the breach "which is sought to be made in the very form and frame of the church."

The bill on pluralities had not been passed nor the grievances of the Commons admitted, but, in pursuance of an order from the King, Bancroft forwarded a long letter to the various bishops on the subject of pluralities which was in reality another of those ordinances by which the actual administration of the Church was carried on. He called upon the bishops chiefly for information as to the number and location of the pluralists, their learning and capability; and also for similar statistics of recusants. The law which existed must be enforced; the canon law against the plurlists, the statute law and the oath of allegiance against the recusants; in which task the Archbishop offered the bishops all possible assistance from the High Commission and the Privy Council. "We that are bishops," he said, "have much to answer before God for our slackness hitherto in this point, the law therein being our warrant." "I must likewise charge you," he continued, “to examine very narrowly the proceedings of your chancellors, commissaries, archdeacons, and officials; for whilst we repose so much trust in them as we do, and they intend little (I mean especially chancellors, commissaries, and officials) but their own profit, many true complaints and mischiefs do indeed thereof ensue.

He also had complaints to make about the expensive apparel worn by the richer clergy and their wives: "Never was their pride in that respect so great as now it is, from the dean to every curate, nothing being left that way to distinguish a bishop from any of them you shall find deans usually either in their velvet, damask or satin cassocks, with their silk netherstocks, nay, some archdeacons and inferior ministers having two benefices, are likewise for the most part so attired . . . which is one principal motive why there is such exclamation against double beneficed men. . . . By such their bravery in apparel they do procure no manner of credit unto themselves, but rather, upon my knowledge, great envy and heart burning against their calling and estates." 2 It was, however, one

1 Cardwell, Documentary Annals, II, 154, 162, July 27, 1610.

2 In 1578, Harrison in his description of England, contrasted the comely attire of the English clergy with the extravagance of the papists. Elizabethan England, Furnival's edi

tion, 78, 79. In fact, what made Bancroft wroth was that the increase of substance which he had secured with great difficulty, the clergy proceeded straightway to spend for fine clothes instead of for education and books.

thing to command and quite another to execute, and the main difficulty, with which Bancroft had to contend, was the inefficiency of the officials who must carry out his orders.

The last task to which Bancroft addressed himself was the final consolidation of the new Scotch episcopal administration. The General Assembly at St. Andrews in May, 1610, had finally established Episcopacy as an administrative institution; but the bishops were still unconsecrated, and were therefore still lacking in the most essential of all claims to the title. In considering the arrangements for the ceremony, the objection was raised that the candidates for consecration had not been ordained as priests under the Anglican ritual, but had merely been "called" by a Scotch presbytery, so that doubts were freely expressed as to the validity of their consecration as bishops, unless it were preceded by ordination as clergymen according to the Anglican forms. Bancroft produced authorities from the Church Fathers to sustain his opinion that no new ordination was needed; and added the real reason which his keen intuition had at once grasped, that "the Ordination given by the Presbyters must be esteemed lawful, otherwise that it might be doubted if there was any lawful vocation in most of the Reformed Churches."1

This difficulty disposed of, the Scotch bishops declared that they would not be consecrated by either archbishop, because that would renew the old claims of the predominance of the English Church over the Scottish Church. Bancroft yielded readily to their scruples, for he saw that this seed of possible discord must not be left between the King and the bishops as well as between the bishops and the presbyteries. The English Church must be a sister, not a mother, and the English archbishop must advise as a friend and not command or claim the right to command as a superior. So, on October 21, 1610, the Archbishop of Glasgow with two of his brethren was consecrated with elaborate ceremonies by the Bishops of London, Ely, Rochester, and Bath and Wells, at the Chapel of the Bishop of London near St. Paul's Cathedral.2

1 Spotiswood, History of the Church of Scotland, 514 (Edition of 1666). His authority is excellent, for he was one of those consecrated. Heylin repeats this entry with some changes, but without acknowledgment; he

copied many other things from the ame source. Aerius Redivivus, 382. 2 Spotiswood, and also Melvill's Diary, 803. The royal order is in Rymer, Foedera, XVI, 706, October 15, 1610.

Impressive and significant as the service was meant to be, Bancroft's good sense made it a private and not a public rite. The mere fact of the consecration was sure to arouse enough bitterness in Scotland, but the ministers would have been doubly incensed if the humiliation and dishonour of the Kirk (as they termed it), had been made a spectacle for the London crowd, parading daily in the nave at St. Paul's.

