BARLOW'S CONSECRATION DOUBTFUL and in prison, or on the point of deprivation. The Queen had sent a commission, dated September 9, 1559, to four of them, namely to the bishops of Durham, Bath and Wells, Peterborough, and Llandaff, requiring them to confirm and consecrate Parker, but they did not perform the Queen's command. She was therefore compelled to seek for convenient instruments in bishops who were not in legal possession of any English see and who had no lawful part or jurisdiction, at the time, in the Catholic and legally constituted hierarchy. This defect of legal position and jurisdiction ought to be sufficient to prevent Anglican writers of respectability from repeating the fiction that the present Anglican hierarchy is regularly and legally descended by consecration. from the old Catholic hierarchy of England, But although the consecrators of Parker were not bishops of any English see at the time of his consecration, three of them had once held English bishoprics, and a fourth had once been a Suffragan or Auxiliary bishop in England. Doubt has been expressed whether Barlow, one of the four, had ever received episcopal consecration. But Hodgeskyn was certainly consecrated, in 1537, according to Catholic ritual, while the other two, Scory and Coverdale, were consecrated, in 1551, after the Edwardian rite. Anglican authors maintain that the doubts concerning the BARLOW's episcopal orders of Barlow are unfounded, and CONSECRA- that even were such doubts based on good TION DOUBT FUL grounds, the other bishops as co-operating or joint-consecrators with him were competent to perform a valid consecration and to transmit valid orders to the new Elizabethan church. Barlow, according to Professor Stubbs, was consecrated bishop of St Davids on the 11th of June, 1536, but he CROMWELL'S EVIDENCE AGAINST PROFESSOR STUBBS quotes no Register, nor can direct evidence be quoted, in proof of this assertion, reference being simply given to "Haddan on Bramhall, vol. III, pp. 138-143, and Preface." Professor Stubbs, at page V of the Preface to his Registrum Sacrum, informs his readers that dates "derived from indirect indications" are printed by him in Italics, as also those dates which are "careful deductions from evidence." (Ibid. p. 1.) According to this rule, the date assigned by him to Barlow's consecration, ought to have been set down in Italics, for it is merely the result of Bramhall's deductions. But no Italics have been employed by Professor Stubbs in this case. The date moreover is contradicted by a State paper, dated the 12th of June, 1536, the day after the alleged consecration, wherein Barlow is styled the "elect bishop of St David's." This paper is a warrant from Sir Thomas Cromwell, the King's EVIDENCE Vicar General and Master of the Rolls, for payPROFESSOR ment of "his dietts" to Thomas Hawley, Claren CROMWELL'S AGAINST STUBBS cieux King of Arms. Hawley had been sent, in the language of the warrant, "to attend upon the Lord William Howard, and the bishop then elect of St Asaph, now elect of St David's, being then also sent in Ambassador into Scotland." It is also said that Hawley "continued his aboade in the said voyage from the 21st day of January last past before the date hereof until the 12th day of June then next following exclusive." The foregoing warrant is in the Bodleian library in Oxford, Ashmole's MSS. No. 857, fol. 48, and has been printed in extenso by Canon Estcourt. This warrant was not known to Professor Stubbs at the time when he compiled his valuable Registrum Sacrum. Great as is the authority of "Haddan upon Bramhall," and meritorious as the services of Professor Stubbs have proved to the cause of ecclesiastical history, BARLOW'S GRANT OF TEMPORALS their a priori reasonings can scarcely be deemed sufficient, in this case of Barlow's consecration, to outweigh the contemporary evidence of the Vicar General, Cromwell. BARLOW'S TEMPORAL S Hitherto all attempts to determine a date for GRANT OF Barlow's alleged consecration have failed. The grant to Barlow of the temporalities of St David's was dated April 26, 1536, and was enrolled not, as usual with Writs of Restitution of Temporalities, in the Patent Rolls of Chancery, but in the Memoranda Rolls of the Exchequer. This grant gave Barlow the temporalities of St Davids for his life, and was followed on the succeeding day, the 27th of April, by a summons to sit in the House of Lords. Canon Estcourt remarks that the suspicious circumstances in Barlow's grant of temporalities are "that the writ, after reciting