antiquity, must to the naked eye be distinguishable from ordinary

men.

Among all these plans, however, the Archbishop never forgot the matter of ecclesiastical incomes. The Visitations show unceasing effort to learn whether a terrier (or survey) of the lands of the glebe had been made; whether the woods were well preserved; and whether any long leases of church lands were outstanding. In the courts and elsewhere no small part of the confusion over incomes arose from the lack of definite records of the situation at any date, whose absence, of course, made it difficult to decide what the custom was a decade previous and led to very annoying difficulties for ecclesiastical litigants. The parish records of every sort must be carefully kept; the register of births and marriages; the terrier of lands; the lists of leases; the statement of the tithes and of the terms of any commutation with the date of its making. With an eye gazing far into the future, Bancroft saw that only in this way could the Church be saved from the recurrence of the situation with which he himself was struggling.

For years, all sorts of tales of the venality of church officials had been bandied about in Puritan tracts, petitions to Parliament1 and the scurrilous broadsheets of the day, until the very reiteration began to carry conviction. We find similar statements in the Visitation Records which are more trustworthy, and, though less extreme are still bad enough. A general bill of complaints, drawn perhaps by a Puritan, said that the whole aim of ecclesiastical administration was not to reform the disorders but to collect fees. "If any such offence be then detected or defaults in churches presented, the said inferior officers do then most commonly grant to the offenders (being first cited before them) a day to amend it. At which time, they grant another day: and so from day to day, do so defer and delay the time by giving days of respite (only for their own gain) that in the end the offender clean escapeth unpunished and the default never amended. For the giving of which days of respite, they take at every time of the offender for every day so given, 6d. at the least."2 Mr. Mosgrave of Elme, in the Arch

1 A choice collection will be found in the Admonition to Parliament, the Certain Articles, and the Marprelate Tracts. They are however so extreme that even contemporaries were incred

ulous.

2" Abuses greatly grevious to the Queenes Majesties subjectes. (1597(?) or 1601 (?).) Strype, Whitgift, III, 376.

deaconry of Wisbeach, 1605, was presented for "sayeing that it were but a folly to present Mr. Gyles the vicar there for that he was at a fee with the Courte for 40s. a yeare and that so the comon fame was and is." "George Dayvs and George Butler (of the parish of Coton, Diocese of Peterborough, 1605) they both did say it is a smale matter to come into the bawdy courte (archdeacon's court) for they did say, for 17 potts of ale or beare they would come out of it when they listed. Further these parties did say unto Thomas Leftchild, that, if so be he must needes come into the courts, it were his best course to agree with the Judge of the Courte and the rest of the officers for shoes or shoe leather and diuers other sundry unreverent speeches in disgrace of the court." From Norfolk comes a tale on the other side. Milo Whaill, an apparitor, "cited a pore woman to the Commissioners courte, beinge Administratrix of her husbandes goodes, Thomas Durrant, to bringe in an accompte and she appereinge, he afterwards brought as he said an excom: and compelled her to giue him 18d., parte whereof she paide (her poverty beinge so greate she could not paye all.) "2 Certainly Mr. Giles, who was probably a Puritan, was often presented for nonconformity and was never punished until Bancroft's day, but all the men like Whaill whom the officials could find, were severely handled and Bancroft himself was particularly harsh with such culprits. Nevertheless, so much smoke must have risen from some fire and doubtless the Archbishop's wrathful anathemas did not prevent the underlings of the ecclesiastical courts from carrying on a great deal of disreputable business under his very nose. far as orders, letters, and canons would go, he did his utmost to stop it, but the best laws in the world, the firmest and best planned institutional fabric, cannot prevent the incompetence, greed, and negligence of its officials from working mischief.

So

In the method of Visitation Bancroft made an innovation of great significance. Previously, the Archbishop's Visitors had been his own officials, with certain divines and civil lawyers sent from

1 This comes from a miscellaneous volume among the Consistory Court books.

2 Marsham, Norfolk Archdeaconry, 1606.

3 His were by no means the first: See Parker's Visitation Articles, of 1569, no. 25, 26, 27; Grindal's Ar

ticles of 1576, Nos. 62, 63, 64; and Bancroft's Articles of 1605, No. 39. Also Bancroft's Letter to the Bishops on non-residence of April 30, 1605, (Wilkins, Concilia, IV, 414) and on pluralities. July 1610, (Cardwell's Annals. II, 158.) Canons of 1604.

CXIX-CXXXVIII.