It was the last public act of Richard Bancroft. He had been ill all summer, his absences from Parliament being excused by the Chancellor day after day on the score of his health. The confinement as a student in his early years, his residence in the marshes of Ely and of Ireland, coupled to the fogs and dampness of Fulham and Lambeth had sown and nourished ague and stone, diseases common at that day but severe and excessively painful. All the last week of October he suffered agonies, and died at last on November 2, 1610. "It is remarkable," wrote Melvill at the conclusion of his Diary, "how soon thereafter the great Judge of this world called the two chief instruments of the overthrow of Discipline of the Kirk of Scotland to their account and judgment: for Richard Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, who, at the funeral sermon made by Abbott, Bishop of London, had the commendation of the overthrowing of the Presbyteries of the Kirk of Scotland, was himself fearfully overthrown by fearful and terrible torments and desperate death at Lambeth in that same month of November, at the verie tyme of the Scottish bishops' inauguration: and in the month of February thereafter immediately following, the Earl of Dunbar was by death plucked from the height of his honour and credit at court. . . And thus was Jericho built up again in Scotland, as also the curse executed upon the builders."

1 The date is settled by the inscription on his tombstone, which with others of that type, has lately been removed from its place in Lambeth Chancel, and a tablet inserted in the wall, bearing all the names of

those buried there. In some books, the date is given as November 12, which of course is merely New Style; November 2 being the Old Style.

2 Row copies this statement some places nearly verbatim.

in

CHAPTER XII

THE RESULTS OF RECONSTRUCTION

The death of Bancroft marks the close of the period of reconstruction. Save for the fulfilment of the plans for the reconstruction of the High Commission by the issuance of the Letters Patent of 1611, Abbot, the new Archbishop, busied himself but little with the administration of the Church. He preferred theological controversy to hearing law suits, appearing to have been content to continue his predecessor's policy, and to carry on the actual administrative work by his predecessor's agents. His long primacy from 1610 to 1633 was, in reality, a continuation of Bancroft's. If there was, on the whole, no retrogression, there was certainly little progress.

In fact the death of the leader seems to be the only adequate explanation of the cessation of effort in 1610, for much remained to be done. The greatest issues had not been settled nor the worst difficulties obviated. The situation had been modified, not remedied. The clergy was still ignorant, nonresident, and pluralist; their incomes were, in general, as inadequate as before; the coercive power of the High Commission and of the ecclesiastical courts had been diminished rather than increased. Moreover, the enemies. of the Establishment were still active: for the Puritans, although cowed, were neither demoralised nor disorganised; the Catholics. seemed loyal, but were still controlled by the Jesuits; and their priests formed ostensibly a missionary organisation for the conversion of England.

On the other hand, very much had certainly been accomplished. The administration of the Church had become possible, the life of the clergy tolerable. The union of small benefices, situated either in the same town or village or within a mile or two, had gone on rapidly; the exchange of benefices by pluralists had been effected in many cases, and enabled a man practically to reside on both at the same time; often the personal intervention of the bishop

or archbishop, had secured a compromise between the parson and his people, by the terms of which part of the old tithes were again paid in kind. Suits were brought in great numbers, and many decisions were rendered on cases where the modus decimandi was in doubt. In 1609, the poorer clergy were relieved from the payment of taxes on their glebe land,' and, as their tithes were already exempt, and most of them paid no first fruits, they were at last able to devote their small stipend to their own needs. Bancroft had also established the rule that, whatever a man's necessities, he should not relieve them without the knowledge of the higher authorities. If he wished to hold two benefices, he must have a dispensation; if he wished to be nonresident altogether on one or the other, he must secure permission; and he must not preach without license.

Bancroft had also laid great stress on the necessity of leaving to succeeding generations as complete a record as possible of the state of the Church. The episcopal registries were overhauled and arranged; the parish records sorted, patched up, and put away. Then were written down and filed terriers of the amount of glebe land; sworn statements of the amount of tithes paid by each bit of land, or of the modus decimandi of the parish as a whole; with the facts concerning leases, agreements, the condition of the timber, water rights, and the like. The cathedrals and the colleges were strictly investigated.

The proportion of learned men and of preachers among the clergy had certainly been increased. The Visitation Records contain many entries stating that some man hitherto unable to preach had now become qualified and had secured his license. Those who could not preach read homilies. It was becoming difficult for a man without at least a bachelor's degree to secure induction. In the diocese of Norwich, three-quarters of all the men instituted between January, 1603, and January, 1608, possessed degrees. Of these, eighty-four were Masters of Arts; nineteen were Bachelors of Arts; twelve were Bachelors of Divinity, while seven possessed higher degrees. Of the remaining fourth, most of them had studied for a time at one of the universities.

A good deal of attention had been paid to the proper chanting of the ritual, and to the music performed in the cathedrals. Caps 1 Petyt MSS. 538. 38, f. 319.