ENGLAND, THE CHURCH OF. The Christian Church in England existed as the Church of the English people long before that people became a united nation; and notwithstanding changes of doctrine, ritual and organization, there has been no real breach of continuity from the 6th century onwards. In the present article only the most outstanding and significant facts in the his tory of the Church of England are described, until we come to the last decade of the 19th century, from which date the course of events is treated more fully.
Christianity reached Britain during the 3rd century, and perhaps earlier, probably from Gaul. An early tradition records the death of a martyr Alban at Verulamium, the present St. Albans. A fully grown British Church existed in the 4th century : bishops of London, York and Lincoln attended the council of Arles in 314; the church assented to the council of Nicaea in 325, and some of its bishops were present at the council of Rimini in 359. Britons made pilgrimages, to Rome and to Palestine, and some joined the monks who gathered round St. Martin, bishop of Tours. Among these was Ninian, who preached to the southern Picts, and about 400 built a church of stone on Wigton Bay ; its whiteness struck the people and their name for it is commemorated in the modern name Whithorn. From northern Britain, St. Patrick (see PATRICK, ST.) went to accomplish his work as the apostle of Ireland. When the Britons were hard pressed by Saxon invaders large bodies of them found shelter in western Armorica, in a lesser Britain, which gave its name to Brittany. A British Church was founded there, and bishops, scholars and recluses of either Britain seem constantly to have visited the other. Afterward Gildas (about 550) and other British monks preached in Ireland, and from them the Scots, the domi nant people of Northern Ireland, received a ritual. The organiza tion of the Scotic Church in Ireland was similar to that of the British Church. Its monastic settlements or schools were many and large, and were the abodes of learning. Bishops dwelt in them and were reverenced for their office, but each was subject to the direction of the abbot and convent. In 565 ( ?) St. Columba, the founder and head of several Scotic monasteries, left Ireland and founded a monastery in Iona, which afforded gospel teaching to the Scots of Dalriada and the northern Picts, and later did a great work in evangelizing many of the Teutonic conquerors of Britain. But the Anglo-Saxon invasion had cut off Britain from communication with Rome. The British Church had no share in the progressive life of the Roman Church. The Britons themselves gradually retreated before the invaders to Wales, and to western and northern districts, or dwelt among them as slaves or as out laws, and they made no attempts to evangelize the conquering race.
The romantic story of the Roman Abbot Gregory (afterwards Pope Gregory the Great) seeing some fair-haired English boys exposed for sale in Rome, and so being led to take a practical interest in the Christianization of their country, is well known. After he became pope he sent a mission to England headed by Augustine. The way was prepared, for Aethelberht, king of Kent, had married a Christian, a Frankish princess Berhta. Augustine and his band landed probably at Ebbsfleet in 597. They were well received by Aethelberht, who was converted and baptized. On the i6th of November Augustine was consecrated by the archbishop of Arles to be the archbishop of the English, and by Christmas had baptized many hundreds of Kentish men. Augustine restored a Roman church at Canterbury to be the church of his see. Gregory sent directions for the rule of the infant church. There were to be two archbishops, at London and York; London, however, was not fully Christianized for some years, and the primatial see remained at Canterbury. The mission prospered, but its influence depended on the varying fortunes of the Anglo-Saxon kings; and in 3o years only Kent, East Anglia and parts of Northumbria remained Christian.
The work of the Romans was taken up by Scotic missionaries. Oswald, under whom the Northumbrian power revived, had lived as an exile among the Scots, and asked them for a bishop to teach his people. Aidan was sent to him by the monks of Iona in 635, and fixed his see in Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, where he founded a monastery. Saintly, zealous and supported by Oswald's influ ence, he brought Northumbria generally to accept the gospel. The conversion of the Middle Angles and Mercians, and the recon version of the East Saxons. were also achieved by Scots or by disciples of the Scotic mission. The Scots were admirable mission aries, holy and self-devoted, and building partly on Roman foun dations and elsewhere breaking new ground, they and their English disciples, as Ceadda (St. Chad), bishop of the Mercians, and Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne, who were by no means inferior to their teachers, almost completed the conversion of the country. But they practised an excessive asceticism and were apt to aban don their work in order to live as hermits. Great as were the benefits which the English derived from their teaching, its cessa tion was not altogether a loss, for the church was passing beyond the stage of mission teaching and needed organization.
