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BISHOP BARLOW &
ANGLICAN ORDERS

By the same Author
THE EARLY CHURCH IN THE
LIGHT OF THE MONUMENTS.
A Study in Christian Archaeology.
With Illustrations. CWeatminsier Library)

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
LONDON New York Bombay
Calcutta and Madras

BISHOP BARLOW AND
ANGLICAN ORDERS
A STUDY OF THE
ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS

ARTHUR STAPYLTON BARNES
M.A.
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE. OXFORD, AND TRINITY COLLEGE.
CAMBRIDGE ; DOMESTIC PRELATE TO
H.H. BENEDICT XV.

A man is not made Bishop by consecration,
but is pronounced so at Rome in Consistory;
and he has no jurisdiction given him by
consecration, but only the rights of his Order,
namely, consecrating of children, et caetera.
ARCHBISHOP WARHAM

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C. 4
55 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1922
Ail rights reserved

NIHIL OBSTAT
J. Canonicus Moves, S.T.D.
Censor Deputatus
IMPRIMATUR Edm. Can. Surmont
Fie. Gen.
IVestmonasierii
die 27 Februarii, 1922

TO HIS EMINENCE FRANCIS AIDAN
CARDINAL GASQUET
Eminence,-^ Had this book, which you have graciously allowed
me to dedicate to you, been published five and twenty
years ago, by which time many of the preliminary
studies for it had already been made, it would have
been regarded as a controversial production. For
at that time the question of the validity of Anglican
Orders was still the subject of active discussion and
was in process of examination by the Commission
appointed by Leo XIII, of which your Eminence was
so distinguished a member. Now that the question
has been decided by authority at Rome, the book has
no longer the same controversial value. The story of
Bishop Barlow is, however, in itself so curious, and
throws so much light on the inner workings of that
historical period, that I hope its publication may be
thought to be justified as a study purely historical,
even if without practical influence in the controversies
of to-day. From the first the Cathohc objections to Anglican
Orders took two main forms, the one historical and
the other theological. It was argued, that is, either
that the historical chain had been broken and

vi DEDICATORY PREFACE
Apostolical Succession thereby lost ; or else, that even
if the material succession had been retained, the form
of service employed had been insufficient to hand on
the grace of Holy Order, so that the same result had
followed. The Commission might, it would appear,
have based its finding on either of these arguments
or on both combined. But the Bull Apostolicae Curae,
the result of their deliberations and of the advice which
they gave to the Pope, did in fact base its decision solely
upon the second or theological argument — an argu
ment which was never put more clearly or succinctly
than by Sancta Clara, the Franciscan writer in the
time of Charles I, who first tried to prove that there
was no essential opposition between the Thirty-nine
Articles and the Council of Trent. ' All ordinations,'
he wrote, ' which are celebrated in a form different
from the Church, with an intention sufficiently ex
pressed of opposition to her sense, are invalid.' ^
The historical argument, this other being alone
amply sufficient for the purpose required, was not
needed, and therefore no appeal was made to it in the
Bull. It remained, of course, exactly as cogent and
decisive as before. To omit to use an argument,
when others are available which are sufficient without
its use, is not to throw any doubt upon its efficacy
and power.
This, however, Anglican controversialists have
never been able to see. Because Leo XIII did not
care to use the argument from history, having all that
he needed ready to hand in the argument from
theology, they have spoken as if he had pronounced
1 An Encheiridion of Faith, by Francis Coventry (2nd edit.,
Douai, 1655). ' Francis Coventry ' was one of his pen names.

DEDICATORY PREFACE vii
the historical argument unsound and devoid of utility,
which is very far from being true.
Most of what is here set forth will be sufficiently
familiar to your Eminence. But I flatter myself,
even so, that you will find something new in the
linking up of various facts and controversies and the
demonstration that all alike, disconnected as they
seemed, are really all portions of one continuous story,
involving more bad faith and more discreditable
actions than has hitherto been supposed. That
Henry himself was the moving power in the matter has
not, I think, been previously suggested, but it seems
clear enough when the full force of the ' Signed Bill ' of
April 1535 is considered. That the singular absence
of documentary evidence was due to deliberate action
on the part of the authorities is also, I think, a new
point, and seems to follow inevitably from the muti
lated Patent Roll of 1536. The anachronism con
tained in Parker's Register, in the account of his
consecration, seems to destroy all possibility of that
document being of the same date as the ceremony
whose details it records. These perhaps are the most
important of the new points I have been able to bring
forward. I think, too, that one reason why so many writers
have failed altogether to understand Barlow's case is
that most of them have forgotten to take into full
consideration the obvious truth contained in the
quotation from Archbishop Warham which I have
placed on the title-page. ' A man is not made bishop
by consecration, but is pronounced so at Rome in
consistory ; and he has no jurisdiction given him by
consecration, but only the rights of his Order, namely,

viii DEDICATORY PREFACE
consecrating of children, et caetera.' Warham was
not making a far-fetched ultramontane claim, as Canon
Dixon rather absurdly interprets, but only stating the
fact, true among Anglicans as well as among Catholics,
that the complete appointment makes a bishop as far
as jurisdiction is concerned, and that consecration
only adds the power of Order. It follows that Barlow
could be a bishop as regards all power of ruling his
diocese and so on, whether he were consecrated or no.
And there is no proof that in Henry's time he ever
went beyond this strictly legal position and used the
power of Order to which he was not entitled.
I hope that your Eminence will deign to read what
I have written, and that you will accord a merciful
judgment to its many defects.
I have the honour to be.
Your devoted Servant in Jesus Christ,
Arthur S. Barnes.

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
the life of bishop barlow
PAGE
WiUiam Barlow, through his consecration of Archbishop
Parker, is the only link that binds the present Anglican
succession of bishops to their Catholic predecessors.
Yet the gravest doubt rests upon his own consecration.
If that fails, the whole Anglican succession fails with it i
He was born in Essex, and early joined the Augustinian Canons.
He became prior of Bromehill, and when in 1528 this
house was suppressed by Wolsey, Barlow was very angry
and published various heretical and Lutheran books,
which were condemned by the bishops. He at once
retracted in a letter to the King. Taken into favour, he
went with Stokesley to France, and now wrote a book
against the Lutherans as heretics ..... 2
His efforts to help on the divorce won the favour of Anne Boleyn.
Through her he was appointed prior of Haverfordwest.
He quarrelled there with the Black Friars who presented
him for heresy. Hence he was moved to Bisham, and
sent on a mission to Scotland. As he gave satisfaction in
this, it was determined to make him a bishop, and he was
appointed to St. Asaph ...... 6
The Bishop of St. David's dying, he was transferred, stiU un
consecrated, to that diocese. Again the election is con
firmed, April 21, 1536, but there was no order for any
consecration ........ 9
StiU, a Grant of Custody of the Temporalities was issued, and
he finished up the Scottish Embassy and took his seat in
the House of Lords ....... 10

x SUMMARY OF CONTENTS
PAGE
He was still unhappy and quarrelsome at St. David's, but re
mained there tUl Henry's death, when he was appointed
by Edward VI to Bath and Wells, after great alienations
of diocesan property. There he stiU quarreUed, this time
with the Dean . . . . . . . .12
At the accession of Queen Mary he was deprived ' for that he
had a vyyf, and for oder matters,' and escaped to the
Continent ......... 17
On Elizabeth's accession he returned, and was made Bishop
of Chichester. He consecrated Parker, December 17,
1559. He lived at Chichester tiU he died, 1568, and left
two sons and five daughters, aU of whom married bishops 1 8
Was he himself ever consecrated Bishop ? BramhaU and
others say, Yes, for ' Henry VIII was not a baby to be
jested withal '........ 19
But what if Henry was the cause of his not being consecrated ?
What if a whole series of documents, not one document
only, are missing ? What if there is positive evidence to
prove the fact that consecration was not intended } What
if the supposition that he was not consecrated solves a
whole series of historical puzzles ? .... 20

CHAPTER II
the views of henry viii on the necessity of
consecration
The general impression is that Henry was always a consistent
and even a bigoted Catholic. But from 1533 to 1540 he
would have been a bold man who would have prophesied
in which camp the King would end. See, for instance, his
instructions to Bishop Foxe in 1535 . . . .23
The years 1535-1536 were the critical period. It was poli
ticaUy his interest to join the Schmalcaldic League. But
he shrank from joining Luther outright. On one point,
however, he was with Luther, viz., that the difference
between priest and bishop was one of jurisdiction only.
Such a doctrine increased the royal power ... 24

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS xi

PAGE

In the year 1 540 he put out a question on this point to a Com
mission of divines. Gardiner's influence prevented the
answer he wished. After Gardiner was removed he got it
from Cranmer and Barlow . . . . . -27
Was such a doctrine ever put in force, and a bishop left un
consecrated } If it was, it can only have been in Barlow's
case. It is unique ....... 32
There are generaUy many documents from which a consecration
can be proved. They are the Significavit, the Register at
Lambeth ; the Archbishop's certificate ; the Bishop's own
Register ; the Restitution of Temporalities ; the Mandate
for Enthronement, and so forth . . . . -32
On the other hand, matters are sometimes aUeged as proofs which
are not so. Such are the sitting as bishop in the House of
Lords, or in Convocation, the granting of leases, and so forth 36
Altogether there should be some fifteen documents extant, any
one of which would be a sufficient proof of consecration.
AU fifteen are absent. We have aU the documents up to
the crucial moment and nothing afterwards. Such a state
o£ a,Sa.iis is fuite unparalleled . . . . -41

CHAPTER III
THE ROYAL SUPREMACY IN ACTION
The Royal Supremacy has of late years been used with such
moderation that people have forgotten what it originaUy
meant, and if pressed might mean even now ... 43
CromweU originated it to enslave the Church. No mere
national Church can withstand encroachment from the
civil power. Only union vyith Rome makes resistance
possible. So Henry broke with the Holy See on the
ground that England is an Empire, and he was only restor
ing ancient rights  43
He had the clergy safe in praemunire, and could extort obedience
by misusing the law. Hence he could aUow saving clauses
which meant reaUy nothing at aU. His first act was to
appoint CromweU Vicar-General, to rank as his represen
tative above all bishops  47

xii SUMMARY OF CONTENTS
PAGE
He assumed precisely the powers which Western Christendom
reserved to the Pope. He would be supreme (i) in aU
causes ; (ii) in aU councils ; (iii) in aU appointments . 49
He further insisted that every act of a bishop should be done
only by his authority. Each bishop had to acknowledge
this, and then take out a licence ..... 50
Edward VI carried on all his father had done, and further
destroyed the last vestige of election. Bishoprics became
absolutely royal donatives . . . . . -53
Both under Henry and Edward, and ever since, new Sees are
set up solely by royal authority . . . . . 54
To understand these questions it is necessary to understand
the distinction between the two powers of Order and
Jurisdiction. Catholics say both are from Christ alone.
Erastians said both are from the people. Henry took
a middle course, and said Order from Christ, Jurisdiction
from the King. He claimed the entire papal authority
in its fullness . . . . . . . -55

ch;apter IV
BISHOP barlow's own DOCUMENTS
In Chap. ii. we saw that aU the documents by which Barlow's
consecration could be proved are lost. Is there any positive
evidence available in the documents which do exist to
show that consecration was not intended and did not take
place ?......... 57
The documents required by the Act 25 Henry VIII c. 16,
are: r. The Conge d'elire; 2. The Royal Assent;
3. The Significavit — aU issued under the Great Seal.
The authority under which they were issued was usuaUy
' Privy Seal.' But the King might, and may, act per
sonaUy by ' Signed Bill '...... 59
The documents for St. Asaph are in the usual form, and need
not detain us. They prove only that consecration was
not contemplated at once ...... 62
The documents for his successor at St. Asaph show that he
was never consecrated for that See .... 63

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS xiii
PAGE
The documents for St. David's are in the form of an ordinary
translation, as if he had been consecrated. And this is
by the King's own order. It is by ' Signed BiU.' Why
was this done ?  64
Moreover they say that he holds Bisham ' in commendam,'
which again presupposes consecration . . . - 65
Again no consecration is contemplated. Cranmer's certificate
proves this  67
Next we have the Grant of Custody. This document is very
remarkable. It could not be issued to a Bishop already
consecrated, and would be voided by his consecration.
Yet the grant is for Ufe. Various peculiarities of this
grant. Barlow's description. Cranmer's description. The
authority quoted for its issue ..... 68
Barlow now assumes fuU style of a bishop. He signs ' WiU™.
Menevensis.' No possible date for his consecration can be
assigned. It cannot have taken place on June 11, as
Bishop Stubbs suggested . . . . . -75
Barlow's position through these documents. He had aU
jurisdiction and possession of temporalities for life.
He passed as fuU bishop. But he had no powers of
episcopal Order. He could not confirm or ordain.
Did he do so ? We cannot teU ..... 78
Did the Chapter of St. David's know how matters really stood ?
If not, why was the matter kept secret } Apparently it
was a ballon d'essai. CromweU and the King were seeing
how far they could go under existing laws. Circum
stances changed and the experiment was not repeated.
But Barlow remained unconsecrated . . . .81

CHAPTER V
THE CONSECRATION OF ARCHBISHOP PARKER AND
THE ATTACK ON BISHOP BONNER
The first year of Queen Elizabeth. Mary's work was undone,
and the Act of Henry VIII making the breach with
Rome was re-enacted. Many Sees were vacant at first.
GraduaUy, as the bishops stood firm, almost all the others
were emptied by deprivation  85

xiv SUMMARY OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Matthew Parker had been chosen early for Canterbury.
He was eventuaUy elected on August i. Five Bishops
had been retained in their sees to consecrate him. A
Commission was issued to them and to two returned
Bishops, Barlow and Scory. They did not act . . 87
By this time there was real difficulty. Possibly some steps
have not been recorded. There were no four ' bishops
in the realm ' available, and the Ordinal had not
been authorised, as a Catholic consecration was hoped
for  88
So a new Commission was issued to Kitchin of Llandaff,
Barlow, Scory, Coverdale, Hodgkins, and SaUsbury, or
any four of them. Kitchin did not act, so Barlow became
head. Was his condition known or forgotten ? . . 90
A special clause of dispensation was added to cover aU defects,
wide enough to be held, in that age, to cover even lack of
consecration ........ 90
The consecration was on December 17, 1559, at five or six
in the morning. The record is a very strange document.
AU the detaUs were kept secret, especiaUy the name of
the consecrator, for many years. Once consecrated him
self, Parker soon fiUed up aU the vacant sees ... 93
Fresh trouble came in 1564, through an attempt to destroy
Bonner by administering to him the Oath of Supremacy
for the second time, when refusal was high treason.
Bonner refused on the ground that Home was ' no bishop
at aU, but only plain Dr. Home ' . . . . -95
The case was argued in private for years. The judges held
Bonner would win if he could prove this. Several papers
still extant throw light on what was going on . . -99
But Barlow was alive, and it was soon discovered how matters
stood. They first attempted to get the Catholic Arch
bishop of Armagh to consecrate. But he too refused.
So it was necessary to go to Parliament and pass a Valid
ating Act, containing also a means for stopping Bonner's
case from coming into court, lest the truth about
Barlow should come out. So the secret remained a
secret stiU. Two curious documents remain in Parker's
Register . . . . . . . . .103

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS xv

CHAPTER VI
ARCHBISHOP Parker's register
PAGE
What was to be done ? If Parker did not care, EUzabeth did.
If Barlow were no bishop, could not the succession have
been kept up through the assistant consecrators ? . . 1 1 1
Anghcans hold, wrongly, that aU such assistants necessarily
consecrate. ApostoUcal succession, they say, is ' like a net,
not a chain.' This is not true, because in the Church of
England only the consecrator says any words. It is
not possible to consecrate a bishop in silence . . • 1 1 3
The general teaching of the Church is clear. One bishop
alone ordinarily consecrates. The assistant bishops are
there as representing the Church. They co-operate, but
do not act independently, and cannot supply defects in
the principal consecrator. For even according to the
present Pontifical they say nothing beyond Accipe
Spiritum Sanctum, and those three words by themselves
do not make a valid ' form ' . . . . . .114
But if they did say the whole of the ' form,' and had the inten
tion of consecrating independently, some theologians
would aUow the vaUdity of the act . . . • ii7
Here then was the only loophole. If aU four bishops said
the whole ' form ' at Parker's consecration, it would be
possible to hold that the others had supplied Barlow's
defect. Hence the whole weight of proof rests on the
Register, which aUeges that they did this. Is it beyond
suspicion of having been tampered with .' . . .118
The Register has been bound since it was written. It is for
the first 107 folios written ' by one hand and with one
ink.' The form which records the consecration is very
unusual, and does not read as if it could have been drawn
up immediately after the ceremony. Has this account
been foisted in at a late date, and the first 107 folios re
written in consequence ?  1 20
But this evidence is merely circumstantial. There should be
something more definite if so serious a charge is made.
Is there, perhaps, any anachronism } Yes. BuUingham

xvi SUMMARY OF CONTENTS
PAGE
is described in it as being Archdeacon of Lincoln in
December 1559, which he was not. (He had been so
under Edward VI, and was granted the incomings in
commendam the foUovdng year.) Such a mistake would
be easily made five or six years later. It would be im
possible at the moment  127
Some further evidence for the fact of the four bishops aU saying
the words is required. Parker's Register alone cannot
suffice unless it can be rehabilitated . . . -13^

CHAPTER VII
THE destruction OF THE DOCUMENTS
Only the Government as yet knew the real facts. But every
thing lay open to anyone who could consult the public
Records. What course should they adopt ? The state
of the Records supplies the answer . . . -133
Of the Diocesan Records for the years 1533-1555, aU are
perfect except Barlow's three dioceses, which are aU
missing . . . . . . . . -134
Of the other Ecclesiastical Records which bear on the case aU
are missing or mutilated where Barlow is concerned, yet
they are in many different places and custodies . '135
The Patent RoUs do not, as they should, contain any reference
to Barlow's Bishopric of St. David's. We ought to find
the Conge d'eUre, the Royal Assent, and the Restitution
of Temporahties, but none are there . . . .136
The Records of the Privy CouncU do not begin until 1540.
In Elizabeth's they are missing precisely for all the dates
when ecclesiastical affairs were prominent. Two other
documents which might be important are also missing
from their proper places . . . . . • 1 37
Some one seems to have removed with great thoroughness
every record bearing on Barlow's case, both civil and
ecclesiastical . . . . . . . .139
In the case of the Patent RoUs we can test whether there has
been dehberate mutUation. The RoU for 1536 has been
cut and some membranes removed. This may explain
why other documents besides Barlow's are missing . .140

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS xvii
PAGE
We cannot throw the blame on Barlow's successor, or on Queen
Mary, as Archbishop Wake tried to do. Mary had no
interest in Barlow. It must have been done between
1 5 59 and, say, 1620  143
The documents, not enroUed, could easily have been stolen.
Perhaps this is why Cranmer's Register is defective. They
were then loose documents not yet bound up. Perhaps
even now they survive somewhere . . . . .144
The period of the Bonner trial seems the most likely for the
coUection of these damaging documents. But the mutila
tion of the Roll seems to have been later, probably 161 3.
Mason quotes his mutilated document of the Temporalities
as being ' in the Rolls Chapel.' So it must have been on
the Patent RoUs then. He saw how damning it was,
took a mutUated and misleading copy, and then got
the original destroyed, not knowing that it existed
elsewhere . . . . . . . . .146

CHAPTER VIII
THE FIFTY YEARs' SILENCE
AU the detaUs of Parker's consecration, and especiaUy the name
of the consecrator and the nature of the service used, had
been kept secret from the first. This is shown by the
fact that none of the Catholic controversialists knew any
thing, though many of them had been in England and
in official positions at the time  1 48
The sUence was unbroken for fifty years, and most rigidly
kept, even under stinging questions and pointed statements.
This is shown from the controversies between Jewel and
Harding, Fulke and Stapleton, and in the writings of
Sanders and Bristow . . . . . . • 1 5 1
At last, in 1 614, Archbishop Abbot breaks silence. He sends
for Catholic priests in prison and shows them the Register.
Only then was the fact of the consecration made known
generaUy. The mystery and silence had generated wild
stories like the ' Nag's Head Fable ' . . . - 155

xviii SUMMARY OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Mason in 1613 had already published the name of Barlow as
Parker's consecrator. As he quoted documents only for
election and confirmation, Champney at once chaUenged
him to prove consecration. From that time onwards the
Barlow question has been the chief question in the matter 1 57
Even whUe the silence held, the chief AngUcan writers always
kept open the point of a succession without a bishop to
initiate it  158
It remains only to ask whether any of the principal actors in
the drama ever by their actions shed any light upon the
matter ......... 160
Barlow was probably relieved when his secret was known.
He was safe and could not be interfered vnth. He died
soon after. Did Mrs. Barlow make use of the secret in
marrying off her five daughters .? . . . . .160
Parker's Register contains a strange replica of his own consecra
tion, for Bishop Curteys' in 1570. Does this show a bad
conscience on his part f It is strange that he should not
have realised that such an entry could only do him harm 162
Elizabeth would probably have much preferred to range
herself with the Old Religion. She was forced to take
up a Puritan attitude. But she frankly despised her
bishops. When it came to the end she would have
turned, but was ' tied vsdth a chain of iron about her neck.'
So she ended miserably, driving away the Archbishop of
Canterbury and other bishops, bidding them be packing,
for she knew fuU well they were but hedge priests . . 165

BISHOP BARLOW AND
ANGLICAN ORDERS
CHAPTER I
THE UFE OF BISHOP BARLOW
William Barlow, of whom we are to treat in the
present volume, is one whose fame has certainly been
greater since his death than ever it was during his
lifetime. He has had the singular fortune to attain
immortality, not for any splendid action or intellectual
greatness, but simply because it is possible that he
once left undone something which he certainly ought
to have done. By his consecration of Archbishop
Parker he is the principal link, indeed the only link,
which joins the succession of the Anglican episcopate
of the present day to its Catholic predecessors. But
the gravest doubt has for three centuries past been
thrown on his own consecration. If he was never
consecrated bishop himself, then Parker's consecra
tion fails also, and with it, since the whole Anglican
episcopate ever since derives from Parker, there falls
the episcopal succession of the Church of England ;
except so far as the opinion can be allowed that, if the
principal consecrator be himself no bishop, the action
of the assistant bishops can sometimes supply what
is wanting and efi^ect the consecration. Were it not

2 ANGLICAN ORDERS
for this point Barlow would have no interest for any
body, but might well be left to the general oblivion
into which most of his contemporaries have long since
fallen, for he does not deserve to be remembered
either for his character or his deeds. But the con
troversy which has connected itself with his name
makes some knowledge of the man desirable, as a first
step to its solution.
He seems to have been born in Essex, and his real
name was Finch. But, like many other ecclesiastics of
his day, he preferred to be known rather by the name
of his birthplace, which was perhaps Bartlow hamlet,
in the parish of Ashdon. When in exile, in Mary's
reign, we find him in ' The Troubles of Frankfort,' i
under the name of W. Bartue,' which may be a recollec
tion of the * t ' which he ordinarily omitted in spelling
his name. Of his early life we know nothing at all,
though he is said to have been connected with both
the universities. In any case he entered religion, and
became a Canon Regular of St. Augustine, an Order
which had several houses in various parts of England.
His original monastery was St. Osyth, not far from
his birthplace, and it is possible that he went from
thence to the house of studies belonging to the Order
at Oxford, perhaps at Rewley Abbey, and took his
D.D. there. It has not, however, been possible to
trace the fact, the curious absence of documentary
evidence, which we shall find obtaining all through
his life, thus beginning with his earliest years. We
find the name cf William Barlow among the Augus
tinian canons of the eastern district as prior of Black-
1 P. clxxxiv in the reprinted edition of 1846.

THE LIFE OF BISHOP BARLOW 3
more, a small house in Essex, and as leaving this to
become prior of Tiptree in 1509. The same name
occurs later as prior of Lees. This can hardly be the
future bishop, who is said to have been seventy years
old at the time of the consecration of Archbishop
Parker, and therefore cannot have been born till about
1490. Perhaps it was an uncle. But it probably is
the Bishop himself whom we find as prior of Bromehill,
Norfolk, in ij'23, and who in the following year
obtained a dispensation to hold the rectory of Great
Cressingham, also in Norfolk, in conjunction with his
priory. The house at Bromehill, indeed, does not
seem to have been a large one, and a year or two later,
in 1528, it was one of those which Wolsey obtained
leave to suppress in order that he might add its endow
ments to the new Cardinal's College at Oxford.
It is not very clear what happened to the prior of
Bromehill when his house was suppressed. He seems
to have been very angry and to have quarrelled vio
lently with the Cardinal and with the Church. Forth
with he began to write a series of heretical pamphlets,
the names of which are quite sufficient to suggest their
tendency. In 1529 several of these were prohibited
by the bishops : ' The Treatyse of the Buryall of the
Masse ' ; * A Dialogue betwene the Gentylman and
the Husbandman ' ; ' The Clymbynge up of Fryers
and Religious Persones ' ; ' A Description of Godes
Worde compared to the Lyght ' ; ' A Convicyous
Dialoge against Saynt Thomas of Canterberye.'
This last was never published, but was a bitter attack
upon Cardinal Wolsey for his action in suppressing
monastic foundations for the benefit of his new
college.

4 ANGLICAN ORDERS
The result of the condemnation of his books by
the bishops was to bring Barlow to his senses, and to
show him that his chances of further preferment were
being seriously jeopardised. He resolved at once,
with characteristic versatility, to change sides again,
and wrote a letter to the King, piteously imploring
forgiveness for what he had done. The letter is
among the Cotton MSS. at the British Museum (Cleop.
E. iv), and has been endorsed in a later hand, 1533.
That date, however, is excluded by internal evidence,
and it must really have been written not later than the
latter part of 1529. He acknowledges that he has
been guilty of errors and heresies * against the doctrine
of Christ and determination of Holy Church,' that he
had denied the mass and purgatory and grievously
erred against the blessed sacrament of the altar, and
further had been guilty of ' slanderous infamy of the
pope and the lord-cardinal and outrageous railing
against the clergy.' He therefore humbly asks pardon
from the King, whom he compliments as full of sound
learning and endowed with singular judgment, and
to him he makes full and complete submission in
every point.
The abject letter succeeded in its object. Henry
cannot have thought the writer a good man or one
worthy of respect, but he saw that one so pliable and
ready to change his opinions at any moment at the
bidding of those in power might be a useful instrument
in what he was contemplating. Barlow was at once
received into favour, and sent with George Boleyn
and Stokesley (afterwards Bishop of London) on a
mission to France on the matter of the divorce,
starting in January 1529-30. He thus came under

THE LIFE OF BISHOP BARLOW 5
Stokesley's influence, and now wrote a book against
the Lutherans with whom he had so lately been asso
ciating himself. It is entitled ' A Dialoge describing
the Originali Ground of these Lutheran Faccions and
many of their Abuses.' In it one William, apparently
intended to represent himself, disputes with ' Nicholas '
about the new learning. Nicholas is a Protestant, and
William has been inclined to the same views, but has
seen the error of his opinions in consequence of a
visit to Germany. There he had been an eyewitness
of the * slanderous language and wicked behaviour '
of those who announced themselves to be ' only the
true followers and observers of Christ's Gospel.' He
had seen Luther himself, ' chief Captain of new heretics
and bringer forth of old heresies,' and one ' Swynglyus '
who lived at ' Scirich ' in Switzerland, and also other
Protestant leaders, and had come back disgusted alike
with the men themselves and with their doctrines, and
very determined to uphold the old religion against all
such innovators. ' Was not the original ground and
cause of M. Luther's heresy,' he asks, ' to do pleasure to
his Prynce and to purchase favour among the people ? '
That, he thinks, is the real root of all the evil. For,
* when princes and commonties are first bent upon affec
tion against the church, or conceive any strange purpose
contrary to Scripture, then immediately they find at
hand such learned persons that can endeavour their
braines in approving their lusts, making that which is
unlawful, lawful ; which say that good is evil and evil
is good, calling light darkness and darkness light.'
The words sound as if they had been written a little
later and were intended to describe Barlow's own
prince, Henry VIII, and such councillors as Cromwell

6 ANGLICAN ORDERS
and Cranmer, or even Barlow himself. The whole
sentiment suggests Stokesley rather than Barlow, and
the book may be due to his influence. If so, we can
the more readily understand why it was that Stokesley,
when he became Bishop of London, ordered all his
clergy to read the book. As Barlow was by that time
himself a bishop, but once more on the Protestant side
and notoriously heretical, it may have seemed a good
thing to Stokesley that these more orthodox sentiments
should be given as wide a currency as possible under
the shelter of his name and authority.
The efforts put forth by Barlow to bring about the
divorce attracted the notice and claimed the gratitude
of the new Queen. She determined to reward so
faithful a champion, and wishing to do so as cheaply
as possible, decided to ask Cranmer to present him to
the living of Sundridge, which just then fell vacant
and was in the Archbishop's gift. Cranmer, either
by a genuine blunder, or not wishing to do as the
Queen desired, made out the papers, not for Sundridge,
but for Tonbridge, a benefice in the gift of the Queen's
father, but not vacant at all. Still the Queen was
determined he should have some reward for what he
had done, and shortly afterwards she advanced him
to the Priory of St. Thomas the Martyr at Haverford
west in Pembrokeshire, which was in her patronage.
The priory was of considerable extent, with a church
about 150 feet in length and 30 feet in breadth, only
single-aisled, and in the shape of a cross. The house
seems not to have been in a very flourishing condition,
since there were only five other canons there to sign
the deed by which in 1534 the new prior formally
accepted the royal supremacy.

THE LIFE OF BISHOP BARLOW 7
There was another religious house in Haverford,
a small house belonging to the Dominicans, and these
soon became Barlow's bitterest enemies. By this
time realising that Lutheranism was in the ascendant
once more, and that, if he wanted more favours from
Anne Boleyn, the profession of Protestant opinions
was the surest way to obtain them, he had begun
preaching various heretical opinions, to the great
scandal of all the neighbourhood. At the instigation
of the Bishop of St. David's these Black Friars at
last formally presented the prior of the Augustinian
canons for heresy. Barlow writes to Cromwell, who
by this time was Vicar-General and all-powerful with
the King, to implore his protection. One of his
servants, he says, has had his house ransacked by the
Bishop's officers, and they have taken away from him
the New Testament and other books, and induced the
Mayor of Tenby to commit him to prison. In the
same letter he complains bitterly of the state of the
diocese and of the lives of the clergy among whom he
finds himself. From the point of view of a keen
Gospel reformer he can find nothing good to say of
them, and he ends by asking leave to depart and to
work in some more congenial neighbourhood in the
future.^ Henry was at this moment at the height of his
Protestantism. He was finding strong opposition
everywhere, and especially from the Carthusians and
Benedictines, to his pretensions to supremacy in
ecclesiastical affairs, and any religious who were willing
to assist him were just then sure of their reward.
1 Letters and Papers, Henry Fill, ix. 376.

8 ANGLICAN ORDERS
Barlow got his desire, and before the end of 1^35 ^^'^
left Wales, having obtained the much richer and far
more desirable Priory of Bisham in Berkshire, the
ruins of which still remain on the banks ofthe Thames.
It is now the seat of Sir Henry Vansittart Neale. Nor
did his good fortune stop here. He was once more
employed in diplomatic work, and in August 1535
he was advanced to the Privy Council and sent on a
mission with Thomas Holcroft to Scotland, his duty
being to persuade the King of Scotland to follow the
example set him by his brother of England, and
to break away from obedience to the Holy See.
In this mission, so entirely to his own taste, he
acquitted himself to the satisfaction of Henry and
of Cromwell, and further promotion was accordingly
determined on, so soon as a bishopric should fall
vacant. The opportunity came in January 1535-6, when
the see of St. Asaph was vacant through the death of
Bishop Standysh. Barlow's name was submitted in
the letters m.issive from the King, and he was accord
ingly elected bishop by the Chapter, the date of the
election being January 16. Cranmer confirmed the
election on February 23, Barlow being represented by
proxy as he was still away on the King's business in
Scotland. The Significavit or command to consecrate
was accordingly not at once issued and he remained
bishop-elect ; the consecration being deferred sine die,
at any rate until such time as he should return from
his mission. But meanwhile another and more impor
tant bishopric in Wales had fallen vacant. Barlow's
old enemy at Haverfordwest, Bishop Rawlins of St.
David's, was also dead, and it was immediately deter-

THE LIFE OF BISHOP BARLOW 9
mined to promote Barlow to that see without going
farther with the matter of St. Asaph. He was elected
to St. David's on April 10, 1536, by the Precentor
and Chapter (the dean's place at that cathedral being
always held by the bishop, so that the precentor was
the head of the Chapter whenever the see was vacant),
and this election was again confirmed in due course by
Cranmer on April 21, 1536. This time Barlow was
present in person, having come down from Scotland
apparently for the purpose of seeing after the business,
and there would seem no reason why he should not
have been consecrated two days later or the Sunday
following. But apparently this was not intended for
some reason, for again the Significavit was not issued.
and Cranmer sends in his certificate of the confir
mation to the King, as having done all that was required
of him, and as if no further step was contemplated for
the present.
This time his embassy to Scotland had not been
very successful, if we may believe Chapuys' report to
the Emperor. ' The King,' he writes, ' having sent
his ambassadors into Scotland to persuade the King
of that country to separate from and refuse obedience
to the Apostolic See, it happened that, the very day
and moment when the English were delivering their
embassy, a storm arose, and a most tremendous clap
of thunder was heard, at which King James, horrified,
rose from his seat, crossed himself, and exclaimed, " I
scarcely know which of the two things has caused me
most fear and horror, that thunder and lightning we
have just heard or the proposition you have made
me." After which, and in the very presence of
the English ambassadors, he ordered unconditional

IO ANGLICAN ORDERS
obedience to the Church to be proclaimed throughout
his dominions.' ^
As Barlow had not been consecrated, the resto
ration of the temporalities of the see of St. David's
could not be claimed of right from the King ; but a
few days later, on April 26, a grant was made under
the Great Seal, making him custodian of the tempor
alities for life, an unusual and indeed unprecedented
step, which looked as if his absence in Scotland, and
consequent continuance as bishop-elect only, was
going to be very prolonged. In virtue of this docu
ment, which is a peculiar one from several points of
view. Barlow took possession of his see at once,
apparently on May i, sending a proxy down to Wales
for the purpose, and himself returned to Scotland to
finish up his mission.
It did not, as events turned out, take more than a
few days to finish up the business of the Scottish
embassy, and he was soon back again in London,
where he took his seat in the House of Lords on
June 30. The first days of that Parliament were
stirring times, when the King's marriage with Anne
Boleyn was being debated and the Queen's life was
at stake. As Barlow owed everything to Anne Boleyn,
and every vote was of importance in the House of
Lords at the moment, we may conclude that he had
not arrived in London many days before he took his
seat. The writ of summons was dated April 27.
A week or two later he surrendered his priory at
Bisham into the hands of the King. He had held it,
according to some, though not all, of the documents,
^ State Papers, Spanish, 1536-8, p. 67.

THE LIFE OF BISHOP BARLOW ii
in commendam with his bishopric since April, and he is
described as perpetual commendatory in the deed of
surrender, but the grant allowing him to retain it in
commendam is not to be traced, and does not seem ever
to have been issued.
As long as Parliament was sitting Barlow remained
in London, giving the most faithful attendance to his
duties. We can trace him day by day in the Journal of
the House of Lords, and find that he was scarcely absent
from a single sitting. In the autumn, after the House
had risen, he went down to visit his diocese in Wales.
It must have been a bitter task for the Canons of
St. David's to be obliged to elect as their bishop one
who had won for himself so evil a reputation in the
diocese for heresy and innovation as had Barlow while
Prior of Haverfordwest, and naturally enough they
were not inclined to welcome him among them. The
storms of Haverfordwest were repeated almost from
the first day. Before the year was out the new Bishop
had been delated to the Bishop of Coventry and Lich
field, who was lord president of the King's Council
in Wales, for heresy preached in the Cathedral Church
of St. David's. The information was laid by Roger
Lewis the precentor, acting as head of the Chapter.
Barlow had said, so it was alleged, among other
heresies, that ' if the King's Grace, being Supreme
Head of the Church of England, did choose, denomi
nate, and elect any lay man, being learned, to be a
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.' ^ The phrase can obviously be
1 Letters and Papers, Henry Fill, xii. 93. Cf. also Strype,
Mem., i. 184, Records, No. 77.

