the printed life of his grace.* It has also been shown that the fact of this consecration is referred to and noted down in the private diary of the Archbishop. It has been proved, moreover, that in the year 1559, the public believed that such a consecration had regularly taken place, for it is mentioned Episcopi ex Achademia Cantebrigiensi, ab anno 1500, Presb. Secu. Norvicen. Ivj. 1559. Decem. 17. Cicestren. Will.Barlowe Th. D. Conf. 1559. Dec. 20. Cant. Hereford. John Scorey Th. Bac. Presb. Regu. Norfolcen. xlvij. | Conf. 1559. Dec. 20. It should be noted here-in reply to those who are never weary of scattering abroad charges of forgery-that the type and paper of the Life of Parker, as may be seen on examination, are precisely the same in character and substance as those of previous portions. * "Anno itaque Domini 1559, Cantuariensis Archiepiscopus electus est a Decano et Capitulo Ecclesiæ Metropolitica Cantuariensis. Posteaque eodem anno 17 die Decembris, adhibitis quatuor Episcopis, W. Cicestrensi, Johanne Herefordensi, Milone quondam Exoniensi et Richardo [lege Joanne] Bedfordensi, lege quadam de hac re lata requisitis, consecratus est."—Life of Matthew Parker, p. 151. And there is this MS. note in the margin:-"Hæ consecrationes et confirmationes in Registris apparent." "These consecrations and confirmations appear in the Register." as a matter of common notoriety in the diary of a London citizen; and finally it is also distinctly referred to by that careful and trustworthy historian William Camden. The providing of further evidence, therefore, may be reasonably held to be a work of supererogation. * Godwin, De Præsulibus, p. 219, may be referred to, as mentioning the Lambeth Consecrations; and the original MS. Letters of the English Reformers and others recently discovered at Zurich and elsewhere, testify directly to the same historical fact. FOR CHAPTER XIX. THE NAG'S HEAD FABLE. the space of nearly forty-five years after the consecration of Archbishop Parker, those literary controversialists who continued so consistently to oppose the changes of the sixteenth century rested their case, in the main, on the irregularity and illegality of the consecrations of Parker and the Bishops whom he had consecrated, but not on their invalidity. Some writers plainly and frankly allowed the fact of the consecration.* Complaints were *E.g. Sanders, in his treatise De Schismate Anglicano, lib. iii., p. 347, allows that Queen Elizabeth obliged those appointed by her to bishoprics, to be ordained by certain persons and by certain ceremonies prescribed by the laws of the realm. The same statement occurs in a passage at p. 165 of the 8vo. edition of this book.-Coloniæ Agrippinæ: 1585. And Dr. Stapleton, another distinguished Roman Catholic controversialist, admits that the Bishops of Queen Elizabeth's reign were ordained according to an Act made in King Edward's days, i.e. according to the Revised Ordinal of 1552. Vide Preface to the Counterblast. 4to. Louvain: 1567. Stapletoni Opera, tom. ii., p. 828. Paris: 1620-Still further, as a negative testimony against the Fable, it should be remembered that only six years after Parker's consecration at Lambeth, the same Sanders had published a vigorous controversial work called The Rock of the Church, wherein the Primacy of St. Peter and his Successors, the Bishops of Rome, is proved out of God's Word. Louvain. 8vo. 1566: with a dedication to Archbishop Parker himself, in which no allusion whatsoever to the Nag's Head Fable is found. This book was reprinted, with alterations and additions, at St. Omer's, in 1624.- Vide, also, John Fludd's Purgatorie's Triumph over Hell, in a Letter to Sir Edward Hoby, by I.R., St. Omer's: 1613.-Treatise of the Catholic Faith, A.D. 1657, and Nullity of the Prelatique Clergy, A.D. 1659.-Erastus Senior, and Erastus Junior, both from the pen of John Lewgar, B.D., a convert to the Church of Rome, whose tracts, however, allow the fact and reality of the The Nag's Early argu the Anglican position, in a belief in it. made that the prelates in question had not been confirmed in their election to the episcopal office by the Holy See; and that, in the act of consecration, ancient canons had been disregarded and set at nought. Arguments were likewise adHead Fable.vanced, founded on the non-use of the old ments against Salisbury Pontifical, which, it was asserted, consistent with Was enjoined to be followed by the Statute Law of England; on the want of succession of Catholic doctrine; on the fact of Parker's marriage; on the unnecessary and irregular alterations of the ancient service; and more especially on the omission of unction and the delivery of the Eucharistic instruments in the new services. But no argument whatever, during the above-named period, can be found based on the fiction that Parker had never received episcopal consecration at all, but had gone through a mock form at a tavern in Cheapside; whereas, after the story had once been launched forth, scarcely any Roman Catholic controversial writer passed it over without notice. In truth, prior to the year 1604, the controversy had been carried on as if the question in dispute were of a purely theological nature; after that date it became a mere controversy of fact. Lambeth consecration. The Consecration and Succession of Protestant Bishops justified, etc., and that infamous Fable of the Ordination at the Nag's Head clearly confuted. By John Bramhall, D.D., Bishop of Derry. London: 1659. Of late years, since Dr. Lingard, Mr. Charles Butler, and Mr. Tierney, have so openly repudiated a belief in the Fable, few Roman Catholic writers, and none of mark, have advocated an opposite view. Mr. John Williams, however, is an exception; but his treatise, already referred to in a note, is a feeble and unworthy production from every point of view.-Edward Stephens, the Nonjuror, On the Authority of the English Bishops, published in 1700. 1. The first printed account of what is generally known as "The Nag's Head Fable," may be found in a Latin work published abroad, by "Christopher Holywood, S.J., who styled himself Christopherus a Sacrobosco." * From it the following passage is taken and put into English: printed ac Christopher "In the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the Bishops of the sectaries were to be made. They that wanted The first ordination met at London, at an Inn in Cheapside, count of it, at the sign of the Nag's Head, and with them came published by the old simple Bishop of Llandaff, to give them ordina- Holywood. tion; which as soon as Bonner, then Dean of the Bishops in England, came to understand, he sent his chaplain from the Tower, where he was imprisoned for his religion, to command Llandaff upon pain of excommunication, not to ordain the new Bishops. By which threat, Llandaff, being frightened, drew back, and making use of many pretences, avoided the sacrilegious ordination. Hereupon the persons waiting for orders began to be in a great rage, to abuse Llandaff, and to consider of taking new measures. To say no more, Scory, the Monk, afterwards the mock Bishop of Hereford, imposes hands upon the rest, and some of them impose hands upon Scory, and so the children are born without a father, and the father is begotten of the children, a thing never heard of in any age before. Thomas Neale,t reader of the Hebrew tongue at Oxford, who was present relating this narrative to the old confessors for religion, and they to me. And the story is confirmed by its being afterwards enacted in Parliament that these parliamentary prelates should be esteemed lawful Bishops." On this narrative it may be remarked, first, that *De Investig. Verâ et Visib. Christi Eccl. Antwerp: 1604, cap. iv., pp. 17-19. †Thomas Neale, who was Hebrew lecturer at Oxford, from 1558 until 1569, lived at Cassington, in Oxfordshire, from that year to 1590.- Vide Dodd's Church History, vol. ii., p. 109, et seq. |