Its organization like its foundation came from Rome. An arch bishop-designate who was sent to Rome for consecration having died there, Pope Vitalian in 668 consecrated Theodore of Tarsus as archbishop of Canterbury. The church had no system of gov ernment nor means of legislation. Theodore united it in obedience to himself, instituted national synods and subdivided the over large bishoprics. He also gave the church learning by establishing a school at Canterbury, where many gained knowledge of the Scriptures, of Latin and Greek, and other religious and secular subjects. In the north learning was promoted by Benedict Biscop in the sister monasteries which he founded at Wearmouth and Jarrow. There Bede (q.v.) received the learning which he im parted to others. In the year of Bede's death, 735, one of his disciples, Ecgbert, bishop of York, became the first archbishop of York, Gregory III. giving him the pallium, a vestment which con ferred archiepiscopal authority. He established a school or uni versity at York, to which scholars came from the continent. His work as a teacher was carried on by Alcuin (q.v.), who later brought learning to the dominions of Charlemagne. The infant church, following the example of the Irish Scots, showed much missionary zeal, and English missionaries founded an organized church in Frisia and laboured on the lower Rhine. Most famous of all, Winfrid, or St. Bonif ace, the apostle of Germany, with many English helpers preached to the Frisians, Hessians and Thuringians, founded bishoprics and monasteries, became the first archbishop of Mainz, and in 754 was martyred in Frisia. Mean while, religion, learning, arts, such as transcription and illumina tion, flourished in English monasteries ; but heathen customs and beliefs lingered on among the people, and in Bede's time there were many pseudo-monasteries where men and women made monasticism a cloak for idleness and vice.
The invasions of the Danes fell heavily on the church ; priests were slaughtered and churches sacked and burnt. Learning disappeared in Northumbria, and things were little better in the south. Bishops fought and fell in battle, the clergy lived as laymen, the monasteries were held by married canons, heathen superstitions and immorality prevailed among the laity. The successful efforts of King Alfred to improve the religious and intellectual condition of his own people (see ALFRED), and the gradual reconquest of middle and northern Eng land by his successors, was accompanied by the conversion of the Danish population. A revival of religion was effected by church men inspired by the reformed monasticism of France and Flan ders, by Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, Oswald, archbishop of York and Dunstan (see DUNSTAN). Dunstan sought to reform the church by ecclesiastical and secular legislation, forbidding im morality among laymen, insisting on the duties of the clergy and compelling the payment of tithes and other church dues; but the ecclesiastical revival was short-lived. Renewed Danish invasions, in the course of which Archbishop Alphege was martyred in 1012, and a decline in national character, injuriously affected the church and, though in the reign of Canute it was outwardly prosperous, spirituality and learning decreased. Bishoprics and abbacies were rewards of service to the king, the bishops were worldly-minded, plurality was frequent, and simony not unknown. A political con flict led to the banishment of the Norman archbishop and the appointment of an Englishman, Stigand, in his place. When Will iam of Normandy planned his invasion of England, Alexander II., by the advice of Hildebrand, afterwards Gregory VII., moved doubtless by this schism and by the desire to bring the English Church under the influence of the Cluniac revival and into closer relation with Rome, gave the duke a consecrated banner, and the Norman invasion had something of the character of a holy war.
The Conqueror's relations with Rome en sured a reform ; for the papacy was instinct with the Cluniac spirit. Lanfranc, abbot of Bec, was appointed archbishop of Canterbury and worked harmoniously with the king in bringing the English Church up to the level of the church in Normandy. William and Lanfranc also worked on Hildebrandine lines in separating ecclesi astical from civil administration. Ecclesiastical affairs were regulated in church councils held at the same time as the king's councils. Bishops and archdeacons were no longer to exercise their spiritual jurisdiction in secular courts, as had been the custom, but in ecclesiastical courts and according to canon law. The king, however, ruled church as well as state ; Gregory granted him con trol over episcopal elections, he invested bishops with the crozier and they held their temporalities of him, and he allowed no councils to meet and no business to be done without his licence. Gregory claimed homage from him; but while the king promised the payment of Peter's pence and such obedience as his English predecessors had rendered, he refused homage; he allowed no papal letters to enter the kingdom without his leave, and when an anti-pope was set up, he and Lanfranc treated the question as to which pope should be acknowledged in England as one to be decided by the crown. The relations established by the Conqueror between the crown, the church and the pope, its head and su preme judge, worked well as long as the king and the primate were agreed, but were so complex that trouble necessarily arose when they disagreed. William Rufus quarrelled with Anselm (q.v.), who succeeded Lanfranc; and Anselm maintained against Henry I. the papal right of investiture (q.v.). This question was settled in England by a compromise : Henry surrendered investi ture and kept the right to homage. The substantial gain lay with the crown, for, while elections were theoretically free, the king retained his power over them.