12 ANGLICAN ORDERS
interpreted in more senses than one. Apparently the
matter was quashed by Cromwell, to whom the Bishop
of Lichfield reported it, for we hear no more about it.
The new Bishop seems to have been no more happy
at St. David's than he had formerly been at Haverford
west. He was involved in another dispute with his
Chapter, this time about the dean's place. They
would not allow him to sit in the dean's stall in the
cathedral, not would they allow him to act as head of
the Chapter as other bishops had always done. John
Barlow, the Bishop's brother, writes about it to Crom
well, and says they have nothing against him, except
that they say that no bishop claimed such things
before, and they will not show their authority for what
they do, but say it is lost. However, they are in
deadly earnest about it, and ' threaten to spend to
their shirts in the quarrel,' so there can be no doubt
they were very deeply moved.^
Under the circumstances we cannot wonder that
Barlow thought once more that he would be happier
elsewhere than in this little remote cathedral village,
where there was no getting away from his hostile
Chapter, and where all were against the views he was
engaged in putting forward. He writes again and
again to Cromwell letters full of complaints of the
place and of his clergy. St. David's, he says, is * a
barbarous, desolate corner,' and the clergy are lacking
in Christian civility and full of Welsh rudeness. He
wishes to remove the see to Carmarthen, which would
be more in the world, and can see no reason for staying
at St. David's merely on account of the relics of the
1 Letters and Papers, Henry Fill, xiii. pt. 2,. p. 473

THE LIFE OF BISHOP BARLOW 13
Saint — ' a rotten skull stuffed with putrefied clouts ' —
especially as he has his doubts ' whether any such
person was ever bishop there as is surmised.' He
did not get his way as to the removal of the see, but
he could at least remove himself, and this he accord
ingly did, wrecking the fine old palace at St. David's
by selling the lead off its roof, so that never since has
it been possible to inhabit it, and going to live in a
new palace of his own, which is still the residence of
the Bishops of St. David's, a mile or two outside the
town of Carmarthen. This house had been granted
to him at his own urgent request for the purpose of
founding a school. However, he thought it so
pleasant a place that he made it his own residence
instead, and no more was heard of the need for a school.
Here he resided pretty regularly till the end of
Henry's reign, always involved in quarrels with his
neighbours, and especially with the country gentry
and the clergy. When Parliament was in session we
find him in London, the most regular attendant of all
in the House of Lords, and he was in London when
Henry VIII died in 1546. The next year, February
1547-8, he preached before the new King, and once
more gave offence to Bishop Gardiner and the more
orthodox party by his doctrine. However, he knew
what he was doing ; Protestantism was once more in the
ascendant, and his sermon, so far from getting him into
trouble, was the means of winning him fresh promotion
from the Lord Protector Somerset, who was a thorough
going Protestant. He was advanced in February
1548-9, by letters patent, the first of the bishops to be
appointed under the new Act with its Erastian pro
cedure, to be Bishop of Bath and Wells.

14 ANGLICAN ORDERS
This diocese of Bath and Wells had for some time
been the centre of the corrupt appointments of the
period. The deanery of Wells, with its beautiful
house and garden, had attracted the notice first of
Crom.well and then of Somerset. Cromwell had
obtained possession by getting Henry to appoint him,
layman as he was, to be Dean of Wells, and after his
attainder the deanery had for a short time been held
by one Fitzwilliam, who was in possession in 1547,
when Somerset in his turn coveted the house. Fitz
william was induced to resign, by what means is not
recorded, and the dean's house and the endowments
of that office were promptly granted to the Duke of
Somerset. Now the deanery was recreated as a royal
donative, and the plunder of the Church began. The
office of dean, now without revenue, was endowed
with the estates of the Archdeaconry and one of the
prebends, and with those of the precentor and suc
centor of the church, and the Chancellor's house was
assigned as the new deanery in place of that which
had been granted away. John Goodman was ap
pointed to this office on January 7, 1548, by letters
patent, and the bishopric being also vacant by the
death of Bishop Knight in September 1547, a new
bishop who would not be too particular in the matter
of alienating the property of his see, much of which
Somerset still coveted, had to be found. No name
suggested itself as more suitable than that of Bishop
Barlow. He had ever shown himself ready to do
anything his superiors desired, and was quite prepared,
in order to get away from St. David's, to enter into
any arrangements that the all-powerful Duke might
think satisfactory.

THE LIFE OF BISHOP BARLOW 15
On July 12, 1548, ' for great sums of money paid
beforehand,' but of which there is no record, and which
do not seem to have been received. Barlow assigned
to the Duke of Somerset, by licence from the King,
' the manors of Banwell, Wells and Chew, Blackford,
Cranmore, Evercreech, the borough of Wellington,
the hundreds of Wells Forum, Winterstoke and Chew,
and also the bishop's palaces at Wells, Banwell, and
Evercreech. This transaction was confirmed by the
Dean and Chapter on January 10, 1549. Then on
February 4, 1549, he sold the manor of Wookey to
the same Duke for ever, and that was confirmed on
January 17, 1549, by the Dean and Chapter. It is
possible that some of these estates were re-transferred
to Bishop Barlow in his personal capacity and not as
bishop of the diocese. Certainly the episcopal manor of
Wookey, having been sold to the Duke, was transferred
back again to Bishop Barlow and his heirs, with permis
sion to sell it, and on December 10, 1550, the Duke
gave him £ 400 and the dean's house for his residence.'^
One would have thought there could have been
little more to grant away, but it was not so. The
next year, March i, 1550, the manors of Congresbury
and Yatton were sold to the King by Bishop Barlow, and
on December 10, 1550, he handed over to the Duke of
Somerset the estates of Wells, Westbury, the hundreds
of Wells and Wells Forum and Westbury Park.^
Barlow had thoroughly justified the perspicacity of
Somerset in choosing him for promotion, and his
excessive and unhesitating compliance with every
demand, however unreasonable, suggests that Somerset
1 Victoria Histories : Hist, of Somerset, ii. 37.
2 Ibid. ii. 37.

1 6 ANGLICAN ORDERS
had some hold over him, and that we have here an
instance of ducal, or rather of royal, blackmail.
, Wherever he was. Barlow seemed always to be
fated to quarrel with his brother clergy. At Wells it
was the Dean, just as at St. David's it had been the
Precentor. The Dean had obtained for himself the
prebend of Wiveliscombe, apparently to make up for
the losses sustained by the deanery, and this was
regarded as vacating his office as dean, as clearly no
one member of the Chapter could hold two stalls.
That, however, was by no means what Dean Goodman
desired, and he fought valiantly to retain his place.
Barlow, on his side, was eager to see a new dean — one
more of liis own way of thinking — ^in his place ; and
rather rashly, and without stopping to think, he formally
deprived him. Goodman, acting on the advice of his
lawyers, attempted to involve the Bishop in a prae
munire as having interfered with the royal prerogative
in depriving one whose office was a royal donative.
On appeal, the Bishop's action was allowed, and the
deanery was declared vacant, but Barlow had to sue
out a pardon from the King for what he had done.
Goodman, however, was not to be beaten, although a
new dean was appointed by the King in his stead.
He brought an action in Chancery against his successor,
and finally succeeded in getting back and becoming
dean once more, when the death of Edward VI in
1553 placed Mary upon the throne.
The accession of Queen Mary put an end to all
Barlow's hopes. There was indeed little chance that
the new Queen would have any mercy on one like
himself, a married bishop who had once been a monk,
but had broken his vows, and who besides was noto-

THE LIFE OF BISHOP BARLOW 17
riously heretical in his opinions, as well as a despoiler
of each of the two sees he had occupied. There was
no question of his continuance in his bishopric. The
question was rather whether or not he could save his
life, and that at any rate he had no mind to lose upon
a mere matter of doctrine. So he came up to London
ready for any submission which might be required of
him. He wrote a letter to the Queen condemning and
revoking all that he had written against the Catholic
religion, and thanking God for His mercy in calling
him once more out of darkness into light. In spite
of this, he was committed to the Tower, but was
allowed to resign his bishopric upon recanting his
errors and republishing his old tract against the
Lutherans. This must have been in the early months
of 1553-4 (for the book is dated 1553, and yet was
published after his resignation), for he is described on
the title-page as ' Sir William Barlowe chanon, late
byshop of Bath.' In November 1554 he attempted
to get out of England in the disguise of a merchant,
but was arrested and brought before the Council in
the Star Chamber, who committed him to the Fleet.
Then he was once more brought up for examination,
but gave answers so far Catholic in complexion that
no further steps were taken, but he was remanded to
the Fleet. From thence he escaped, and this time
succeeded in crossing the Channel. He went to
Germany, and for the remainder of Queen Mary's
reign remained abroad at Embden, ministering in poor
circumstances to an English congregation at that place.
In spite of his resignation of his bishopric having
been accepted, a sentence of deprivation seems to have

1 8 ANGLICAN ORDERS
been pronounced against him at a later date. The
matter is not very clear and is not of great importance,
but in some of the documents connected with the
appointment of his successor the see is spoken of as
being vacant ' by the free resignation,' and in others
as ' by the deprivation ' of its former occupant.
Machyn, moreover, in his Diary speaks of him as
having been deprived in Queen Mary's time ' for
that he had a wyf and for other matters.' ^
With the death of Mary and the accession of
Elizabeth things in England looked brighter for the
champions of Protestantism, and when the news got
to him in Germany, Barlow, old as he was, for he was
now seventy years of age, at once determined to go to
England. He was included in the commission for
the consecration of Archbishop Parker in 1559 and
eventually took the principal part, as the actual con
secrator, in the ceremony at Lambeth, having been
before that appointed by the Queen and elected by
the Chapter to the bishopric of Chichester. There
was no question of sending him back to either of his
former sees, for neither Bath and Wells nor St. David's
would have welcomed him after the way in which he
had alienated the revenues and quarrelled with the
clergy in each place. Chichester was not an important
or a rich diocese in those days, and he could do little
harm there. To add to the revenues of the see,
which were not large, a canonry of Westminster was
conferred upon him when the monastery there was
once more suppressed, and this he held in commendam
with his bishopric for the next five years. His death
1 Machyn's Diary, p. 199. Cf. Strype's Annals, vol. i. pt. ii,
p. 198.

THE LIFE OF BISHOP BARLOW 19
occurred at a very advanced age at Chichester on
August 15, 1568, and he was buried in Chichester
Cathedral. His wife, Agatha Welsbourne, daughter of Hum
phrey Welsbourne and formerly a nun, survived him
and died at the age of ninety in 1595. By her he had
two sons, William, afterwards archdeacon of Salisbury
and a man of some scientific attainments, and John,
who apparently died young.
He had also five daughters, all of whom were
married to bishops, Anne to the Bishop of Hereford,
Elizabeth to the Bishop of Winchester, Margaret to
the Bishop of Lichfield, Frances to the Archbishop
of York, and Antoine to another Bishop of Winchester.
Even if his claim to be Father of the Anglican epis
copate cannot be sustained, at least he was father-in-
law to a large portion of the episcopate of the reign
of Queen Elizabeth.
Such, then, in life, was the man concerning whom
the question has been debated for three hundred years
whether or no he was ever consecrated himself to
the episcopal office. The question was never raised
publicly in his own lifetime, nor for many years after
his death. It was the absence of the record of his
consecration from the documents printed or referred
toby Mason in his 'Vindiciae Ecclesiae Anghcanae' in
16 1 3 and 1625 that first gave the idea to Champney,
a writer on the Catholic side, that no such record was
in existence. Such is indeed the fact; the record of
the consecration is missing in Cranmer's Register at
Lambeth, though the confirmation to both St. Asaph
and St. David's is duly recorded. But on the other

20 ANGLICAN ORDERS
hand the improbability of the consecration ceremony
having been omitted is so great that at first sight it
hardly seems worth discussing. Bramhall has put
the case as well as anyone, and it certainly sounds
almost conclusive. His words are these : * What
pretence can they feign why Bishop Barlow was not
consecrated in Henry VIII's time ? Was Henry VIII
a baby to be jested withal ? In Archbishop Parker's
case they suppose all the bishops to have been stark
mad, to cast themselves down headlong from a preci
pice when they had a fair pair of stairs to descend by ;
but in Bishop Barlow's case they suppose all the world
to have been asleep ; except there had been such an
universal sleep, it had been impossible for any man
in those days to creep into a bishopric in England
without consecration. To say he is actually possessed
of a bishopric therefore he is consecrated, is as clear
a demonstration in the English law as it is in nature
to say, the sun shineth, therefore it is day.' ^
We may grant some of this at once. Henry VIII,
in the first days of his drunkenness with the new
powers of the royal supremacy, was emphatically not
' a baby to be jested withal.' Nor, it may be added,
was either Cranmer or Barlow at all a likely person to
attempt the perpetration of such a jest upon the
supreme head. But how does the case stand if
Henry was himself the instigator .? How if the action
was itself only a fresh abuse of the royal supremacy ?
If Henry had set his heart upon it and desired that it
should be done, we may turn the question round and
ask in our turn, was he ' a baby to be jested withal ' ?
1 Archbishop Bramhall's Works, Library of Anglo-Catholic
Theology, iii. 140.

THE LIFE OF BISHOP BARLOW 21
Or again, were either Cranmer or Barlow the men
who were likely to stand out against his will for a
ceremony they both thought needless and undesirable .''
The supposition that Henry was himself the originator
of what was done, may still be improbable, but it
is not impossible, and neither Bramhall himself nor
any Anglican writer has ever faced the question or
attempted to deal with it. The onus probandi, we quite
admit, lies with those who deny the consecration,
but their case will no longer seem ludicrous if it can
be shown even that Henry was not certainly opposed
to it. But the evidence against the consecration is itself
so slight, says Archbishop Bramhall again. ' What
is the absence of a single document in a register
which was badly kept ^ ' But what if it be not only
a single document which is missing, but a whole series
of documents, and these not in one place only or in a
single register, but in many places, and in the State
records as well as those of the Church ? What if
every document is available up to the point just before
consecration, and every document after that point
not only now missing but apparently never issued at
all ? What if, in addition to this absolute want of
confirmatory evidence, there should be positive evidence
as well, showing that the Bishop was as a matter of
fact in full possession of his see, using the full title
and insignia of a bishop, and so forth, at a time when
not only had consecration not taken place, but when
it was not immediately contemplated.'' If that can
be shown, and we hope in the course of this volume
to prove it clearly, the matter will bear a very different
complexion. It is never possible to prove a negative.

22 ANGLICAN ORDERS
and Barlow may have been consecrated secretly and
without documents at some later time, but there is
not the smallest reason to think that it was so, and the
onus probandi in that case, if anything has to be based
upon the assertion, clearly lies with those who main
tain, and not with those who deny that anything of
the sort was ever carried through. If it can be shown
that Barlow was still unconsecrated when he was
passing as full bishop and already possessed of all the
rights of his bishopric, and that there is no shadow of
reason to think that he was ever consecrated later,
that, by the nature of the case, is all that can possibly
be known. For all practical purposes it is enough to
prove that he was not consecrated at the proper time,
before he took possession of his bishopric. If we
succeed in proving that, the rest will be granted, in
default of any evidence to the contrary, by every
reasonable man.

CHAPTER II
THE VIEWS OF HENRY Vlll ON THE NECESSITY
OF CONSECRATION
The general impression on the minds of those who
have not read the history of the Reformation period
very carefully is that Henry VIII, except on the one
point of the royal supremacy, was a consistent and
even a bigoted Catholic. They remember his book
on the Seven Sacraments against Martin Luther
and the recognition it won from the Pope himself,
and they remember the Six Articles — ' the whip
with six strings ' — and the reactionary policy of his
later years. But they are apt to forget that there
was a period in between — the seven years, namely,
from 1533 to 1540 — when his views were by no
means so settled or so Catholic. During those
years he would have been a bold man who would
have ventured to prophesy in which camp the King
would end. Again and again he seemed to be on
the point of taking the final step, and joining the
Lutheran princes of the north as the champion of
Protestant Christianity on the basis of the Augsburg
Confession.^ Throughout the period his religious
1 See, for instance, the instructions given to Bishop Foxe when
he was sent as Ambassador to the German princes in September 1535.
' In case they shaU require that the King's Majesty shaU receive

24 ANGLICAN ORDERS
opinions, so far as they were fixed and decided at
all, leant much more in the Lutheran than in the
Catholic direction. The breach with Rome, which
was precipitated by the anxiety of the King to get
rid of Catherine of Aragon in order that he might
be free to marry Anne Boleyn in her stead, took
place in the year 1533. Such a step was not likely
to be carried through without arousing a good deal
of heated feeling, and the next few years form a
period of the greatest unsettlement and anxiety,
dominated by the masterful, and indeed tyrannical,
actions of Henry himself, inspired throughout as
he was by his new minister Thomas Cromwell, the
Machiavelli of English politics. No one could say
where the innovations were going to stop. It all
depended upon the personal will of the King himself
and the guidance of his unscrupulous minister.
The years 1535-1 5 36 were the really critical
period. They begin with the assumption by Henry
of the title of Supreme Head of the Church and the
appointment of Cromwell to be his Vicar-General
in spiritual matters. Soon a veritable reign of
terror was introduced. The executions of More
and Fisher on Tower Hill, and of the Carthusian
priors at Tyburn, brought home to all that neither
the whole confession of Germany [Augsburg], as it is imprinted,
the Bishop shall say that when the King's Highness shaU have seen
and perused the articles of the league, and shaU perceive that there
is in it contained none other articles but such as may be agreeable
with the Gospel, and such as His Highness ought and conveniently
may maintain, it is not to be doubted, and also " I durst boldly affirm,"
the said Bishop shaU say, " that the King's Highness wiU enter the
same " ' [league]. Record Ofice MS., quoted by Froude, History, ii.
404, edition 1856.

HENRY VIII AND CONSECRATION 25
lofty position nor personal holiness would avail
anybody at all if he dared to withstand the King's
arbitrary will in any matter touching the supremacy.
Not many men in any age are of the stuff of which
martyrs are made, and, when once Henry had shown
by these judicial murders to what lengths he was
wining to go to get his own way, there were few
found to withstand his pleasure. When the rising
in the north, which we know as the Pilgrimage
of Grace, had been suppressed by the Duke of
Norfolk, and the country terrorised afresh by savage
executions of all who had taken part in the insurrec
tion, the King and Cromwell were practically absolute,
none daring to stand up against them within the
realm. Outside of England, however, Henry stood in
a far less favourable position. Only the fact that
the Emperor and the King of France were at war
with one another saved him from an attack from
either or from both combined. So soon as peace
should be concluded the danger would be acute, for
Pole was acting as the Ambassador of the Pope and
trying to induce them to patch up their differ
ences with each other, and to join together in pro
hibiting commercial intercourse with England, and
so reducing her to an early submission. Against
this threatened action, however, there was an ob
vious counter-move available, for which Cromwell
was exceedingly anxious. The Protestant princes
of Germany, who had just renewed the Schmalcaldic
League, were eager that Henry should join them
and place himself at their head, thus making a great
Protestant confederation of the north to withstand

26 ANGLICAN ORDERS
the efforts of the Pope and the Catholic princes of
the south. The policy of the move was obvious,
and yet Henry could not bring himself to make it.
He was not prepared to go aU lengths with Luther
and the German Reformers. He still retained his
belief in the sacramental system of the Church and
especially in Transubstantiation and the Mass. A
league with the Protestant princes was therefore,
as he told them, out of the question until an agree
ment on doctrinal matters had been arrived at. Nor
was such agreement easy in his own case, since he
had already published a book against Luther of
which he was inordinately proud, and he had no
desire to humiliate himself before all Europe by
eating his own words and confessing that Luther
had been right and he wrong in the points at issue.
It was one thing to repudiate the authority of the
Pope within his own dominions and to make himself
Supreme Head of the Church in England, it was
quite another to break with the whole sacramental
system of the Church and to confess himself a
follower of a German friar who had broken his vows.
Desirable as the alliance might be from a political
point of view, pride blocked the way and kept him
true to the remnants of Catholic faith which still
survived in his mind.
On one point, however, he does seem to have
been tempted to adopt the Lutheran doctrine.
Luther was teaching that there was no real distinc
tion between priests and bishops in the matter of
order, but only in that of jurisdiction. That was a
view which had been maintained by a few Catholic
theologians in the past, and it was particularly con-

HENRY VIII AND CONSECRATION 27
venient for the German reformers, since the bishops had
nowhere joined themselves to their cause. Catholic
writers in this sense had derived the whole episcopal
authority from the Pope, as the sole fountain of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and had held that the
power of ordination, ordinarily exercised only by
the bishops, was really latent in the priesthood, and
might conceivably be called forth into active exercise.
Such views were never common in the Church, and
since the Council of Trent they have become heretical,
but they seem sometimes to have been maintained,
and the Protestants adopted them with only one
change — that since they derived all ecclesiastical
jurisdiction either from the civil power or from the
call of the congregation, they held that the whole
source of the episcopal power resided in the lawful
appointment, and attached no importance at all to
the ceremony of consecration.
To this latter doctrine Henry, under Cromwell's
influence, seems to have leant. It is obvious enough
that it tends largely to increase the power of the
king as supreme head, and it would not at the time
have seemed heretical quite in the same sense as
would have been the denial of the priesthood or the
derivation of priestly power from lay sources. It
could be represented as a question of jurisdiction,
in which order was not necessarily involved, and
jurisdiction had already in England been taken
away from the Pope and assigned to the royal
power. In the year 1540, with the view of compiling
some statement of doctrine for England to follow,
Henry put out some questions on the sacraments, to

2 8 ANGLICAN ORDERS
be answered by a commission of bishops and learned
men. Among these questions was one — the twelfth
— which ran as follows : ' Whether in the New
Testament be required any consecration of a bishop
or priest, or only appointing to the Office is
sufficient ? ' To this apparently he expected an
answer to the effect that appointment alone was
needed ; at least from such prelates as Cranmer and
Barlow ; but he was somewhat disappointed when
he got the answers. At first they do not seem to
have answered as individuals, but to have sent
answers agreed upon by groups. From one such
group, which seems to have had the adhesion of
Cranmer, the answer given was that ' Making of
Bishops hath two parts. Appointment and Ordering.
Appointment, which the Apostles by necessity made
by common election, and sometime by their own
several judgment, could not then be done by Christian
princes, because at that time they were not ; and
now at this time appertaineth to Christian princes
and rulers. But in the Ordering, wherein grace is
conferred, the Apostles did follow the rule taught
by the Holy Ghost, Per manuum impositionem cum
oratione et jejunio.' They further went on to say
that ' Only appointment is not sufficient, but Con
secration, that is to say Imposition of hands with fast
ing and prayer, is also required. For so Apostles used
to order them that were appointed, and so have been
used continually and we have not read the contrary.' i
/ 1 Strype's Cranmer, App. xxvii and xxviii, quoting Cottonian
MSS. Cleopatra E. 5, foi. 38. The whole history is a Utde obscure,
and has been made more so by the marginal references added to the
MS.

HENRY VIII AND CONSECRATION 29
These answers were not at all to Henry's taste at
the moment, and he has left the proof of his annoy
ance by three notes in his own handwriting which
he has placed against them. To the assertion that
' making of Bishops hath two parts — Appointment
and Ordering,' he asks, 'Where is this distinction
found ? ' To the main contention he rejoins, ' Now,
since you confess that the Apostles did occupate
the one part, which now you confess belongeth to
princes, how can you prove that Ordering is only
committed to you Bishops .'' ' And to the quotation
in Latin about the method of Ordination, he appends
the note, ' Ubi hoc ? '
Nor did the King stop short at simply making
notes. He learnt from Cranmer or from some other
source that the reason why the answers had not been
more to his liking was that the influence of Stephen
Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester — than whom, as
Lingard says, no prelate was ' more feared by those
of the New Learning,^ or more respected by those of
the Old ' — had been very strong on the Commission.
He determined therefore to dismiss Gardiner,^ re
placing him on the Commission by the Bishop of
Carlisle, and then sent back the questions for further
consideration. When Gardiner was once removed,
and the King's own views were thus clearly indicated,
the answers of the prelates were far more inclined
to innovation. A summary of them, drawn from
^ It is scarcely necessary, perhaps, to point out that the ' New
Learning,' in the language of the sixteenth century, simply means
• the novel teaching ' or Lutheranism and Protestantism generally.
It has nothing to do with Humanism.
2 Cf. Strype's Cranmer, I. no.

30 ANGLICAN ORDERS
the MSS. in the Lambeth Library,^ is printed in
Burnet's ' History of the Reformation.' Cranmer's
view is now that ' In the New Testament, he that is
appointed to be a bishop or a priest, needeth no
consecration by the scripture, for election or appoint
ing thereto is sufficient.' Barlow agrees ' Only the
appointing.' In their answers to a former ques
tion these two prelates are even more thoroughly
Erastian. Cranmer draws a parallel between civil
ministers and ecclesiastical, and says that just as ' the
civil ministers ... be those whom it shall please
his highness for the time to place under him,' so
also ' the ministers of God's word, under his majesty,
be the bishops, parsons, vicars and such other priests
as be appointed by his highness to that ministration,
as, for example, the Bishop of Canterbury, the
Bishop of Durham, etc' Barlow said, * because
the Apostles lacked a Christian prince, by that
necessity they ordained other Bishops,' not appar
ently through any authority given them by God.
Cranmer, however, was evidently by no means sure
what the King really wanted, and he ends his paper
of answers with the following abject words. ' This
is my opinion and sentence at this present, which
I do not temerariously define, but do remit the
judgment thereof wholly unto your majesty.'
He had good reason. Already, perhaps, as he
penned the words, the fall of Cromwell had come,
and with it his swift beheading on Tower Hill. The
time of reaction had arrived. The King was in
love with Katherine Howard, and Cromwell's offence
1 StiUingfleet MSS., D. 1108, foi. 69.

HENRY VIII AND CONSECRATION 31
had been that he had arranged the marriage with
Anne of Cleves, which now kept Henry from
satisfying his desires. With Cromwell's influence
gone, the King passed more and more into the hands
of the Catholic party, and Cranmer's own head would
very likely have fallen also within a few months had
not the discovery of Katherine's infidelity diverted
the King's thoughts and given Cranmer a further
period of influence, though not of such influence
as he had before enjoyed.
This long introduction has been necessary to
show that there was a time when Henry VIII was
actually considering the possibility of imposing on
England that doctrine of the ministry and especially
of the episcopate which was already widely accepted
among the Lutherans of the Continent. The induce
ment to adopt this doctrine was a double one. It
would manifestly greatly increase the power of the
royal supremacy if all the bishops should confessedly
owe all their authority to the royal appointment and
not to any spiritual succession conveyed through
consecration. At the same time such a doctrine
would be of advantage in bringing England into
line with the princes of Northern Europe and the
Schmalcaldic League. Christian III was actually
at this moment imposing it on Denmark and
Norway.^ Cromwell, we may assume, would be
active in pressing it, for it agreed precisely with
his views and policy. Cranmer at this period was
1 For this matter of the Danish 'Bishops' since 1536 see in
The Church Quarterly Review, vol. xxxii, an article by Canon A. J.
Mason, on ' The Loss of the Succession in Denmark.'

32 ANGLICAN ORDERS
more anxious to agree with the King than to put
forward any views of his own, but his personal in
clinations would certainly have favoured the Lutheran
doctrine. Moreover, it is clear from a comparison
of his two answers already given, that he believed
the King's inclinations and intentions to be moving,
at that moment, in the same direction.
We come, therefore, next, to ask the question
whether as a matter of fact in any single case the
doctrine was actually put in force. The great
majority of English bishops at this period were
undoubtedly consecrated in the traditional manner.
Was there even any single case in which the theory
that the appointment by the supreme head was
relied on as being in itself sufficient, and consecration
was omitted as being unnecessary and non-essential ?
To this question a glance at Stubbs' ' Registrum
Sacrum Anglicanum ' at once supplies an answer. In
every case except one there exists sufficient evidence,
either in Cranmer's own register, or else in that of
the Bishop himself, or at least in some contemporary
and authoritative document, to put the consecration
beyond doubt. In one single case, that of William
Barlow, who was appointed Bishop of St. Asaph
early in 1535-6 and translated, still unconsecrated,
to St. David's in April 1536, there is extant no
documentary evidence of any kind whatever which
can be quoted to prove that consecration was even
contemplated. If the theory was actually carried into
effect in any one single instance, we have found the man.
The range of documents from which such
evidence can be obtained is considerable. As a

HENRY VIII AND CONSECRATION 33
rule satisfactory proof of the consecration of any
bishop can be produced from the following sources,
any one of which under the circumstances, and
seeing that a priori the probability of consecration
having actually taken place is so overwhelmingly
strong, would be alone and by itself amply sufficient
to prove the fact.
I. The deed called Significavit, issued as Letters
Patent under the Great Seal to the Archbishop
of the Province. This deed contains the King's
mandate to consecrate the bishop-elect, and the
Archbishop is bound under all the penalties of
praemunire to execute this command within twenty
days. If, therefore, it can be shown in any individual
case that this document was actually issued, we may
take it as proof that the consecration followed in
due course, as no archbishop would be likely volun
tarily to place himself in a position of so great danger.
This document may be found in any one of four
places. The original document itself may have sur
vived, though this is most unlikely. It does not
seem ever to have been the custom at Lambeth to
preserve these. But it ought to be found enrolled
on tbe Patent Rolls, and from 1533 onwards, the
date at which it was first introduced, this is practically
invariably the case. Then again, it should be on
the Archbishop's register, being recited in most cases
from that date onwards as the authority for the
confirmation of the election. The only exception
will be when consecration was not going to follow
immediately, for then another document, that com
monly known as the Royal Assent, is recited in
its place as the authority for confirmation, and the

34 ANGLICAN ORDERS
Significavit comes at a later date as the authority for
consecration. Lastly, if the Significavit itself cannot
be found anywhere, it may be possible to recover
the authority sent to the Lord Chancellor to order
him to issue it. This authority as a general rule
will be a document under the Privy Seal, but in
exceptional cases it will be a document signed
personally by the King himself, coming direct to
the Chancellor without the intervention of either
the Clerk of the Signet or the Privy Seal. In either
case it should be available, and as all these copies of
the document were preserved in different hands and
separate localities, it is certainly unlikely that no
single one of them will have survived in any particular
case. There should really be yet a fifth place in
which we ought to be able to trace it, namely, in the
records of the Signet, where we ought to find the
original authority which caused the Privy Seal to be
affixed. But all the records of the Signet for this
particular period were destroyed in a great fire at
the Banqueting Hall of Whitehall in 1618.
2, The Archbishop's register should contain the
record of the consecration, giving at least the day
and place and the name of the bishops who took
part in the ceremony. A similar record ought to
be found at the commencement of the new bishop's
own diocesan register.
3. After the consecration it was customary for
the Archbishop to send a certificate by letters patent
under his own official seal to the King, announcing
that he had duly obeyed the royal commands and
that the bishop had accordingly been properly con
secrated. This certificate again can ordinarily be

HENRY VIII AND CONSECRATION 25
found in two places. It should be in the Arch
bishop's register, and it should also be either recited
in or attached to the Grant of Restitution of Tempor
alities which was sent in due course to the King's
escheators, and was also enrolled upon the Patent Rolls.
4. There should be a licence from the Dean
and Chapter of Canterbury allowing the privilege of
the consecration taking place outside the Cathedral
of Canterbury. No consecration had been held at
Canterbury for many centuries, but the Chapter
were very tenacious of their ancient rights, and in
every case the formal permission was applied for
and duly granted. This licence should be found in
the register kept by the Chapter of Canterbury.
5. After consecration there follows the restitu
tion by the King of the temporalities of the see.
By English law the revenues of any see fell to the
King during the vacancy. A bishop could demand
restitution as soon as he had been consecrated and
had done fealty. This restitution was made by
means of Letters Patent under the Great Seal
addressed to all concerned. The document was in
variably enrolled on the Patent Rolls, and should
be found there. It is not, however, quite an
infallible proof of consecration, for although the
bishop cannot claim his temporalities of right until
he has been consecrated, it is within the King's power
to grant them of grace at any time after confirmation.
This has hardly ever been done, but they were thus
granted to Bishop Bonner as Bishop of Hereford,
and there are no doubt other instances on record.
In such a case, however, the fact that consecration
had not taken place would be clear, because only the

2$ ANGLICAN ORDERS
election and confirmation would be recited In the
document. Here again the actual document is very
unlikely to be extant, but we ought to find the copy
on the Patent Rolls, and the original authority for
its issue among the Privy Seals.
6. Lastly, there should be a mandate from the
Archbishop to the Archdeacon of Canterbury to
enthrone the newly consecrated bishop In his own
cathedral. This should be found In the Arch
bishop's register and also in that of the Archdeacon
of Canterbury. There should further be a record
of the enthronement in the register of the Dean and
Chapter of the bishop's own cathedral,
7. Besides these public records there may chance
to be some casual mention of the fact of the conse
cration in some diary or private letter written at
the time. Such unpremeditated confirmation would
generally be taken as sufficient evidence to prove the
fact in default of any more authoritative document.
A good Instance of what is meant is furnished by
the mention of Parker's consecration which is to be
found in Machyn's Diary.
Besides these sources from which genuine proof
of the fact of consecration having taken place may
be derived, there are three others which are often
cited by writers on this subject, although they have
no actual value at all, as the slightest knowledge of
the law is sufficient to show. These are :
I. >The possession of a seat In the House of
Lords. But the right to sit in the House does not
depend, and never has depended, on consecration.
It depends on the possession of a Writ of Summons
from the King. Any bishop who has received that

HENRY VIII AND CONSECRATION 37
writ can take his seat and vote In the House simply
by presenting It and proving his identity. He has
the right to receive the writ as soon as the election
has been confirmed, and consecration has nothing
to do with it. The law on the subject may be seen
in Phllllmore's ' Church Law,' i. 56, or Gibson's
'Codex,' I. 148. Gibson's words are as follows : 'A
Bishop Confirmed may sit in Parliament as a Lord
thereof. It is laid down by my Lord Coke that a
Bishop Elect may so sit, but, in the case of Evans and
Ascuith, Jones held clearly that a Bishop cannot be
summoned to Parliament before Confirmation, with
out which the Election Is not complete.' At this
period, too, when a see was vacant it was customary
to summon to the House of Lords the Guardian of
the Spiritualities of the see for the time being. This
official gave place to the bishop as soon as the latter
had been confirmed. Consecration has never had
anything to do with the matter. Precedence in the
House depends upon the date of consecration, but
that is all. They sit there ' according to their
auncienties.' 2. The right of sitting and voting In Convo
cation similarly follows on confirmation. Nothing
is given in consecration except the power of order
alone — the power, that is, to confirm children and
adults and to pass on the Apostolic succession In the
Sacrament of Holy Orders. The right of sitting
and voting In Synod Is a matter of jurisdiction not
of order, and so according to the invariable rules of
Canon Law It follows on the full appointment to
the see, when spiritual jurisdiction is conferred, and
for it consecration is not necessary. The English

38 ANGLICAN ORDERS
law follows canonical precedent In the matter, and
there are several instances on record of bishops being
summoned before consecration.
3. The third matter is one which Is less obvious.
Champney, a Catholic writer of the seventeenth
century, is often quoted, even now, as having said
that leases drawn by a bishop before consecration
were Invalid, and therefore as admitting that since
Barlow's leases were not disputed he must neces
sarily have been duly consecrated. Champney's
remark was based on a blunder. He thought
Chief Justice Broke had so laid It down, but he was
quite in error. The blunder has been corrected
again and again ; the law books, if they were referred
to, would show that consecration has no connection
whatever with leases, but that these depend solely
upon the possession of the temporalities, whether
granted in freehold by way of restitution, or by a
temporary grant of custody.
The whole matter on this point was explained by
Archbishop Wake of Canterbury in a letter to le
Courayer, and his words may be found printed In
that author's ' Dissertation ' : ' Utinam profecto sic se
res habuisset ! ' he says. ' Invictissimum id nobis prae-
beret argumentum pro eonsecratione Barlovii. ... At
vero plane apparet hanc non fuisse Judicum regni sen
tentiam.' ' Would that the matter were really so.
It would provide us with an Invincible argument
for the consecration of Barlow. But, as a matter of
fact, it Is clear that this was not the opinion of the
Judges of the Realm.' ^
^ le Courayer, Dissertation, etc., p. 3 59 sej., Oxford edition 1 844.

