6 Edward died. Although Northumberland was reluctantly supported at first by the council backed by the foreign mercenaries and by the extreme protestants, his whole ants prior to Jane by means of a will; will exe 21, and Edward died July 6, 1553; Northum 5 failure of incoherent and impracticable conspiracy collapsed in the presence of a popular outburst in Mary's favor, which sent him to conspiracy. the block, and with him the hapless girl whom he had involved berland's in the toils of his ambition. 1 See above, p. 108. And also Bailey's Succession to the English Crown, PP. 135, 136. 2 Lady Jane, born in 1537, Lady 8 Celebrated 25th of May, 1553. 5 See the copy printed for the Camden Society by Mr. John G. Nichols, Letters Patent for the Limitation of the Crown: Queen Jane and Queen Mary, Appendix. A clear analysis of the letters, showing Edward's leaning to male succession, may be found in Bailey, p. 167. |