During Stephen's reign the church grew more powerful than was for the good either of the state or itself. Its courts encroached on the sphere of the lay courts, and further claimed exclusive criminal jurisdiction over all clerks whether in holy or minor orders, with the result that criminous clerks, though degraded by a spiritual court, escaped temporal punishment. Henry II., finding ecclesiastical privileges an obstacle to adminis trative reform, demanded that the bishops should agree to ob serve the ancient customs of the realm. These customs were, he asserted, expressed in certain constitutions to which he required their assent at a council at Clarendon in 1164. In spirit they generally maintained the rights of the crown as they existed under the Conqueror. Archbishop Becket (see BECKET) agreed, re pented and refused his assent; and a long quarrel ensued. The archbishop's murder consequent on the king's hasty words shocked Christendom, and Henry did penance publicly. By agreement with the pope he renounced the Constitutions, but the encroachments of the church courts were slightly checked, and the king's decisive influence on episcopal elections and some other advantages were secured. Under the guidance of ecclesiastics employed as royal ministers, the church supported the crown until, in 1206, Innocent III. refused to confirm the election of a bishop nominated by King John to Canterbury, and consecrated Stephen Langton as archbishop. The resulting quarrel with the pope ended with the king's surrender in 1213, when he acknowledged that he held his kingdom of the Roman see, promised a yearly tribute for England and Ireland, surrendered his crown to the legate, and received it again from him. Langton guided the barons in their demands on the king which were expressed in Magna Carta. The first clause provided, as charters of Henry I. and Stephen had already pro vided, that the English Church should be "free," adding that it should have freedom of election, which John had promised in 1214. As John's suzerain, Innocent annulled the charter, sus pended Langton, and excommunicated the barons in arms against the king. These prerogatives were maintained by the papal legates after the accession of Henry III., until 1221, when Pandulf's de parture restored Langton to his rightful position as head in Eng land of the church. Reforms in discipline and clerical work were then carried out. Religious life was quickened by the coming of the friars (see FRIARS) . Parochial organization was strengthened by the institution of vicars in benefices held by religious bodies. It was a time of intellectual activity, in character rather cosmo politan than national. English clerks studied philosophy and theology at Paris or law at Bologna; some remained abroad and were famous as scholars, others like Archbishop Langton and Bishop Grosseteste returned to be rulers of the church, and others like Roger Bacon to continue their studies in England. The schools of Oxford had already attained repute, and Cambridge began to be known as a place of study. The spirit of the age found expression in art, and English Gothic architecture, though originally, like the learning of the time, imported from France, took a line of its own and reached its climax at this period. Henry's gratitude for the benefits which in his early years he received from Rome was shown later in subservience to papal demands ; but the state of the national church was noted by the Provisions of Oxford in 1258 as part of the general misgovernment which the baronial opposition sought to remedy. The alliance be tween the crown and the papacy in this reign diminished the liberties of the church.
Edward I., who was a strong king, checked an attempt to magnify the spiritual author ity by the writ Circumspecte agatis, which defined the sphere of the ecclesiastical courts, put a restraint on religious endowments by the Statute of Mortmain, and desiring that every estate in the realm should have a share in public burdens and counsels, caused the beneficed clergy to be summoned to send proctors to parlia ment. The clergy preferred to make their grants in their own convocations, and so lost the position offered to them. The king's dealings with the church were on the whole statesmanlike. He employed clerical ministers and paid them by church preferments. but his nominations to bishoprics did not always receive papal confirmation which had become recognized as essential. His weak son Edward II. yielded readily to papal demands. The majority of the bishops in his reign, and specially those engaged in politics, were unworthy men; religion was at a low ebb; plurality and non residence were common. Moreover the residence of the popes at Avignon from 1308 to 1377 brought them under French influence; and Englishmen during the war with France were specially dis pleased that large sums should be drawn from the kingdom for them and that they should exercise ecclesiastical patronage in England. Papal interference in suits concerning temporalities was checked by a law of 1353 (the first statute of Praemunire), which made punishable by outlawry and forfeiture the carrying before a foreign tribunal of causes cognizable by English courts. This measure was extended in 1365, and in 1393 by the great statute of Praemunire. Indignant at this, Urban V. demanded payment of the tribute promised by John, which was then thirty-three years in arrear, but parliament repudiated the claim.
The Black Death disorganized the church by thinning the ranks of the clergy, who did their duty manfully during the plague. Large though insufficient numbers were instituted to benefices and unfit persons received holy orders. The value of livings decreased and many lay vacant. Some incumbents deserted their parishes to take stipendiary work in towns or secular employments, and unbeneficed clergy demanded higher stipends. Greediness infected the church in common with society at large. The state needed money and attacks were made in parliament on the wealth of the church. A definitely anti-clerical party formed itself, with John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, at its head. For political reasons he supported John Wycliffe; but he was unpopular, and when the bishops cited Wycliffe before them in St. Paul's, the duke's con duct provoked a riot and the proceedings ended abruptly (see WYCLIFFE). Wycliffe held that temporal power belonged only to laymen ; and not to popes nor priests ; and he even attacked the papacy itself, which in 1378 was distracted by the great schism; and afterwards condemned pilgrimages, secret confession and masses for the dead. He taught that Holy Scripture was the only source of religious truth, to the exclusion of church authority and tradition, and he and his followers made the first complete English version of the Bible. His opinions were spread by the poor priests whom he sent out to preach and by his English tracts.