HENRY VIII AND CONSECRATION 39
Of course it is quite true that in modern practice
the restitution of the temporalities Is as a rule not
made till after consecration, and so far It Is also true
that a lease made by an unconsecrated bishop would
generally be void, but In some cases the custody of
the temporalities has been granted before conse
cration, and Barlow's Is precisely one of these cases.
His leases, therefore, were equally valid whether he
were consecrated or not, in virtue not of his conse
cration, or of any grant of restitution, but of the grant
of custody of the temporalities for life which was
made to him on April 26, 1536, at a time when
consecration is proved, by the very fact that such a
grant was made, not to have yet taken place.
Leaving, then, these three last out of considera
tion and confining ourselves solely to the public
records, there remain In every case at least thirteen
documents, all of which ought to be available, and
any one of which would be sufficient by itself to prove
the fact of consecration.
(i) The original authority. Privy Seal or Signed
Bill, for the issue of the Significavit. This
would now be at the Record Office, and
formerly at the Privy Seal Office.
(2) The Significavit itself, enrolled upon the
Patent Rolls, now at the Record Office, and
formerly at the Rolls Chapel.
(3) The Significavit, copied and recited as the
authority for confirmation, in the Register
at Lambeth.
(4) The ' Register of Consecration,' in the
Register at Lambeth.

40 ANGLICAN ORDERS
(5) The ' Record of Consecration,' in the
Register of the diocese.
(6) The Archbishop's certificate of consecration
sent to the King but also entered In the
Register at Lambeth.
(7) The Archbishop's certificate, appended to or
recited in the Deed of Restitution of Tem
poralities. This Is enrolled on the Patent
Rolls at the Record Office.
(8) The Privy Seal authority for the issue of
the Grant of Temporalities. This is at the
Record Office.
(9) The Restitution of Temporalities, reciting
the fact of consecration. This is enrolled
on the Patent Rolls at the Record Office.
(10) The permission by the Dean and Chapter
of Canterbury for consecration to take place
outside of Canterbury Cathedral. This is
in their Register at Canterbury.
(11) The authority of the Archbishop to enthrone
the new bishop. Issued to the Archdeacon
of Canterbury and registered in his Register.
(12) The same authority in the Register at
Lambeth.
(13) The record of the enthronisatlon in the
books of the Dean and Chapter of the
diocese.
To these we may add :
(14) In certain cases, of which Barlow's is one,
additional evidence may be afforded by a
' Dispensation of Retainer ' or licence to

HENRY VIII AND CONSECRATION 41
retain in commendam a benefice of which the
bishop was possessed beforehand. For since
any such benefice would not be voided
except by consecration, such a dispensation
would be needless had the bishop not been
consecrated. These dispensations would be
found on the Patent Rolls if granted by
the King. Barlow claimed to hold the
Priory of Bisham thus in commendam.
(15) Lastly, evidence may be available from some
other contemporary document tvhich men
tions the fact of the consecration having
taken place.
From this list It is clear that it is by no means a
matter of the loss of one single document. The
age of Henry VIII was one when the duty of making
careful records was thoroughly understood, and for
the most part, except when wilful mutilation has
taken place at a later date, the records are In perfect
order. It would be a matter of considerable research
to ascertain exactly from how many of these sources
we can prove the consecration of each of the bishops
of the period, but probably in no case will less
than nine or ten of the proofs be forthcoming. In
Goodrich's case, the first of the new bishops after
the breach with Rome, which is the only one we
have personally investigated, twelve of the thirteen
regular documents are extant. The only one missing
is the licence of the Archdeacon of Canterbury,
whose register has suffered a mutilation just at this
place, which mutilation also includes the entry for
Barlow, if it was ever there.

42 ANGLICAN ORDERS
Now, how does it stand with Bishop Barlow ?
It seems hardly credible, but in every one of
these possible sources the effort to recover the
document meets with failure. Every step of his
history is in order and can be proved by docu
mentary evidence, until we come to the crucial
moment. We know all about his election, the
Royal Assent to his election, the confirmation of
the election by Archbishop Cranmer. But there the
series stops short. For anything fiirther we have
neither Privy Seal nor enrolment on the Patent Rolls.
The State records are as silent as the ecclesiastical,
nor is there any chance mention of the fact in any
contemporary authority to supply the gap. So far
as external evidence is concerned, the effort to prove
the consecration of Bishop Barlow completely breaks
down. It Is a very remarkable circumstance, quite
inexplicable if the consecration ever really took place,
and absolutely unparalleled In the case of any other
bishop of the period, or Indeed since careful records
of such matters in England first began.

CHAPTER III
THE ROYAL SUPREMACY IN ACTION
The royal supremacy over the Church of England
has In these latter days been exercised with such
moderation, even In those details In which It has not
rather passed Insensibly Into a supremacy of the
House of Commons and of the Prime Minister,
that few except professed historians realise all that it
meant In Its early days under the Tudor sovereign,
or even all that it is legally capable of meaning,
under changed conditions, at the present moment.
As the present inquiry is concerned with what seems
to have been a tentative though largely Ineffectual
effort to press the supremacy farther than It ever
was pressed at any other time, it will be well to
examine briefly what It was that was Intended by
the phrase In the minds of its authors, and how
far it was actually put Into action In the reigns of
Henry VIII and Edward VI.
It was Thomas Cromwell, as has already been
said, to whom belonged the credit of the idea of thus
enslaving the Church of England and bringing it
into complete subjection to the royal authority.
Not, of course, that the idea was an original one by
any means — it is as old as the relations themselves

44 ANGLICAN ORDERS
between Church and State — and it was everywhere
very active just at this period in Protestant Germany.
But Cromwell it was who conceived the idea of
imitating the German practice In England, who
first persuaded the King that this was a desirable
object to aim at, and one likely to enable him to
obtain his desires in other matters, and who showed
the King how it might best be carried Into effect.
The object of attack was not at first the papal
jurisdiction, but the local liberties of the Church of
England Itself. The papal jurisdiction fell indeed
in the course of the struggle, but it fell because it
stood in the way of the enslaving of the local Church,
not because It seemed to Henry a thing in Itself
calling for destruction. His primary object was to
assert within his own kingdom his own supremacy
in matters of spiritual jurisdiction no less than
in temporal. His predecessors had asserted their
power to do the like on many occasions, but the
assertion had been ineffectual because Rome stood
in the way, and would not let assertion pass into
practical action. Now once more It became clear
that the liberties of the Church could not be broken
while Rome and the successor of St. Peter were able
to make resistance. Henry did what his predecessors
had shrunk from doing. He did away with the
authority of St. Peter within his realm. When
once he had succeeded in this, he found the local
Church entirely at his mercy. He had his will and
enslaved her to the utmost, and the Church of
England found, as every merely national Church
has found before her, as every such Church always
will find as long as the world lasts, that the only

ROYAL SUPREMACY IN ACTION 45
security the Church has against the encroachments
of the civil power in any Individual country lies in
the power and force that is derived from union with
the Universal Church of Christ. None can make
any effectual resistance except those who live under
the rule of the Apostolic See, to which the privileges
of St. Peter and the guardianship of unity have been
committed by the hands of her Founder. What
the King had to do was to devise a line of argument
by which, without open and Immediate breach with
the Holy See, he might get the powers inherent In
the Pope transferred to some local body under his
own control. To transfer those powers nakedly to
the civil power, as had been done often under
Luther's influence in Germany, was too violent a
course to satisfy England at that juncture, when as
yet Lutheran opinions had made but little way among
the peoples. Some other and less manifestly anti-
CathoHc a course must be selected if the people
were to be fooled into accepting It.
Such a course Henry discovered in the con
sideration that in ancient times the Roman emperors
had taken a great, nay, a commanding part In the
government of the Church. What Constantine and
his successors had done then, why should not he
himself do now .'' If In them It was no Intolerable
invasion of ecclesiastical rights or apostolic authority,
why should It be so in him ? Was not England an
empire as well as Rome, or at all events could it not
be declared so ? Or, again, why was It necessary to
go either so far back or so far afield as to Rome in
the fourth century ? Was It not admitted that in
this island in Saxon days the kings, CathoUc as they

46 ANGLICAN ORDERS
were beyond all others, had yet taken a great share
with the bishops in governing the Church, some
times without its being clearly defined how much
was due to their own royal power and how much to
the authority inherent In the episcopal office ? What
had been done then, and perhaps a little more, could
be done now. Who should dare to say It was against
the constitution of the Catholic Church, if the King
should take once more into his own hands what he
asserted to belong of right to the office which he
held, and should revoke again the permissions which
had only been granted by his predecessors to the
bishops in terms which had always asserted the
paramount authority of the Crown ?
Some such considerations as these seem to have
inspired the course which was taken by Henry and
laid down In the Act 24 Henry VIII, cap. 12. It
was decreed that ' this realm of England is an Empire
and so hath been accepted in the world ' — that ' the
body Spiritual thereof . . . now being usually called
the English Church ... is sufficient and meet of
itself, without the intermeddling of any exterior
person, or persons, to declare and determine all such
doubts and to administer all such offices and duties
as to their rooms spiritual doth appertain.' The
principle laid down is that not only the Roman
Empire but every empire is self-contained, and that
emperor and clergy acting together can resolve
every doubt and settle every question within the
bounds of the empire. The exact relations of
emperor and clergy and the part which each of them
is to play are not as yet clearly defined, but Henry
had no doubts on that score. He had the clergy

ROYAL SUPREMACY IN ACTION 47
safe in the penalties of praemunire, and he had no
intention of letting them free until they had acceded
in full to everything that he required.
Never in all history has there been a grosser
case of tyranny under the shadow of law than was
involved in this abuse of the Statute of Praemunire.
The clergy were accused of having rendered them
selves liable to its penalties by accepting the legatine
authority of Cardinal Wolsey. If they had done so,
so also had the laity. The most guilty of all had been
Henry himself, since that authority had only been exer
cised under Letters Patent from the King. Jf justice
had been the object, the clergy could only have been
acquitted. But, as they knew, justice was the last
thing they would get from either the King's lawyers
or the King himself. Had they pleaded their cause
it would Infallibly have been given against them, for
it was no defence to urge that others had done the
same, and the King himself, of course, was above the
law. They would have lost their case, have been
declared outside of the King's protection, and their
lives and property would have been at the mercy of
the King himself or of any of his subjects. They
were caught in a trap and they knew their weakness
in face of the royal tyranny. They did not even
attempt a defence, but offered to buy themselves off
and to make amends for the offence they had com
mitted by an immense money penalty which should
swell the King's treasury and thus avert his anger
from themselves.
But Henry, although he never despised money,
was on this occasion after a yet larger prize. He
made it clear that no mere money payment would

48 ANGLICAN ORDERS
satisfy him, but that submission must be made also
on other points. These points were five in number ;
but It is only the first two with which we are now con
cerned. The first required them to admit the King
to be the only Protector and Supreme Head of the
Church of England. The second defined that the
cure of souls was committed to his hands. Against
these two the clergy fought to the utmost of their
power. After three sessions spent In useless dis
cussions they at last obtained leave to add the words
' after God,' and ' so far as the law of Christ permits '
to the bald declaration of the royal supremacy as
it had first come before them. After all, as Henry
probably said to" himself, the added clauses, however
much they may have satisfied the consciences of
those who agreed to them, are of no practical im
portance in limiting the authority thus admitted to
exist. The main point was yielded when once the
supremacy of the Crown in spiritual matters was in
any sense agreed to.
The restriction voted by Convocation had little
force when It came to practical matters. Nothing
could be more explicit than the words used In subse
quent Acts of Parliament. Take, for instance, the
wording of 37 Henry VIII, cap. i^. ' Whereas the
royal majesty is justly supreme head In earth of the
Church of England, and hath full authority to correct
and punish all manner of heresies, schisms, errors,
vices, and to exercise all other manner of jurisdictions,
commonly called ecclesiastical jurisdiction.' It is also
added that ' the archbishops and bishops have no
manner of jurisdiction ecclesiastical, but by, under
and from the royal majesty.' If the claim was granted

ROYAL SUPREMACY IN ACTION 49
with such fullness without any dissent, Henry could
well afford to let the clergy salve their consciences by
inserting harmless words which had, after all, no sort
of practical force.
The first action taken under these powers of
supremacy was the appointment of a vicar-general.
Henry thoroughly realised the value to any ruler of a
subordinate who could be made responsible for all
that went wrong, while the credit of all that succeeded
still went to the King himself. Cromwell, as vicar-
general, was to * exercise all and every jurisdiction,
authority and rightful power ' inherent in the Supreme
Head himself. He was to visit and correct, himself
or by commission, every religious house in the king
dom. He sat In convocation, layman as he was, above
the Archbishop of Canterbury and all the prelates,
as being the representative of the Supreme Head of
whom bishops and abbots were the mere delegates,
allowed to meet only at his royal will and to transact
only such business as he was graciously Inclined to
permit. The powers thus exercised In spiritual matters
were alleged by Henry to be those only which were
inherent in the Crown and had been used before
his time by other Christian princes. They were, as
a matter of fact, precisely those which had been
reserved for centuries, by the common judgment of
all Christians, at least In the Western Church, to
the successor of St. Peter. He was to be supreme,
as the Pope had hitherto been, (i) in all causes
spiritual and ecclesiastical, as well as temporal ; (2) in
all Councils or Convocations of the Church, which
were not to meet without his sanction, and whose

50 ANGLICAN ORDERS
deliberations were to be wholly Ineffective without
his confirmation ; and (3) in all appointments to the
higher dignities of the Church. If the right of the
Chapter, in the case of the old sees, to elect Its
own bishop was preserved in form, it was rendered
nugatory by the Letters Missive which named the
person they were bound to elect under the strongest
penalties. If, again, the right of the Archbishop to
confirm the election was retained in form, this too
became a mere solemn farce, as no power was allowed
to him to refuse his confirmation. Bishoprics
became, as they still legally remain, practically
absolute donatives In the hands of the King. As
in law and in the councils of the Church, so also in
the appointment of her officials the whole power
formerly exercised by the Pope passed unquestioned
into the royal hands.
But Henry was by no means content only to possess
the right of nomination of the bishops and the control
of their collective actions. Supremacy In his mind
meant more than that. He would have the acknow
ledgment from each and every one of them that every
single one of his episcopal actions was done by the
sole authority of the King, and that he held his office
itself only at the King's pleasure. Accordingly every
bishop, from Cranmer himself down, was made In
October 1535 to take out a commission to this effect.^
These commissions from the Crown begin by reciting
the fact that all jurisdiction in the Church of England,
ecclesiastical as well as secular, flowed from the royal
power, was received from the royal munificence, and
^ One of these commissions, from Bonner's Register as Bishop of
London, is printed by Burnet, Reformation, iv. 410, Pocock's edition.

ROYAL SUPREMACY IN ACTION 51
must be resigned thereto at any time should the King's
majesty so decide. They go through all the various
parts of the episcopal function — ordination, collation
to benefices, the administration of justice In the
ecclesiastical courts and so forth, — and grant the royal
licence and permission to carry them out. All this
was given, not under the Great or even the Privy Seal,
but under a new seal reserved for such ecclesiastical
acts done In virtue of the royal supremacy over the
Church. These commissions were Issued to and accepted
by every bishop who held office in October 1535. All
through Henry's reign, whenever a new bishop was
appointed to an old see, a licence of this kind was
issued to him. When Henry died and Edward suc
ceeded to the throne, all these commissions, being
personal to the individual Supreme Head, were held
to have lapsed by his death, and new documents of
exactly similar tenor were issued in their place. Only
to the bishops of the new sees under Henry, and to
those bishops who were appointed under the new law
of Edward VI, It seems that no such licences were
given, as it was held that their complete dependence
on the Crown was sufficiently clearly set forth in the
Letters Patent by which they were appointed, without
any ecclesiastical election of any kind.
In the case of the old sees, as has been already said,
a nominal election was made by the Chapter, followed
by an equally nominal confirmation by the Archbishop,
and by these empty ceremonies the real truth, viz.,
that the King's own appointment was the only deter
minant factor, was masked and hidden from view.
But in the case of the new sees which Henry himself

52 ANGLICAN ORDERS
founded, and where there was no Chapter with a right
of election, Henry himself appointed by Letters Patent,
in virtue of an Act of Parliament passed in 1539
(31 Henry VIII, cap. 9). The accustomed procedure
was that he should do everything in a single issue of
Letters Patent. As a specimen of these we may take
those for the erection ofthe new see of Chester in 1 541,
which is printed in Rymer's collection.^ It begins
by erecting the new see in the precincts of the old
monastery ; makes the old monastery church to be
the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed
Virgin Mary ; erects the town of Chester into a city ;
transfers the then Bishop of Bangor, John Bird, to be
bishop of the new see, so that ' solely by virtue of
this translation he shall be henceforth held and is
Bishop of Chester,' gives to him authority to ' exercise
all Pontifical offices and Episcopal jurisdiction ' within
the boundaries of the see which it then proceeds
to define ; transfers the Archdeaconry of Richmond
from the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of York to
that of Canterbury, and generally settles and defines,
purely by the royal authority, all matters relating to
the jurisdiction of the new bishop. As the Church
had no hand whatever, even apparently, in his appoint
ment or in giving him his jurisdiction, it was clearly
unnecessary that a further commission, declaring
these to be solely from the Crown, should be accepted
by him. As long as Henry VIII was on the throne it was
only in the case of new sees and suffragan bishops
that appointment by simple Letters Patent was
1 Rymer, T., Foedera, xiv. 717.

ROYAL SUPREMACY IN ACTION 53
resorted to. But under Edward VI this novel proce
dure was extended to every bishopric in England and
Wales by the Act Edw. VI, cap 2. This Act speaks
the plain truth as to the useless pretence of election
and confirmation which went on then, as at the present
day, in episcopal appointments. ' Whereas,' it says,
' the said elections be in very deed no elections, but
only by a Writ of Cong^ d'elire have colour, shadows
or pretences of election, serving nevertheless to no
purpose and seeming also derogatory and prejudicial
to the King's prerogative Royal, to whom only apper
taineth the' collation and gift of all Archbishoprics
and Bishoprics and Suffragan Bishops within His
Highness' realm ... be it enacted . . . That from
henceforth no such Conge d'elire be granted nor
election of any Archbishop or Bishop by the Dean and
Chapter made. But that the King may by his Letters
Patent at all times when any Archbishopric or Bishopric
be void, confer the same to any person whom the King
shall think meet. . . . And that the said person upon
whom the Archbishopric or Bishopric or Suffragan-
ship is so conferred, collated or given may be con
secrated and sue his Livery or " outer lemayne " and
do other things as well as If the said Ceremonies and
elections had been done or made.'
As a matter of fact, however, no bishop appointed
under this Act of Edward VI had any need thus to
sue for his temporalities, for, as a glance at the Letters
Patent appointing them, several of which are printed
in Rymer's collection, will at once show, the tem
poralities are given by the same Letters Patent which
appoint them to the bishopric. The phraseology Is
very much that of Henry's Letters Patent for new sees,

54 ANGLICAN ORDERS
but Is even more explicitly Erastian. In the first
place the King, by virtue of the Act which is duly
recited, ' of his certain knowledge and mere motion,'
' confers gives and concedes ' to the selected person,
' the said Episcopate of  ' and ' names, makes,
ordains, creates, declares and constitutes him Bishop
of  ' ; ' to have, hold, occupy and enjoy the
said Bishopric, during his natural life, si tamdiu se bene
gesserit in eodem, (If he so long has been of good
behaviour), with all the Manors belonging thereto.'
The document then goes on to give the new bishop
authority to ordain and do all other episcopal acts, in
much the same way as the licences which had usually
been issued to the other bishops, and ends by making
a grant for life of all the temporal possessions of the
see. The result of this procedure was very much to
simplify the complicated method of making a bishop
which had till then been In vogue. It reduced the
necessary documents to two only, the concession of
the bishopric with its rights and possessions, which has
just been summarised, and the Significavit, or order
to the Archbishop to consecrate the person to whom
this concession had been made. With the exception
of the clause printed in italics It was not really more
Erastian than the other and still customary procedure,
but It brushed aside and abolished all the various links
with the past which then concealed, as they still do,
the essential Erastianlsm of the whole procedure.
It was, however, employed only for a very few years,
for the Act was rejected under Mary and was not
revived under Elizabeth.
The clause limiting the tenure of the bishopric to

ROYAL SUPREMACY IN ACTION 55
the continuance In good behaviour of Its occupant was
used under Mary to save the necessity of more formal
deprivation. As these bishops held their bishoprics
thus admittedly at the royal pleasure, they were
deprived without formal trial. No such clause has
ever reappeared In any appointment to an English see.
But although she had no longer this justification,
Elizabeth followed Mary's example and deprived
bishops at her will without trial.
By these Acts and documents the theory of
the royal supremacy as held by Henry VIII and
Edward VI, and In the main also by Elizabeth and all
succeeding monarchs, becomes simple enough. To
understand It thoroughly it is necessary to remember,
what every lawyer and indeed every educated layman
In those days recognised clearly, the essential difference
which exists in the episcopal office between the powers
of order and jurisdiction.
The power of order Is the power of conferring
grace through the sacraments and of carrying on the
ministry through ordination. The power of juris
diction is the power to govern the Church and to
exercise the power of order within her borders.
The Catholic doctrine was, and Is, that both these
powers are originally from Christ alone, and can only
be lawfully exercised by the Church through those
to whom she grants them. The extreme Erastians
assigned both to the civil power, and the Lutherans
to a great extent taught the same. Henry VIII, in his
dealings with the Church of England, made a com
promise. On the one hand the King made no claim
whatever to the power of order. He did not claim
to be able himself to consecrate the Eucharist nor to

S6 ANGLICAN ORDERS
ordain clergy. If he did on one occasion claim to
Imake a bishop, as we are contending in this book, it
|was because he held that there was no essential differ
ence between priests and bishops, but that the power
|)f the episcopate was latent in every priest. On the
other hand he claimed the power of jurisdiction in all
its fullness. He asserted that the whole government
of the Church in its every smallest detail belonged to
him. In matters ecclesiastical he was to be master
even more than he was in civil affairs. All juris
diction in the Church flowed from him and could be
exercised only by his permission. Although as a
general rule he was graciously pleased to act through
the archbishops or the bishops, he was in no way
bound to do so, and could act in person or through
lay vicars-general or other delegates if he chose to do
so. That in Henry's view and in the view of his
Parliament was what was meant by the royal supre
macy over the Church. Added to all the powers
which had been possessed by any previous monarch,
he was to hold and to exercise all the powers, without
exception, which had ever been claimed or exercised
by the Popes at Rome in their capacity as successors
of St. Peter. Even the right of defining doctrines to
be held and taught in his dominions was seized and
exercised, and though he stopped short of claiming
infallibihty for his teaching, he did not shrink from
enforcing it with all the powers of the secular law,
even to the infliction of the death penalty itself.

CHAPTER IV
BISHOP barlow's own DOCUMENTS
We saw in Chapter II that all the documents by which
the consecration of Barlow could possibly be proved
are, by a singular fatality if ever they existed, now
unable to be found. It is almost inconceivable that
fourteen separate documents, some belonging to the
State and others to the Church, In the custody of at
least eight different functionaries in localities widely
separated, can possibly have disappeared by mere
accident or carelessness If ever they existed at all.
Thus we are led with practical certainty to say that
they never did exist, and consequently that the conse
cration never can have taken place. But still our
evidence is purely negative. We feel that negative
evidence is never, by itself, really absolutely conclusive,
and we naturally go on to ask whether there is not in
existence some sort of positive evidence which tends
in the same direction. It does not need a very great
amount of positive evidence to put the matter beyond
a doubt, when the negative evidence Is already so
overwhelmingly strong. So, accordingly, we go on
to examine with special care the documents which
have come down to us In connection with his case, all
of which, it will be remembered, have to do with the

58 ANGLICAN ORDERS
events which precede consecration. To do this with
effect we must first know exactly what documents we
ought to look for In an appointment to a bishopric at
this particular period. They are those ordered by
the Act 25 Henry VIII, cap. 20, which laid down
once and for all the procedure to be followed In these
matters.! This procedure has remained in force down to
the present time, except for one brief period under
Edward VI, when bishops were appointed solely by
Letters Patent, and another under Mary, when the
method of appointment by Papal Bull was reintro
duced, and this simplifies our inquiry very materially.
The only really Important change since introduced is
that the document known as the Royal Assent, which
was traditional from old times, and which continued
to be Issued all through the reign of Henry VIII,
although it was practically included In the Significavit
which was also Issued, now no longer exists. In
Elizabeth's time and ever since It has been discontinued
as being useless and redundant, except in the case of
translation, when of course there Is no Significavit
needed, and it takes the place of that document.
But under Henry VIII Its Issue In the procedure for
new bishops had in some cases a practical meaning,
and It was not entirely useless, as we shall presently see.
The documents, then, which were issued prior to
consecration In the reign of Henry VIII, were in
ordinary cases three ; all of them under the Great
Seal and all consequently enrolled upon the Patent
Rolls. They were :
! Printed in Appendix, infra p. 1 74.

BISHOP BARLOW'S DOCUMENTS 59
I. The Conge d'elire, or permission to the Dean
and Chapter to elect a bishop. With this was sent
the Letters Missive naming the person whom they
were to elect under grave penalties. This latter
document was not under the Great Seal or even the
Privy Seal, but only under the Privy Signet.
2. The Royal Assent, a notification to the Arch
bishop that the King assented to the election of his
own nominee, and requesting, not commanding, the
Archbishop to do ' that which belonged to his office
in the matter.' This was not a new document, but the
old traditional one issued for centuries before in
similar cases, especially for the confirmation of the
election of abbots who were Lords of Parliament,
and Its effect In Henry's reign, when it was issued
alone and not as It usually was In conjunction with the
Significavit, was to cause the Archbishop to confirm
the election, but to do nothing more. As far as the
wording is concerned, it might easily have been made
to cover consecration also, where consecration was
needed, but It never had done so in the past (since the
State In those days had no responsibility for the con
secration, a bishop being fully made for State purposes
by the confirmation of his election or by papal provi
sion), and so It was not held to do so now. It was
always thus issued alone without the Significavit In
cases of translations, and was also issued alone for
new bishops, exceptionally, four times in Henry's
reign. In the case of Shaxton, for both Barlow's bishop
rics, and for Bonner when elected to Hereford. In
each case the same effect followed, the Archbishop
confirmed the election and sent a certificate to the
King to say he had done so, showing that all the King

6o ANGLICAN ORDERS
had asked had been finished. In all other cases the
Archbishop does not send the certificate until the con
secration Is complete, nor does he in any case proceed
to consecration until the Significavit has been Issued.
The case of Shaxton Is the best to take as an illus
tration. The Royal Assent was Issued by itself,
without Significavit, on March 5, and accordingly
Cranmer confirms the election and sends his certificate
to the King. This was on March 18, 1534-5.
Then the Significavit was issued on March 22, and
Cranmer proceeds on April 1 1 to perform the con
secration, and sends a second certificate to the King to
say he has done so. The whole is recorded in Cran
mer's register, and It makes very clear the exact force
arid value which was held to belong to each of these
documents at that time. The Royal Assent thus
issued alone meant that the election was to be con
firmed at once, but that consecration was for some
reason or other to be deferred.
3. The Significavit. This was a new document,
rendered necessary by the Act 25 Henry VIII. It
began by repeating the Assent already given in the
previous document, and then went on to command —
not now to request — to command the Archbishop to
confirm, consecrate and invest the bishop-elect. If
the Archbishop failed to comply within twenty days
he ran the risk of the penalties oi praemunire. Accord
ingly, In every case where the Significavit can be shown
to have been Issued, we may assume that consecration
is sure to have followed in due course.
These documents were all Issued under the Great
Seal. Before the Lord Chancellor could affix the
Great Seal he required authority to do so. The rules

BISHOP BARLOW'S DOCUMENTS 6i
as to this authority had just been changed before
Barlow's election to his first bishopric, by the Act
27 Henry VIII. Up to that time the authority for
each document had been given in all matters affecting
bishops by a separate written authorisation signed
by the King In person and stating the exact words
which the document was to contain. But just before
Barlow's time the new procedure came Into force
which still governs the matter, subject only to certain
simplifications. There were now two ways in which
authorisation could be given. In all ordinary cases —
the exceptions are exceedingly few — the procedure
followed a fixed and rather complicated course, the
whole of which was a mere matter of routine. The
complicated nature of the process was due to the con
flicts between the King and his advisers in the four
teenth century, and was designed to ensure that,
besides the Lord Chancellor, at least one other great
officer of State, the Lord Privy Seal, should be a party
to the affixing of the Great Seal. The whole system
is set out In the Act 27 Henry VIII, cap. 11, and Is
briefly recounted in Anson's ' Law and Custom of the
Constitution,' ii. 56 (third ed.). There was needed
in the first place a warrant signed by the King and
countersigned by the Secretary of State, addressed to
the Attorney or Solicitor-General, and bidding him
prepare the Bill. This Bill, when prepared and signed
by the Attorney-General, was taken to the Secretary
of State, and received the King's signature. It next
went to the Signet Office and was there deposited.
An attested transcript of it, sealed with the Signet, was
next taken to the Office of the Lord Privy Seal, within
eight days, and the Lord Privy Seal was thereby

62 ANGLICAN ORDERS
bidden to direct the Chancellor to make the Letters
Patent In the prescribed form. This again was
deposited at the Privy Seal Office. A new attested
transcript was made and sealed with the Privy Seal.
It was taken to the Crown Office or Patent Office and
there engrossed. The Privy Seal and this engross
ment then went on to the Lord Chancellor, who, if he
saw no objection, wrote his name under the grant and
the Great Seal was then affixed. ^
This was the ordinary procedure, but in any par
ticular case the King could if he wished, as he still
can, shorten the procedure by means of a ' Signed
Bill.' This would go direct to the Lord Chancellor
without going through either the Signet Office or the
Privy Seal. But the whole routine of appointing a
bishop could not be thus initiated. The ' Signed
Bill ' or ' Immediate Warrant ' was, and is, authority
for the one document appended to it and for nothing
else.^ Now we are in a position to examine Barlow's
documents, for we know what we ought to find. To
begin with those for St. Asaph. The Conge d'elire
is in the usual form and presents nothing of Interest
to us. The Royal Assent is given by Privy Seal, the
first instance, as it seems, of the use of the new pro
cedure. Barlow is described in it, quite correctly, as
' William Barlow, prior of the house or priory of
Bisham.' There Is no Issue, as we should have
expected there would be In the ordinary routine, of a
! See also Nicolas, Sir N. H., Ordinances of the Privy Council,
vi. cxl-ccxiz. ^ See Sir W. Anson and Sir N. H. Nicolas, as above.

BISHOP BARLOW'S DOCUMENTS 63
Significavit. No doubt It is only because Barlow is
away in Scotland. Had the Significavit been issued
a difficult situation would have been created, as con
secration would be due to follow within twenty days.
So the document for the Royal Assent and no other
was Issued to Cranmer. The effect of that would be,
as we have already explained, to authorise Cranmer to
confirm the election, but not to do anything beyond
that. Accordingly Cranmer, on receiving this docu
ment, proceeds to the confirmation. Barlow being
represented at It not personally but only by proxy,
and having done this he sends his certificate to the
King. He had done all that was asked of him and
all that he was authorised to do. Sooner or later, on
Barlow's return to London, we should expect that the
Significavit would be Issued In Its turn, and that
consecration would then follow just as It did In the
case of Shaxton. So far our documents show indeed
that consecration did not follow Immediately on con
firmation to St. Asaph, and was not expected to take
place for some little time, but they show nothing more.
Almost immediately, while he Is still unconse
crated, there follows his appointment to St. David's.
If we are right so far In our deductions, we shall expect
to find him described In the documents as Bishop-elect
of St. Asaph. That would have been his proper title
as confirmed but not consecrated, but the documents
are not uniform In the matter. All the documents
for his successor, Bishop Wharton, at St. Asaph de
scribe the see as being vacant through the free trans
mutation (an unusual expression, used as far as Is known
in no other previous documents whatever and seem
ingly coined to express the very exceptional fact that

64 ANGLICAN ORDERS
it was the case of a bishop being transferred to another
see before he had yet been consecrated) of the late
Bishop-elect, William Barlow. We find this repeated
five times, in the Conge d'elire, the Royal Assent, the
Significavit, the record of confirmation, and the Res
titution of Temporalities. Moreover, we find Barlow
himself still signing his letters simply as William
Barlow in March 1536.^^ It Is therefore certain that
he was never consecrated to St. Asaph, and on this
hypothesis everything Is in order.
We turn to the documents issued for his appoint
ment to St. David's and we find an apparent con
tradiction. In these he is uniformly described as
tunc episcopus Asaphensis, there is no mention of his
being merely bishop-elect, but the full title Is given
to him just as if he had been consecrated. The case
Is the more remarkable because here the King has
intervened personally to take the matter out of the
ordinary routine procedure and Into his own hands.
For the authority Is by ' Signed Bill ' and not the usual
' Privy Seal.' The wording, therefore, is ordered by
Henry himself in person under his own autograph
signature. This second bishopric of Barlow seems
to be the only Instance in which the royal authority
has thus intervened ever since the Act settling the
procedure was passed In 27 Henry VIII, so the matter
Is even more remarkable than It seems at first
sight. Why did Henry deliberately order this difference
between the documents for the two sees } Is it
possible to give any reason except the obvious one that
! State Papers, Scotland, v. 36.