London, men who were not acquainted with the country nor with its clergy and who were therefore not qualified to conduct their search rapidly and so to the best advantage. They did not know what to look for nor where to find the worst nonconformity, though, of course, if the only object of the Visitation were still, as it had been in the Middle Ages, to inspect the work of the local officials, it was necessary that they should not be allowed, by their own presence on the bench, to intimidate men from presenting them and thus to conceal their own faults. To Bancroft's mind, however, the chief object of the Visitation, next to revealing the condition of the clergy, was the spreading of information of what the law was and the manner in which the authorities at Lambeth wished the administration conducted. He wished to investigate rather the lapses from grace in the parishes than the faults of the diocesan officials themselves. Previously, when the Archbishop's Visitors had departed, the local episcopal officers knew no more about the state of their diocese than they had before and were equally ignorant of the exact reading given the law by the archiepiscopal staff. Now, by combining the bishop, his vicar-general, commissary, and chief clergy with several officers from London, Bancroft brought local knowledge into contact with metropolitan experience and methods, helped his own men to find quickly the difficulties, gave to the bishop and his officers a view of the condition of their diocese as seen through the archbishop's eyes and, best of all, gave the local officers by this close association with their colleagues from London. a knowledge of new methods to be pursued and a comprehension of the personality of the men with whom they were continually dealing by letter and messenger. Through this means, he brought the local and central administration into close contact, to their mutual profit, and exorcised that hostility and suspicion which had too often prevailed among the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Let us all stand together and help each other in our common endeavour for the great purpose of uplifting the Church of Christ in this realm. of England, was Bancroft's motto.

He also introduced a new idea of the value of administrative experience, insisting that only competent men should be advanced to positions of trust and that men should be kept long enough in

1 His register affords abundant proof of this. Wilkins has printed, in his Concilia, IV, 414, 415, Ban

croft's letter to Dr. James, the Visitor of the Diocese of Bath and Wells, dated May 28, 1605.

office to learn the duties of the place. When he assumed the bishopric of London he had filled his staff, so far as he could without damaging its efficiency by depriving it of that local knowledge which can only be gained by long acquaintance with a given territory, from the men whom he had trained in the High Commission, and when he removed to Canterbury, he took them with him, partly because of their intelligence, but more because they understood his methods and policy. Sir Edward Stanhope, Sir Daniel Dun, Sir John Bennett, John Cowell, Dr. Edward James, all of them men of great ability, high intelligence, and attainments recognised to such an extent that their writings on civil and ecclesiastical law were held authoritative by European experts, formed the backbone of his administration and to their energy and worth no small part of his success was due. The efficient administration of a great institution depends often as much upon the capacity of subordinates as upon the organising ability of a great brain at its head. Bancroft was not only a leader but a great judge of human nature. Vaughan and Ravis, who succeeded him in the See of London, were not men of theological learning or of any particular reputation, but they had administrative ability coupled with much tact and performed their difficult functions, at a most trying epoch, to the admiration even of the Puritans.2

Some men of value he sent into the country where they were sorely needed: Dr. James was sent to the diocese of Bath and Wells as the Bishop's chancellor, for Mountagu, the Bishop of that See who was a favourite of the King, spent most of his time at Court, and, although a clever writer and an entertaining companion, was a man of small ability. This was another innovation upon the Elizabethan idea, that any man of ordinary intelligence and known political loyalty was qualified to hold most ecclesiastical positions. Although Whitgift and Aylmer had not acted on such an idea, it was none the less very wide spread. The greater influence which Bancroft was able to exercise in the appointment of officials and

1 When he was Chancellor of Oxford University, he reappointed his Vice Chancellor because he said he had observed at Cambridge that the constant rotation of officers gave them a Vice Chancellor who was never efficient because, as soon as he had familiarised himself with the duties of his post, he was replaced by some one

else. S. P. Dom. Jac. I, 47. No. 19. July 8, 1609. Bancroft to the Vice Chancellor, and Doctors, Proctors, and Masters of the Convocation House, Oxford.

2 Chamberlain to Winwood, February 26, 1604-5. Winwood's Memorials, II, 49.

even bishops,1 was a factor which must not be neglected if we are to understand this sudden burst of administrative energy and skill. For years, men had been acquiring in obscurity, as had Bancroft himself, administrative knowledge of value, and the years 1604 and 1605 were only the fruitage of the previous decades. Yet it had needed the man with the eye to see, the head to plan, and the hand to execute, to bring forth these men from isolation and to put them into connection with the work which they were fitted to accomplish.

Bancroft's success with the able is by no means as remarkable as his capacity for dragging work out of the unfit whom he found in office and whom he could not displace, for most of this great record of the years 1604 and 1605 was made by the very men who had been so careless and negligent in the preceding years. Many men who preached in 1606 had not preached regularly before; many succeeded in procuring licenses who had not previously been qualified; churches were repaired; books and ornaments were procured for the service by the very men who had neglected for so many years to provide them.

to

1 Certain ambassadorial statements the contrary notwithstanding.

Whitgift had exercised considerable influence in this particular also.