With the accession of the Lancastrian house the crown allied itself with the church, and the bishops adopted a repressive policy towards the Lollards. In 1401 a statute, De heretico comburendo, ordered that heretics convicted in a spiritual court should be committed to the secular arm and publicly burned, and, while this statute was pending, one Sawtre was burned as a relapsed heretic. Henry V. was zealous for orthodoxy and the persecution of Lol lards increased, although the movement had ceased to have any political importance and the church itself was in an unsatisfactory state. As regards the papacy, the crown generally maintained the position taken up in the previous century, but its policy was fitful, and the custom of allowing bishops who were made cardinals to retain their sees strengthened papal influence. The bishops were largely engaged in secular business: there was much plurality, and cathedral and collegiate churches were frequently left to inferior officers whose lives were unclerical. The clergy were numerous and drawn from all classes, and humble birth did not debar a man from attaining the highest positions in the church. Preaching was rare, partly from neglectfulness and partly because, in 1401, in order to prevent the spread of heresy, priests were forbidden to preach without a licence. Monasticism had declined. Papal indul gences and relics were hawked about chiefly by friars. On the other hand, all education was carried on by the clergy, and religion entered largely into the daily life of the people, into their gild meetings, mystery-plays, and holidays, as well as into the great events of family life—baptisms, marriages and deaths. Many stately churches were built in the prevailing Perpendicular style, often by efforts in which all classes shared.
During the earlier years of the 16th century Lollardism still existed among the lower classes in towns, and was rife here and there in country districts. Persecution went on and martyrdoms are recorded. The old grievances concerning ecclesiastical exactions remained unabated. Lutheranism affected England chiefly through the surreptitious importation of Tyndale's New Testament and "heretical" books. In 1521 Henry VIII. wrote a book against Luther in which he maintained the papal authority, and was rewarded by Leo X. with the title of Defender of the Faith. Henry, however, whose will was to himself as the oracles of God, finding that the pope opposed his intended divorce from Catherine of Aragon, determined to allow no supremacy in his realm save his own. He carried out his ecclesiastical policy by parliamentary help. Parliament was packed, and was skilfully managed; and he had on his side the popular impatience of ecclesiastical abuses, a new feeling of national pride which would brook no foreign interference, the old desire of the laity to lighten their own burdens by the wealth of the church, and a growing inclination to question or reject sacerdotal authority. He used these advantages to forward his policy, and when he met with opposition, enforced his will as a despot. The parliament of 1529 lasted until 1536; it broke the bonds of Rome, established royal supremacy over the English Church, and effected a redistribution of national wealth at the expense of the clergy. Appeals to Rome were forbidden by statute, and the council ordained that the pope should thenceforth only be spoken of as bishop of Rome, as not having authority in England. In 1534 all payments to Rome were forbidden, and it was enacted that, on receiving royal licence to elect, cathedral chapters must elect bishops nominated by the king. The papal power was extirpated by statute, parliament at the same time declaring that neither the king nor kingdom would vary from the "Catholic faith of Christendom." The submission of the clergy was made law; appeals from the archbishops' courts were to be made to the king in chancery, and to be heard by royal commissioners appointed for the purpose; and the king's title as "Supreme Head in earth of the Church of England" was declared by parliament without qualification. Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, lately chancellor, the two most eminent Englishmen, were beheaded in 1535 on an accusation of attempt ing to deprive the king of this title.
By breaking the bonds of Rome Henry did not give the church freedom; he substituted a single despotism for the dual authority which pope and king had previously exercised over it. In 1535 Cromwell, the king's vicar-general, began a visitation of the monasteries. The reports (comperta) of his commissioners having been delivered to the king and communicated to parliament in 1536, parliament declared the smaller monasteries corrupt, and granted the king all of less value than £200 a year. A rebellion in Lincolnshire and another in the north, the formidable Pilgrim age of Grace, followed. The suppression of the greater houses was effected gradually, surrenders were obtained by pressure, and three abbots who were reluctant to give up the possessions of their con vents for confiscation were hanged. Monastic shrines and treas uries were sacked and the spoil sent to the king, to whom parliament granted all the houses, their lands and possessions. Some of the wealth was used for the bishoprics of Westminster, Bristol, Chester, Gloucester, Oxford and Peterborough.