BISHOP BARLOW'S DOCUMENTS 65
it was designed to lead the Chapter of St. David's to
believe that this was an ordinary case of translation of
a bishop already consecrated, while at St. Asaph,
where the contrary would be known to be the fact,
the documents are drawn in the usual form } It is
quite true that In the parallel case of Bishop Bonner
a year or two later the same distinction occurs between
the documents for the two sees, he, too, being described
as Bishop-elect in the documents for his successor at
Hereford, and as Bishop in those for his own appoint
ment to London, but that Is a case of an official
draughtsman carefully following a precedent set only
a year or two before by royal authority. Clearly
there Is all the difference in the world between a clerk
following a precedent already in existence and a king
thus intervening to create the precedent in question,
and this latter cannot have happened without some
very definite reason. Before Barlow no precedent can
have occurred, so his case does really create the prece
dent In question.
There Is a further point to be considered before
we leave this ' Royal Assent.' Henry was not content
with ordering Barlow to be described in it as full
Bishop of St. Asaph rather than only Bishop-elect,
but he must carry his lie farther. He goes on to
describe Barlow as ' Perpetual Prior Commendatory
of Bisham.' The force of this description has never
hitherto been pointed out. It Is a direct assertion
that Barlow had been consecrated as Bishop of
St. Asaph, which was certainly untrue. Benefices in
commendam have ceased to exist so long in England
that the law about them has been forgotten, but
it will be found set out with accuracy and fullness by

66 ANGLICAN ORDERS
GIbson.i A Commendam retinere such as this would
have been was only needed by a bishop after conse
cration. For up to the moment of his consecration
his right to his earlier benefice was unchanged. He
only became commendatory after consecration, if he
had been granted leave before that ceremony took
place to retain the earlier benefice which would other
wise have been voided ipso facto by the consecration.
To style a bishop, as Henry here styles Barlow,
also commendatory of another benefice is to make the
definite assertion that consecration had taken place
and that a hcence to continue holding the earlier
benefice in commendam had been granted. Of course,
it need hardly be said, there Is no trace whatever in the
Patent Rolls or anywhere else of such a Hcence having
been Issued. But the use of the phrase In this docu
ment leaves no doubt whatever of Henry's intention
to mislead. A Commendam retinere would leave Bar
low in full possession of his rights as prior ^ and still
able to resign the priory Into the King's hands, which
in fact he did that same year.
The * Signed Bill,' as we have said, was an
authority only for the issue of the one document
attached to it. It did not Initiate or set in motion any
routine procedure. Accordingly, since the document
appended was only that known as the Royal Assent,
! Codex ii. 913. Or with even greater fuUness and accuracy by
Godolphin, Repertorium Canonicum, pp. 230-241, edition 1680.
^ Gibson, Bishop, Codex ii. 914. A Commendam retinere simply
prevents the voidance of a benefice and therefore leaves rights intact.
On the other hand a Commendam capere does not create a true
incumbency, but only a beneficiary. It is worth while, perhaps,
to notice that the creation of a perpetual Commendam was speciaUy
reserved to the Pope by the CouncU of Lyons in 1274.

BISHOP BARLOW'S DOCUMENTS 67
there was no issue of the Significavit, as there would
normally have been had the ordinary procedure been
followed. Cranmer had authority, therefore, only for
the confirmation, he was not authorised to go on to
consecration. Accordingly, he acts In this second case
exactly as he did in the two similar cases of Shaxton
and of Barlow's first see. He confirms the election
made by the Dean and Chapter, and then sends his
certificate to the King as having completed his task
and done all that he was required to do. But this
time Barlow was present and was confirmed In person,
not as he had been in the former case by proxy. In
that instance it was easy enough to assign a reason for
the deferring of the consecration, for If Barlow was
away in Scotland he obviously could not be conse
crated in London until his return, but in this case it
is not easy to understand why the matter should not
have gone forward In the usual routine. If he could
appear in person at the confirmation on the Friday, what
hindered him from being consecrated on the following
Sunday .'' It is not easy to suggest a reason, but there
can be no doubt as to the fact. The consecration did
not take place on the following Sunday, In spite of
Barlow's presence In London. No Significavit was
issued and no intention was manifested of holding a
consecration at any time In the immediate future.
The usual procedure had been cut short at the con
firmation by the personal act of the King In issuing
his ' Signed Bill,' though what his motive was In so
acting there is, so far, nothing to show.
The next document Is Cranmer's certificate to the
King to say that he has carried out the confirmation
of the election. This may be found in his register,

68 ANGLICAN ORDERS
and follows the usual form. The only point of interest
for us Is that Cranmer follows the King's lead and
describes Barlow as ' lately Bishop of St. Asaph and
perpetual Commendatory of Bisham.' That is to say,
the form of the certificate is that for an ordinary
translation of a bishop already consecrated, not that
for a new appointment of one whose consecration is
deferred for a time.
This certificate bears the date April 22, 1536 ;
and it closes with a petition to the King that he will
now do * that which belongs to his Royal prerogative '
in the matter. The phrase occurs in other similar
certificates of the period, as for instance in the case of
Shaxton, and, suggestive as it sounds in this special
instance, one cannot build much upon It. It was only
a matter of form and need not have meant anything
very definite. In the other cases in which it was used
it was mere formality and met with no response. But
in this case Henry did respond to the invitation. Four
days later there was issued from the Chancery by
Letters Patent under the Great Seal a very remarkable
document, which will require our very careful attention
and will repay a very minute examination. Before,
however, we go on to make this Investigation it will
be well to know something of the nature of the corres
ponding documents which were issued at that period,
and still are, to bishops on their appointment to their
see. It is a grant of Custody of the Temporalities
Issued before consecration, as occurred also In several
other Instances of the period.
It has already been explained that on a vacancy
occurring In any see, the temporalities of the see — ^that
is, its lands and other possessions — Immediately came

BISHOP BARLOW'S DOCUMENTS 69
into the King's hands. He had the ' custody ' of them
so long as the vacancy lasted, and the profits accruing
belonged to him. Ordinarily they had to be ' re
stored ' of right to the bishop on his own request, when
the vacancy had fully come to an end by his conse
cration. Sometimes, but rarely, they were ' restored '
earlier If the King so chose, after confirmation but
before consecration. ^ When once they had been so
' restored ' the bishop held them in freehold so long
as he remained bishop of the diocese. If he died, or
was translated to another bishopric, or resigned, the
temporalities forthwith came once more to the King,
and the profits during the vacancy again belonged to
him. These ' Grants of Restitution ' therefore were not,
strictly speaking, ' grants ' at all. They take the form
of a notice, under the Great Seal, sent to the King's
escheators and other officials to the effect that the
vacancy of the see had come to an end, and that, there
fore, they had nothing further to do but to hand every
thing over to the new bishop, to whom all now belonged
in freehold. But it was within the power of the King to deal as
he pleased with any profits or privileges which were
available during the vacancy. He could apply them to
his own use, or, if he so pleased, he could assign these
rights to another. Grants of this kind, which are real
grants, given solely of the King's good will, are called
' Grants of Custody.' They run In the ordinary form
of all such grants, Rex, Omnibus ad quos, etc. Salutem.
Sciatis quod, etc., and are given under the Great Seal.
! Godolphin, Repertorium Canonicum, p. zS.

70 ANGLICAN ORDERS
Such ' Grants of Custody ' are of two kinds :
I. Retrospective. This is the case where the
King desires to hand over to a bishop the profits, etc.,
which have accrued during the vacancy. Nowadays
It is done as a matter of course, but in Henry's time
it was rare. Cranmer had a grant of this kind which
may be read in Rymer, Fcedera xiv. 457.
2. Prospective. When for any reason it was
foreseen that there would be a long vacancy, the King
sometimes made a grant of the profits and rights of
the vacant bishopric to some person, generally the
bishop nominated but not yet elected, to hold as
custodian. Such a grant was necessarily temporary,
given generally for the time for which the temporalities
remained in the King's power, i.e. until the vacancy
should be concluded by the consecration of a new
bishop. If it should be drawn for a long period,
and of this there Is no example except this grant of
Barlow's, It would necessarily be rendered void by any
such consecration, for the temporalities would then
belong to the new bishop ipso facto, and not be any
longer In the King's power to grant. Nemo dat quod
non habet. No one can grant away what he does not
hold. Now this grant to Barlow of April 26, 1536, Is a
grant of this last kind — a Grant of Custody during
the vacancy of the see. It is therefore an absolute
proof that Barlow was still unconsecrated on that date.
Had he then been already consecrated the grant would
have been void and useless, for the temporalities would
have been his own in freehold already, and he needed
only to demand restitution. It is a Grant of Custody
made to a bishop elect and confirmed, on account ofthe

BISHOP BARLOW'S DOCUMENTS 71
vacancy of the see, which continued till consecration.
Normally it would run only for two or three weeks at
most, then be succeeded by the usual ' Restitution.'
One would have expected a simple Restitution to
avoid this complication. 1 This was the procedure In
the parallel case of Bishop Bonner in 1 539. Evidently
In this case of Barlow a long vacancy was expected,
and as we look further Into the document we see that
it Is so. The Custody Is given not as usual ' as long
as the see is vacant,' h'o.t for his whole lifetime, ^durante
vita sua.'
The point Is so important that we must stop to
emphasise it. Here we have a grant which In Its
nature is of a temporary character — a grant of ' Cus
tody ' and not of ' Restitution.' Such a grant would
be voided and come to an end ipso facto the moment
Barlow was consecrated. Yet it is made to extend
to the whole of his life. What other conclusion is
possible than that it was not in contemplation that he
should be consecrated, at any rate for some time to
come, and that it was even possible that he might
continue unconsecrated for the whole of his life .'' If
he chose so to remain he would nevertheless have the
enjoyment of the temporalities of his see all through
the time. The only difference would be that he
would hold them by the favour of the King, to
whom they really belonged owing to the continued
vacancy of the see, and not in freehold, as being the
! The case is unique. There is no other instance known of a
mere Grant of Custody issued to a bishop already confirmed, obviously
because normally it would be futUe to do so, as the same object could
be attained more simply by the King's granting Restitution, of grace,
in the usual form.

72 ANGLICAN ORDERS
possessions of the diocese of which he was fully
bishop.'^ The next point to consider Is Barlow's own de
scription. He is no longer ' Bishop of St. David's and
perpetual prior commendatory of Bisham ' as he was
in the documents issued only a week or so before under
the Great Seal and the Seal of the Archbishop of Can
terbury respectively. He is back once more in the
old position, and Is only ' our beloved and faithful
William Barlow, prior of the Monastery or Priory of
the Holy Trinity at " Bostleham Mountague " of the
Order of St. Augustine.' Of course It would have
been Impossible to style him commendatory prior in
this document. It is a document which could only
be Issued to one who had not yet been consecrated as
bishop. And no man could possibly be a Commen
datory prior who had not already been so consecrated.
So he had of necessity to go back to his true status
again. But one could not ask for a clearer proof of
bad faith than this, that he should be described falsely
on April 20, by Henry's own express order, in a
formal document Issued under the Great Seal, as Com
mendatory when no Commendam had been issued or
indeed needed, and again, truly, on April 26, in
another document of similar authority, as prior under
the ordinary circumstances, with no mention of any
Commendam at all, and in a context which precludes
•"¦ The grants to the bishops appointed under Edward VI are
sometimes quoted as being paraUel. It is true the same phrase is
used, ' during his life,' but these are quite different documents and
under a different Act of Parliament. The argument breaks down
as soon as this is realised. These grants are of the nature of
Restitutions, not of Custody.

BISHOP BARLOW'S DOCUMENTS 73
the possibility of any Commendam having been issued
previously. But we are not yet by any means at the end of the
peculiarities of this amazing grant. Such a confusion
as we find in it between the recognised phraseology
of a retrospective and that of a prospective grant could
never have been perpetrated by a professional draughts
man within the office of the Privy Seal. It must have
come to that office from some authoritative source
outside. And as, on Inspection, it proves to have
been simply copied from the retrospective grant given
to Cranmer three years before, with the necessary
changes made in their proper places, we shall probably
not be far wrong if we fix on the Archbishop as being
concerned in Its production.
But a higher power even than the Archbishop
seems to be implicated. Note the title by which the
Archbishop is called. He Is Primate of All England
and Legate of the Apostolic See. Who in 1536 would
have dared to give Cranmer that title .'' Not Cranmer
himself, who had formally resigned It two years before
in Convocation, on the express ground that it was
derogatory to the royal supremacy. Not, surely, any
clerk In the office of the Privy Seal or of Chancery.
Would even the Lord Chancellor Audeley himself
have dared to use it, when within the year his greater
predecessor, Thomas More, had lost his head for
impugning the royal supremacy } Would any single
person have dared to do it except the King in person }
If we think of the veritable Reign of Terror which was
at that moment in progress, it seems inconceivable that
anyone else would have ventured on the act. Who
again, except the King himself, would have dared to

74 ANGLICAN ORDERS
go on to apply to Cranmer the well-known phrase
which for centuries had been appropriated to the Pope,
to denote the action of the Holy See In the provision
of bishops. ' Ipsum sic electum Episcopum praedictae
Ecclesiae Menevensis praefecerit et Pastorem. ' Cranmer,
apparently by confirming the election, for he had done
nothing else, Is asserted to have ' set Barlow as Bishop
and Pastor over the Church of St. David's.' Never,
before or since, has such language been used of any
Archbishop of Canterbury, or of anyone except the
Pope. And who, we may well ask once more, would
have dared to use such language of him at such a time,
except the King himself, who was claiming to be
possessed of papal powers In England .'' But why
should the King use such terms } We can only
suggest that It was because he knew he was doing a
very Erastian action, and he wished to cloak It by a
special show of ecclesiastical authority. He would
not have Invented the words, or put them in
wholly out of his own head, but there they were
before his eyes in Cranmer's grant, and he simply
ordered them to be copied into the new grant for
Barlow. One point more remains to be considered. The
grant ends with the words Per breve de Sigillo Private,
' by Brief of Privy Seal,' which is the usual thing, and
then goes on ' and by the granted authority of Parlia
ment.' For what reason was this added ? It does
not occur In any other of Henry's grants. Obviously
he Is conscious that he Is doing something quite
unusual and wishes to claim a special authority for
doing it. That was always Henry's way. All his
most illegal and violent actions were done under the

BISHOP BARLOW'S DOCUMENTS 75
form of the strictest law. But still It Is not very clear
what Act he Is appealing to. It can hardly be
25 Henry VIII, cap. 16, which Is the Act which
regulates the appointment of bishops, for that contains
nothing to the point, and had, moreover, been contra
vened in several points by the peculiar procedure
adopted in this case. It would seem that the appeal
is to the recently passed Act of Supremacy, and that
Henry is justifying his unusual action by repre
senting it as an act of that supreme authority over
the Church with which he had been endowed by
Parliament. It Is only of comparatively recent years that the
real nature of this document has been known to his
torians. It was originally published in 1613, but
only In a deliberately mutilated form, giving an entirely
false Impression, by Mason In his book on ' The Con
secration of the Bishops in the Church of England.'
This mutilated form was the only one known till Canon
Estcourt found the document and published it entire
in 1870. Even he, however, did not fully realise its
force and meaning.
From the day on which he received this grant
Barlow took the full style of a bishop. He had signed
himself ' Will" Barlo ' a month before.^ But now
he signs ' Willmus Menev,' a title he had no right to
adopt before consecration had taken place. He is also
given the title by others. The summons to the House
of Lords was issued on April 27, the day after the
temporalities were restored to him ; and he Is sum
moned as Bishop of St. David's, not as Bishop Elect.
1 British Museum, Caligula B. Ill, leaf 194; cf. State Papers,
Henry VIII, v. 36, 46.

76 ANGLICAN ORDERS
He took possession of his see at once, apparently by
proxy,! and himself went up once more to Scotland
on the King's business. He remains In Scotland,
however, only for a few weeks, for he Is back in London
by June 30, on which day he took his seat In the House
of Lords. If he was ever consecrated at all it must
have been before that date. At least no later date has
ever been suggested by anybody.
There was a consecration of bishops on June 1 1,
when Repps of Norwich and Sampson of Chichester
were consecrated. It has been maintained by the
late Bishop Stubbs and others that Barlow was probably
consecrated with them. That, however, is put out
of the question by documentary evidence. We have
the warrant from Cromwell bearing the date of June 1 2,
in which Barlow Is still spoken of ' as the Bishoppe
then elect of St. Asaph's, now elect of St. David's.' ^
Moreover, there is also extant a letter written by one
Anthony Walte, a servant of Sherburn, Bishop of
Chichester, to Lady Lisle. It tells how Dr. Sampson
' was consecrated with the abbot of St. Benet's, now
bishop of Norwich ' on Trinity Sunday, and since he
makes no mention of a third recipient of consecration,
makes it certain that Barlow was not also consecrated
at the same time.* It is obviously impossible for any
one, in the face of the complete absence of every one
of the various documents required for a consecration
to take place, and also of these two pieces of documen
tary evidence to the contrary, to continue to maintain
! See Estcourt, Question of Anglican Ordinations, p. 65.
2 Ashmolean MS. 857, f. 48. It is printed in fuU by Estcourt,
App. xxiv.
* Letters and Papers Henry Fill, x. 481.

BISHOP BARLOW'S DOCUMENTS 77
that Barlow could have been consecrated on June 1 1 .
That date was suggested formerly by Dr. Haddan,
and adopted by Bishop Stubbs In the first edition of
his ' Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum.' It has, how
ever, been abandoned In the later edition of that
book. We are now in a position to sum up what we have
learnt from the study of Bishop Barlow's documents.
Certainly we have learnt this, that he was In a most
unusual position. There Is a total absence of evidence
for his consecration on the one hand ; on the other
there Is the singular fact of a deliberate and careful
variation in the wording of his documents. Wherever
the facts would be known and in consequence it would
be futile to attempt to pass him off as a consecrated
Bishop, the documents duly give him his proper title
of Bishop Elect. It Is so with all the documents
connected with St. Asaph, and it is so with Cromwell's
warrant, quoted above, about the ' dyetts ' of Thomas
Hawley, who had been Barlow's constant companion
during his embassy to Scotland. The very form of
the grant of ' Custody * issued proves the same thing.
But wherever the facts would not be known, and where
it would be naturally taken for granted that conse
cration to St. Asaph had taken place, the word ' Elect '
is dropped and he Is spoken of simply as Bishop of
St. Asaph or St. David's, or as ' the same now Bishop.'
It is thus in all the documents which are connected
with St. David's ; with Cranmer's certificate to the
King ; with the wording as distinct from the form of
the grant of Custody of the Temporalities; with the
summons to the House of Lords. Such a variation,
so deliberately and consistently carried out, cannot

78 ANGLICAN ORDERS
have been made without a reason — and the reason
seems obvious enough.
Let us take Barlow's position on June 12, 1536, a
date when Cromwell's warrant, already quoted, makes
it quite certain that he was not yet consecrated. He
will have been dressed as a bishop, in full accordance
with Catholic custom, ever since February 23, the date
of his confirmation to the see of St. Asaph.^ He was
passing himself off as a fully consecrated bishop —
there can be no doubt about that, — signing himself
as William Menevensis, and so forth. He was In
full possession of his see of St. David's so far as
spiritual jurisdiction was concerned, by virtue of the
confirmation of his election on April 21. He had
every power and every right to rule his diocese, to
present to benefices, to grant dispensations, to hold
diocesan Courts. He was in full possession also of
all the temporalities of the see, and that not for a time
only, but for life. He could grant leases, draw the
revenues, deal with the property as he would, by virtue
of the King's grant of April 27. He could take his
seat In the House of Lords at any moment that he
pleased, for the King's Writ of Summons had been
issued to him on April 28, and he had been summoned,
not as Bishop Elect and Confirmed, but as full Bishop
of St. David's. Hence there would be no question
of the date of consecration arising, so long as he was
content to take his seat beneath any bishops who had
already done so, and did not himself raise the question
of ' ancientry.' It has never been any part of the duty
of the officials of the House of Lords to demand proof
! Caerimoniale Episcoporum.

BISHOP BARLOW'S DOCUMENTS 79
or date of consecration, ^ when this writ is presented ;
although, when such proof is brought, and a bishop
claims In virtue of it to have precedence above others
who although consecrated later than himself have
taken their seat in the House before him, it Is their
duty to determine how the rights of precedence really
stand. Barlow could claim also by the ordinary Canon
Law to be summoned to Convocation, and to sit and
vote there with the other bishops, nor had he any
reason to doubt that Cranmer would duly summon
him ; and summon him also, as the King had already
done to the House of Lords, as Bishop of St. David's
and not merely as Bishop Elect.
There was only one thing In fact still wanting to make
Barlow's position complete, and that was the power of
Holy Order. From a canonical point of view at all
events, however the matter might have been ruled by
the secular lawyers in view ofthe powers ofthe Supreme
Head, Barlow still could not confirm and he could
not ordain. His confirmations and ordinations would
have been invalid in the eyes of the Church, however
they might have been regarded by the law of the land.
But there his disabilities ended. Everything else that
a bishop could do he could do validly and lawfully, by
the laws ofthe Church as well as by the law of England.
He could assist at the consecration of other bishops
and join in the imposition of hands, for that Is primarily
an act of jurisdiction, signifying official concurrence
with the consecrator's action, and only secondarily and
! See the Journals of the House of Lords for the period. The
phrase is Hod'ie allatum est Regium Breve . . . Episcopo directum . . .
qui presens admissus est ad suum Eminenciae locum salvo cuipiam jure.
An extract is printed infra, p. 185.

8o ANGLICAN ORDERS
accidentally an act of the power of order — if indeed
It is ordinarily an act of order at all. Abbots and
other priests of dignity can be commissioned to join
in the imposition of hands when bishops are not
available, and bishops elect and confirmed, though
not yet consecrated, are always allowed to do so. The
only acts belonging to a bishop which flow from the
power of Holy Order are confirmation and ordination,
and these, consequently, were the only episcopal
actions which Barlow was still Incapable of performing
validly by the Canon Law.
It Is a question which is of the greatest interest,
whether he did or did not actually perform these acts In
Henry's lifetime ; for there Is no doubt that he did in his
later years, as can be proved by an inspection of the dio
cesan registers of Chichester. But for Henry's reign we
have no means of discovering how matters lie. The
diocesan records of St. Asaph's and St. David's, and
also those of Bath and Wells are all missing for
Barlow's time, although extant both before and after
his episcopate, and so the evidence we require has been
rendered inaccessible.
Another interesting question, which again we have
no means of answering, is whether or not Barlow was
made, like every other bishop of his time, to take out
a licence from the King to give him permission to
exercise his office. The original document would
be pretty certain to have perished In any case, and as
these licences were not issued under the Great or even
the Privy Seal, but under Henry's special Seal for
ecclesiastical matters, depending on his supremacy,
they did not need any formal authority for their issue,
nor were they enrolled on either the Patent or the

BISHOP BARLOW'S DOCUMENTS 8i
Close Rolls. We have, therefore, no means left to
us of ascertaining whether one was actually Issued to
Barlow or not. If a licence was Issued, and if it ran
in the usual form, it will have contained the grant of
the King's authority to ordain and to do all other
episcopal actions. If the whole circumstances of the
case be taken into consideration there will be few who
will doubt that a licence of this sort was issued in due
course, and that Barlow, holding it, was rendered fully
competent In his own eyes and in those of the King to
ordain such clergy as were needed for the diocese of
St. David's, and to use the full powers of a bishop in
every way. But of this, unless either the royal licence
or else the diocesan registers of St. David's should
still exist In some private library, which Is scarcely
likely to be the case, we shall never be able to produce
actual proof, nor to clear up beyond dispute the real
nature of the situation.
There Is one more question which it is Interesting
and important to ask at this juncture. It Is, how
far the Chapter and Diocese of St. David's under
stood how matters had been arranged. Was Barlow's
position as a bishop made by the sole authority and
power of the King acting as Supreme Head of the
Church of England generally realised, or was the
knowledge of it confined to the very small number of
highly placed officials who could not be kept from
knowing what was going on ? The answer to this
question seems to be given us by the documents
themselves. What could be the object of the signifi
cant divergence between the wording of the documents
intended for St. David's and of those which belong
to St. Asaph If it were not to make the Precentor and

82 ANGLICAN ORDERS
Canons of St. David's imagine that Barlow had been
already consecrated as Bishop of St. Asaph and that It
was a case of an ordinary translation from one diocese
to another ? We may take it for granted that the
Chapter did not know the real facts, but took Barlow
for a consecrated bishop, and that, If they did not know,
the knowledge was confined to the very limited circle
of the King, Cranmer and Cromwell, with a few other
highly placed and confidential officials who could be
relied upon to do whatever the King wished and to
keep his secrets inviolate. But In that case. It may
be urged, how was the King's object attained ? If
his purpose was the increase of the Royal Prerogative
and the Institution of a hierarchy owing everything,
and not merely their appointment to himself, then
publicity was essential. Why then was the matter
kept secret .''
The answer would seem to be that Barlow's case
was of the nature of a ballon d'essai, to make practical
trial how far the existing law, without any change
whatever, would allow the King to go in this direction.
No law whatever, so far as the letter of it was concerned,
was contravened by what was done. The King with
held the issue of the Significavit. That was all, Nor
was there any power by which he could be forced to
Issue It. If he did not, but acted as he did In Barlow's
case, the event had proved that he could get a purely
State bishop In each individual case. If he chose to
• go on he could obtain as many bishops of this kind as
he pleased, bishops with the power of jurisdiction,
but lacking the power of order. The succession could
be kept up, if it was desired, by a few bishops of the
old sort. The possibility of doing all this was proved

BISHOP BARLOW'S DOCUMENTS 83
by the Barlow case. But Henry had not made up his
mind fully whether he would do it. Hence he kept
what he was doing a secret. In the event he deter
mined not to carry the scheme further. In the interval
between the time when the Barlow scheme was initiated
in November or December 1535, and the next epis
copal vacancy in April 1536, the whole situation had
changed as on the turn of a kaleidoscope. Catherine
of Aragon had died In January, and he was free to
marry again, as soon as he had got rid of Anne Boleyn.
That freedom he achieved in May. The foreign
dangers had passed away. The Pope's excommunica
tion was suspended. There was no longer any danger
from the Emperor or from France, and therefore no
need to join up with the Protestants of the North.
The bishops In England were completely subservient,
and were giving no trouble in the matter of the destruc
tion of the monasteries. So the scheme was given up
for the time, and though in 1 540 Henry showed signs
of wishing to take it up afresh, it was never again put
into action. Barlow remained the only State bishop.
In the Danish sense, to be found In England. But
Henry was not a person who liked recanting, and so
Barlow remained unmolested, even during the re
action of Henry's later years, with his secret known
to few except himself. In order that the King might
save his face, and not have to acknowledge the fact
that he had once plotted with Cranmer and Cromwell
and that the plot had miscarried and come to a profit
less and futile conclusion.
The form of Barlow's Grant of Custody suggests
that after all Henry's main object may have been
pecuniary. He was In desperate need of money, and

84 ANGLICAN ORDERS
was obtaining it at this very time by the robbery of
the Church through the destruction of the monasteries.
The possessions of the bishops offered another rich
field for plunder. If they were once consecrated these
possessions were theirs In freehold. But till they were
consecrated they were the King's, and he could deal
with them as he would. The temporalities of St.
David's were Inconsiderable, but Winchester, Durham
and York, among others, were very rich. If the same
process were repeated in the case of one of these, there
would be no need for the King to grant custody of the
whole of the temporalities. He could grant just what
he pleased and retain the rest. The advantage to the
royal exchequer is obvious and might be exceedingly
important. Queen Elizabeth knew this when she
kept the rich see of Ely vacant for so many years.
Legalised robbery of the Church has been in all ages
a popular method of refilling the depleted coffers of
the State.

CHAPTER V
THE CONSECRATION OF ARCHBISHOP PARKER AND THE
ATTACK ON BISHOP BONNER
There were five sees which chanced to be vacant at
the moment when Queen Mary died, on November 1 7,
1558, and to these Canterbury was at once added, the
death of Cardinal Pole, perhaps happily for him, taking
place only a few hours after that of Mary.
Before the new Queen had been on the throne a
mcnth the number of sees vacant was further Increased
by the death of four bishops more. By the end of
1558, before any changes had been introduced in
religious matters, there were only seventeen of the
dioceses In England and Wales which still had a
bishop. A few more months passed away, and even this
scanty band began to be thinned yet more by depri
vations. Parliament had been at work in the mean
time, and It was no longer doubtful to anyone what
the policy of the new Queen was to be in matters
ecclesiastical. The Royal Supremacy was restored,
but only after a fierce struggle, and with the title of
' Supreme Governor ' substituted for that of ' Supreme
Head.' The Second Prayer Book of Edward VI was
revived, the papal jurisdiction had been once more
abolished, and matters were now ready for proceeding

86 ANGLICAN ORDERS
against the small band of the surviving bishops, all of
whom stood firm and unmoved, recording their votes
in the House of Lords steadily and unanimously
against each change that was proposed.
On May 23, 1559, a commission was issued to a
body of eighteen laymen to administer the new Oath
of Supremacy to the bishops and others who had been
ordered by Parliament to take it, and the last thinning
of the episcopal ranks at once began. We can best
date the various deprivations by noting the times
at which the spiritualities in each diocese passed
into other hands. The spiritualities of London were
seized June 2, 1559 ; those of Lichfield, June 24 ;
Worcester, June 30 ; Lincoln, July 2 ; St. Asaph,
July 1 5 ; Winchester, July 1 8 ; Peterborough, Novem
ber 1 1 ; Exeter, November 1 6 ; and Ely, November 23.
The spiritualities of York came Into the hands of the
Dean and Chapter on February 3, 1559-60, although
Heath, the Archbishop, had been in trouble as early as
July 5> 1559-
The Queen was In no great hurry to fill the vacant
sees. To begin with, while they were vacant the
revenues all belonged to the Crown, and this was no
small matter at a time when the Crown needed money
very badly indeed. Then, too, she had designs on a
great many manors and other possessions which be
longed to these bishoprics, and ' exchanges ' and other
rearrangements, all tending very much to the advan
tage of the Crown, were carried through more readily
while they were vacant than when the vested interests
of a bishop actually in possession had to be considered.
But not even Elizabeth could keep all England without
bishops for an Indefinite period, and by the middle of

CONSECRATION OF PARKER 87
1559 it was already clear that something must be done,
without any very prolonged delay, to fill the vacant
sees, and to provide the Church of England with a
new set of rulers.
Matthew Parker, formerly Master of Benet Col
lege (Corpus Christi) at Cambridge, who had been
also Dean of Lincoln under Edward VI, had been
selected for the post of Archbishop of Canterbury as
early as March 1559. He shrank from the responsi
bility, but his scruples were overborne ; the Conge
d'elire was issued to the Dean and Chapter with
Letters Missive containing his name as the person
whom they were commanded to elect, and accordingly
he was returned as duly elected, though only four
prebendaries would attend to vote, on August i.
The next step was to confirm the election, a duty
which would normally have fallen to the Archbishop
of York, but the Archbishop, even If not already
deprived, was out of favour, and, moreover, would
refuse to act. The proper course for the Crown to
take under these circumstances was to Issue a com
mission to four other bishops, and this was accordingly
done. There were at the time five other bishops still
remaining in possession of their sees : Tunstall of
Durham, Bourne of Bath and Wells, Pole of Peter
borough, TurbeviUe of Exeter, and Kitchin of Llan
daff. The hope was apparently still entertained that
some of these might yet be induced to act. A com
mission was therefore issued, on September 9, to Tun
stall, Bourne, Pole and Kitchin, joining with them two
of the returned exiles. Barlow and Scory.^ As Canon
1 Pat, I, Ehz. p. 2, m. I. Rymer, Foedera, xv. 541.

88 ANGLICAN ORDERS
Estcourt has remarked, it is hard for us to understand
* how anyone could hope that a Commission would be
executed which bore so gross an insult on the face
of it. Not merely to require them to consecrate a
married priest, notoriously suspected of heresy, but
to join with them two suspended excommunicated
ecclesiastics, calling themselves Bishops, relapsed
heretics and apostate Religious, was sufficient of itself
to prevent the execution of the Mandate.' We must
note also, although we do •'not know for certain, that
they may have been asked to use a form of ordination
which had already been formally adjudged invalid by
the authorities at Rome. There Is no record whether
they were ever definitely cited, nor in what manner
their refusal was given. But Tunstall was deprived
on the 28 th ofthe same month of September, Pole was
deprived November 4, and for Bourne a commission
was Issued on October 18, to tender to him the Oath
of Supremacy and directing the steps to be taken in
the event of his refusal.
By this time the Government was in a position of
real difficulty. The Act required not bishops merely,
but ' Bishops within the realm,' that is to say bishops
in possession of actual sees, and except Kitchin of
Llandaff, there was none remaining. For a short period
it looks as If Elizabeth and Cecil must have given up
the attempt and determined to have State bishops
after the Danish manner, without consecration but
only appointed by Letters Patent from the Crown.
They took power to do this by the Incorporation
into the Act of Supremacy ^ of a Bill which had
' Strype, Annals, ii. 59.

CONSECRATION OF PARKER 89
passed both houses In March, entitled 'A Bill for
the collation of Bishops by the Queen's Highness and
without rites or ceremonies.' Some such plan seems
the only explanation of a variety of facts which
seem to look in that direction. Chief among these
is a document under the Great Seal, dated October 20,
and appointing Parker, Grindal and Cox, all as full
bishops and not bishops-elect, to act as commissioners
for administering the Oath of Supremacy.^ Another
similar document is the issue to Parker by the Heralds'
College of a coat of arms, again as full archbishop, on
November 28. Parker himself at this period took to
signing himself as Matthew Cantuar, and Jewel and
others speak of him as Archbishop of Canterbury
with no qualification. He was certainly given the
right to reside at Lambeth, though no actual grant
of custody seems to have been Issued. This theory
again, if It be true, would explain the words of Catholic
controversialists such as Stapleton and Bristow, who
were in a position to know, since they were still in
England at the time, and who say definitely that the
new bishops were appointed at first only by Letters
Patent and later by the ceremony of consecration.
There is absolutely no evidence, however, to show
that any such Letters Patent were ever actually issued.
But be all this as it may, the idea of finding bishops
of some kind, even if no diocesan bishops were avail
able, was soon taken up again. There is a paper
extant ^ giving the course of action which in the writer's
opinion should be followed. It is annotated on the
1 Rymer, Fcedera xv. 546.
2 State Papers, Domestic, EUzabeth, 1559, July, p. 135. It is
printed in fuU by Estcourt, who also gives a facsimile.

90 ANGLICAN ORDERS
left side in Cecil's handwriting and on the right in
Parker's. Cecil has written In one place * There Is no
Archbishop nor four Bishops now to be had.' How
ever, they had to get forward somehow, and a new com
mission was Issued on December 6, in which the places
of the bishops who had been deprived were taken by
four more of the exiles : Coverdale, who had been
Bishop of Exeter, Bale, who had once been Bishop of
Ossory in Ireland, and two suffragans, Hodgkins of
Bedford and Salisbury of Thetford. Any four of this
commission might act. Bishop Kitchin of Llandaff,
who had apparently not joined in the refusal of his
fellow-bishops, keeps his place in this second com
mission, the only one of the Marian bishops who did
so, but he did not join In the consecration. There
was another difficulty which was troubling the Govern
ment, arising out of the legal position of the Ordinal of
Edward VI. As a Catholic consecration was then
still hoped for, it had not received the authority of
Parliament in the session which had since come to an
end. Cecil makes a note to that effect on the paper
already mentioned.
To remedy these defects, and especially the defect
that none of the bishops named in the commission,
with the one exception of Kitchin, had any episcopal
jurisdiction within the realm, a very singular clause
was added to the commission. By this clause the
Queen undertook, out of the plenitude of her royal
authority as Supreme Governor, to make good and to
supply any possible legal defects which might arise
out of the unusual facts of the situation. ^ That It was
^ The fuU text is : 'Supplentes nihilominus suprema auctoritate nostra
ex mero motu et certa scientia nostris, si quid aut in his quae juxta

CONSECRATION OF PARKER 91
the want of jurisdiction in the bishops, rather than the
lack of authorisation ofthe Ordinal which was especially
the cause of this clause supplentes nihilominus, is shown
by the fact that It occurs only In this one commission
for Archbishop Parker, and was not repeated In the
documents ofthe bishops who followed later ; although
the defect of Parliamentary authority was just as
pressing in each of these cases as in that of the
Archbishop himself.
Still It is hard to believe that so widely drawn and
all-embracing a dispensation as this was really only
meant to supply the lack of territorial jurisdiction.
The words applying to the possible defects in persons
are these, conditio, status, facultas, and these are doubt
less used in their strict legal and canonical sense. Of
these facultas would alone have covered sufficiently the
want of jurisdiction. Status and conditio are of wide
meaning, and a formal opinion was given on the point
by the late Mr. J. R. Hope Scott, Q.C., a very eminent
authority, to the effect that he thought ' there could
be no question but that even the want of consecration
in the consecrators would, in those times, have been
held to have been cured by the language of this
commission.' One is inclined to wonder whether this may not
be the true explanation, and that Cecil, at least, knew
of Barlow's position, and that he caused this strange
dispensation to be drawn up In these wide terms in
order to cover the difficulty which he knew of, although
mandatum nostrum pradictum per vos fient aut in vobis vel vestrum
aliquo conditione statu facultate vestris ad pr<emissa perficienda desit
aut deerit, eorum quae per statuta hujus nostri regni aut per leges eccle
siasticas in hac parte requiruntur aut necessaria sunt, temporis ratione
et rerum necessitate id postulante.'

