In the Charitable Donations (Ireland) Act (7 & 8 Viet. c. 97) the Roman Ca tholic prelates are designated for the first time since the Reformation by their epis copal titles. They had been referred to in the bill, when first brought in, as "any person in the said church [of Rome] of any higher rank or order," &c. ; and, on the proposition of the government, this was altered to "any archbishop or bishop, or other person in holy orders, of the Church of Rome.' In December, 1844, a royal commission was issued constituting the Board of Charitable Bequests in Ireland, and the two Roman Catholic archbishops and bishop who are appointed members of the Board are styled "Most Reverend" and" Right Reverend," and are given pre cedency according to their episcopal rank.
The English bishops who have been sent to Nova Scotia, to Quebec, and to the East and West Indies, have been named from the countries placed under their spiritual superintendency, or from the city which contains their residence and the cathedral church.
Suffragan England. every bishop is, in certain views of his cha racter and position, regarded as a suffra gan of the archbishop in whose province he is. But suffragan are rather to be understood as bishops to partibus who were 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 hi of state, the assistance of a 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 England was made by Wharton, a great ecclesias tical antiquary, and is printed in an ap pendix to a Dissertation on Bishops to partibus, published in 1784 by another dis tinguished church-antiquary, Dr. Samuel Pegge. • 0 At the Reformation provision was made for a body of suffragans. A suffragan, in the more ordinary sense of the term, is a kind of titular bishop, a person ap pointed to assist the bishop in the dis charge of episcopal duties. The act 26 Henry VIII. c. 14, authorizes each archbishop and bishop to name a suffra gan, which is to be done in this manner be 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 named from some extinct see, but from some town within the realm. Six and twenty places are named as the seats (nominally) of the suffragan bishops. They were these which follow :— Thetford, Marlborough, Grantham, Ipswich, Bedford, Hull, Leicester, Huntingdon, Dover, Gloucester, Cambridge, Guildford, Shrewsbury, Pereth, Southampton, Bristol, Berwick, Taunton, Penrith, St. Germains,
Shaftsbury, Bridgewater, and the Molton, Nottingham, Isle of Wight This was before the establishment of the six new bishoprics. But every bishop within his province is sometimes spoken of as a suffragan of the archbishop, being originally, in fact, little more. Questions have been raised respecting the origin of the word suffragan, which is by some supposed to be connected with or votes, as if the bishops were the voters in ecclesiastical assemblies; but more pro bably, if connected with suffrages at all, the term has a reference to their claiming to vote in the election of the archbishop. A great question respecting the right of election of an archbishop of Canterbury, between the suffragans of his province and the canons of Canterbury, arose in the time of King John, and is a princi pal occurrence in the contest which he waged with the pope and the church.
Very few persons were nominated suf fragan bishops under the act Hen. VIII. C. 14. One, whose name was Robert Pnrsglove, who had been an abbot, and who was a friend to education, was suf fragan bishop of Hull. He founded the Grammar School of Tideswell in Derby shire. He died in 1579, and lies interred in the church of Tideswell, under a sump Mous tomb, on which is his effigy in the episcopal costume, with a long rhyming inscription presenting an account, curious 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 sere, monies in which the bishop usually offi ciated, more for the amusement than to the edification of the people. The ens, tom, 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 ex hibitions, but that they served to abate the dreariness of mid-winter. Much may be found collected on this subject in Ellis's edition of Brand's Popular An tiquities,' vol. L pp. 328-336. The cus tom was finally suppressed by a procla mation of Henry VIII, in 1542.