6. The bishops were too hasty; else with a discreet slowness they might have had what they aimed at. The old story of the fellow that told the gentleman he might get to such a place if he did not ride too fast, would have fitted their turn.

7. For a bishop to cite an old canon to strengthen his new articles, is as if a lawyer should plead an old statute that has been repealed God knows how long.

VII.

BISHOPS IN THE PARLIAMENT.

I. BISHOPS have the same right to sit in Parliament as the best of earls and barons; that is, those that were made

1.6. For a bishop to cite &c.] This was done in the Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical, put out in 1640 by the Synods of the two Provinces. See Canon v. 'Against Sectaries' and Canon ix on the summary or collection of visitatory articles which the Synod had caused to be made out of the rubric and the canons and warrantable rules of the Church. Wilkins, Concilia, iv. 548 and 550.

1. 10. Bishops have the same right &c.] The various objections, here stated and answered, to the right of bishops to sit in Parliament, to the nature of their seat by office and not by blood, and to the policy of allowing them to meddle with temporal affairs, were raised from time to time in the long series of discussions which led finally to the abolition of their right and then of their office.

See, especially, the reasons offered by the Commons in reply to the reasons offered by the Lords in favour of the bishops, June, 1641. They cover most of the points raised in this chapter of the Table Talk.

The Commons do conceive that bishops ought not to have votes in Parliament. First, because it is a very great hindrance to the exercise of their ministerial function.

(2) Because they do vow and undertake at their ordination, when they enter into Holy Orders, that they will give themselves wholly to that vocation.

(5) Because they are but for their lives, and therefore are not fit to have legislative power over the honours, inheritances, persons, and liberties of others.

(6) Because of bishops' dependency and expectation of translation to places of greater profit. Nalson, Collections, ii. 260.

by writ. If you ask one of them [Arundel, Oxford, Northumberland] why they sit in the house? they can only say, their father sat there before them 1, and their grandfather before him, &c. And so says the bishop: he that was a bishop of this place before me, sat in the house, and he that was a bishop before him, &c. Indeed your later earls and barons have it expressed in their patents, that they shall be called to the parliament.

Objection. But the lords sit there by blood, the bishops

not.

Answer. 'Tis true, they sit not there both the same way, yet that takes not away the bishop's right. If I am a parson of a parish, I have as much right to my glebe and tithes, as you have to your land, that your ancestors have had in that parish 800 years.

2. The bishops were not barons, because they had

1 Before them, H. 2] so originally in H. 'him' is written over them.'

1. 16. The bishops were not barons &c.] What Selden here denies was among the statements made by Mr. Bagshaw, Reader of the Middle Temple, in his speech in Hall (1639) on the thesis Whether it be a good Act of Parliament that is made without the assent of the Lords Spiritual. He argues that it is good, because inter alia' they do not sit in Parliament as bishops, but by reason of the baronies annexed to their bishopricks, which was done 5 W. I, and all of them have baronies except the Bishop of Man, and he is not called to Parliament.' Whitelock, Memorials, p. 33.

Selden explains his point more fully in his Titles of Honour, part ii. ch. 5, vol. iii. pp. 659, 724, 727. He shows that in the Saxon times the lay claim to be included in the Witenagemot was the holding of land of the king in chief by knight's service. Those who so held were, after the Normans, parliamentary barons, and their tainlands only were the parliamentary baronies. But in Saxon times, the bishops did not hold by this tenure, yet they were none the less summoned regularly to the Witenagemot, and had voice and place as bishops. And thus their freedom from that tenure . . . . continued it seems till the fourth year of King William I, when he made the bishopricks and abbeys subject to knight's service in chief, by creation of new tenures, and so first turned their possessions into baronies, and thereby made them barons of the kingdom by tenure.

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baronies annexed to their bishoprics (for few of them had so, unless the old ones, Canterbury, Winchester, Durham, &c. the new erected we are sure had none, as Gloucester, Peterborough, &c. Besides, few of the temporal lords had any baronies). But they are barons, because they are called by writ to the parliament, and bishops were in the parliament ever since there is any mention or sign of a parliament in England.

3. Bishops may be judged by the peers, though in time 10 of popery it never happened, because they pretended they were not obnoxious to a secular court; but their way was to cry, Ego sum frater domini papæ, I am a brother to my lord the pope, and therefore take not myself to be judged by you. In this case they impannelled a Middlesex jury, and dispatched the business.

4. Whether may bishops be present in case of blood?

1.3. as Gloucester, Peterborough &c.] These were among the six bishoprics founded by Henry VIII out of part of the spoils of the monasteries. On the nature of their endowment see the king's grant to the bishopric of Gloucester: 'Damus .... habenda et tenenda omnia et singula praedicta, Aulas, Cubicula . . . . domos aedificia et caetera omnia et singula praemissa praefato episcopo Gloucestriae et successoribus suis imperpetuum, tenenda de nobis haeredibus et successoribus nostris in puram et perpetuam eleemosinam.' Rymer, Foedera, xiv. 727 (1712 fol.).