92 ANGLICAN ORDERS
most did not, and to provide the requisite answer. If it
should become generally known. If so, his expedient
failed in the result, as will be seen later on.
When Kitchin refused to act, Barlow became the
senior bishop in the commission, and to him It was,
accordingly, that the duty of taking the principal part
In confirming the election and consecrating the Arch
bishop naturally fell. We may feel sure that no
suspicion whatever of his Irregular position, or of the
fact that he had never been consecrated, occurred to
Elizabeth, or to the Archbishop himself. They were
both of them far too anxious to secure the legal vahdity
of the act to have run such a needless risk when there
was no real necessity. Barlow himself, no doubt,
held his tongue. In his eyes It was a matter of no
consequence, since he had no belief In apostolic
succession. But it would certainly have jeopardised
his prospects of future promotion had he acknow
ledged openly that after all, so far as the episcopal
character was concerned, he was no bishop at all,
although he had acted as one throughout a long series
of years. All those who had been concerned in the original
matter were long since dead. Henry himself had
perished miserably, Cranmer had been burned, Crom
well had been beheaded. The matter, as the docu
ments themselves show, had been kept very secret at
the time. Barlow's own Chapter at St. David's had
been deceived, and there were probably only a very
few who had ever realised how matters stood. Quite
possibly Barlow himself was the only survivor of those
who had originally been connected with the affair, and
the secret was known to himself alone. Twenty-three

CONSECRATION OF PARKER 93
years is a long time, and many witnesses can be
removed by death within such a period. In any case,
whether any knew it except himself or not, the point
was not brought forward publicly, and Barlow went
on without hindrance to sit as the chief of the commis
sion, to confirm the election of the Archbishop, and a
few days later, on December 17, 1559, to take the
chief part In his consecration at Lambeth Palace.
It was a strange scene, singularly characteristic of
the new Church of England, and prophetic of much
that was to happen later within her borders. It is all
recounted for us in the Register of Archbishop Parker,
in a form which reminds us more of a report In a
modern Church newspaper, than of the dull columns
of an episcopal register. It was cold and dark,
between five and six o'clock on a midwinter morning,
when Parker entered the chapel, with four tapers
carried before him. The four bishops. Barlow wear
ing a cope, Scory and Hodgkins In surplices, and
Coverdale in his gown, took their places on the south
side of the Communion table, and Parker, wearing his
doctor's habit, was opposite to them on the north.
They said the office of Morning Prayer together, and
then Scory preached a sermon. Then they all returned
to vest for the Communion service, and came back
through the north door ; Barlow as celebrant, with
two archdeacons, BuUingham and Gest, to act as
deacon and sub-deacon, all three habited In copes.
Scory, Hodgkins and Parker were all now habited in
surplices, but Coverdale's Puritan prejudices would
not allow him to join them, and he kept apart, still
clothed In his long black woollen gown. After the
Gospel Barlow took his seat before the Communion

94 ANGLICAN ORDERS
table, and the other three bishops presented Parker
to him to be consecrated ; the Queen's mandate was
read ; the new Archbishop took the prescribed oaths
against Rome ; the litany was sung and the rest of the
service gone through. At the moment of consecration
all four of the bishops, contrary to the rubric of the
Book they were using, are stated in the register not
only to have laid on their hands, but also to have
recited the words ' Receive the Holy Ghost,' etc.
After the service all left the chapel, and the new Arch
bishop was solemnly escorted to his household.
That was the scene, which to-day can be read by
anyone in the pages of Parker's Register. But at
the time no Information of any kind was vouchsafed
to the outside world. The darkness of the winter
morning was a fit emblem of the secrecy with which
this momentous consecration and all Its details were
guarded for many years. No one knew who had been
the consecrator, or how the ceremony had been carried
out. The most pressing questions, the most pointed
inquiries, the most elaborate and often insulting
Insinuations could not draw any kind of Information
from the authorities. The whole affair was deliberately
wrapped in Impenetrable mystery.
The new Archbishop at once went on with the
work of filling up the vacant sees. He confirmed
Barlow to Chichester and Scory to Hereford. With
the assistance of these two and of Hodgkins, he
consecrated Grindal to London, Cox to Ely, Meyrick
to Bangor, and Sandys to Worcester. A month later
four more bishops were consecrated ; Jewel of Salis
bury and three more followed before the end of March
1560. The difficulties had been surmounted, epis-

ATTACK ON BISHOP BONNER 95
copal government had been restored, and the reformed
Church of England was fairly set upon her way. It
was not till some years later. In 1564, that a fresh
trouble began to show Itself, the real nature of which
is now explained for the first time.
The Catholic bishops who had been deprived in
1559 had not for the most part been kept In actual
prison. Elizabeth, with a somewhat sardonic sense
of humour, had assigned them as unwelcome and
unbidden guests to the Intruding prelates who now
held their property. With these hosts they abode,
scarcely, as Bramhall claims for them, ' splendidly
lodged,' but at least probably In some respects less
uncomfortable than they would have been in the
common prison. One, however, of their number.
Bishop Bonner of London, the most hated of all
because from having been an adherent of ' the New
Learning ' he had become its most determined oppo
nent, was kept In the Marshalsea Prison in South
London ; not, however, In the common wards, but In
some sort of semi-private custody.
It had been enacted by Parliament that to refuse
the Oath of Supremacy a second time, when It was
tendered by the proper person, namely, the bishop of
the diocese, was High Treason, and to be punished In
the usual barbarous manner. The enactment had
been Intended to be for the most part a dead letter, only
to be called Into use in certain exceptional and serious
casfs. Parker, acting In conjunction with Cecil, had
absolutely forbidden the bishops ever to act without
his leave.^ But to some of the more extreme of the
1 Strype's Parker, i. 125.

96 ANGLICAN ORDERS
Puritan party it seemed to open the door to a speedy
revenge upon their enemies, and especially upon
Bishop Bonner, who, as has been said, was held in
great detestation, not only on account of his desertion
of their cause, but also because of stories of his cruelties
during Mary's reign, for the most part quite apocry
phal as has since been shown, which had been put
Into circulation and were generally believed to be
true by the common people. Parker and Grindal
agreed to put the matter In action against him, and
carefully concealed from Cecil what they were doing.^
From the Marshalsea, accordingly, Bonner was sum
moned before Bishop Home, the new Protestant
Bishop of Winchester, who had determined to offer
him the oath for the second time and thus to bring
about his final undoing. He, as well as Parker and
Grindal, soon had good reason to repent of this unwise
and gratuitous ferocity.
Bonner's enemies, and they were many, were full
of unholy glee. There was no doubt in anyone's
mind that he would refuse the oath, and they looked
forward to seeing him die a traitor's death. Already
they pictured him drawn to the gallows in a hurdlie,
to hang there for a few moments, and then to be cut
down alive, to be stripped and butchered and dis-
1 State Papers, Domestic, EUzabeth, 1564, p. 239. 'For Dr.
Bonner's oath,' wrote Grindal to CecU, May 2, 1 564, ' I did of pur
pose not trouble you with it aforehand, that if any misliked the matter
you might liquido jurare ye were not privy of it. Notwithstanding
I had my Lord of Canterbury's approbation by letters, and I used
good advice of the learned in the laws. I could wish that the judges
were moved that expedition may be used before them. A thing
obtained with such difficulty would not the better lie without aU
execution ; and no more meet person to begin withal than that person.'

ATTACK ON BISHOP BONNER 97
embowelled before life left him ; while the cauldron
of boiling pitch stood ready to receive the quartered
limbs and the head, which no doubt would then be
set up on London Bridge or Temple Bar, so that all
might look upon and execrate the poor mangled
remains of him who had once been the proud Bishop
of London, and judge in many a case of heresy.
Such were their pleasing anticipations, but they
were not destined to be realised. Bonner refused the
oath, as they were all quite sure that he would do, but
he refused it on unexpected grounds. ' This oath,'
he told Bishop Home, ' has to be administered by the
Bishop of the diocese, but you are no Bishop of
Winchester, no, nor no Bishop at all, but only plain
Dr. Home.' Home could do nothing but order his
chancellor to return a certificate into the King's Bench
to report Bonner's refusal, and the matter accordingly
stood for trial. Bonner appeared before the court,
confessed the fact of his refusal and traversed the
indictment. He asked for counsel, and Plowden and
Wray, two very eminent lawyers, were assigned to
him. There Is still extant a long plea,i drawn up appar
ently by Bonner himself, which deals with the reasons
why the indictment should not stand. It Is probably
his preliminary instruction for his lawyers, and does
not necessarily represent the actual pleading In court,
but it shows the kind of arguments he was bringing
forward. As his life was at stake he makes every
possible objection, technical or practical, against the
legality of what Home had done. Very possibly his
1 Printed by Strype, Annals, vol. i, pt. 2, pp. 379-81 in original
edition, from one of Foxe's MSS., now in the Harleian collection.

98 ANGLICAN ORDERS
own lawyers cut out a great deal before they brought
it before the court. In any case, most of it is unim
portant and need not occupy us now. The plea which
is of Interest to us, and which seems to have arrested
the attention of the judges, deals with one of the two
objections which we have already spoken of as having
been noticed by Cecil at the time of Parker's conse
cration. In Bonner's paper it is stated as follows :
' Item. That the said Dr. Robert Home not
being lawful Bishop of Winchester, but an usurper,
intruder and unlawful possessloner thereof, for that
according to the laws of the catholic church, and the
statutes and ordinances of the realm, the said Dr.
Home was not elected, consecrated, or provided, etc.
' Item. That Dr. Home foresaid is no lawful
Bishop, neither concerning the tendering of the said
oath, nor exercise of other ecclesiastic office, for many
causes, and specially for that the said Dr. Home was
not lawfully consecrated according to the laws and
statutes of this realm, and especially the statute of
25 Henry VIII, cap. 20, where in effect is required
that he that Is to be consecrated must among other
things have one archbishop and two bishops, or else
four bishops at the consecration, which the said Dr.
Home had not.'
There is no reason to suppose that Bonner had
any special knowledge of the matter. The great
secrecy with which the whole subject of the conse
cration of Parker and the other new bishops had been
surrounded, would have prevented him from having
any accurate knowledge of what had occurred. He
suspected that something was wrong in the matter of
these consecrations. Very likely he thought they had

ATTACK ON BISHOP BONNER 99
never really taken place, but that the Queen's appoint
ment had been held sufficient. He could not in any
case think of any four ' bishops within the realm ' who
were available when all the Catholic bishops had refused
to act. So he drew his bow at a venture, on the chance
that something was wrong, and that the precise details
would come out in court. In any case he hoped to
secure such delay and breathing space as might be
possible, and at least to defer the death with which he
was being threatened.
The judges, when Bonner's plea was brought
before them, threw out all the rest, mostly questions
of legal phraseology and local jurisdiction, but agreed
unanimously that If Bonner could prove that Home
was not Bishop of Winchester, that plea would stand
and Bonner must be acquitted.^ The decision caused
the greatest annoyance to his enemies, and Randolph,
who was up In Edinburgh, hearing the rumour of what
had happened, writes for confirmation of it to Cecil
on March 30, 1565. 'The tale here is that Boner
in his defence at his arraignment said that there was
never a lawful Bishop in England ; which so astonished
a number of the best learned that yet they know
not what answer to give him ; and where It was
determined he should have suffered, he Is remitted to
the place from whence he came, and no more said
unto him.' ^
1 ' Et fuit mult debate inter omnes justic. in camera dmi. Cattyne
si Bonner poit donner in evidence sur cest issue, scil. quod ipse non est
inde culpabilis, que le dit Evesque de Winton. non fuit episcopus tempore
oblationis sacramenti. Et resolve per omnes que, si le verity et materia
soit tyel in fait, et a ceo serra bien resceive sur cet issue, et le jury ceo
trier a' — Dyer's Reports, 234.
2 State Papers, Scotland, x. 66.

loo ANGLICAN ORDERS
For nearly two years the case dragged on, and they
dared not let it eome into open court. Again and
again Bonner was brought out of prison and taken to
the chambers of the judges, but only to go back once
more to prison. All unwittingly as It may have been.
It was obvious that he had hit upon a plea which was
puzzling the wits of the wisest of his adversaries to
know how to defeat.
There are two or three papers still extant which
give us a clue as to what was going on among the legal
authorities. The judges at least had no knowledge as
yet of Barlow's lack of consecration. It was evident,
of course, from the first that it was Parker's and not
Home's consecration which was the really weak spot.
If Home were called upon to produce his archbishop
and two bishops he could only produce Parker, who
would at once be called upon to bring proof that he
too had been properly consecrated. So a search was
at once Instituted Into the Registers, and certified
copies were produced for the judges to inspect. One
such paper is preserved among the Harleian MSS.,
and gives copies of the consecration of several of the
bishops of Henry's reign, Immediately after the passing
of the Act 25 Henry VIII, cap. 20, all certified by
the Archbishop himself to be accurately copied from
the Register. But a far more important paper than
this Is the one which is preserved among Foxe's MSS.
in the British Museum. This seems to embody the
results of a search made into the Registers at Lambeth
by some person who was doing it for official purposes.
It begins with an abstract of the Register of Bonner's
consecration taken from Cranmer's Register. Then
it goes on to recount the whole story of Parker's

ATTACK ON BISHOP BONNER loi
consecration in language for the most part resembling
the existing Register, but presenting one or two
important variations from It,i which rather look as if
it may have been copied from an earlier draft, and not
from the Register in the form we have It to-day. It
ends, and this Is the really Important part for our
present purpose, by setting down the pedigree, so to
speak, of all Parker's consecrators. This part runs
as follows :
' William Barlow was consecrated In the time of
Henry VIII.
' John Scory was appointed Bishop of Rochester
by letters patent given by the command of the King
for his consecration on the 27th April ofthe fifth year
of the reign of King Edward VI. Thomas Arch
bishop of Canterbury consecrated him with Nicholas
of London and John of Bedford as assistants, on the
30th August of the fifth year of Edward VI.
' Miles Coverdale was consecrated Bishop of
Exeter on the 30th day of the month of August 1551
and the fifth of the reign of the said King, by the same
Consecrators.' ^
This most Important paper lets us Into the secret
of what was going on among some of the authorities
on the Anglican side. They seem to have contem
plated at first a retort against Bonner that If Home
had not been consecrated in strict accordance with
law, so neither had Bonner himself. But this, even if
^ For instance, it gives Barlow definitely as consecrator and the
others as ' assistants,' and names the Ordinal as the rite followed,
both of which admissions are carefully avoided in the existing Register.
^ Harleian MSS. 419, foi. 149. A facsimUe is printed as the
frontispiece to Estcourt's Question of Anglican Ordinations.

I02 ANGLICAN ORDERS
it could have been substantiated, would obviously have
been quite futile. Bonner was not defending his
episcopal position, but standing his trial for treason.
But In any case Bonner's episcopal position was beyond
attack, for all in his case had been rightly done. He
had been consecrated by Stephen Gardiner, with
Sampson of Chichester and Skyp of Hereford as
assistants. It was only In the case of an archbishop
that the Act required four bishops. The next matter
was the defence of Parker's consecration, and for the
information of the judges a full abstract is prepared
of all that took place on that December morning.
Then comes the question of Parker's consecrators,
whether they were competent to Impart consecration
or not, and this involved a further search in the
Registers to substantiate the episcopal character of
each of them. The searcher found the evidence for
Scory and for Coverdale without difficulty, but he
could find nothing about Barlow. He will have found,
just as a searcher in Cranmer's Register will find to-day,
the record of the confirmation of Barlow's election to
St. Asaph and later on to St. David's, but he could
not find a word about his consecration. But he knew
that he had acted as a bishop In Henry's reign. He
assumed, therefore, that consecration must have taken
place, even though no record of it seemed to have
survived, so he writes down ' Consecrated In the time
of Henry VIIL' It Is Interesting at least as a proof
that the Registers were as defective in 1564, so far as
Barlow is concerned, as they are to-day.
But if Bonner's plea was to be rebutted, some
evidence of Barlow's consecration was necessary.
Otherwise It was clear that Bonner must win, for it

ATTACK ON BISHOP BONNER 103
Would not be possible to show that the requisite four
bishops took part In Parker's consecration, If the
consecration of the principal among them, the actual
consecrating bishop himself, could not be proved.
But in 1564, Barlow himself was still alive and Bishop
of Chichester. No matter how defective the records
might be, he at least would know where and when he
was consecrated, and would no doubt be able to supply
the documents from the certificates In his own posses
sion. In any case he could make affidavit and the
necessary evidence could be made good in that way.
So to Barlow himself we may suppose that the Crown
lawyers, who were In charge ofthe case against Bonner,
now betook themselves, and from him they will have
learnt the fact, which probably no one at that time was
suspecting, that he never had been consecrated at all,
but had held his office solely on the King's appointment
in virtue of the Royal Supremacy over the Church.
There would have been no use In his trying to conceal
the position, for he would have known that the whole
matter would be clear to all as soon as the civil records
and especially the Patent Rolls came to be examined,
for it would be manifest to all that the King had never
Issued his Significavit, and therefore that no conse
cration could possibly have taken place.
The effect of this discovery upon the Government
authorities can easily be Imagined. In the first place
it was obviously Impossible for them to go on with
the case against Bonner. True, even Bonner himself
probably did not know how strong a position he held,
but It would be impossible to prevent the facts from
being known, if once the case was allowed to go forward.
So it was determined that the case should never be

ro4 ANGLICAN ORDERS
allowed to come Into court at all. Some other way
of settling the matter must be discovered, whereby
the case could be kept out of the courts, and the world
at large kept In ignorance of the real state of affairs.
Here, perhaps, will be the best place In which to
treat of a story which has a distinct bearing upon the
subject of Anglican Orders but seems not to have
been placed hitherto in its proper connections. Edward
RIshton, the editor of Nicholas Sanders' notes In the
latter part of his work ' De Origine ac Progressu
Schlsmatis AngllcanI,' published his book in the year
1585 at Cologne. Sanders had died in 158 1. When
treating of the consecration of Parker and the difficulty
the Government was in to find a properly constituted
consecrator, he says, ' They importuned also an Irish
Archbishop then a prisoner In London to succour
them In the straits they were in. They promised to
set him at liberty, and to reward him for his services
if he would preside at their ordination. But the good
man could not be persuaded to lay hallowed hands
upon heretics or be a partaker in the sins of others.'
No Irish Archbishop was in the hands of Eliza
beth's Government in 1559. So the story cannot be
true about Parker, as RIshton has told it. He has
probably confused some note left by Sanders and not
clearly expressed. The reference Is clearly to Richard
Creagh, Archbishop of Armagh, who was captured
at Drogheda in October 1564. He was tried for his
life In Dublin, but the jury would not convict, though
the strongest pressure was brought to bear on them,
and the Archbishop was brought to the Tower of
London January 18, 1565, and shut up in a cell called
' the whale's belly,' because no light ever penetrated

ATTACK ON BISHOP BONNER 105
Into it. From this place he escaped In April 1565, as
he himself believed miraculously, finding the doors all
open, and fled to Louvain. While he was in prison
he is recorded to have been taken before the Queen
and to have had a long interview with Cecil. At
Louvain he lived at the Papal College, and must have
been In constant communication with Sanders, who
was Regius Professor of Divinity. The evidence is
therefore good and trustworthy. It was not In con
nection with Parker's consecration, but with the
Bonner trial that Creagh was approached In prison
and asked to confer the gift of consecration upon the
new Anglican episcopate, who. It had just been realised,
had after all no claim to their office even in law. It
was March 30, 1565, that Randolph wrote from Edin
burgh to say that the scandal had spread even there,
and men were saying there was ' never a lawful bishop
in England,' and it was only three weeks after that
that Creagh escaped from the Tower, fled to Louvain,
and told Sanders of the pressure that had been put
upon him. Creagh only remained at Louvain a short
time. He returned to Ireland and was recaptured in
1568. He was once more brought to the Tower, and
was kept there in close and harsh captivity till his
death in 1585. There was strong suspicion of poison.
One wonders whether the publication in that same
year of RIshton 's book, revealing the fact that Creagh
had spoken at Louvain about these overtures, may not
have been the cause of his death. Dead men tell no
tales. What he had said then did not matter, since
as RIshton had told the story it carried its own refu
tation. But at least he should have no chance of
himself correcting the mistake that had been made.

io6 ANGLICAN ORDERS
Queen Elizabeth's ministers would hardly have hesi
tated to order the removal by poison or otherwise of
a prisoner whose life was already forfeited by the law,
and who had knowledge of a very inconvenient secret.
After Creagh's refusal there was one way, and one
way only, by which the situation could be saved. The
whole matter could be removed to Parliament. It was by
no means a pleasant alternative, but there was nothing
else to be done. It was bitterly humiliating and could
not fail to set people talking, but It was the only way
out of the impasse, and so It was adopted. The strange
Act 8 Eliz., cap. i, ' An act declaring the making
and consecrating of the archbishops and bishops of
this realm to be good and lawful and perfect,' was the
result. This Act rehearsed that ' divers questions had
grown by overmuch boldness of speech among the
common sort of people upon the making and conse
crating of bishops whether the same were duly and
orderly done according to the law or not,' and ' evil
speech was used against the high state of prelacy.'
All this was no doubt true enough, and much of It
had probably arisen from the long delay over Bishop
Bonner's case. All the world knew that Bonner had
boldly said that ' there was never a lawful bishop in
England,' and everyone knew too that for some reason
or other the Government dared not act, but had gone
on deferring the hearing of the case for more than two
years. No wonder if gossip In the meantime had
flourished and Increased exceedingly.
Then the Act goes on, very cumbrously and
tediously, to explain that there really were some
grounds for such an opinion. It could not give the

ATTACK ON BISHOP BONNER 107
real grounds, for it was precisely in order to keep those
secret that it was being passed, so it had to put forward
others instead, and it was not the fault of those who
had to draft it if these other reasons do not strike
the mind as conclusive. The possible illegality arising
out of the fact that the Ordinal was not originally a
part of the Prayer Book, and therefore was not neces
sarily authorised by an Act which named the Prayer
Book only, was made to appear as the whole cause for
the action now taken. It was therefore enacted that
all consecrations which had been held according to the
Queen's letters patent since the beginning of her reign
should be held to be valid, and that all bishops so
consecrated should be declared, judged and deemed
good and perfect bishops, notwithstanding anything
to the contrary that could or might be objected.
Whatever flaws, legal or otherwise, there might have
been in what had been done in the past, the supreme
power of the English Parliament, coming to the aid
of the authority of the Supreme Governor of the
Church, now washed away and made good, so that
these consecrations could in no way be attacked for
the future.By this Act the position of Bishop Home and the
other Elizabethan prelates was indeed established
beyond controversy just so far as their legal status in
England was concemed, but the difficulty of Bonner
still remained. If Home was now certainly legal
Bishop of Winchester, and all his past actions in that
capacity were valid, then Bonner must still be tried
for his life, and the facts which so much pains had been
taken to hide away would quite possibly be dragged
out in court. To avoid this some means must

io8 ANGLICAN ORDERS
be found of stopping the suit altogether. It was
attempted first to do this in the Lords, by an amend
ment restricting the validation of the acts of the bishops
by excepting all such as related to life and property.
But when this went down to the Commons it was
feared that such an amendment might be held in law
to invalidate the leases, etc., which these bishops had
already granted. The desired object was, however,
attained by appending to the Act a second clause,
which provided that no person should be molested on
account of any certificate of any such bishop which had
been sent in prior to the end of the session then in
course, and especially that any tender of the Oath of
Supremacy made by any such bishop before that time
should be void and of no effect. Thus the case
against Bonner was quashed, and all proceedings
stopped, possibly to his own great surprise, as he did
not know to what it was that he owed this unexpected
clemency on the part of his enemies. People generally
must have felt, as historians feel to-day, that it was an
astonishingly great result to have come from so small a
cause as the possible merely technical illegality of the
Ordinal employed. It was comparable to the use of
a Nasmyth steam hammer to break the shell ofa walnut.
What was the use of the validating clause Issued by
the Supreme Governor at that very consecration If It
could not cover such a trifle as that .'' Were the
powers of the Crown over the Church really so very
limited ? It was not thus that Henry and Edward in
the past — or, for the matter of that, Elizabeth herself
In the future — were ordinarily wont to construe the
powers of their supremacy. Men wondered then, and
historians have wondered ever since, because they had

ATTACK ON BISHOP BONNER 109
not the clue which explains everything ; but to this
extent Elizabeth and Cecil had their way, that no one
suspected the real cause, and the secret about Barlow's
consecration remained a secret still.
Two curious documents, to which attention does
not seem to have been drawn hitherto, survive in
Parker's Register ^ and finish up the story. Appar
ently the judges were not satisfied even with the Act,
and required something more. So, on November 24,
1566, Elizabeth Issued a Latin Brief addressed to
Archbishop Parker, and bidding him, before the octave
of St. Hilary next, when the Law Courts would reopen,
make search diligently in his Registers and other
Archives. Whatever he should there find about the
consecration of Robert Home to the see of Winchester,
he was to have engrossed on parchment and send to
the Barons of the Exchequer, properly certified under
his own seal. Parker accordingly, on January 24,
1566-7, makes the report, addressing it to ' Honora-
blllbus Viris Dominis Baronibus Scaccarii,' and says
that having searched his Register he has found that on
February 15, 1 560-1, he had confirmed the election
of Robert Home to the see of Winchester, and on the
1 6th ofthe same month had consecrated him ' adhibitis
primitus ^ ceremoniis more Ecclesiae Anglicanae usitatis.'
With this certificate the Barons of the Exchequer were
^ Register, Parker, i, foi. 258.
^ This word primitus was added by Parker himself, the rest
being a quotation from the Register. It is not quite clear what he
can have meant by it. It cannot mean ' for the first time,' for Home's
was by no means the first consecration under the new conditions.
Nor can it weU mean simply ' the ceremonies having first been
performed,' which would be doubtful Latin in any case, for the
consecration was itself the sum of those ceremonies.

no ANGLICAN ORDERS
apparently satisfied, now that the Act had given to all
such consecrations a sanatio ab radice in the eyes of
the law, and so the Bonner case ends. To the last
the real point at Issue, the status of Bishop Barlow,
was never divulged to the world at large.

CHAPTER VI
ARCHBISHOP Parker's register
The discovery of the terrible mistake which had been
made in allowing Barlow to act as consecrating bishop
in the initiation of the new hierarchy must have come
as a thunder-stroke to the authorities of the English
Church, and especially to the Queen herself. To
Parker and the other new bishops It may well have
seemed of httle consequence, once their legal position
as parliamentary bishops was secured by the new Act.
For none of them had any real belief in Apostolical
Succession, or would have troubled himself greatly
about the breaking of the chain. To them it was
sufficient that, as Article XXIII puts it, they were
' lawfully called and sent ' and had ' public authority
given unto them in the congregation,' and they asked
no more. But to Elizabeth and to Cecil it meant
much more. To Elizabeth it meant an absolute
breach with the Catholic succession, and she had not
lost belief in the doctrine of the sacraments to the
same extent as had the bishops. To both the Queen
and to Cecil it meant, too, a very definite lessening
of bargaining power in case of a reconciliation with
Rome. And while the bishops were all of them eager
to close the door to all negotiations with Rome, well

112 ANGLICAN ORDERS
knowing that their position was hopeless if any such
negotiations were successful, the Queen and her
minister were by no means of the same mind at this
period. They were anxious to keep the door open
and avoid a final breach. At that very moment, in
1566, they were considering the possibility ofa matri
monial alliance with the Archduke Charles, the brother
of the Emperor Maximilian. A few months later there
were negotiations for a marriage with the sixteen-year-
old Charles IX of France. In either case some degree
of reconciliation with Rome could hardly fail to be
the result. Elizabeth herself, too, was sick of her
new Church, of the men whom she had been obliged
to make bishops, and of the ruin they had brought
upon all religion in England. It must have been
most unwelcome tidings that her new succession,
initiated after so great difficulties, was all a sham. At
all hazards, If she were not to be the laughing-stock
of Europe, a position which she of all women would
least desire to occupy, the matter must be rectified so
far as It was still possible. The secret was not yet out,
but still, in case It should become public property,
¦ — and who could tell whether It might not do so at any
moment, seeing how many people might possibly still
have personal knowledge on a matter which after all
took place only thirty years before.? — all that was
possible must be done to save a situation which
certainly seemed to be lost beyond redemption. If
Barlow himself were not a bishop, how about those
others who consecrated with him ? Could not they,
or one of them, have supplied what was lacking in him
of episcopal character and the power of Order ?
On this subject, the exact nature of the function

ARCHBISHOP PARKER'S REGISTER 113
of the assistant bishops at a consecration, Anglicans
generally are very much confused In their theology.
It is common to read in their books that all such
bishops always consecrate simultaneously with the
principal consecrator, that this Indeed Is the very
object for which they are present, and that consequently
Apostolical Succession resembles rather a net than a
chain, and cannot be broken by the failure of any one
bishop. Unfortunately this doctrine, beautiful and
comforting though it be to those who are disturbed
about the validity of their succession. Is not true.
It is upset completely by one little fact which they
always fail to take into consideration, namely, that
according to English custom It Is the consecrating
bishop alone who pronounces the words which make
up the ' form ' of consecration. It is manifestly use
less, so far as the transmission of the succession is
concerned, for any number of assistant bishops to join
in the laying on of hands if they do not at the same
time join in the words which constitute the ' form ' of
the sacramental act. It has no effect at all, according
to all Catholic theology, if one bishop lays on hands
while another person, whether a bishop or no, pro
nounces the words of the ' form.' Such an action would
be adjudged by all theologians to be unquestionably
Invalid, for the Church knows nothing of any such
dividing up of a single sacramental action. Yet in
the Ordinal of the Book of Common Prayer, as in all
the Sarum Pontificals which preceded it, the rubric
has always been clear that the archbishop or presiding
bishop and no one else is to pronounce these essential
words. It follows inevitably that the assisting bishops
cannot, at any consecration carried out In accordance

114 ANGLICAN ORDERS
with the Book of Common Prayer, have had any share
in carrying on the succession, supposing them other
wise to have been fully qualified to do so. There Is
a story told of a recent king of England, probably
entirely apocryphal, yet even so its value as an illus
tration is in no way Impaired, that his baptism was
invalid and had to be repeated, because the Arch
bishop of Canterbury had said the words while the
Archbishop of York had poured the water. Just In
the same way the co-operation, e.g. of Mark Antony
De Dominis, who had been formerly Catholic Arch
bishop of Spalato, at the consecration of Bishop Felton
In 1 6 17, could have done nothing to bring In the
Catholic succession, as long as the essential words
were pronounced, as they were, only by Archbishop
Abbot. The general teaching of the Church on the whole
subject is perfectly clear, and Is that the function of
assistant bishops at a consecration has nothing what
ever, ordinarily, to do with the handing on of the suc
cession. One bishop alone consecrates, and through
him alone can the line of succession normally be
traced. In all cases where the presiding bishop alone
recites the * form, ' no question can even be raised on
this point. No theologian has ever yet maintained
that anyone can perform any sacramental act whatever
without pronouncing the words which constitute the
' form ' of the sacrament, or that the essential parts of
a sacramental act can be divided between two persons,
save only in the single case of matrimony, where the
duality of the ministers is of the essence of the sacra
ment through Its nature of a contract.
Even where the assisting prelates do say the words

ARCHBISHOP PARKER'S REGISTER 115
of the ' form ' with the presiding bishop. Catholic
theologians are practically unanimous in teaching that,
here also, the whole consecration Is effected by one
only.^ There can be no question, of course, that con
secration by a single bishop Is valid. The presence
of other bishops Is not necessary, although desirable.
In their absence, abbots or even prominent priests
are allowed to act in their stead. There seems
no reason, therefore, to suppose that the function of
assisting bishops at a consecration Is in any essential
matter different from that of the assisting presbyters
at an ordination.
On this point the instructions of St. Gregory the
Great to St. Augustine of England, which are quoted
by St. Bede, are worth study. St. Gregory instructs
St. Augustine that, although as long as he Is the only
bishop In England he must necessarily act alone, as
soon as other bishops have been consecrated three or
four should come together for all future consecrations,
not for the purpose of ensuring the validity of the
succession, but, as St. Gregory puts It, 'just as other
married couples come together to a marriage to rejoice
with the bridegroom and the bride.' ^
Perhaps St. Gregory here rather minimises the
function of these assisting bishops. Whether they do
or do not pronounce the words of the ' form ' makes
ordinarily no essential difference. The whole onus
of the consecration rests on the presiding bishop, and
the act is his and not theirs. They bring the neophyte
bishop and present him to the presiding bishop, as
Scory and Hodgkins presented Parker to Barlow,
^ See Estcourt, p. 112 seq., for catena of theologians.
2 Baedae, Opera Historica, ed. Plummer, i. 52.