that the Chapter had elected him for Bishop and Pastor, then states that the archbishop had not only confirmed him but had also preferred him to be Bishop and Pastor, and proceeds to grant not merely for the time of vacancy, but to the same now bishop for his life, all the profits in the King's hands by reason of the last vacancy of the bishopric and custody of the temporalities; thus in fact precluding the Crown from making restitution in the proper form without a surrender of the grant so made. And it does not appear that Barlow ever made such a surrender or ever obtained the temporalities in the accustomed manner." If Barlow really received the temporalities in this unprecedented mode and sat as a bishop without consecration, it would explain the words attributed to him by Strype (Mem. Vol. I, page 184), namely: "If the King's Grace, being Supreme Head of the Church of England, did chuse, denominate and elect any lay man, being learned, to be a IRREGULARITIES COMMON. bishop, that he so chosen, without mention made of any orders, should be as good a bishop as he is, or the best in England." It is worthy of remark that even at the time when the register of Parker's consecration was prepared, no date for Barlow's consecration could be assigned, beyond the mention of the "time of Henry VIII." Among the Foxe MSS. in the British Museum (Harleian, 419, fol. 149), is a paper in Elizabethan handwriting, without date, and entitled by Strype "The Consecration of bishop Bonner, archbishop Parker etc." This paper gives an account of Parker's consecration, and says that Parker was consecrated by Barlow, bishop elect of Chichester, as consecrator; with the bishop elect of Hereford, (John Scory); the suffragan bishop of Bedford (John Hodgeskyn); and Miles Coverdale, as assistants. This paper mentions the names of the consecrators of Scory and Coverdale with the full dates of their respective consecrations. It says nothing of Hodgeskyn's consecration, and simply says of Barlow, "Willelmus Barlow consecratus fuit tempore Henr. VIII." The facts and circumstances above related, although not a demonstration that Barlow was never consecrated, are at least proof that the alleged fact of his consecration has never been established, and that without other evidence than at present has been brought forward, it is open to reasonable doubt. IRREGULA RITIES To some persons it seems impossible to believe that an Anglican bishop, even during the time of COMMON. the ecclesiastical changes consequent on schism, could have held his see without consecration. Yet it is notorious that in those times numbers of laymen held church benefices and even dignities. It has been shewn that Barlow received his writ of summons to parliament THE CASE OF LANCASTER without consecration, and that he received the temporalities of St David's by an unusual instrument which appears to ignore the necessity of episcopal ordination. Another instance may be cited which proves to demonstration either that a bishop elect was allowed, before his own consecration, to ordain ministers for the Anglican church, or that Anglican consecration was a ceremony of such a non-sacramental nature that its repetition was a matter of indifference. THE CASE OF One Thomas Lancaster, Treasurer of Salisbury, LANCASTER was consecrated in July, 1550, to the See of Kildare, in Ireland, by George Browne, archbishop of Dublin. This circumstance is attested by Sir James Ware. This Thomas Lancaster was promoted to the archbishopric of Armagh, in 1568, by Queen Elizabeth. That Lancaster, bishop of Kildare, and Lancaster, archblshop of Armagh, were one and the same person, is proved by a letter of Queen Elizabeth, dated March 28, 1568, describing Lancaster as one who was heretofore bishop of Kildare, and to this statement Cecil adds the remark: "and therein for the time proved very laudably." Notwithstanding his previous consecration as bishop of Kildare in 1550, Lancaster again, eighteen years afterwards, received episCONS- copal consecration as archbishop of Armagh, the ceremony of consecration being performed on the 13th of June, 1568, by Adam Loftus, archbishop of Dublin, Hugh Brady, bishop of Meath, and Robert Daly, bishop of Kildare. This second consecration is also attested by Sir James Ware, and by the Loftus MSS. now preserved in Marsh's Library in Dublin. Harris, the compiler of a new edition of Ware's work, tried to explain away the difficulty of this repeated consecration by asserting that Lancaster, bishop of Kildare, and Lancaster, TWICE ECRATED |