The publication of the "Ten Articles" (1S36), the "Bishop Book" (1537), the "Six Articles" (1539) and the "King's Book" (1543), showed that Henry, while changing many things in the church, would not allow any deviation in essentials from the reli gion of Catholic Europe, which was not then so dogmatically de fined as it was later by the council of Trent. Edward VI. was a child, and the Protector Somerset and the council favoured further changes, which were carried out with Cranmer's help. Many Ger man reformers came to England, were favoured by the council, and gained influence over Cranmer. The first Book of Common Prayer was authorized by an Act of Uniformity in '549; it retained much from old service books, but the communion office is Lutheran in character. It excited discontent, and a serious insurrection broke out in the West. After Somerset's fall the government rapidly pushed forward reformation. Altars were destroyed and tables substituted. Five bishops, Bonner of London, Gardiner of Win chester, and Heath of Worcester, then already in prison, and two others, were deprived. Under the influence of the Swiss reformers, who took a lower view of the Eucharist than the Lutheran divines, Cranmer soon advanced beyond the prayer-book of 1549. A sec ond prayer-book, departing further from the old order, appeared in 1552, and without being accepted by convocation was enforced by another Act of Uniformity, and in 1553 a catechism and f orty two articles of religion were authorized by Edward for subscription by the clergy, though not laid before convocation. Edward died in
Apart from matters of faith, the church had fared ill under a royal supremacy exercised by self-seeking nobles in the name of the boy-king. Convocation lost all authority and bishops were treated as state officials liable to deprivation for disobedience to the council. Means of worship were diminished, and the poor were shamefully wronged by the suppression of chantries, gilds and holy day ; even the few sheep of the poor brethren of a gild were seized to swell a sum which from 1550 was largely diverted from public purposes to private gain. Churches were despoiled of their plate ; the old bishops were forced, the new more easily persuaded, to give up lands belonging to their sees.
When Mary succeeded her brother, the deprived bishops were restored, some reforming bishops were imprisoned, and Cranmer, who was implicated in the plot on behalf of Lady Jane Grey, was attainted of treason. As regards doctrine, religious practices and papal supremacy, Mary was set on bringing back her realm to the position existing before her father's quarrel with Rome. Her first parliament repealed the ecclesiastical legislation of Edward's reign, and convocation formally accepted transubstantiation. Cardinal Pole was received as legate, and the title of Supreme Head of the Church having been dropped, a parliament carefully packed, and the fears of the rich appeased by the assurance that they would not have to surrender the monastic lands, he absolved the nation in parliament and reunited it to the Church of Rome on November
the clergy being absolved in convocation. Parliament repealed all acts against the Roman see since the twentieth year of Henry VIII. The heresy laws were revived, and a horrible persecution of those who refused to disown the doctrines of the prayer-book began in 1555, and lasted during the remainder of the reign. Nearly 30o persons were burned to death as heretics in these four years, among them being five bishops : Hooper of Gloucester, Ferrar of St. David's, Ridley of London, and Latimer (until 1539) of Worcester in 1555, and Archbishop Cranmer in 1556. The chief responsibility for these horrors rests with the queen. Mary died in 1558. Her reign arrested the rapid spolia tion of the church, but the persecution by which it was disgraced made another acceptance of Roman supremacy impossible.
Elizabeth's accession was hailed with pleasure; she was known to dislike her sister's ecclesiastical policy, and a change was expected. An Act of Supremacy restored to the crown the authority over the church held by Henry VIII., and provided for its exercise by commissioners, whence came the Court of High Commission nominated by the crown, as a high ecclesiastical court. An Act of Uniformity prescribed the use of the prayer-book of 1552 in a revised form which raised the level of its doctrine, and injunctions enforced by a royal visitation re established the reformed order. Adherents to Rome vainly tried to obtain papal sanction for attending the church services, and were forced either to disobey the pope or become "recusants"; many were fined, and those who attended mass were imprisoned. Meanwhile a party, soon known as Puritans, rebelled against the prescribed church order; exiles who had come under Genevan influence objecting on their return to vestments and ceremonies enjoined by the prayer-book. There was much non-conformity in the church which the queen ordered the bishops to correct. Meanwhile the pope endeavoured to involve the English Catholics in political rebellion. Active opposition to the government was stirred up by Pius V., and in 1569 a rebellion in the north, where the old religion was strong, was aided by papal money and en couraged by hopes of Spanish intervention. In 157o Pius published a bull excommunicating and deposing the queen. Thenceforward recusants had to choose between loyalty to the queen and loyalty to the pope. They lay under suspicion, and severe penal laws were enacted against Romish practices. About 1579 many seminary priests and Jesuits came over to England as missionaries ; some actively engaged in treason, all were legally traitors. The council hunted down these priests and their abettors, and many were exe cuted. The papal policy defeated itself ; a large number of the old religion while retaining their faith chose to be loyal to the queen.