II 6 ANGLICAN ORDERS
saying, ' Most Reverend Father in God, we present
to you this godly and well learned man to be ordained
and consecrated Bishop.' By these words they
acknowledge that the action to be performed is not
theirs but his, and that their office is merely sub
ordinate and secondary. But, all the same, they have
a real function to perform and are there for a real and
most important purpose. They are there, to use the
words of Martene, so often quoted by Anglican con
troversialists, words with which every Catholic theo
logian Is in full accord, ' non tantum testes, sed etiam
cooperator.es,' ' not only as witnesses, but also as co-
operators.' They are witnesses of course, but their
function Is more than that. They are there on behalf
of the Church. They signify that it Is no mere
personal act of consecration In which they join, but
the official act of the Church. They co-operate in
the consecrator's act and share his responsibility. But
if he effects nothing, neither do they. They perform
no action independent of that which he performs.
They are more than witnesses, they are co-operators
In his act, but they are not Independent agents acting
apart from him.
For this, after all, is the office of a co-operator.
Aaron and Hur co-operated with Moses when they
stayed up his hands at Rephldim ; they were no mere
witnesses ; but the act and all its value was his and
not theirs, and they did nothing apart from him. Our
Blessed Lady again co-operated really and effectually
at our Redemption ; she was no mere witness as she
stood by the side of the Cross ; but she could not
therefore have redeemed us had our Lord failed to do
so. The whole merit and power of the act was His

ARCHBISHOP PARKER'S REGISTER 117
and not hers. She is our Co-Redemptress, taking the
chief part in man's co-operation with the Redeemer,
but, alone, effecting nothing. So also, while every
theologian will admit that the assistant bishop at a
consecration Is a true and effectual co-operator in what
is done, it by no means follows that he is actually con
secrating and handing on the Apostolic Succession,
apart from what is being done by the principal bishop
whom he Is assisting. Such co-operation in an act
which is, of itself, null and invalid, need not, and
ordinarily will not, be able to provide the force to
render effective an act which without such co-operation
would not have had validity.
But one case still remains to be discussed. It Is a
case which had hardly ever been discussed by theolo
gians at the date of Parker's consecration, and which
remains unsettled still, and practically undebated,
since it does not seem ever to have occurred In practice
within the Catholic Church. What Is to be held In a
case in which the consecrating bishop has consecrated
for some reason invalldly, and in which the assisting
bishops not only laid on their hands, but also recited
the whole of a valid ' form ' with the principal conse
crator, and further had the Intention of consecrating
independently and not merely of assenting formally
to his action ? Can it be held, on the analogy of the
CQ-celebratlon of newly ordained priests with the
bishop who has just ordained them, that each or any
one of these assistant bishops can ever have himself
effected a valid consecration, and so have handed on
the Apostolic Succession ? That Is a question which,
as we have said, the Church has never yet decided,
because no such question has ever been brought up

1x8 ANGLICAN ORDERS
for formal adjudication or has ever been generally
discussed by theologians. It is therefore still possible
to hold as a private opinion that such a consecration
might conceivably be valid, but it cannot be said to be
so certainly, or even probably, though perhaps a few
theologians of the present day would be inclined to
favour it, if only it could be proved, or at least presumed,
that the assisting bishops had the requisite intention
of consecrating independently, which would not nor
mally be the case.
Here then was the only possible second line of
defence left to Elizabeth, Parker and Cecil in the
difficulty into which they had got themselves, should
the facts ever become public property. It was quite
clear that Barlow being no bishop, the succession In
the direct line had pro tanto failed, and that Bonner
was so far right in saying that there was ' no lawful
bishop In England.' For all the new bishops except
Barlow, and of course Scory, had been consecrated by
Parker, and so had their succession only from Barlow.
Could it be held that the succession had nevertheless
been handed on through one or all of the other three
bishops who had acted on that memorable occasion }
Only, it is clear, if these others, and not Barlow alone,
had said the words with the intention of consecrating
independently, and had so acted in direct contra
vention of the rubric. The Register, as we now have It,
asserts that this was the case. All four bishops are
there definitely asserted to have joined in the laying
on of hands, and all four to have recited together the
words ' Receive the Holy Ghost, ' etc. ; which words in
the Book they were using, the Ordinal of Edward VI,
are directed to be said by the Archbishop alone. It

ARCHBISHOP PARKER'S REGISTER 119
follows that the whole stress of maintaining it to be
a possible opinion, that Barlow's want of episcopal
character was made good by the co-operation of the
other three, lies first upon the possibility of proving
that to have been a valid ' form ' in spite of Its having
been condemned by the Bull of Leo XIII, and,
secondly, upon the trustworthiness of the Register,
and upon it alone, for there is no corroborating
evidence available from any other source. The other
copies which remain at the Record Office or at
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, are merely pre
liminary drafts made up for the Register itself and
have no independent force apart from it. That
they are drafts, and not copies as they are usually
designated, can easily be shown by noting the correc
tions which have been made in the form which Is now
in the Register.^
Hence it becomes necessary for us, in order to
elucidate this point, to make a detailed examination
of the Register, and to ask ourselves whether the entry
we find there is evidence beyond dispute. The
question we have to decide Is this: Is it certain that
Parker's Register as we know It to-day has not been
tampered with and made to give this particular
evidence which was not originally there ? Is the
Register entirely above suspicion .¦*
Such, at any rate, was not the opinion of Cardinal
PItra, the learned Benedictine, in his day perhaps the
first authority in Europe in a matter of this kind.
He saw the Register In 1852, and expressed the
^ See Estcourt, Question of Anglican Ordinations, pp. 101-9,
for a careful discussion of the relations of these various drafts one
with another.

I20 ANGLICAN ORDERS
verdict that ' It had all the marks of an apocryphal
document.' ^ His reasons for this opinion he put
into writing, and confided the record to the care of
the monks of his own monastery of Solesmes. Unfor
tunately this record is not now available, not being
among the papers at Quarr Abbey, but there is no
doubt it Is still in existence, and when it is again
available it will be interesting to see how far the
impressions of the Cardinal coincide with those which
are now to be set down.
Archbishop Parker's Register, which as a public
record may be seen by any person at Lambeth Palace
at any time, is a large leather-covered volume, not
a mere collection of parchments bound together like
some of those of his predecessors, but a book, made
up of some 410 folios of parchment, each folio being
a separate skin. It Is divided into five parts. Confir
mations and Consecrations of Bishops ; Vacations of
Dioceses ; Various Commissions ; Visitations ; Colla
tions. In the Archbishop's own lifetime, while these
various Registers were In actual use, these separate
parts will probably have been separate volumes, or at
least not only one volume, and will have been bound
together later on, when the second volume was begun,
or possibly after the Archbishop's death. On inspec
tion this proves to have been the case. Some of the
writing on the outside margins has been cut through
(e.g. f. 119, 120) in the process of binding. Appar
ently the first part — that dealing with the Confirmation
and Consecration of Bishops — was on slightly larger
parchments than the others, and it has been cut down
* Fie du Cardinal Pi tra, by Abbot Cabrol, p. 145.

ARCHBISHOP PARKER'S REGISTER 121
to make all uniform. At what date this was done,
or whether the volume has been bound more than once,
is not of immediate consequence and would need an
expert to decide. But there can be no doubt of the
main fact that the book has been rebound since the
entries were made in it, which, of course, makes it
more possible that It may have been In some way
tampered with.
Opening the book, we find the first two folios,
numbered as such, taken up, the first with a large
representation of Parker's arms, and the second with
an elaborate title in Gothic letters. These two folios
were not originally any part of the Register itself,
but have been stuck in since with paste or gum. The
date at which this was done is again not of great conse
quence. Nothing much depends upon this elaborate
title. However, it has hitherto always passed as part
of the original record and has been reproduced as
such again and again, even in facsimile. Its object is
certainly to give importance and an antique appearance
to the Register that follows, and its wording Involves
the claim that it Is absolutely contemporary with the
actual consecration of Parker, since it gives the names
of the four bishops engaged in that ceremony with the
style which was then theirs, but which ceased to be
theirs three days afterwards when Parker proceeded
to confirm their elections. It speaks, for Instance, of
Barlow as ' quondam Bathon et Wellen episcopus nunc
electus CIcestrien.' Barlow ceased to be properly de
scribed as now Blshop-f/^f/ of Chichester as soon as his
election had been confirmed by Parker on December 20.
At the same time this false Impression of being of
the actual date of the consecration is contradicted lower

122 ANGLICAN ORDERS
down, where we are told that Anthony Huse was then
Principal Registrar. Anthony Huse, as we are told
In a more or less contemporary note in ordinary
writing on the same page, died in 1560, and Parker
himself in 1575. So anyhow it is a clumsy and rather
disingenuous piece of work, but it is not otherwise
important for our present purpose. It was probably
engrossed at the time the book was bound, to serve
as an ornamental title. All that we can say for certain
is that it Is older than 1 6 1 3, at which date It Is quoted
by Mason. The actual Register begins on folio 3. The first
part, that of the Confirmations, etc., of Bishops, with
which alone we have at present to do, consists of 143
folios, ending on f. 145. This was once a complete
and independent book, for the record of the last
bishop entered. Bishop Freake of Rochester, in 1572,
has been completed elsewhere on another page,
namely, on f. 2131;, 214 and 2141;, at the end of the
portion dealing with Vacation of Dioceses.
The record of the actual consecration of Parker
does not follow the usual and traditional form. The
ordinary form would do little except name the principal
bishop and those who assisted him, quote the authority
(the Significavit) for the consecration and give the
witnesses. But In this case this accustomed form Is
completely lacking, and Its place is taken by a quite
different document for which there Is no precedent in
any previous record of a consecration. It Is headed
Rituum ac Ceremoniarum ordo in consecrando Reveren
dissimo in Christo Patre Matthaeo Parker, etc., and
occupies nearly the equivalent of a full folio written
on both sides. The ordinary form would occupy about

ARCHBISHOP PARKER'S REGISTER 123
half a page, so that this document is about a page and
a half longer than the usual one. It Is a long and
discursive account of all that happened on that im
portant occasion, entering Into every kind of utterly
trivial detail, such as the arrangement and colour of
the carpets and the cushions ; the dress of the Arch
bishop himself and the other assistants, which varied
from a sumptuous cope to a plain black cassock ; the
doors at which the Archbishop and others went In and
out, and so forth. Among all these other details there
is recorded incidentally the very Important fact — if
fact it be — that all four bishops said the words ' Receive
the Holy Ghost,' etc.
Altogether we could scarcely conceive a document
more calculated than this is to arouse suspicions. It
is almost inconceivable as the record of a ceremony
drawn up at the very time at which it was performed.
It reads all the way through as if someone is collecting
and setting down on record as much as could still be
remembered of a ceremony which had taken place
years before. Such a farrago of unimportant details
of cushions and carpets ; of north doors and south
doors ; of chairs and tables and so forth ; all mixed
up with the points that really matter ; Is quite unsuit
able as the serious record intended for entry In a public
Register of a ceremony that had only just taken place.
It is far easier to understand, though still somewhat
ludicrous, if we can think of it as a document of
1566 rather than of 1559. The vestiarian details, for
instance, are quite what we should expect at the later
date, but would not have been so likely to be recorded
at the earlier. At the same time the description fits
Into the Register as if it were part of it. It Is In the

124 ANGLICAN ORDERS
same handwriting as the rest of the document, and was
clearly written by the same hand and approximately
at the same time as the rest of the record of the-
confirmation and consecration to which it belongs.
This same handwriting, clearly an official hand of
the right period, continues as we turn over the leaves.
There is no change for a period of several years. The
Register seems strangely uniform. It is all written,
as Lingard once remarked, ' by one hand and with one
ink.' He regarded that, strangely enough, as a sign
of authenticity, but, surely, it is not thus that Registers
are usually written. That it should be all by one hand
is not so strange, for it may all be the work of one
engrossing clerk, but even then one would expect
more variation, a change of ink and of pens, and even
the style of handwriting varying a little as the years
pass and the separate entries are made. But no. It Is
all absolutely uniform and without any variation at
all. Not until folio 109 does it change, and then at
once it Is like all other Registers. There is a change
of handwriting, and the usual variations characteristic
of all Registers occur from that point onward. But
up to that point all is uniform — ' written in one hand
and with one ink ' — irresistibly suggesting the copy of
a Register all engrossed at one time, not a true Register
at all. We look at the date at which the change comes.
The first entry in the new hand is the record of Hugh
Jones, Bishop of Llandaff, May 5, 1566. It Is the
date of the Bonner trial and of the new Act. Ther6
had been no consecration of a bishop for some time,
so the last entry In the uniform hand belongs to Richard
Cheyney in April 1562. The ' copy * may have been
made, if copy only It really is, any time between May

ARCHBISHOP PARKER'S REGISTER 125
1 562 and May 1 566. Now 1 564 is the date at which
the Bonner trial began, and it ended in 1566.
The ' copied ' portion of the record occupies, as
has been said, 107 folios. The original record, which
on this theory has been removed, will have taken the
same space within a page or so, on the supposition
that the principal or perhaps the only change has been
that the strange and unusual account of the conse
cration has been substituted for the more regular
record which was originally there. The portion of
the original book which still survives consists of 143
folios, a strange number to make up as a complete
book. Add the 107 folios which have been removed,
if the present is really but a copy, and we get 250
folios, 500 pages, a much more likely number to have
been selected as the original number of which the
Register should consist.
On this evidence it Is pretty clear what may have
been done. When the authorities first became aware
of the mistake they had made, the first 107 folios of
the original book of 250 folios had already been
written on. But the Register of Parker's consecration
did not contain the vital fact, or perhaps we had better
say the vital statement, for we are not sure it was a
fact, that all four bishops said the words as well as laid
on their hands. It was absolutely necessary to foist
this in somehow. For this purpose the new account
was prepared. A copy of it was submitted to Cecil,
hence the paper copy in the Record Office ; and a
copy was engrossed on parchment of the right size
for insertion into the Register. Then it was noticed
that the statement had been made that the bishops
had said the words in Latin, Hence the work had

126 ANGLICAN ORDERS
to be done again, and the rejected copy survives at
Corpus Christi College at Cambridge. Next it was
decided to make It, not an addition to, but an integral
part of the record. But since it was longer than the
existing and corresponding record which was to be
removed. It was necessary to rewrite the whole record.
Otherwise the paging would for all time have given
away what had been done. So these 107 folios were
removed and the work of rewriting was begun. Incor
porating this time the spurious record in its place.
This would be done without using any more folios
than before, if the last folio In the portion thus re
moved had not been completely covered. Hence
forward, except in the uniformity of the writing, the
ink and the pen, and in the suspicious character of the
Interpolated document Itself, there would be nothing
to tell anyone of the fraud which had been committed,
and the Important statement about the four bishops
would take Its place as part of the official record.
But, It may very reasonably be objected, all this is
after all merely vague circumstantial evidence, and
though It has, taken altogether, a not inconsiderable
cumulative force, it is still quite insufficient by Itself
to convict the authorities of so very serious, and Indeed
criminal an offence as would be this deliberate falsi
fication of the public records. What Is needed. In
addition to all this. Is some piece of positive evidence,
however small, which is absolutely inconsistent with
the record as It stands, and cannot possibly have been
written at the time at which the records, if they
are genuine, must have been committed to writing.
Some such small slip, as is well known, Is very often
to be found In any case where a later writing is passed

ARCHBISHOP PARKER'S REGISTER 127
off as belonging to an earlier period. Nothing is more
difficult than to reconstitute the past and still keep
every detail correct. ' Liars,' as the old proverb says,
' need to have good memories.' Almost always they
give themselves away by making some slip or per
petrating some inaccuracy. Is there anything of the
kind to be found In the document now under suspicion ?
If there is, the suspicion caused by so much circum
stantial evidence is at once much Intensified, and the
fraud may perhaps thus be brought home to Its per
petrators beyond any reasonable doubt.
When we examine the document again from this
point of view and test chronologically and in detail
every statement It makes, we find that there actually
is such an anachronism contained In it ; one which
would have been impossible In 1559 or 1560, while
the event was still recent, but which might easily have
been made in 1565 or 1566. Parker Is said to have
been assisted at the Communion Service by two of
his chaplains, Nicholas BuUingham and Edmund Gest,
respectively Archdeacons of Lincoln and of Canterbury.
Now there is no doubt at all that Gest was actually
Archdeacon of Canterbury on December 17, 1559.
He had been appointed by Elizabeth, sede vacante, on
October 13, 1559, and held the office by a Commendam
retinere even after he became Bishop of Rochester the
next year. So his claim to the title on the date Is quite
beyond cavil. But the matter stands far otherwise
with Nicholas BuUingham. This statement in his case
has been a constant difficulty to his biographers. For
nothing can be more clear than that on December 1 7,
1559, he was not Archdeacon of Lincoln and had
not been so for many years. He had held the arch-

128 ANGLICAN ORDERS
deaconry in question, it is quite true, in the time of
Edward VI, just as Parker had held the deanery of
the same Cathedral, but both had been deprived six
years before, on the accession of Queen Mary.^
BuUingham had no more right to be styled Archdeacon
of Lincoln in 1559, than Parker had to be styled Dean.
He had been succeeded there by Thomas Marshall in
1554, who had held the post till he died in 1558,
The archdeaconry was therefore again vacant when he
once more returned from beyond seas on the accession
of Elizabeth, and Sir F. Ayscough forthwith wrote to
Cecil (December 27, 1558) to ask that he might be
restored to his former preferment.^ However, the
position was not In Cecil's power to grant. The right of
patronage lay with the Bishop, and the Catholic Bishop
Thomas Watson was still in possession of his see and
would certainly refuse to appoint BuUingham. Wat
son forthwith did actually appoint Owen Hodgson,
who was installed January 14, 1558-9,^ but only held
the archdeaconry for a few months, as he Was deprived
for refusing the Oath of Supremacy at some time
late in 1559, probably by the commission appointed
October 20 in that year.
As the see was now vacant by the deprivation of
Watson, the archdeaconry remained vacant also, and
on December 17 of that year, the date of Parker's
consecration, there was no Archdeacon of Lincoln at all.
BuUingham is accordingly quite correctly described
in the immediately preceding account of Parker's
confirmation In the Register, the genuineness of which
^ Le Neve, Fasti, ii. 34, 46.
2 State Papers, Elizabeth, 1558, p. 118.
' Register, Lincoln, 1558.

ARCHBISHOP PARKER'S REGISTER 129
there is no reason to doubt, simply as ' Nicholas BuU
ingham, Doctor of Laws.' He had taken his LL.D.
degree at Cambridge on January 1 6 of that same year.
The next month, January 1559-60, BuUingham
was appointed to the bishopric of Lincoln. He ob
tained the Royal Assent to his election on January 1 2,
and was confirmed on the i8th. At that time, there
fore, January 1 8, his proper style was ' Bishop of Lincoln
elect.' That same day, January 1 8, there was issued to
him a licence of Commendam capere (not, be it noticed,
retinere as in Gest's case), conferring upon him the
vacant archdeaconry as a fresh appointment. The
document may be read In Rymer (' Foedera,' vol. xv,
p. 564). It recites the fact that the archdeaconry was
at that moment, certo et legitimo modo vacantem, et ad
nostram Presentationem ratione Vacationis Sedis Epis
copalis Lincoln, pleno jure spectantem. The grant was
to be for three years, dating from the time he received
the bishopric, that is from the day of his consecration,
before which time no Commendam was needed or
could have force. He resigned the Commendam before
the three years were fully up, on November 6, 1562,
in order to preserve the right of appointment, which
would have gone to the Crown had the Commendam
been allowed to run its full course.^
It seems, therefore, perfectly clear from these
documents that BuUingham was not Archdeacon of
Lincoln on December 17, 1559, and had not been so for
six years past.^ Nor could he be so styled on account
^ See Gibson's Codex ii. 91 5, for the law on this point.
^ Each of the records of the first fourteen bishops in Parker's
Registers, all contained in the ' copied ' portion, refers back to Parker's
own consecration as the norm for the ceremonies which foUowed. The

I30 ANGLICAN ORDERS
of the grant in Commendam, which was going to be
made a month later, for that was made to him only
when he was already bishop-elect and only took effect
after his consecration. Had he been in any sense
archdeacon before this Commendam was Issued, the
document would have been drawn In a different form,
as a Commendam retinere, not capere, allowing him to
retain a preferment he already held. Such a grant
was actually issued only a fortnight earlier to the new
Bishop of St. Asaph, Richard Davis, allowing him to
retain his prebend In the Cathedral of St. Asaph, which
would otherwise have been voided by his consecration.
The language in this case Is quite different. It runs
terms are 'adhibitis ceremoniis juxta formam descriptam in Acta
consecrationis ipsius Reverendissimi patris.' The credit due to these
entries depends, of course, entirely on the credit assigned to Parker's
own record. Each of the first six also names BuUingham as Arch
deacon of Lincoln, and as taking part in the ceremony. In each of
these six BuUingham also appears as the Commissary presiding at the
confirmation, but here he is always only Dr. BuUingham, even when
his fellow Commissary, Dr. May, is given his fuU title as Dean of
St. Paul's. The seventh entry is BuUingham's own confirmation and
consecration to Lincoln, and here there is no reference to any arch
deaconry at all in either part. He is throughout ' Nicholas BuUing
ham, Doctor of Laws.' So again in all the State documents for his
consecration, the Congi i'Uire, the Royal Assent. There does not
appear in fact to be any trace wliatever of his holding the archdeaconry,
or of his having been styled Archdeacon, in any document whatever,
State or ecclesiastical, provincial or diocesan, except only and pre
cisely in these seven accounts of consecrations which are each and all
of them already under suspicion as being not contemporary entries
but later additions made for a purpose. The Episcopal and Archi-
diaconal Registers at Lincoln, if carefully examined, would probably
put the matter beyond doubt. If he was reaUy in any sense Arch
deacon at the time in question, it should certainly be possible to prove
the fact from them.

ARCHBISHOP PARKER'S REGISTER 131
thus : Concedimus . . , Prebendam . . . quam idem
Ricardus canonice et legitime adeptus est et adhuc canonice
possidet . . . quinquennium retinere, etc. A compari
son of the two documents, which almost follow one
another in Rymer, makes it clear beyond all doubt
that BuUingham was not Archdeacon of Lincoln on
December 17, 1559 ; and that no one writing at that
time could possibly have called him so. He was only
plain Dr. BuUingham, and remained so until, a month
later, he became Bishop of Lincoln. Never for one
single moment after 1553 was his proper style Arch
deacon of Lincoln, and certainly it was not so in Decem
ber 1559 ; but on the other hand, anyone writing a
little carelessly five or six years afterwards, remem
bering only a little vaguely that he had certainly been
Archdeacon of Lincoln at one time, and that he was
restored to the enjoyment of the revenues of the same
about the date In question, might very easily have
fallen into the blunder.
This error seems to provide the necessary additional
evidence to stamp the account of Parker's consecration
in the Register, already on so many grounds lying
under suspicion, as being simply a forgery, foisted
into the position it now occupies. Since the object
of the forgery seems likely to have been to Insert the
statement, till then absent from the record, that all
four bishops said the words as well as laid on hands —
for no other object can easily be suggested, and this
was clearly urgently pressing — it is not difficult to see
how much, or how little, credence that statement
should still retain. Whether all four bishops did
actually say the words must remain uncertain. All
that we can say is that there Is no evidence for it, for

132 ANGLICAN ORDERS
the Register in its present state clearly proves nothing.
If it is to be used as the sole and sufficient evidence
for so important a statement, it needs first a very great
deal of rehabilitation, made as the result of an even
more close and detailed examination than that which
we have been able to give to it.

CHAPTER VII
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE DOCUMENTS
By the passage through Parliament of the * Act
declaring the making and consecrating of the arch
bishops and bishops of this realm to be good, lawful
and perfect,' the legal position ofthe bishops had been
secured, though at the price of great humiliation.
Still an even greater humiliation had been avoided,
and the facts about Parker's consecration had been
kept secret. As things now were, it was only the
Government who knew the real facts. Bonner did
not know ; the Catholic controversialists on the Con
tinent did not know ; the English people did not
know, but the Government knew. The Queen knew,
Cecil knew, Parker knew — at least it seems Impossible
to suppose that they did not know. The secret lay
open to anyone who could examine the public records.
What course should they adopt ? We have no evi
dence whatever on the subject except the state of the
records themselves, but they are eloquent enough,
and seem to leave no doubt as to what was done.
We now go on to examine their evidence in detail.
The reign of Henry VIII was a period of Intense
legal activity and accuracy. The documents of the
time are well kept and their phraseology is scrupulously

134

ANGLICAN ORDERS

exact. Any defect in the records of this period has
an importance, therefore, which it would not have in
a more troubled time such as that of the Civil Wars
a hundred years later.
Let us first take the Diocesan Episcopal Registers
of Canterbury province, for the years which are impor
tant for our inquiry, namely from 1533 to 1555, and
see how far they are perfect. It will give us a good Idea
how matters stand with such records as are in ecclesias
tical custody.

perfect
perfect
perfectperfectperfect
perfectperfect
perfect perfect
perfect perfectperfectperfect
perfect
begin only In 1619
begin In 1538, perfect
from that date
missing from 1518-1554
perfect except 1548 to
^553
^ The second extant volume of St. David's Register is wrongly
marked on the cover as beginning 1534, and is generaUy so quoted.
On examination it proves to begin only in 1554.

Canterbury .
Chichester .
Coventry
Ely . .
Exeter
Hereford
Lincoln .
London .
Norwich .
Rochester Salisbury
Winchester .
WorcesterBangor
LlandaffSt. Asaph
St. David's ^ .
Bath and Wells

DESTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTS 135
Leaving Llandaff out of the question, everything
else is perfect all through the province, with the
striking exception of Barlow's three dioceses. Of
these St. Asaph begins just two years after Barlow's
time, St. David's has a volume missing which includes
the whole of Barlow's episcopate, and Bath and Wells
has precisely Barlow's volume missing and nothing
else. We turn next to the minor ecclesiastical records
which are connected with the case, to see how the
matter stands with them.
St. Asaph Chapter Records — missing for Bar
low's years.
St. David's Chapter Records — missing for Bar
low's years.
Bath and Wells Chapter Records — missing for
Barlow's years.
Dean and Chapter of Canterbury's Register —
mutilated just at the place where Barlow's
entry should be, otherwise perfect.^
Archdeacon of Canterbury's Register — muti
lated just at the place where Barlow's entry
should be, otherwise perfect.
Here again we seem to have the same story. Such
a singular coincidence as the absence of all these
documents for the crucial dates can hardly be due to
mere accident. Let us see next how matters stand
with the State records. The Patent Rolls should
^ This Register was long supposed to be missing for the years in
question, and was so returned in the Reports of the Hist. MSS.
Commission. It has, however, been found, in a very bad condition
and badly burnt, but is apparently mutilated at the crucial page or
pages.

136 ANGLICAN ORDERS
contain copies of the Conge d'elire, the Royal Assent,
the Significavit, If it was ever Issued, and any and every
Grant of the Temporalities, whether it be the ordinary
Restitution or take any exceptional form.
For St. Asaph we have the Conge d'elire and the
Royal Assent, and these were the only two documents
issued under the Great Seal for that diocese. But for
St. David's we have nothing at all on these Rolls.
There is no Conge d'elire, no Royal Assent, and no
Grant of Custody of the Temporalities, although we
know that all these were issued and ought to be there.
Of course there is no Significavit, that has been said
already. We know the terms of the Royal Assent,
because we have the Signed Bill which orders its Issue,
and it is also copied Into Cranmer's Register as the
authority for the confirmation. So, too, we know the
terms of the Grant of Custody, because we have the
Privy Seal which was the authority for its Issue, and
because it was also copied, very exceptionally, no
doubt because of Its unusual form and validity for a
whole lifetime, on to the Rolls of the Lord Treasurer's
Remembrancer In the Exchequer. No other similar
grant Is copied there, which shows the Impression that
its extraordinary wording made upon the Exchequer
officials. The terms of the Conge d'elire we do not
know, because the records of the Chapter of St. David's,
which is the only other place we should expect to find
it, are also missing. But the important point for the
moment is this, that all these three documents ought
undoubtedly to be enrolled on the Patent Rolls for
27 or 28 Henry VIII and that not one of them is there.
The minutes of the Privy Council might give us
much help, but as usual they are missing in every case

DESTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTS 137
for the critical periods. For the time of Barlow's
appointment, 1535, we have nothing, for the records
only begin again after a silence of 100 years in 1540.
Before that we have only ' a few original Minutes
Ordinances and Letters which have survived.' ^ The
record begins again in August 1540, and on Septem
ber 29 of that year we find that a commission was
appointed ' to examine what juels plate and ornaments
be embezzled from the shrine of St. David's by whom
and to what value.' We have not the report of the
Commission, so we do not know how far Barlow was
involved. When we come to the next crucial period, the first
and second years of Elizabeth, we find the same thing.
From May 1559 to May 1562 ' the Register is unfor
tunately missing.' ^ So we can get no information
about the institution of the new hierarchy from this
source. We look next for the period of the Bonner
trial 1564-6. The record is missing from May 28,
1564, to August 7, 1564, and again from October 2
to November 4 In that year, and once more between
December 31, 1565, and October 8, 1566. The oath
was tendered to Bonner on April 26, 1564. His trial
was ' set for Michaelmas term ' and therefore probably
took place In October 1564. The preparation ofthe
new Act ' declaring the making and consecrating of
the archbishops and bishops of this realm to be good,
lawful and perfect ' was the period before September 29,
1 566. The coincidence of dates Is remarkable.
There are two other documents of much less
^ Proceedings of the Privy Council, edited for the Commissioners
of Public Records by Sir Harris Nicolas, vol. vii. Preface, p. i.
2 Acts of the Privy Council, edited by J. R. Dasent, vol. vii. p. xvi.

138 ANGLICAN ORDERS
Importance which ought to be forthcoming, and might
conceivably be of use. The first is Barlow's resigna
tion into the King's hands of Bisham Priory In July
1536. The original ought to be among the records
of the Court of Augmentations, but It Is missing,
though almost all similar documents are there extant.
A copy of it, however, exists on the Close Rolls
(28 Henry VIII, pt. 2, m. 59). It Is only of interest
for our present purpose on account of Its description
of Barlow, who appears as ' Bishop of St. David's '
and ' prior commendatarlus perpetuus ' of Bisham. It
is dated July 5, 1536, and is therefore proof positive,
if any additional proof was needed, that at that date he
was passing as full bishop and not bishop-elect. It
is more or less an accident that we know this, as the
original document is missing, and by no means all
similar documents were copied on the Close Rolls.
In this case it very likely was copied because the King
was going to refound the priory as a Benedictine
abbey, so it was especially necessary to preserve
evidence of its surrender. The other document which
it Is worth our while to look for Is the ' Parliament
Pawn ' for the Parliament in which Barlow first took
his seat. These ' Parliament Pawns ' are the memor
anda used in the sending out of the Writs of Summons
to a new Parliament, and they often contain short notes
which may be of interest. It would be possible,
therefore, that we might find some note which would
throw light on the question why Barlow was sum
moned in April 1536 as full Bishop of St. David's,
instead of Bishop-elect, which was the title he was
really entitled to at that moment. But here again we
shall find that someone has been before us. The

DESTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTS 139
' Pawns ' for this particular Parliament are missing,
though earlier ones are in existence. The State
records have given precisely the same result as the
ecclesiastical. Someone in a sufficiently powerful
position to do so seems to have gone over the whole
field with great thoroughness and to have removed
every record bearing upon Barlow's case.
Let us go back to the Patent Rolls. It is quite
impossible to suppose that Barlow's documents were
never entered there. If we were to grant, for the sake
of argument, that this may have been so with the
Conge d'elire and the Royal Assent, at least It cannot
possibly be true of the Grant of Custody of Tempor
alities. There is no Instance ofthe period where such
a grant has been left unentered. Barlow himself will
have been sure to see that It was duly enrolled, for
otherwise, if he lost the original document, there might
easily be grave difficulties affecting his administration
of the episcopal properties. The Patent Rolls would
be the primary proof In a Court of Law of the extent
and validity of the grant that had been made.
Now In some of the other cases we have considered
it would be easy enough to remove a document. If
the document Is on a separate piece of parchment or
forms a separate volume it is easy to abstract It. But
In the case of the Rolls It would be necessary to muti
late the Roll itself. These Rolls are made up of a
series of membranes, fastened together, the top of
each to the bottom of the next, and thus making a long
strip, perhaps sixty to a hundred feet in length, rolled
up, as the name denotes, into a cylinder. To remove
a document which has once been enrolled Involves

140 ANGLICAN ORDERS
the cutting and mutilation of the entire Roll, while
even if such an attempt should be made, the fact that
the Roll Is written on both sides would render it
comparatively easy to detect the fraud. For it will
very rarely happen that deeds will commence on eiach
side at exactly the same place.
To the Record Office, therefore, the present
writer went, determined to examine the Rolls for 1536
as minutely as possible, and confident that there must
be some trace of a mutilation which would show that
the Grant of Custody, and most probably Barlow's
other documents, had been removed. He mentioned
what he was going to do to the officials in charge of
the Search Room, but received little encouragement
from them. ' How was it possible,' they asked, ' for
anyone to have got at the Patent Rolls at any time ?
They had always been carefully kept, as so much
depended upon them, and had always been in safe
custody. They were perfect, it was believed, from
the time of King John, the oldest and best preserved
of all our records.' They felt obviously that It was a
waste of time to search them for such a purpose, and
that there was no chance of any such discovery. In
spite of all that they said the search began.
As documents were not entered on the Rolls in
any strict chronological order but only according to
the regnal years, it became necessary to search the
whole of the Rolls for 28 Henry VIII. One could
not turn to the months of June and July, and thereby
lessen the labour of searching. Fortunately it was
not a year of many grants, and the whole is included
in two Rolls.
It was not long before the expected discovery was

DESTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTS 141
made. In the second Roll two membranes which are
joined together obviously do not fit. There has been
interference of some kind. As the judgment of an
expert seemed to be needed, the Roll was at once
submitted to one of the officials of the Record
Office, and he very kindly wrote the following report
upon it.
Patent Roll 670
(28 Henry VIII, part 2).
' Membrane 20 of this Roll (in the old numer
ation ; in the later numeration m. 13) shows
signs of very unusual dealing. At the top It
gives the end of a quite ordinary grant dated
July 1 8th. This is cancelled In the ordinary
way by crossed lines. The preceding membrane,
however, does not give the rest (the beginning)
of the same grant. The inference seems to be
that either before or after the make-up of the
Roll (probably after) the preceding membrane
or membranes was or were removed and another
or others substituted. It does not seem probable
that the cause for this action was the grant of
which a fragment has remained, otherwise can
cellation in the ordinary form would have been
applied to the whole of it as it has been to the
part ; and indeed the mere fact of removal ap
pears to argue some very special and unusual case.
' It Is possible that the partly remaining grant,
if It could be traced either elsewhere on the Roll
or among the original warrants, might throw light
(either by its nature or its length) on the question
how much was cut out and why.'

142 ANGLICAN ORDERS
It is impossible to say how many membranes have
been removed, since it was done before they were
numbered. But it is unlikely that Barlow's three
documents will all have been on the same membrane,
and so it may have been necessary to remove three.
If so the records of many other documents will have
been removed with them, and we may have the
explanation why, for instance, Sampson's Significavit
and Rugge's (or Repp's) Royal Assent and Significavit
are all missing. Presumably they were on one or
other of these membranes, and their removal was,
so far, accidental, but the loss in their case is of no
consequence as copies exist elsewhere.
This completes the evidence about Barlow's docu
ments. Wherever we turn, whether to his own epis
copal records, or to the other ecclesiastical records
which would contain entries which concern him, or
to the records of the State, we find the same condition
of affairs. Someone has been before us and has
removed every record which could throw any light
upon the question of his consecration. Our next
task must be to find out who was responsible for
these mutilations and abstractions.
It has sometimes been said that the loss of Barlow's
Register at St. David's is accounted for by the action
of his successor, Bishop Ferrar, In burning the records
there. But the books which Ferrar burnt were the
Missals and other Catholic service books, in the
calendars of some of which the dates of certain events
were said to be entered.^ He is not recorded to have
* See Estcourt, Question of Anglican Ordinations, p. 80, and
Appendix xxviii. The original paper is among Wharton's I.ISS.
at Lambeth, No. 585, foi. 239.

DESTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTS 143
meddled with the Registers, and that in fact he did
not do so is shown by the existence of a Register of
earlier date. It Is only Barlow's Register, or rather
the volume in which Barlow's Register was contained,
which has disappeared. The others are still extant.
Nor can we throw the blame on Queen Mary,
as Archbishop Wake tries to do in his letter to le
Courayer.^ He was clearly aware, through some
Lambeth tradition, that some interference with the
documents had taken place. But Queen Mary could
not know that Barlow would consecrate Parker after
her death, and apart from that fact there was no con
ceivable reason why Barlow's papers should interest
anybody. It is clearly Barlow's records that have
primarily been tampered with, and therefore the person
who did It must have been interested in Barlow and
in no one else, and the interference must have been
later than 1559.
From the Patent Rolls we can learn that the muti
lation there must be anterior to the earlier of the two
numerations of the membranes. There does not seem
to be any record in existence as to the date of this
numeration, but the figures seem not later than about
1620, though any argument based only on the shape
of Arabic numerals Is rather precarious. We come,
then, to this conclusion. Barlow's documents could
have been of no Interest to anyone before 1559,
for his sole Importance arises from his having conse
crated Parker. The mutilation, therefore, must have
occurred between 1559 and, say, 1620. It can only
have been done by the highest authority, for who else
1 le Courayer, Dissertation, etc., p. 349.