'So, too, in the case of Peterborough, the king (1542) grants to the bishop and his successors, various manors and rents (valued at £368 11s. 6d.), in puram et perpetuam eleemosynam, and subject to deductions only for tenths and first-fruits.' Willis, Survey of Cathedrals, iii. 493 (London, 1742, 3 vols.).

1.9. Bishops may be judged &c.] Selden, in his treatise on the privileges of the baronage, lays it down as a rule of the common law that bishops, although unquestionably peers of the realm, were to be tried by common juries and were in fact so tried; no regard being paid to their claim as churchmen to be free from lay jurisdiction. He gives several instances in which this claim was made and disallowed, and the trial had by a common jury. Works, iii. 1538 ff.

1. 16. Whether may bishops be present &c.] This question became prominent and was hotly disputed at the trial of the Earl of Strafford.

Answer. That they had a right to give votes, appears by this; always when they did go out, they left a proxy; and in the time of the abbots, one man had 10, 20, or 30 voices. In Richard the 2d's time there was a protestation against the canons, by which they were forbidden to be present in case of blood. The statute of the 25th of Henry the 8th may go a great way in this business. The clergy were forbidden to use or cite any canon, &c. but in the later end of the statute, there was a clause, that such canons as were in usage in this kingdom, should be in force till the thirty-1 two commissioners appointed should make others; provided they were not contrary to the king's supremacy. Now the question will be, whether these canons for blood were in use in this kingdom or no? The contrary whereof may appear by many precedents in Richard 3 and Henry 7 and the beginning of Henry 81 in which time there were more attainted than since, or scarce before. The canons of irregularity for blood were never received in England, but upon pleasure. If a lay lord was attainted, the bishops

1 Richard, Henry, Henry, H. 2] initials only in H.

The bishops were denied all meddling even in the commission of preparatory examinations concerning the Earl of Strafford, as causa sanguinis, and they as men of mercy, not to deal in the condemnation of any person. Fuller, Church History, bk. xi. sec. 9, § 10.

That bishops were forbidden by the canons to pronounce sentence of condemnation at trials on a capital charge, is clear. See e.g. Wilkins, Concilia, vol. i. 112, 365 and 474.

On the authority of the canons, as law, it is laid down by 25 Henry VIII, chap. 19, that the canons are not to be pleaded or used if contrary to the king's prerogative or to the customs, laws and statutes of the kingdom-canons, not thus contrary, to be in force, as Selden states.

In the case referred to in Richard II's time, the exclusion of the bishops was a concession granted to them at their own request. The whole subject is discussed exhaustively in the opinion delivered by the Bishop of Lincoln (Williams) as to the right of the bishops to be present at Strafford's trial. Hacket, Life of Williams, part ii. p. 153 ff.

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assented to his condemning, and were always present at the passing of the bill of attainder: but if a spiritual lord, they went out, as if they cared not whose head was cut off, so none of their own. In those days the bishops, being of great houses, were often entangled with the lords in matters of treason; but when d'ye hear of a bishoptraitor now?

5. You would not have bishops meddle with temporal affairs. Think who you are that say it. If a Papist, they Io do in your church; if an English Protestant, they do among you; if a Presbyterian, where you have no bishops, you mean your Presbyterian lay elders should meddle with temporal affairs as well as spiritual. Besides, all jurisdiction is temporal, and in no church but they have some jurisdiction or other. The question then will be reduced to magis and minus; they meddle more in one church than in another.

1. 8. You would not have bishops meddle with temporal affairs, &c.] So in 1641, a bill was introduced for the second time to forbid bishops having votes in Parliament or holding any temporal office, 'the greatest argument being that their intermeddling with temporal affairs was inconsistent with, and destructive to, the exercise of their spiritual function.' Clarendon, i. 470.

The same argument was used by Lord Say and Sele (June 1641), who based it on the Scriptural rule that—' No man that warreth, entangleth himself with the affairs of the world.' Nalson, Collections, ii. 268.

Early in 1641, a committee of the House of Commons, appointed to consider a remonstrance of some ministers, and the London petition for the better government of the Church, voted, inter alia, that Article 6, complaining that bishops were encumbered with temporal power and state affairs, was material and fit to be considered by the House. Sir R. Verney's Notes of Proceedings in the Long Parliament, pp. 4-14. Most of the questions treated in the Table Talk, were raised in the course of this inquiry.

See, too,' It is not possible for one man to discharge two functions, whereof either is sufficient to employ the whole man, especially that of the ministry, so great that they ought not to entangle themselves with the affairs of this world.' Speech of Nathaniel Fiennes, Feb. 1640-41. Nalson, Collections, i. 757