In the meantime the doctrine of the church was officially set forth in the revised articles of religion which appeared as the XXXIX. Articles in 1576; and from this time began the non conformist effort to introduce Presbyterianism. Cause for griev ance existed in the state of the church which had suffered from the late violent changes. Separation, or Independency, began about 1578 with the followers of Robert Browne, who repudiated the queen's ecclesiastical authority (see CONGREGATIONALISM) ; but many nonconformists remained in the church and continued their efforts to subvert its episcopal system. Elizabeth understood the political value of the church, and would allow no slackness in enforcing conformity. Archbishop Whitgift, though kind-hearted, was strict in his administration of the law ; and his firmness met with success. The church regained a measure of orderliness and vigour ; its claims on allegiance were advocated by eminent divines and expounded by Hooker. The queen died in 1603.
On the accession of James I. the Puritans expressed their desire for ecclesiastical change in the Millenary Petition which purported to come from i,000 clergy. At a conference between divines of the two parties at Hampton Court in 1604, James roughly decided against the Puritans. Some small alterations were made in the prayer-book, and a new version of the Bible was undertaken, which appeared in 1611 as the "authorized version." Although conformity could be enforced, the Puritan party grew in strength partly from religious and partly from political causes. They would not admit any authority in religion that was not based on the scriptures ; their opponents maintained that the church had authority to ordain ceremonies not contrary to the scriptures. The bishops derived their support from the king, and the church in return supported the king's claim to absolutism and divine right. It suffered heavily from this alliance. As men saw the church on the side of absolutism, Puritanism grew strong both among the country gentry, who were largely repre sented in the Commons, and among the nation at large, and the church lost ground through the king's political errors. Many of the changes introduced by Laud after he became archbishop in 1633 were needful. Their purpose was partly to restore order and decency in worship; but the introduction of more ceremonial offended the Puritans and was enforced in a harsh and tyrannical manner. Laud lacked wisdom and sympathy. Under his rule non conforming clergy were deprived and sometimes imprisoned. The cruel punishments inflicted by the Court of Star Chamber of which he was a member, his own harsh dealing, and the part which he took in politics as a confidential adviser of the king, combined to bring odium upon him and upon the ecclesiastical system which he represented. A storm of discontent with the course of affairs both in church and state gathered. In r 64o Charles, after dissolv ing parliament, prolonged the session of convocation, which issued canons magnifying the royal authority. The Long Parliament voted the canons illegal; Laud was imprisoned, and in 1642 the bishops were excluded from parliament. The civil war began in 1642; in 1643 a bill was passed for the taking away of episcopacy, in 1645 Laud was beheaded, and parliament abolished the prayer book and accepted the Presbyterian directory, and from 1646 Presbyterianism was the legal form of church government. The king, who was beheaded in 1649, might have extricated himself from his difficulties if he had consented to the overthrow of epis copacy. The victory of the army over parliament secured England against the tyranny of Presbyterianism, but did not better the condition of the episcopal clergy; the toleration insisted on by the Independents did not extend to "prelacy." Community of suffering and the execution of Charles I. brought the royalist country gentry into sympathy with the clergy, and at the Restoration the church had the hold which it lacked under the Laudian rule.
On the king's restoration the sur vivors of the ejected clergy quietly regained their benefices. The Presbyterians helped to bring back the king and looked for a reward; but the parliament of 1661 was violently anti-Puritan, and in 1662 passed an Act of Uniformity providing that all ministers not episcopally ordained or refusing to conform should be de prived on St. Bartholomew's Day, the i4th of August following. About 2,000 ministers are said to have been ejected, and in 1665 ejected ministers were forbidden to come within five miles of their former cures. Nonconformist worship was made punish able by fine and imprisonment, and on the third offence by trans portation. In 1673, parliament passed a Test Act making reception of the holy communion and a denial of transubstantiation neces sary qualifications for public office, thus excluding both noncon formists and Roman Catholics. Later, when the dissenters found friends among the party in parliament opposed to the crown, the church supported the king, and the doctrine of passive obedience was generally accepted by the clergy. Nevertheless the church was popular, and among the great preachers and theologians were Jeremy Taylor, Pearson, Bull, Barrow, South and Stillingfleet.
The church and the nation, however, were strongly Protestant, and were alarmed by the efforts of James II. to Romanize the country. James dispensed with the law by prerogative and appointed Romanists to offices in defiance of the Test Act. In 1688 he ordered that his declaration for liberty of conscience, issued in the interest of Romanism, should be read in all churches. His order was almost universally disobeyed. Archbishop Sancroft and six bishops who remonstrated against it were brought to trial, and were acquitted to the extreme delight of the nation.