144 ANGLICAN ORDERS
could have access both to the State Records and to the
Ecclesiastical ? It does not seem possible to suggest
any other moment at which It is so likely to have
happened as that which we have already put forward —
the period of Bishop Bonner's trial — nor any other hand
which could have carried It through except that of
the Supreme Governor and her utterly unscrupulous
minister, William Cecil. The only possible alterna
tive would be the year 1614 or thereabouts, of which
we shall say something directly.
It may be, also, that we have in this mutilation of
the records the explanation of the gaps In Cranmer's
Register. If it was determined to cover up the tell
tale absence of any record of Barlow's consecration by
abstracting other records from that Register so that
he should no longer stand alone in this respect, there
can have been no difficulty in so doing. That Register
was a mere collection of loose parchments, each
bishop's record being generally recorded on a separate
piece of four or six leaves. 'The binding of them into
a single volume is of much later date. It was only
necessary, therefore, to remove any documents that
were desired, and no trace would be left behind. No
great harm has been done by the abstraction. If abstrac
tion there was, for the Archbishop's Register, as we
have said, is only one of very many ways in which
a consecration can be proved. But considering the
careful way in which the surviving records prove to
have been drawn up, it seems much more likely that
a thief has been at work, than that Cranmer's registrars
should have been so careless in their work as is gener
ally supposed. In one point, indeed, the thieves seem to have

DESTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTS 145
over-reached themselves. There seems to be one
record, and one only, missing from Warham's Register,
and It may very likely have been stolen at the same
time. It is that of Stephen Gardiner. The contro
versial advantage of being able to retort on those who
attacked the position of Barlow, that Gardiner himself
was in no better case, is obvious enough, and it was
at once made use of by Mason when the suggestion
was first made that perhaps Barlow had never been
consecrated. But the argument seems too convenient,
and to some at least It will seem to increase the
probability that this absence of records Is due to fraud
and not to mere carelessness of a registrar.
There is, of course, no proof that these records
have been destroyed. They have been removed from
their proper custodians, that is all that we can say.
It may be that they still exist hidden away in some
forgotten receptacle — at Hatfield or at Lambeth, or
somewhere else, — and will some day be discovered
and brought to light. A writer In Baconiana, the
Journal of the Bacon Society, some years ago stated
that 'there is a sealed bag in the Record Office, which
was sealed up at the death of Queen Elizabeth, and Is
only to be opened by the joint consent of the reigning
sovereign, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the
Lord Chancellor.' If there should be any truth In
this rather improbable-sounding story, the missing
documents may very well be there. But perhaps on
the whole it Is more likely that Elizabeth and Cecil did
their work with Tudor thoroughness, acting on the
principle that 'dead men tell no tales,' and committed
the whole collection to the flames. It did not occur to
them that the records would ever be opened to public

146 ANGLICAN ORDERS
search, and that many of the documents they were
destroying could be found copied In other places.
They forgot that they had still left in existence these
other proofs of a fact, the memory of which they
thought they were hiding up effectually, never again
to be revealed to anybody until the end of time itself.
The period of the Bonner trial and its consequent
disclosures seems by far the most likely date for the
collection of the ecclesiastical documents, but there is
some reason to think that the mutilation of the Patent
Rolls ought to be assigned to a later date. Francis
Mason, as has been already said, published a deliber
ately shortened and misleading copy of Barlow's Grant
of Custody of the Temporalities of St. David's in his
book on the ' Consecration of Bishops in the Church
of England,' which came out in 1613. He gives as
his reference for this mutilated document, ' the Rolls
Chapel,' which would Imply that It was still at that
date to be found on the Patent Rolls. The Roll
of the King's Treasurer's Remembrancer, on which
Estcourt found the document in 1870, Is an exchequer
document, and would not have been in the Rolls
Chapel in 1613. Since that date we have also been
given access to the Privy Seal, the original authority,
that Is, for the issue ofthe document In question, which
is consequently now extant in two places. But this
again would not have been at the Rolls Chapel in 161 3,
and It is very unlikely that Mason ever saw either of
these two copies which are now known to exist. If
his reference Is correct and it was really from the
Patent Rolls that he took it, It follows that the mutila
tion through which it has been removed must have
taken place at a later date than 1613, It cannot have

DESTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTS 147
been much later, because the figures ofthe numeration,
which are later than the mutilation, are themselves
apparently at latest early seventeenth century. The
simplest explanation of all the available facts would
seem to be that Mason found the document In its
proper place on the Patent Rolls and realised its force
as the clearest possible proof that Barlow's conse
cration had never been even contemplated. He then
published a garbled form, so arranged as to give a
completely false idea ofthe real nature ofthe document,
and then persuaded the authorities to mutilate the
Roll, so that none might ever know the actual character
of the grant in question, or draw from It the inevitable
conclusions. In this deception he was completely
successful for more than 250 years, until his labours
were rendered nugatory by the throwing open of the
records.

CHAPTER VIII
THE FIFTY YEARS* SILENCE
The difficulties in which the Government was finding
Itself in consequence of Bonner's plea that Home was
no legal Bishop of Winchester were, of course, obvious
to everyone, even before the desperate remedy of the
new Act had been carried through. Exactly what the
difficulty was no one knew, but few can have been
satisfied to believe that there was nothing more in
the matter than the mere fact, as alleged in the Act,
that the Ordinal used had never received formal
parliamentary sanction.
Precisely what had happened at Parker's conse
cration, who had been the officiating bishops, and what
the exact form of service employed, seems to have
been kept a secret from the very first. There was
quite enough irregularity in the fact that no single
bishop actually in possession of a diocese in England
took part in the consecration, and In the doubtful
legality of the Ordinal of Edward VI, to make it
desirable to keep the matter as much in the back
ground as possible, and consequently it is probable
that very few, even in those circles where one would
have expected a full and exact knowledge, had any
real certainty as to what had happened. This seems

THE FIFTY YEARS' SILENCE 149
clear from the ignorance displayed by the leading
Catholic controversialists on the Continent. They
had been for the most part Oxford men, holding high
positions in various colleges, and especially at New
College, and also in many cases canonries and other
preferments in various cathedral bodies. None of
them had been deprived until a month or two before
Parker's consecration, and In some cases they had
remained in England till long after that event. They
would have known or been able to find out everything,
if the facts had been generally known in Oxford
common rooms or in cathedral closes. Harding, for
instance, had been Fellow of New College and nomin
ated Warden and was also Prebendary of Winchester
and Treasurer of Salisbury. Stapleton, too, ' the most
learned Roman Catholic of all his time,' had been
Fellow of New College and Prebendary of Barlow's
own Cathedral of Chichester, and did not leave Eng
land until 1563. Allen was Principal of St. Mary
Hall and held a canonry at York. He only resigned
his Principalship In 1560, and left England In 1561.
Bristowe, Fellow of Exeter, and Campion, Fellow of
St. John's, were still at Oxford as late as 1568. John
Bridgwater held the Rectorship of Lincoln College
ten years later still, up to 1578, It is clear that such
men must have known or could have found out all
that was allowed to become public property, and yet
from their writings we find that they were in absolute
darkness as to what had really happened. It explains
the purpose of that strange selection of the hour for
the consecration, at five or six o'clock on a December
morning, with practically no one except officials pres
ent, not with ' thousands of spectators ' as Bramhall

I50 ANGLICAN ORDERS
surmises, but only. In the words of the Register,
in presentia nonnullorum aliorum (' in the presence of
some others '). It explains why Stowe knew nothing
of the consecration, and has not recorded even the
bare fact. Not one of the foreign ambassadors said
a word about it In their reports. Machyn ^ knew ;
probably he had something to do with the carpets and
the cushions and so forth, for that was more or less
his business ; but his Is the solitary mention which
has come to us from any outside source. From the
first the whole affair had been a secret ; and a secret
it was to be far more than before, and for much
weightier reasons than ever, for full fifty years to come.
This silence Is so marked and so Invariable ; unbroken
on any single occasion for all those years ; even when
the exigencies of controversy seemed to make speech
inevitable ; that it is impossible to think It due to
anything less than a stringent command from the
Supreme Governor herself. After all there was reason.
She had apparently caused the Register at Lambeth
to be rewritten and falsified. She had destroyed all
the documents from which information could be
gathered. Yet the danger was not over. None could
say who might not be in possession of the facts about
Barlow from personal knowledge, and might carry
that knowledge, if he once realised its importance, to
Louvain or to Douay. The only safe way was silence,
and that for years to come ; silence as to who had
consecrated Parker, and silence also about the Register
from which the facts could beat any moment ascertained.
How rigid that silence was will best be realised

^ D

tary, p. 220.

THE FIFTY YEARS' SILENCE 151
from a study of the controversies of those years.
Controversy in those days was a leisurely affair carried
on by a series of pamphlets or even volumes, and
lasting over a whole course of years. We will take
two of the most notable : the controversy of Harding
with Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, and that of Stapleton
with Fulke, Master of Pembroke Hall at Cambridge.
The point to notice is the absolute refusal, under
whatever provocation, to give the names of the con
secrators of Archbishop Parker, or to appeal to any
Register. Harding ^ : ' You bear yourself as though you
were Bishop of Salisbury. But how can you prove
your vocation .''... Who hath called you ? Who
hath laid hands on you ? By what example hath he
done It ? How and by whom are you consecrated .''
Who hath sent you ? Who hath committed to you
the office you take upon you .'' Be you a priest or be
you not ? If you be not, how dare you usurp the
name and office of a Bishop ? If you be, tell us who
gave you Orders ? The institution of a priest was
never yet but in the power of a Bishop. Bishops have
always, after the Apostles' times, according to the
ecclesiastical canons, been consecrated by three other
Bishops, with the consent of the Metropolitan and
confirmation of the Bishop of Rome.'
Jewel ^ : ' We deny not the consecration of three
Bishops, we deny not the confirmation of the Metro
politan. We ourselves are so consecrated and con
firmed. The matter that lieth between us is this :
whether through the whole Church of Christ no man
1 Confutation ofthe Apology, etc., 1565.
2 Defence ofthe Apology, Parker Society, p. 330.

152 ANGLICAN ORDERS
may be allowed for a Bishop without the confirmation
of the Pope,'
Harding^: ' It remaineth, M. Jewel, you tell us
whether your vocation be ordinary or extraordinary.
If it be ordinary show us the letters of your orders, at
least show us that you have received power to do the
office you presume to exercise, by due order of laying
on of hands and consecration. But order and conse
cration you have not. For who could give that to you
of all these new ministers, which he hath not himself.? '
Jewel ^ : ' Whereas it pleaseth you to call for my
letters of orders and to demand of me, as by some
authority, whether I be a priest or no .'' what hands
were laid over me .'' and by what order I was made ?
I answer you : I am a priest, made long sithence by
the same order and ordinance and I think also by the
same man and the same hands, that you, M, Harding,
were made priest by. In the late time of K. Edward
the sixth, ' Further, as If you were my Metropolitan, ye
demand of me whether I be a Bishop or no ? I answer
you : I am a Bishop, and that by the force and accus
tomed canonical election of the whole Chapter of Saris-
bury, assembled solemnly together for that purpose,
' Our Bishops are made in form and order, as they
have been ever, by free election of the chapters, by
consecration of the Archbishop and other three
Bishops ; and by the admission of the prince,'
Harding ^ : ' Ye were made, you say, by the Con-
1 In Jewel's 'Defence of the Apology, Parker Society, p. 332.
^ Defence of the Apology, Parker Society, p. 344.
3 A Detection of Sundry Foul Errors made by M. Jewel (Louvain,
1568), p. 234.

THE FIFTY YEARS' SILENCE 153
secration of the Archbishop and other three Bishops.
And how I pray you was your Archbishop himself
consecrated .'' What three Bishops in the realm were
there to lay hands on him ? You have now uttered
a worse case for yourselves than was by me before
named. For your Metropolitan himself had no
lawful consecration.'
To this Jewel makes no reply, though he pub
lished another edition in which he answers other points
of Harding's. Next let us see Stapleton's attack and Fulke's
answer. Stapleton ^ : ' The pretended Bishops of Protes
tants . . . who laid hands over them ? Whither
went they to be consecrated, seeing that at home
there was no number of such as might and would
serve their turne ? '
Or again In another work 2;
' If I should ask M. Horn again, how he can go
for a Bishop and write himself the B. of Winchester,
being called to that function only by the letters patent
of the prince, without due Consecration or imposition
of hands by any Bishop or Bishops living . . . neither
he nor all his fellows, being all unordered prelates,
shall ever be able to make any sufficient or reason
able answer (answering as Christian Catholike men)
whereby it may appear that they may go for right
Bishops of Christes Church; but that they must
remain, as they were before, or mere laymen, or
simple priestes.'
1 Fortresse ofthe Faith (Antwerp, 1565), pp. 141-4.
2 A Counterblast to M. Home's Fague Blaste against M. Fekenham
(Louvain, 1567), p. 458.

154 ANGLICAN ORDERS
Fulke i : ' Where he saith, that when all the
Popish Bishops were deposed there was none to lay
hands on the Bishops that should be newly consecrated
it Is utterly false ; for there was one of the popish
Bishops that continued In his place ; there were also
divers that were consecrated Bishops In King Edward's
time.' Here It is worth noting how carefully Fulke, who
must have known the facts perfectly well, draws a
' red herring ' across the path to lead attention away
from Barlow. ' There was one ofthe popish Bishops,'
that is, Kitchin ; ' there were also Bishops consecrated
in King Edward's time,' these are Scory and Cover-
dale ; but Barlow Is carefully left out.
When, a few years later, Bristow returned to the
question again and Fulke was appointed to answer
him, he makes no attempt at defence at all, but takes
refuge In simple abuse, ' With all our heart we abhorre,
defye, detest and spit at your stinking greasle anti
christian orders.' ^ After that there was obviously
nothing more to be said.
So we might go on, but it shall suffice only to take
a single Instance more. Godwin, Bishop of Llandaff,
in complhng his ' Catalogue of the Bishops of Eng
land,' must have referred continually to the Registers
at Lambeth. His painstaking and laborious work
could not have been compiled without perpetual
reference to all such sources of Information. Yet In
his first edition, published in 1601, although he gives
the date of Parker's consecration quite correctly as
December 17, 1559, he does not give the smallest hint
1 Stapleton's Fortresse Overthrown, p. 117 (Parker Society).
2 A 'Retentive to Stay, etc. (London, 1580), p. 69.

THE FIFTY YEARS' SILENCE 155
as to who his consecrators were. The secret still
holds. In his second edition, published in 161 5, the
information is Inserted. The period of secrecy has
come to an end. Barlow has been dead for forty-
seven years, and no living man can still have anything
to tell about his earlier years. So It Is thought safe
to give the name.
The long silence had actually been broken In 16 14,
a little before the publication of Godwin's second
edition. The renewed attacks of Cathohc contro-
verslahsts, still left without any definite knowledge
after all these years, caused Archbishop Abbot to
determine to give the information at last. He sent
for four Catholic priests, two seculars and two Jesuits,
who were then in prison for their religion, and pro
duced the Register before them. The Catholic and
Protestant accounts differ considerably as to the effect
that was produced and the opinions that were expressed.
What it was is after all of no great importance. They
were taken by surprise, and were also probably of no
great skill In such matters. They may have expressed
one opinion at the time, and come to another after
talking it over together afterwards. It matters but
little. We can form our own opinion on the Register
to-day, and can examine It under more satisfactory
conditions. The important point Is that by this
dramatic act the long silence was at length broken,
the well-kept secret as to the actual consecration of
Archbishop Parker was at last divulged, the existence
of the Register was made public and it was appealed
to as the real authority by which the question at Issue
might be settled. The question inevitably asked then,
as now, was. Why was this not done long ago ? Why,

156 ANGLICAN ORDERS
if all was in order and could be submitted to scrutiny,
this long silence of fifty years, which had been the
parent in turn of so many wild rumours and improbable
stories, including that of the ' Nag's Head ' which had
been current for so many years .-' This story is told
in several different forms but the main point in all is
the same, that the newly elected bishops were gathered
together at the Nag's Head Tavern in Cheapside, and
that there Scory ' with a Bible in his hand, and they all
kneeling before him, laid it upon every one of their
heads or shoulders, saying " Take thou authority to
preach the word of God sincerely " ; and so they rose
up bishops.' Only the long silence and mystery
which was made about the real facts could ever have
got credence for a story so obviously childish. It
must have had some origin, for it is not like a mere
malicious invention, and it is likely enough that there
was some gathering at this tavern, perhaps after the
confirmation of the election of the new prelates at Bow
Church almost adjoining, and that after dinner some
horseplay and travesty of the ceremony of consecration
took place and was witnessed by Catholic attendants,
Scory at least was quite likely to have got merry with
wine and to have acted in this kind of way. The
story had a much greater Influence than It deserved,
just because no real information could be got by
anyone, and people were consequently ready to believe
anything, no matter how impossible or absurd.
Before the Register was actually shown by Arch
bishop Abbot in May 16 14, its existence had been
made known to the world by Francis Mason, in his
book * The Consecration of the Bishops in the Church
of England,' etc., which was published in 161 3. In

THE FIFTY YEARS' SILENCE 157
a long dialogue, ' Orthodox ' maintains the Anglican
position against ' Philodox,' When he comes to the
crucial point of the consecration of Parker (p, 127),
' Orthodox,' ' to take away all scruple,' promises ' to
faithfully deliver out of Authentlcall records, both the
day when he was consecrated and the persons by whom,'
With the reference at the side Ex Registro Matth.
Park. tom. i. f. 2 and 10, and In form as if it were a
transcript, which of course it is not, he quotes :
/ William Barlow.

'Anno 1559 Matth. Park.
Cant. Cons. 1 7 Decemb. by

John Scorle.
Miles Coverdale.
John Hodgeskins.'

Philodox replies : ' If all this were granted yet it
were nothing unless you could justify the consecration
of his consecrators, therefore you must tell me when
they were made Bishops.'
Orthodox : ' Two of them In the reign of King
Henry 8 and two in the reign of King Edward the
sixth. In the reign of King Henry 8, Barlow and the
Suffragan of Bedford. Bishop Barlow was a man of
singular note , . . who was advanced to be Prior of
Bisham and from thence elected to the Bishoprick of
Saint Asaph, which election was confirmed 23 Feb.
1535, and soon after It pleased the King to preferre him
to the Bishoprick of Saint David's where he continued
all the days of King Henry duly discharging all things
belonging to the order of a Bishop, even Episcopal
consecration as I have already declared out of authen
tlcall records. He was also translated by King Edward
to the Bishopric of Bath and Wells and by Queen
Elizabeth promoted to Chichester. And as he was

158 ANGLICAN ORDERS
generally acknowledged and obeyed as a Bishop in his
own nation, so Buchanan relating how King Henry
sent him Embassadour into Scotland doth give him
his just Episcopal title. Now you told us before out
of Sanders that in King Henry's time " none might
be acknowledged for a Bishop unless he were conse
crated by three, with the consent ofthe Metropolitan,"
Wherefore seeing Barlow was so famously and noto
riously acknowledged not only In the days of Queen
Elizabeth and King Edward, but also in the days of
King Henry, it Is a clear case that he was so consecrated.'
In side references Mason quotes the Register of
Cranmer for the election and confirmation to St. Asaph
and to St. David's, but gives no reference whatever
for any consecration. Such a halting proof posi
tively asked for a challenge, and promptly received it
from Champney and other Catholic controversialists.
Mason had, in fact, given the whole case away. It was
evident from his words that — what no one had hitherto
suspected as far as we can tell — there was no authentic
proof of Barlow's consecration to be found. It is
from that point that, the fifty years of silence having
come to an end, and the name of Parker's consecrator
having at last been given to the world, the old myths
of the Nag's Head fable and such like were gradually
abandoned, and Catholic controversialists more and
more fixed on the point of the want of evidence for
Barlow's consecration ; a point which has been de
bated ever since, and towards the solution of which
this book may perhaps be of assistance.
It Is worth noticing, too, how all the chief Anghcan
writers in Elizabethan times were careful to leave a

THE FIFTY YEARS' SILENCE 159
loophole in all that they wrote on episcopal succession
to cover the case of an actual break. It certainly
suggests that they at least knew how the case stood
about Barlow, and realised that although it was
necessary for them to defend Episcopacy against the
Puritans, It would not do to close the door too rigidly
against those who had not been. validly and episcopally
ordained. Estcourt has treated this point at some
length.^ Here It may be sufficient to quote his
summary. ' These writers all agree In one point, and
that Is, as to a supposed case of necessity. Let us put
these words together. Fulke says " where the Church
hath been long exiled " ; Pilkington, " except some
great cause to the contrary " ; Whitaker, " when the
good of the Church requires " ; Hooker, " when the
exigence of necessity doth constrain " ; " an extra
ordinary form of ordaining were sufficient," Fulke
proceeds; "It may prevent the use of laying on of
hands " by Pilkington's admission ; " without order
ministers may be constituted," is Whitaker 's prin
ciple ; " the ordinary institution of God may give
place," Is the exception made by Hooker. Where
and when was the necessity .'' What was the great
cause to the contrary ? ' ' Hooker's words seem even
to be an allusion to those used in the Queen's dis
pensing clause for Parker's consecration, " temporis
ratione et rerum necessitate Id postulante " in the one ;
" when the exigence of necessity doth constrain " in the
other.' Was It perhaps the knowledge of Barlow's
lack of consecration which inspired both phrases ?
Little more indeed remains to be said, unless it be
^ Question of Anglican Ordinations, pp. 126-130.

i6o ANGLICAN ORDERS
to inquire whether any of the principal actors in the
drama ever by their later actions shed any further light
upon the question.
To Barlow himself the exposure came probably
as a relief. All his life he must have lived conscious
that he was in danger of such a happening. That
Henry VIII was Involved and was even the actual
cause of the whole affair, would, as he well knew, avail
him nothing if It suited that King to call him to account.
Under Edward VI he had been, as it seems, obliged
to submit to the blackmail of Somerset. But now at
last the long-kept secret was out, and yet he was safe,
and the secret itself had turned into a valuable posses
sion. He himself did not live long to enjoy it, for he
died in 1568, but he left a widow behind with two
sons and five daughters. Since he had married only
after Henry's death in 1 546, these were as yet hardly
of marriageable age, and the family circumstances
were doubtless somewhat narrow. Yet Mrs. Barlow
determined, so the story goes, that she would marry
all her daughters to bishops,^ and she actually suc
ceeded in doing so. Whether we have suggested the
right cause or no, the fact remains that any young
ecclesiastic who allied himself with one of the Mis
tresses Barlow found his way to promotion made quick
and easy. When Mrs. Barlow followed her lord to
their grave in Chichester Cathedral at the ripe age
of 90, having survived her husband a quarter of a
century, each of her five daughters was safely ensconced
in an episcopal palace, and those not the meanest, two
of them having married successive Bishops of Winches-
1 Dictionary of National Biography ,• Overton, Wm., p. 1284.

THE FIFTY YEARS' SILENCE i6i
ter, and one an Archbishop of York, One, for her
first husband, had married Matthew Parker, the eldest
son of the Archbishop, and only after his death, by a
second marriage, had come to her full destiny as a
bishop's spouse.
To Parker himself, on the whole the most honest
and respectable of the Elizabethan bishops, it must
have been abhorrent to be mixed up in the very
doubtful proceedings of which we have told. Yet in
a matter concerning his own Register it is impossible
to conceive him innocent. If there could be any
doubt remaining he has destroyed it by his own act,
as we shall now go on to tell : an act to which attention
has not, so far as we are aware, hitherto been drawn
in connection with this controversy. Students of
criminal annals have often noted how wrongdoers,
except only the most practised and hardened, are
almost sure to give themselves away, even in cases
where detection would otherwise have been impossible,
by some foolish act or needless precaution. They
cannot keep away from the scene of their wrongdoing,
and their return leads to their conviction. Or, it may
be, haunted always by the fear of detection, when they
are really perfectly safe, they try to make themselves
safer still by some needless precaution, and the pre
caution, far from helping them, turns out to be the
very means by which their crime is brought home.
When Barlow died in 1568 his place was not
immediately filled. It was a way of good Queen Bess
to keep bishoprics unfilled as long as possible, even
for many years together, for while they were thus
vacant the whole of their revenues passed to the use
of the Crown. But in 1570 the place was filled, after

1 62 ANGLICAN ORDERS
eighteen months of vacancy, by a safe man, nominated,
we may suppose, by Parker himself, his own chaplain,
Richard Curteys ; one who had also for some years
been Dean of Barlow's own cathedral at Chichester.
The fact of its being Barlow's vacancy would inevit
ably have brought back to Parker's mind the details
of his own consecration, and the falsified record which
he had placed in his Register. The weak part of that
record — it has been charged against it again and again
by one writer after another — is that it Is absolutely un
paralleled by any other similar record In any Register.
That objection, he now determined, should no longer
apply. He could not create a precedent, and Insert
a similar description for an earlier bishop, but he could
at least provide a parallel, and it should be unique no
more. So there appears once more in the pages of Parker's
Register a second account of a consecration which
forsakes the routine pattern and launches out into the
needless details of the first. It is to be found on
folios 125^ and 126, and is nothing more or less than
a replica of the earlier one, written obviously with
that one before the compiler's eyes, and following it
almost word for word except for the changes which
were absolutely necessary. Once again, this time not
in Lambeth Chapel but In Canterbury Cathedral
itself, the east end is decorated with hangings, and a
carpet Is laid down on the floor, and a table is brought
in (it is Interesting to note that in 1570 there was
no permanent altar of any sort even in Canterbury
Cathedral), and made ready for the ceremony. Then
the chairs are placed for the consecrating prelates,
Canterbury himself, and the Elect of York, Winchester

THE FIFTY YEARS' SILENCE 163
and Rochester, and cushions on which they might lean,
not forgetting a special cushion for the candidate
himself. Then there followed a sermon, rather a
better sermon apparently than had been preached at
Parker's own consecration, for whereas Scory on that
occasion preached haud ineleganter, this time the
preacher's effort was delivered eleganter, without any
modifying negatives. Next we have once more a
description of the dresses. There are no splendid
copes on this occasion, nor any garbed only in black
gowns, but Canterbury himself, as all the rest, is
merely wearing a linen surplice, superpelliceo linteo
indutus. Then comes the consecration itself. It
follows the account of the earlier ceremony actually
word for word. All four prelates impose their hands,
and all alike recite the words Take the Holy Ghost and
see thou stir up, etc. The account ends with a long
list of notabilities present, Instead of the mere handful
who had faced the winter morning cold on the earlier
occasion ; with a congregation too in multitudine
copiosa ; and the ceremony was evidently at a more
reasonable hour of the day, for they adjourn to a great
feast prepared for them in the palace of the Archbishop.
Incidentally, too, we get a clue to the name of the
actual compiler of these two strange narratives, for the
Significavit is read ^ per me Johannem Incent notarium
publicum.' John Incent had succeeded Anthony Huse
ten years before as Principal Notary to the Archbishop,
and he was also present at Parker's own consecration
in 1559. It is strange that Parker should not have realised
that such a replica of the earlier document, while it is
useless, just because one is so obviously copied from

1 64 ANGLICAN ORDERS
the other, as evidence to show that such a detailed
account was not unparalleled in similar instances, yet
gives away the case for all the strange features that
the earlier document contains. So long as that
remained unique and unparalleled it was possible to
account for its unusual form, as manifesting the strong
sense of its compiler and of Parker himself, that the
ceremony which it commemorated was itself unique
and unparalleled — the initiation of a new hierarchy-^
and deserved more than the usual perfunctory notice.
The singular feature, especially, that no one bishop
acted alone and exclusively as the consecrator, but that
all alike united In the recitation of the words, might
be explained, and has been explained ever since, as
due to the fact that no archbishop was present, and that
all alike were acting in virtue of a Royal mandate,
addressed to all of them and making no distinction
between them. But In this second case these con
siderations are entirely absent. Why should the usual
form be departed from again in this case, and In this
case only ? What peculiar importance had this con
secration over any other ? And most of all, why, when
the Metropolitan himself was present, should the
plain words of the Rubric and the otherwise invariable
custom of the English Church not be followed ? As
far as we are aware there Is no other instance, from
the time of the consecration of Parker himself to the
present moment. In which it is alleged that any similar
exception was made. It is explicable If we consider
it as due to Parker's uneasy conscience, and to his
desire to produce a parallel for the strangeness of his
own record, but it is not easy to suggest any other
reason to account for It. And then the question

THE FIFTY YEARS' SILENCE 165
inevitably follows : Why was Parker uneasy about
this particular matter, and why did he want a parallel ?
He would have been far wiser, it would seem, to have
left it alone, for the general Impression It produces Is
only strongly to confirm the conclusion to which we
have already come on other grounds, that the record
in question is an interpolation and has no right to
occupy the place that It does in the Register.
Lastly, we come to the Supreme Governor herself.
Elizabeth was not. It is clear, of a religious turn of
mind. The things of the soul meant little to her while
her strength and power lasted, and she was not inclined
to ally herself unreservedly with either side. Only
the force of circumstances and the pressure of the
pohtical and personal situation in which she found
herself had thrown her into the arms of the Protestant
party. But she was herself no Puritan, and had she
been free to choose her own path In a lower station
of life, would probably have preferred to range herself
with the old religion, though assuredly without any
great earnestness or depth in her religious life. She
was frankly contemptuous of the bishops she had
placed in power, and had little or no belief at any
time in the new religion she had herself set up. On
the other hand, in her better moments she looked back
with regret to the Catholic faith. It is not necessary
to think of her as wholly false when she swore to her
sister Mary that she would preserve the Catholic
religion, or when she told the French ambassador that
she was as good a Catholic as his master, or when she
wearied the Emperor's envoy by telling him again
and again that what she really longed for was to go
into a convent and be a nun. Rather, these words

1 66 ANGLICAN ORDERS
expressed her feelings just at the moment — a moment
of revulsion from the chaos she had created. Her
own inclinations, apart from policy, would probably
have been towards the form of Catholicism she had
known in her childhood In the days of Henry —
Catholicism with the Crown in the place of the Pope ;
and it Is due after all to her alone and to the strength
of these predilections, for her bishops were Calvinists
almost to a man, that the Church of England took on
and has preserved the mixed characteristics that have
marked her ever since.
But in her last hours, when It had become clear
even to herself that this world and all that she had
sought in It was passing away, and she herself going
to stand her trial for all the evil she had wrought, she
would fain have turned to religion for consolation,
but it was too late. There is scarcely a more terribly
sad end to be found in history than was that of the
great Queen who had reigned so long, and on the whole
so gloriously as far as worldly matters were concerned.
One of her ladies. Lady Southwell, who was with her
all the time, has left us the account of it.
' Now falling into extremity, she sat two days and
three nights upon her stool, ready dressed, and could
never be brought by any of her council to go to bed,
or eat, or drink ; only my lord admiral one time
persuaded her to drink some broth. For any of the
rest, she would not answer them to any question ;
but said softly to my lord admiral's earnest persuasions,
that if he knew what she had seen in her bed he would
not persuade her as he did. . . . And presently
commanding [Cecil] and the rest to depart her chamber.

THE FIFTY YEARS' SILENCE 167
she willed my lord admiral to stay ; to whom she shook
her head, and with a pitiful voice said, " My lord,
I am tied with a chain of Iron about my neck." He
alleging her wonted courage to her. She replied,
" I am tied, and the case is altered with me." '. . .
* So growing past recovery (having kept her bed
fifteen days, besides three days she sat upon her stool,
and one day, when being pulled up by force, she stood
on her feet fifteen hours) the council sent to her the
bishop of Canterbury and other of the prelates, upon
sight of whom she was much offended, cholerlcly
rating them, bidding them be packing, saying she was
no atheist, but knew full well that they were hedge
priests, and took it for an indignity that they should
speak to her.' ^
Certainly no one had better means than had
Elizabeth of judging of the character, whether the
word is taken in its theological or moral sense, of the
prelates she had chosen to set over her Church.
^ MS. at Stonyhurst, Aug. A., iii. 77. Printed in Tierney's
edition of Dodd's Church History, iii. 71.

APPENDIX
I. The Line of Episcopal Succession in the Church of
England, the Colonies, Scotland, and America.
n. The Line of Episcopal Succession in the Protestant
CniniCH OF Ireland.
in. The Ecclesiastical Appointments Act, 25 Henry
VIII, cap. 20.
IV. Barlow's Documents and where they may be
FOUND.
V Some of Barlow's Documents :
I. Royal Assent to his election to St. David's. Signed
Bill.
2. Cranmer's Letter to the King, announcing Con
firmation only and not Consecration.
3. Letters Patent granting Barlow the Custody of the
Temporalities of St. David's for life.
4. Warrant from Sir Thomas Cromwell, dated June 1 2,
1536, in which Barlow is still spoken of as only
Bishop Elect.
5. Extracts from the Journals of the House of Lords,
1536.
6. Conge d'elire for Barlow's successor at St. Asaph
{Wharton), shewing that he was never consecrated
to St. Asaph.
VI. Parker's Documents :
I. Steps suggested for Parker's Consecration, with
Cecil's notes thereon.
2. Order of Rites and Ceremonies observed in the
Consecration of Matthew Parker.

170

ANGLICAN ORDERS

APPENDIX I
The Line of Episcopal Succession in the
Church of England, &c.
Every existing bishop in the Church of England and the
Colonies has his succession from Archbishop Sumner of Canter
bury by one or other of three lines. By far the greater number
are ofthe line Sumner,Tait, Benson, Davidson. There is another
line Sumner, Jackson, Temple, Lang. A third is found only
in Canada : Sumner, Howley, John Medley of Fredericton.
The American Protestant Episcopalian succession comes
from William White, Bishop of Pennsylvania. Bishop Seabury,
the first Bishop consecrated for America, who had the Scottish
succession, has left no representative. White had been con
secrated by John Moore of Canterbury. Moore was con
secrated in 1775 to Bangor by Frederic Cornwallis of Canter
bury, and he in his turn had been consecrated to Lichfield by
Thomas Herring. The American succession merges into the
English at this point.
The Scottish succession comes from Sancroft of Canterbury,
and merges then into the English line. The succession is
Sancroft, — ^Thomas White, — George Hicks, — -James Gadderas,
— ^Thomas Rattray, — ^William Falconer, — ^Robert Kilgour,
— John Skinner, — George Gleig, who was consecrated Bishop
of Brechin in 1808. The existing episcopal bench derives
from Gleig by various lines. Archbishop Sumner's line of
succession is as follows :

Bishop.

Year.

See.

Consecrator,

Consecrator's See.

Sumner, J. B.

1828

Chester

E. Vernon Harcourt

York

Harcourt, E. V.

1790

Carlisle

Wm. Markham

York

Markham, Wm.

1 771

Chester

Robert Drummond

York

Drummond, Rt.

1748

St. Asaph

Thomas Herring

Canterbury

Herring, Th.

1738

Bangor

John Potter

Canterbury

Potter, Jn.

^tl^

Oxford

Jonathan Trelawney

Winchester

Trelawney, Jon.

1685

Bristol

William Sancroft

Canterbury

Sancroft, Wm.

1678

Canterbury

Henry Compton

London

Compton, Henry

1674

Oxford

Gilbert Sheldon

Canterbury

Sheldon, Gilbert

1660

Loudon

Brian Duppa

Winchester

APPENDIX

171

Bishop.

Year.

See.

Consecrator.

Consecrator's See.

Duppa, Brian
Laud, WiUiam
Monteigne, Geo.
Abbot, George
Bancroft, Rich.
Whitgift, John
Grindal, Edm.
Parker, Matth.
Barlow, William

1638
162T161716091597157715591559

Chichester
St. David's
Lincoln
LichfieldLondon
Worcester LondonCanterbury

WiUiam Laud
George Monteigne
George Abbot
Rich. Bancroft
John Whitgift
Edm. Grindal
Matt. Parker
WiUiam Barlow J

Canterbury
London Canterbury
Canterbury CanterburyCanterbiury Canterbury ?

Put in genealogical form the lines are as follows :
William Barlow
I
Matthew Parker
WUliam Sancroft

Jon. Trelawney \
Thomas Herring

Robert Drummond i
J. B. Sumner

Thomas White
George Gleig
(Scottish Episcopalian
succession)

Frederic Cornwallis

John Moore

William White
(American Protestant
Episcopalian succession)

A. C. Tait Jn. Tackson Wm. Howley
II I
E. W. Benson Fredk.Temple John Medley
I I (Canadian succession)
R. T. Davidson C. G. Lang
(from whom all the present Angli
can Episcopate, except in Canada,
America, Scotland, and Ireland, derive).