James's attack on the Church cost him his crown. Protestantism was secured from further royal attack by the Bill of Rights; and in i7oi the Act of Succession provided that all future sovereigns should be members of the Church of England. That the king's title rested on a parlia mentary decision was destructive of the clerical theory of divine right, and encouraged Erastianism, then specially dangerous to the church. William, a Dutch Presbyterian, secured the passing of an Act for toleration of Protestant dissenters who did not deny the doctrine of the Trinity. Anxious for further concessions to dissenters, he appointed a committee of convocation for altering the liturgy, canons and ecclesiastical courts, but the Tory party in the lower house of convocation was strong and the scheme was abortive. A long controversy began between the two houses : the bishops were mostly Whigs with latitudinarian tendencies, the lower clergy Tories and high churchmen. During most of the reign convocation was suspended and the church was governed by royal injunctions, a system injurious to its welfare. Neverthe less its religious life was active ; associations for worship and the reformation of manners led to more frequent services, to the establishment of schools for poor children, and to the foundation of the Societies for Promoting Christian Knowledge (S.P.C.K.) and for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (S.P.G.). Unfortunately for the church, its supposed interests were used by the Tories for political ends.
With the accession of the Hanoverian line the church entered on a period of feeble life and inaction: many church fabrics were neglected; daily services were discon tinued; holy days were disregarded; Holy Communion was infre quent ; the poor were little cared for ; and though the church remained popular, the clergy were lazy and held in contempt. The church was regarded as subservient to the state; and it was treated by politicians as though its principal function was to support the government. This change was accelerated by the silencing of con vocation. A sermon by Hoadly, bishop of Bangor, impugned the existence of a visible church, and the "Bangorian controversy" (q.v.) which ensued threatened to end in the condemnation of his opinions by convocation, or at least by the lower house. As this would have weakened the government, convocation was pro rogued, letters of business were withheld, and from 1717 until 1852 convocation existed only in name.
While the church was inactive in practical work, it showed vigour in the intellectual defence of Christianity. Controversies of earlier origin with assailants of the faith were ably maintained by, among others, Daniel Waterland, William Law (a nonjuror) Bishop Butler, whose Analogy appeared in 1736, and Bishop Berkeley. At length a deep and far-reaching revival of spirituality and energy set in, known in history as the Evangelical Revival. Its origin has been traced to Law's Serious Call, published in r 728. Law's teaching was actively carried out by John Wesley (q.v.), a clergyman who from 1739 devoted himself to evangelization. While he urged his followers to adhere to the church, he could not himself work in subordination to discipline; the Methodist organization which he founded was independent of the church's system and soon drifted into separation. Nevertheless, he did much to bring about a revival of life in the church. A number of the clergy were his allies, and these became the fathers of the Evangelical party. They differed from the Methodists in not forming a separate organization, but remaining in the church and working on the parochial system. The Evangelicals soon grew in number, and their influence for good was extensive. They laid stress on the importance of conscious conversion, giving prom inence to the necessity of personal salvation rather than of incor poration with and abiding in the church of the redeemed. Bishop Porteus of London sympathized with them, Lord Dartmouth was a liberal patron, and Cowper's poetry spread their doctrines.
During the reign of George III. the progress of toleration, though slow and fitful, greatly advanced both as regards Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters. The spirit of rationalism, which had been manifested earlier in attacks on revelation, appeared in a movement against subscription to the Articles demanded of the clergy and others which was defeated in parlia ment in 1772. The alarm consequent on the French Revolution checked the progress of toleration and was temporarily fatal to freethinking; it strengthened the position of the church, which was regarded as a bulwark of society against the spread of revo lutionary doctrines; and this caused the Anglican Evangelicals to draw off more completely from the Methodists. The church was active: the Sunday-school movement, begun in r 780, flourished; the crusade against the slave-trade was vigorously supported by Evangelicals; and the Church Missionary Society (C.M.S.), a distinctly Evangelical organization, was founded. Excellent as were the results of the revival generally, the Evangelicals had defects which tended to weaken the church. Some characteristics of their teaching were repellent to the young; they were deficient in theological learning, and often in learning of any kind ; they regarded the church as the offspring of the Protestant reformation; they expounded the Bible without reference to the church's teach ing, and paid little heed to the church's directions.
within the church were urgently needed. In 1813, out of about io,800 benefices, 6,311 are said to have been without resident incumbents; the value of some great offices was enormous, while many of the parochial clergy were wretchedly poor. The repeal of the Test Act, long practically inoperative, in 1828, and Catholic emancipation in 1829, mark a change in the relations of church and state; and the Reform Bill of 1832 transferred political power from a class which generally supported the church to classes in which dissent was strong. Yet wholesome changes were effected by legislation : dioceses were rearranged, plurality and non-residence were abolished, tithes were commuted, and the Ecclesiastical Commission, which has effected reforms in respect of endowments, was permanently established in 1836. But convocation remained silenced and the church was regarded merely as an institution subject to the state. Among the clergy generally ritual observance was neglected and rubrical directions disobeyed. A few churchmen, including Keble and New man, set themselves to revive church feeling, and Oxford became the centre of a new movement. The cardinal doctrine of its pro moters was that the Church of England was a part of the visible Holy Catholic Church and had unbroken connection with the primitive church; they inculcated high views of the sacraments, and emphasized points of agreement with those branches of the Catholic Church which claim apostolic succession. Their party grew in spite of the opposition of low and broad churchmen, who, specially on the publication of Tract XC. by Newman in 1841, declared that its teaching was Romanizing. In 1845 Newman and many others seceded to Rome. The Oxford movement was wrecked, but its effect survived both in the new high church party and in the church at large. As a body the clergy rated more highly the responsibilities and dignity of their profession, and became more zealous in the performance of its duties and more ecclesi astically minded. High churchmen carried out rubrical directions, and after a while began to introduce changes into the perform ance of divine service which had not been adopted by the early leaders, were deprecated by many bishops, and excited opposition.
In 1833 the supreme jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters was transferred to the judicial committee of the privy council. Before this court came an appeal by a clerk named Gorham, whom the bishop of Exeter refused to institute to a benefice because he denied unconditional regeneration in baptism, and in 185o the court decided in the appellant's favour. The decision was followed by some secessions to Rome, and high churchmen were dissatisfied that spiritual questions should be decided by a secular court. Convocation was revived in 1852. Meanwhile broad church opinions were gaining ground to some extent owing to a reaction from the Oxford movement. Among the clergy the broad church party was comparatively small, but it included some men of mark. In 186o appeared Essays and Reviews, a volume of essays by seven authors, of whom six were in orders. The book as a whole had a rationalistic tendency and was condemned by convocation : two of the essayists were sus pended by the Court of Arches, but its judgment was reversed by the judicial committee. An attack on the historicity of the Old Testament was published by Colenso, bishop of Natal, for which he was deposed by Bishop Gray of Cape Town, in 1863, but the judicial committee decided that the bishop of Cape Town had no coercive jurisdiction over Natal. Some practices introduced by clergy desirous of bringing the services of the church to a higher level came before the judicial committee in the case of Westerton v. Liddell in 1857, with a result encouraging to the ritualists, as they then began to be called. An increase in ritual usages, such as eucharistic vestments, altar lights and incense, followed. In 186o the English Church Union was formed mainly to uphold high church doctrine and ritual, and assist clergy prosecuted for either cause, and in 1865 the Church Association, mainly to put down such doctrine and ritual by prosecution. A royal commission appointed in 1867 recommended that facilities should be granted for enabling parishioners aggrieved by ritual to gain redress, and in 187o that a revised lectionary and a shortened form of service should be provided. A new lectionary was approved by the two convocations and enacted, and convocation having received letters of business in 1872 and 1874 drew up a shortened form of prayer which was also enacted, but the commission had no further direct results. Between 1867 and _1871 two decisions of the judicial committee were adverse to the ritualists, and by exciting dislike to the court among high churchmen indirectly led to an increase in ritual usages. Among those who adopted them were many self devoted men; their practices, which they believed to be incumbent on them, were condemned as illegal, yet they saw the rubrics daily disregarded with impunity by others who trod the easy path of neglect. In 1873 a declaration against sacramental confession re ceived the assent of the bishops, and in 1874 Archbishop Tait of Canterbury introduced a bill for enforcing the law on the ritualist clergy; it was transformed in committee, and was enacted as the Public Worship Regulation Act. It provided for the appointment of a new judge in place of the old ecclesiastical judges, the officials principal, of the two provinces. Litigation increased, the only check on prosecutions being the right of the bishop to veto pro ceedings, and in 1878-1881 four clergymen were imprisoned for disobedience to the orders of courts against whose jurisdiction they protested. In consequence of the scandal raised by this mode of dealing with spiritual causes, a royal commission on ecclesiastical courts was appointed in 1881, but its report in 1883 led to no results, and the bishops strove to mend matters by exercising their veto. Advanced and illegal usages became more frequent. Pro ceedings in respect of illegal ritual having been instituted against Bishop King of Lincoln, the archbishop of Canterbury (Benson) personally heard and decided the case in 189o, and his judgment was upheld by the judicial committee (see LINCOLN JUDGMENT). The spiritual character of the tribunal and the authority of the judgment had a quieting effect. (X.)