172

ANGLICAN ORDERS

APPENDIX II
The Succession of Bishops in the Protestant
Church of Ireland
The Irish Protestant succession of bishops is wholly and
entirely distinct from that of the Church of England. It
will be found that all the existing bishops derive by various
lines from Lord John Beresford (i 773-1 862), who was suc
cessively Bishop of Cork and Ross, Bishop of Raphoe, Bishop
of Clogher, Archbishop of Dublin, and Archbishop of Armagh
and Primate. He held this last see for more than forty years.
Tracing the line further back it works out as follows :

Bishop.

Year.

See to which
Consecrated.

Consecrator.

Consecrator's See.

Beresford, Lord

1805

Cork

Ch. Brodrick

Cashel

John

Brodrick, Ch.
1795
Clonfert
W. Beresford
Tuam
Beresford, W.
17S2
Dromore
R. Fowler
Dublin
Fowler, R.
1771
KiUaloe
A. Smyth
Dublin
Smyth, A.
1752
Clonfert
J. Ryder
Tuam
Ryder, J.
1741
KUlaloe
J. Hoadley
Dublin
Hoadley, J.
1727
Ferns
W. King
DubUn
King, W.
1690
Derry
F. Marsh
DubUn
Marsh, F.
1667
Limerick
T. Price
Cashel
Price, T.
1660
KUdare
J. BramhaU
Armagh
Bramhall, J.
1630
Derry
J. Ussher
Armagh
Ussher, J.
1621
Meath
Chr. Hampton
Armagh
Hampton, Chr.
1613
Armagh
T. Jones
DubUn
Jones, T.
1584
Meath
A. Loftus
Armagh
: ^oftus, A.
1563
Armagh
Hugh Curwen
Dublin
Hugh Curwen, who had been appointed Archbishop of
Dublin by Mary in 1556, was the only one ofthe Irish bishops
who conformed under Elizabeth. He was consecrated by
Edmund Bonner of London, who in his turn had been con
secrated by Stephen Gardiner. It is from Gardiner and Bonner
therefore, oddly enough, that the present Protestant Irish
bishops have their legal descent. Hugh Curwen was a man
APPENDIX 173
of no great reputation, a Catholic by inclination, but a ready
conformer to the wishes of his superiors in all reigns. He
apparently stood with the rest of the Marian Hierarchy in
refusing to consecrate Parker, for though we have no evidence
that he was ever asked, it would have got the Government
out of such a very difficult position had he consented, that one
can hardly think he was overlooked. By 1560, however, he
seems to have been willing, now Parker and the rest had been
consecrated, to provide a similar succession for Ireland. As
he stood alone, however, and no other bishop in Ireland was
available, the Act 2 Eliz. 1560, cap. 4, s. 2 (Irish), provides
that in the case of the consecration of a bishop the Significavit
should be addressed to the Archbishop, or if the see be vacant,
to any other archbishop in Ireland. It was only in the case
of archbishops that this Act demanded assistant bishops, in
accordance with the general law of the Church. This would,
perhaps, have allowed Hugh Curwen to act alone. There are
no records of any consecrations at this date, and the whole
succession is consequently rather doubtful. But what seems
most likely is that Hugh Curwen consecrated Craik to Kildare
in 1560 without any other bishop being present, and that he
and Craik consecrated Skiddy to Cork in 1 562. If so, there
would have been the necessary two assistant bishops which
the law demanded for the consecration of an archbishop when
Loftus was consecrated to Armagh, it is said on March 2, 1563.
Letters Patent to this effect were issued by Elizabeth, and were
presumably acted upon. But at the same time if it is true
that Nehemias Donnellan held the Archbishopric of Tuam
for many years without ever receiving any orders at all,^ it is
impossible to feel very confident about what was done in
Elizabeth's reign in Ireland, especially when no official records
have survived. ' Moran, P. F., Episcopal Succession in Ireland, p. 33.

174 ANGLICAN ORDERS

APPENDIX III
The Ecclesiastical Appointments Act,
25 Henry VIII, cap. 20
(Transcr. Statutes of the Realm, iii. 462)
Archbishops ' Be it ordained and established by [the king our sovereign
to be elecSd ^°^^i hy the assent of the Lords spiritual and temporal, and
on the the Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by
nation aSy! authority of the same] that at every avoidance of every arch
bishopric or bishopric within this realm, or in any other the
king's dominions, the king our sovereign lord, his heirs and
successors, may grant to the prior and convent of the dean and
chapter of the cathedral churches or monasteries where the
see of such archbishopric or bishopric may happen to be void,
a license under the great seal, as of old time has been accus
tomed, to proceed to election of an archbishop or bishop of the
see so being void, with a letter missive, containing the name of
the person which they shall elect or choose: by virtue of which
license the said dean and chapter or prior and convent, to which
any such license and letters missive shall be directed, shall with
all speed and celerity in due form elect and choose the said person
named in the said letters missive, to the dignity and office of the
archbishopric or bishopric so being void, and none other.
In default of And if they do defer or delay their election above twelve
the'ffin'^*'"^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^'^^ license and letters missive to them delivered,
shall appoint that then for every such default the king's highness, his heirs
by letters and successors, at their liberty and pleasure shall nominate and
patent only. 1. i_ • 1 ¦
present by their letters patent under their great seal such a
person to the said office and dignity so being void as they shall
think able and convenient for the same.
The person And that the person so elected [by the dean and chapter
!^ rac^^"™ °'' P"°'' ^^^ convent], after certification made of the same
elect. elecoon under the common and convent seal of the electors

APPENDIX 175
to the king's highness, his heirs and successors, shall be reputed
and taken by the name of lord elected of the said dignity and
office that he shall be elected unto.
And then making such oath and fealty only to the king's He shaU do
majesty, his heirs and successors, as shall be appointed for the ^^ to^the
same, the king's highness, by his letters patent under his great shall there-
seal, shall signify the said election if it be to the dignity of a ^s°°ie|tkin
bishop to the archbishop and metropolitan of the province and confirm
where the see of the said bishopric was void, if the see of the J,* ^f'^ daect
said archbishop be full and not void; and if it be void, then to
any other archbishop within this realm, or in any other the
king's dominions; requiring and commanding such archbishop
to whom any such signification shall be made, to confirm the
said election, and to invest and consecrate the said person so
elected to the office and dignity that he is elected unto, and to
give and use to him all such benedictions, ceremonies and all
things requisite for the same, without any suing procuring or
obtaining any bulls, letters or other things from the see of
Rome for the same in any behalf. And if the person be elected
to the office and dignity of an archbishop according to the
tenor of this Act, then after such election certified to the king's
highness in form aforesaid, the same person so elected to the
office and dignity of an archbishop shall be reputed and taken
lord elect to the said office and dignity of archbishop, where
unto he shall be so elected; and then after he has made such
oath and fealty only to the king's majesty, his heirs and suc
cessors as shall be limited for the same, the king's highness
by his letters patent under the great seal shall signify the said
election to one archbishop and two other bishops, or else to
four bishops within this realm, or within any other the king's
dominions, to be assigned by the king's highness, his heirs or
successors, requiring and commanding the said archbishop and
bishops with all speed and celerity to confirm the said election
and to invest and consecrate the said person so elected to the
office and dignity that he is elected unto, and to give and use
to him such pall, benedictions, ceremonies and all other things
requisite for the same, without suing procuring or obtaining

176 ANGLICAN ORDERS
any bulls, briefs or other things at the said see of Rome or by
the authority thereof in any behalf.'
It is further enacted by this Act that any dean and chapter
who fail to elect within twenty days of the time the Conge
d'elire and letters missive reach them, and also any archbishop
or bishops who do not, within twenty days after the Significavit
has reached them, proceed to consecrate, 'shall run into the
dangers pains and penalties of the Statute of the Provision
and Praemunire, made in the five and twentieth year of the
reign of King Edward III, and in the sixteenth vear of King
Richard II.'

APPENDIX IV
Barlow's Documents and where they may
BE FOUND
I. Conge d^ elire for St. Asaph. Printed in Rymer's
'Foedera,' xiv. 558, from Pat. H. VIII, p. i, m. 11
(Record Office). It is the usual form.
2. Royal Assent for St. Asaph. Printed in Rymer's
'Fcedera,' xiv. 559, from Pat. H. VIII, p. 2, m. 11
(Record Office). Usual form.
3. Confirmation to St. Asaph. In Cranmer's Register at
Lambeth, ff. 188(7-21 1*. It is in the usual form.
4. Cranmer's Letter to the King reporting the Confirmation.
In Cranmer's Register, f. 211*. The usual form
where no Significavit had been issued.
5. Conge d'elire for St. David's. It should be on the Patent
Rolls, but is not. The ' Privy Seal ' ordering its
preparation is extant at the Record Office (March 1536)
and is printed by T. A. Lacey, ' A Roman Diary,'
p. 109. Usual form.
6. Royal Assent for St. David's. It is missing on the Patent
Rolls, but the • Signed Bill ' ordering its issue is extant
and is printed below, p. 178. It is in the form for
a bishop translated.

APPENDIX 177
7. Confirmation to St. David's. Printed in T. J. Bailey's
'Ordinum Sacrorum in Eccl. Angl. Defensio,' p. 41,
and also by Courayer, Eriington, and Lee, from Cran
mer's Register. Barlow is described as ' nuper Episcopus
Assavensis et Monasterii de Bisham Commendatarlus
Perpetuus.' Otherwise all is normal.
8. Cranmer's Letter to the King, April 21, 1536. Printed
below, p. 178.
9. Grant of Custody of Temporalities. It should be on the
Patent Rolls, but is missing. It is printed below, p. 1 79,
from the Memoranda Roll of the Lord Treasurer's
Remembrancer, 28 H. VIII, Easter term. Roll I, as
published by Estcourt, ' Question of Anglican Ordina
tions,' App. xix. It is full of anomalies.
10. Two letters written by Barlow. The first written in
March 1536, and signed Will™. Barlo, showing that
he had not been consecrated to St. Asaph. The second
written to Cromwell, May 23, 1536, and signed
Willmus Menev, showing that he was then passing
as full Bishop of St. David's. These are in ' Letters
and Papers, Henry VIIL'
II. Conge d'elire for Barlo-w's successor to St. Asaph. Printed
below, p. 186, from Pat. 28 H. VIII, p. 2, m. 9, in
Record Office. The see is said to be vacant per liberam
transmutationem Will. Barlowe ultimi episcopi ibidem
electi, and this form is uniformly kept to in all the
documents for this appointment. It proves that Barlow
was never consecrated to St. Asaph.
12. Admission to House of Lords. Printed below, p. 185,
from the Journals of the House of Lords.
13. Warrant from Cromwell, June 12. Barlow is ' now elect
of St. Davyes.' Printed below, p. 184.
14. Resignation of Priory of Bisham. It should be among
the Records of the Court of Augmentations, but it is
missing. It had been copied, however, on to the
Close Rolls, 28 Henry VIII, p. 2, m. 29, where it was
found by the present writer.

178 ANGLICAN ORDERS
APPENDIX V
Barlow's Documents
(I)
Royal Assent to his election to St. David's. Signed Bill, with
Henry's signature ordering its issue. Record Office,
' Chancery Warrants,' 28 Henry VIII, Privy Seals Bundle,
April 1536. To the King our Sovereign Lord.
Pleaseth it your highness of your most noble and abundant
grace to grant your gracious letters patent under your great
seal in due form to be made according to the tenor ensuing.
HENRY R.1
Rex reverendissimo in Christo patri Thomae Cantuar.
archiepiscopo totius Angliae primati salutem. Sciatis quod
election! nuper factae in ecclesia Cathedrali Meneven. per
mortem bonae memoriae dom. Richardi Rawlyns ultimi
episcopi ibidem vacante de reverendo in Christo patre dom.
Willelmo Barlow sacrae theologiae professore tunc episcopo
Assaven. et Mon. de Bisham Sarum dioec. commendatorio
perpetuo in episcopum loci illius et pastorem regium assensum
adhibuimus et favorem, et hoc vobis tenore praesentium signi
ficamus ut quod vestrum est in hac parte exequamini. In
cujus etc. Teste etc. (2)
Cranmer's Letter to the King announcing Confirmation only
(from Cranmer's Register, foi. 205, Lambeth). [The Latin
is printed by T. J. Bailey, ' Ordinum Sacrorum in Eccl.
Angl. Defensio,' p. 41.]
To our most gracious Sovereign and Lord in Christ, the Lord
Henry FIII, hy the grace of God, etc., etc.
Whereas we have confirmed the election lately made of the
Reverend Father William Barlow, lately Bishop of St. Asaph,
' This is Henry's own autograph signature.

APPENDIX 179
and Commendatory Perpetual of the Monastery of Bisham
in the diocese of Salisbury, within our province of Canterbury
as Bishop and Pastor of the Cathedral Church of St. David's
within our province of Canterbury aforesaid, to which you
have granted your royal assent and favour in due form of law,
justice so requiring, and have performed all else which in the
business of the said confirmation are by law required, we there
fore by the tenor of these presents signify to your Royal High
ness that the said confirmation was and is performed by us as
aforesaid ; praying that your Majesty may graciously please
as heretofore to show your benevolent favour and to perform
to do and commend further those things which belong to your
Royal Office and Prerogative in their behalf.
In testimony of which our seal is appended to these presents.
Dated at our Manor of Lambeth, the 21st day of the month
of April, A.D. 1536, and the fourth year of our Consecration.
(3)
Letters Patent granting Barlow the Temporalities of the
See of St. David's.
From the Memoranda Roll of the Lord Treasurer's Remem
brancer, 28 Hen. VIII. Easter term. Roll I. The words
contracted are here written at full length, and the spelling
partly modernised.
De litteris Dni Regis nunc patentibus Willelmo Barlowe
Episcopo Menevensi de custodia temporalium Episcopatus
Elien.i una cum exitibus et proficuis eorundem temporalium a
tempore ultimae vacationis Episcopatus illius usque datum
litterarum patentium praedictarum factis et irrotulatis.
Henricus VIII. Rex &c. Omnibus &c.
Sciatis quod cum per mortem Ricardi Rawlyns nuper
Episcopi Menevensis Cathedralis Ecclesia Menevensis nuper
viduata ac pastorali solatio fuerit destituta et vacaverit, eoque
praetextu omnia exitus et proficua firmae redditus reventiones
* Elien. is a mistake of the engrossing clerk for Meneven. N 2

i8o ANGLICAN ORDERS
jura commoditates et emolumenta omnium temporalium
Episcopatus illius a tempore mortis praedicti nuper Episcopi
durante tempore vacationis Episcopatus illius nobis jure
praerogativae nostrae regiae pertinuerunt et spectaverunt ac
pertinere et spectare dignoscuntur.
Cumque etiam Praecentor et Capitulum dictae Cathedralis
Ecclesiae post mortem praedicti Episcopi licentia nostra inde
prius obtenta dilectum et fidelem nostrum Willelmum
Barlowe priorem Monasterii sive Prioratus S'^® Trinitatis de
Bostlesham Mountague Ordinis S*' Augustini in com'" nostro
Bukk nunc dictae Ecclesiae Cathedralis Meneven. per nos
nominatum Episcopum in suum eligerunt Episcopum et
pastorem Reverendissimus in Christo pater Thomas Archi
episcopus Cantuariensis totius Angliae Primatus et Apostdlicae
Sedis Legatus electionem illam acceptaverit et confirmaverit
ipsumque sic electum Episcopum praedictae Ecclesiae Mene
vensis praefecerit et pastorem sicut per litteras patentes ipsius
Archiepiscopi nobis inde directas nobis constat.
Nos nunc certis de causis et considerationibus nos special
iter moventibus et ob sinceram dilectionem quam penes prae
fatum nunc Episcopum gerimus et habemus de gratia nostra
speciali ac ex certa scientia et mero motu nostris dedimus et
concessimus ac per praesentes damus et concedimus pro nobis
haeredibus et successoribus nostris quantum in nobis est eidem
nunc Episcopo omnia et singula exitus firmas redditus proficua
&c. quorumcumque temporalium Episcopatus praedicti seu
Episcopatui eidem vel temporalibus Episcopatus illius quovis
modo pertinentium sive spectantium.
Ac praesentationes nominationes et ordinationes quorum
cumque advocationum coUationum &c. de advocatione Episco
patus illius quovismodo contingentium sive emergentium per nos
ad praesens vel ante praesentem diem durante praedicta i-acatione
praedicti Episcopatus minime collatas datas sive praesentatas.
Necnon omnimodos fines forisfacturas exitus forisfactos
redemptiones et amerciamenta ac etiam omnimodos fines pro
licentia concordandi omnium tenendum Episcopatus praedicti
residentium sive non residentium infra feoda ejusdem Episco
patus tam integre tenentium quam non integre tenentium

APPENDIX i8i
coram quibuscumque justiciariis nostris in quibuscumque
curiis nostris factos sive forisfactos tempore vacationis praedictae
contingentes licet iidem tenentes sint vel eorum aliquis sit
escaetor vicecomes justiciarius noster ad pacem nee alius
justiciarius noster constabularius vel alius officiarius vel minister
noster aut licet hujusmodi tenentes alibi de nobis in capite vel
aliter tenuerint aut eorum aliquis tenuerit in tam amplis modo
et forma prout praedictus Ricardus Rawlyns nuper Episcopus
Meneven : et praedecessores sui nuper Episcopi ibidem sede
ilia plena per cartas progenitorum nostrorum quondam Regum
Angliae vel aliter seu eorum aliquis melius et liberius habuerunt
seu perceperunt habuit seu percepit.
Et omnia alia proficua quaecumque omnium et singulorum
jurium temporalium Episcopatus praedicti seu eidem Episco
patui quoquomodo sive jure pertinentia appendentia accidentia
sive spectantia qualitercumque praevenientia sive emergentia
aut in manibus nostris extiterunt seu existere deberent ratione
quacumque a festo S*' Michaelis Archangel! ultimo praeterito
durante vita praedicti nunc Episcopi causa praedictae ultimae
vacationis Episcopatus illius et custodiae dictorum temporalium
ejusdem. Habenda levanda percipienda retinenda gaudenda utenda
et possidenda omnia et singula praemissa cum eorum juribus
et pertinentiis universis eidem nunc Episcopo et assignatis suis
a supradicto festo S'' Michaelis Archangeli ultimo praeterito
durante vita sua per manus suas et ministrorum suorum proprias
et per manus omnium et singulorum nunc et nuper escaetorum
vicecomitum custodum temporalium senescallorum ballivorum
&c. sive aliorum occupatorum omnium et singulorum prae
missorum et eorum cujuslibet vel aliquorum aliorum officiari-
orum nostrorum quorumcumque seu eorum alicujus qui se inde
aliquo modo pro nobis aut nomine nostro vel aliter intromis-
erunt aut intromittere debuerunt in singulis et quibuscumque
comitatibus et locis infra regnum nostrum Angliae et Marchiis
Walliae in quibus praemissa seu aliquod praemissorum existunt
jacent vel sitUata sunt libere integre quiete bene et in pace ac
adeo plene licite et impune de dono nostro speciali prout nos
ad omnia et singula occasione vacationis praedictae Episco-

1 82 ANGLICAN ORDERS
patus illius haberemus seu habere potuissemus si praesens
concessio nostra eidem nunc Episcopo facta non fuisset
absque perturbatione molestatione inquietatione seu gravamine
nostri aut haeredum nostrorum aut justiciariorum nostrorum
Baronum nostrorum de Scaccario Escaetorum vicecomitum
aut aliorum officiariorum seu ministrorum nostrorum quorum
cumque vel eorum alicujus et absque compoto response onere
seu aliquo alio aut aliqua alia re quacumque de pro aut in
praemissis vel aliquo praemissorum per ipsum nunc Episcopum
Escaetores vicecomites aut aliquem vel aliquos officiariorum
aut ministrorum nostrorum praedictorum sive aliquorum
aliorum vel eorum alicujus nobis vel dictis heredibus nostris
quovismodo reddendo faciendo seu solvendo.
Ac omnimoda debita compota praestita arreragia et demanda
quae nobis de aut pro praemissis vel eorum aliquo seu causa
vel occasione praemissorum aut eorum alicujus per ipsum nunc
Episcopum aut aliquem officiariorum seu ministrorum nos
trorum praedictorum vel aliquorum firmariorum tenentium
sive occupatorum praemissorum vel alicujus inde parcellae vel
aliquorum aliorum pertinent reddenda facienda seu solvenda
penitus eidem Episcopo remittimus et relaxamus atque ipsum
omnesque et singulos officiarios et ministros nostros praedictos
de praemissis et quolibet praemissorum pardonamus ac eos et
eorum quemlibet erga nos et heredes nostros quantum in nobis
est exoneramus ac finaliter penitus acquietamus per praesentes.
Eo quod expressa mentio &c.
In cujus rei &c.
Teste meipso apud Westmon xxvi*° die Aprilis anno regni
nostri vicesimo octavo.
Per breve de Private Sigillo et de data auctoritate Parlia-
menti. What Mason printed in 1613 was this grant as far
as the asterisk, p. 180. He omits the description both of
Barlow and Cranmer. The &c. printed above he expands
into several Hnes of legal repetitions. So he did not copy
from this Roll as Estcourt thought he did. He omits all the
rest of the document.

APPENDIX 183
(Translation of the important parts of the above Grant
of Custody.. The legal verbiage is curtailed.)
Henry Fill, King, etc. To all, etc.
Know ye that whereas by the death of Richard Rawlyns the
late Bishop the Cathedral Church of St. David's is widowed
and deprived of pastoral care and is vacant, and that therefore
all the temporalities of the said Bishopric from the time of
the decease of the late Bishop during the time of vacancy belong
to us through our Royal Prerogative.
And whereas the Precentor and Chapter of the said
Cathedral Church after the death of the said Bishop, having
first obtained our license thereto, have elected our beloved
and faithful William Barlow, Prior of the Monastery or Priory
of the Holy Trinity of Bostleham Mountague of the Order
of St Augustine, . . . who was nominated by us to the said
Cathedral Church of St. David's, to be their Bishop and Pastor,
the most Reverend Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canter
bury, Primate of All England and Legate of the Apostolic See,
has accepted and confirmed that election and has set the said
Elect over the Church of St. David's as Bishop and Pastor as ap
pears by Letters Patent from- the said Archbishop directed to us.
We therefore . . . have given and granted ... to the
same now Bishop all and every returns &c. of all temporalities
whatsoever belonging to the said See.
And all presentations &c. in the gift of the Bishop to which
up to the present day during the vacancy of the See we have
not already presented :
And also all fines &c. of the tenants &c.
And all other profits of any temporal right whatsoever
which belong to the said Bishopric which are in our hands
by reason of the vacancy of the said Bishopric, from the feast
of St. Michael the Archangel last past during the life of the said
now Bishop.
To have, to hold &c. &c. from the said feast of St. Michael
Archangel during the life of the said now Bishop.
And all debts &c. &c. &c.

1 84 ANGLICAN ORDERS
Witness myself at Westminster the 26th day of April of
the 28th year of our reign.
By Brief of Privy Seal and by the Authority of Parliament
granted. (4)
Warrant from Sir Thomas Cromwell to Sir Bryan Tuke,
Treasurer of the King's Chamber, to pay Thomas Hawley,
Clarenceux King of Arms, his dietts for his journey to
Scotland. Dated 12th of June 1536.
[From the Ashmolean MS., No. 857, foi. 48. Now in
the Bodleian.]
Mr. Tuke, whereas ye by the King's commandment certifyed
you by mee the 22 day of January last past before the date
hereof payd unto Norroy now Clarenceux King of Armes
sent then into Scotland to attend vpon the Lord WiUiam Howard
and the Bishop then elect of St. Asaph, now elect of St. Davyes,
being then also sent in Embassador into Scotland aforesaid
vpon a reconning of his dietts after the rate of vj^- viij'^' by the
day for iiij monethes beforehand, accompting xxviij dayes to
every Moneth. The same dyettes to be accompted and to
begyn the said 22*'' day of January, the summe of 37" vj'
viij*^. Forasmuch as the same Norrey now Clarenceux con
tinued his aboade in the said voyage from the xxj day of January
last past before the date hereof vntill the 1 2 day of June the
next following exclusive, viz* by the space of cxlij dayes, soe
that there is due to him for his dyettes for the said tyme the
summe of 47'' 6' viij^ which hee hath in the said Moneth of
January last past whereof received of you the summe of
37" 6' viij** as before, and soe resteth due to him for his sayd
dyetts the sume of x", I signifie vnto you that the Kings plesure
is that ye incontinent of his graces money being in yo" custody
pay vnto the said Clarenceulx the said summe of x" in full
supplyment and payment of his said dyetts for the tyme
aforesaid. And thus hartily fare ye well. At my house at

APPENDIX 185
the Rolles the xij*'' day of June in the xxviij**" yeare
of the reigne of our said sovraigne Lord King Henry the
eight, 1536.
The original of the foregoing warrant has not been found. The
copy from which it is taken is in a MS. volume containing precedents
and other coUections relating to Heralds and CoUege of Arms. There
is no signature given in the copy, but it is clear that it was from Crom
weU, because he was Master of the Rolls at the time, and tUl the 2nd
July next, when he was made Lord Privy Seal. There are letters
of Cromwell's dated from the RoUs printed in Tierney's ' Dodd,'
vol. i. pp. 432 and 437. (5)
Extracts from the Journals ofthe House of Lords, 1536.
1 2 die Junii. Hodie allatum Regium Breve . . . Episcopo
Cicestren. directum, quo idem Episcopus in presenti Parlia
mento personaliter ad comparendum summonebatur, qui pre.^
1 7 die Junii. Hodie allatum est Regium Breve, Reverendis
simo in Christo Patri Johanni Norwicen. Episcopo directum,
quo idem Episcopus, in presenti Parliamento, ad comparendum
summonebatur, qui presens admissus est ad suum Eminencie
locum, salvo cuipiam jure. ^
30 die Junii. Hodie allatum est Regium Breve, Reverendo
in Christo Patri W. Menivenc. Episcopo directum, quo idem
Episcopus, in presenti Parliamento, personaliter ad compar
endum summonebatur, qui presens admissus est ad suum
Eminencie locum, salvo cuipiam jure.^
4 die Julii. Hodie allatum est Regium Breve, Edwardo
Hereforden. Episcopo directum, quo idem Episcopus, in
presenti Parliamento, personaliter ad comparendum summone
batur, qui presens admissus est ad suum Eminencie locum,
salvo cuipiam jure.*
• Vol. i. p. 85. Sic in original, owing probably to his having been
consecrated only the day before.
« P. 87. ' P. 92. * P. 93-

1 86 ANGLICAN ORDERS
List of Peers in Order of Precedence, July 4.^
p. Rmus. in X° P. Archiepus. p. Archiepus. Eborum.

Cant.

P-

Epus. DunoUen.

p. Epus. London.

Epus. Carliocen.

Epus. Wyntonie.

Dux Richemondie.

p. Epus. Exonie.

Dux Norff.

p. Epus. Lyncolne.

Dux Suff.
p. Epus. Bath.
P-
Marchio Dorset.
p. Epus. Elien.
Marchio Exonie.
p. Epus. Bangor.
P-
Comes Arundell.
p. Epus. Hereford.
Comes Oxonie.
p. Epus. Wigorum.
Comes Northumberland.
Epus. Roffen.
Comes Westm'lande.
p. Epus. Cicestren.
Comes Salopie.
p. Epus. Norwicen.
Comes Essex.
p. Epus. Menivenc.
Comes Derby.
Abbas Westm.
Comes Wigorum.
Abbas Sancti Albani, &c.
&c.
Comes Rutlande, &c.
(Edward Fox, Bishop (
jf Hereford, had been consecrated
some time before, but had
never taken his seat. He now is
given his proper precedence. The
p. stands for 'present.')
(6)
Conge d'elire for Barlow's successor (Wharton) in the see of
St. Asaph.
[From Patent Rolls, 28 Henry VIII, p. 2, m. 9.]
Rex Dilectis sibi in Christo, Decano et Capitulo Ecclesiae
nostrae Assavensis, Salutem.
Ex parte vestra nobis est humiliter supplicatum ut, cum
Ecclesia nostra praedicta, per liberam Transmutationem
Willielmi Barlowe ultimi Episcopi ibidem Electi, sit Pastoris
solatio destituta, Alium vobis eligendi in Episcopum et Pastorem
Licentiam concedere dignaremur, Nos precibus vestris in hac
parte favorabiliter inclinati, Licentiam illam vobis tenore
1 Pp. 92, 93-
APPENDIX 187
Praesentium duximus concedendam ; Mandantes quod talem
vobis eligatis in Episcopum et Pastorem qui Deo devotus,
Ecclesiae vestrae necessarius, Nobisque et Regno Nostro
utilis et fidelis exstat.
In cujus &c.
Teste Rege apud Westmonasterium
vicesimo nono die Maii. Per Breve de Private Sigillo.
The same style, ' vacant through the free transmutation
of William Barlowe last Bishop Elect,' is kept up through all
the other documents for Wharton's appointment.
APPENDIX VI
Some of Parker's Documents
(I)
Steps Suggested for Parker's Consecration
[' State Papers, Domestic,' Elizabeth, vol. v, 25 (Kai.,
P- 135)-]
The Copye of I. Suete is to be made for the
this wold be Quenes Letters Patents, called Signi-
sent htther. ^ 1 1 1 j ^.^^ l
ficaverunt to be addressed to T. harch-
bushopp of the Province, for the
confirmacion of the Electe, and for
his consecracion.
There is no 2. When the See Archiepiscopall y'/jf^^""^'
^TMho**s '^ vacant, then after election, lyke 20, tiie order
Vowtobehad. Letters Patents for the confirmacion y ^^^ °^^th\
Ou7"^du °^ *^® electe are to be directe to any tZ restitution
i^ren urn, ^^^^ Archebushopp with in the '''.'^«'«»»^'"'-
. . re 11 1 alities IS done
King s dominions. Ir all be vacant, after the con-
to iiii. Bushops to be apoynted by secration as it
!L J^ r. J 1 semeth to me
the Quenes Letters Patents declar- u the sayd
ing her graces assent Royall with ^''^^
request for his consecracion and Pall.

1 88 ANGLICAN ORDERS
3. The fealtie for the Temporal-
ties of the See is to be made to her
Maiestie. The othe also to be
geven. And the ordinary fees to be
payde to her Maiesties Officers.
4. The consecracion is to be on
suche a Sondaye as the Consecrators
with th' assent of the Consecrand.
shall accorde. And in such place as
shall be thought most requisite.
This booke 5. Thorder of K. Edvrard's book
is not estab- jg ^q ^jg observed, for that there is
parlement. none other speciali made in this last
session of Parliament.
The notes on the left hand are in Cecil's handwriting and that
on the right in Parker's. A facsimile of the document may be found
in Estcourt, ' Question of Anglican Ordinations,' p. 86.
From Parker's Register at Lambeth. (The Latin original
has been frequently printed. A facsimile is given by
T. J. Bailey, ' Ordinum Sacrorum,' &c.)
Order of Rites and Ceremonies observed in the Consecration
of the Most Reverend Lord, Matthew Parker, Archbishop of
Canterbury, in the Chapel within his manor of Lambeth on
Sunday, viz. : the seventeenth day of the month of December,
in the year of our Lord one thousand five hundred and fifty-nine.
' In the first place the east end of the chapel was adorned with
tapestry, but the floor was covered with red cloth, and the table
which was to be used for the holy offices was placed at the east end
thereof adorned with a frontal and a cushion.
' Besides which there were four chairs placed towards the south
part of the east end of the chapel, for the four bishops to whom the
duty of consecrating the Archbishop was delegated. Moreover a
faldstool covered with a carpet and cushions was set before the chairs,
against which the Bishops might rest when kneeling. Similarly
also a throne and a faldstool adorned with hangings and a cushion

APPENDIX 189
were placed for the Archbishop at the north side of the east end of
the same chapel.
' These things having been arranged in their order, early in the
morning, about five or six o'clock, the Archbishop, wearing a scarlet
gown and hood, enters the chapel by the west door, with four wax
torches borne before him, and accompanied by the four Bishops who
were about to perform the Consecration, viz. : William Barloe,
sometime Bishop of Bath and WeUs now elect of Chichester ; John
Scory, sometime Bishop of Chichester now elect of Hereford ; Miles
Coverdale, sometime Bishop of Exeter, and John, Suffragan of Bed
ford ; and all of them having taken in their several order the seats
prepared for them, immediately Morning Prayer was said in a clear
voice by Andrew Peers on, Chaplain to the Archbishop, at the con
clusion of which John Scory, of whom we have spoken above, ascended
the pulpit, and having chosen as his text " The elders who are amongst
you I exhort, who also am an elder," preached not inelegantiy.
' The sermon being ended, the Archbishop and the other four
Bishops go out of the Chapel together, to prepare themselves for the
Holy Communion, and, without delay, forthwith return by the
door on the north side, vested in the following manner, viz. : the
Archbishop in a linen surplice (as it is called), the Elect of Chichester in
a sUk cope, ready to celebrate the Holy Communion {ad sacra peragenda
paratus). He was served and assisted by two of the Archbishop's
Chaplains, viz. : Nicholas BuUingham and Edmund Gest, Archdeacons
of Lincoln and Canterbury respectively, similarly vested in silk copes ;
the Elect of Hereford and the Suffragan of Bedford in Unen surplices.
' But Miles Coverdale used only a wooUen gown reaching down
to his feet. In this manner vested and arrayed in their places,
they proceed to celebrate the Communion, the Archbishop kneehng
upon the lowest step of the Chapel.
' The Gospel being ended, the Elect of Hereford, the Suffragan
of Bedford and Miles Coverdale (of whom above), presented the
Archbishop to the Elect of Chichester, sitting before the table in
his chair with these words, " Reverend Father in God, we present
unto you this godly and weU learned man to be consecrated Arch
bishop." After he had said this [sic'] the Queen's Letters Patent
or Mandate for the Consecration were at once produced, which having
been read by Dr. Thomas Gale, Doctor of Laws, the oath of the
Queen's supremacy, or for the defence of her Majesty's Supreme
authority was administered to the Archbishop, according to the
Statutes made and provided in the first year of our most gracious
Queen Elizabeth, which when he had solepinly taken in the words
prescribed vsdth his hand on the Holy Gospels, the Elect of Chichester,
having exhorted the people to pray, prepared himself to sing the
Litony, the choir responding. Which being ended, after some

I90 ANGLICAN ORDERS
questions proposed to the Archbishop by the Elect of Chichester,
and after certain prayers and suffrages to Almighty God, according
to the form of the book published by the authority of Parliament,
Chichester, Hereford, the Suffragan of Bedford and Miles Coverdale
laid their hands upon the Archbishop and said in English — " Take
the HoUie Gost, and remember that thou stirre up the grace of God,
whish ys in the by Imposicon of handes, for God hath not given us
the Spirite of feare, but of Power and Love and Soberness."
* Having said this they delivered the Bible into his hands using
the foUowing words — " Give hede unto the readinge, ezhortacon
and Doctrine, think uppon thes thinges, conteyned in this Booke,
be diligent in them that the increase comminge therbye may be mani
fest unto all men ; Take hede unto thyself, and unto thy Teachinge,
and be diligent in Doinge them, for bye doing thys, thou shalt save
thyself and them that hear thee through Jesus Xst our Lord."
' After they had said these things Chichester, without any delivery
to the Archbishop of the Pastoral Staff, continues the remainder of
the Communion Office, with whom the Archbishop, and the four [sic]
Bishops before named with some others, received the Holy Communion.
' At the conclusion of the service the Archbishop goes out by the
north door at the East end of the Chapel, accompanied by the four
Bishops who had consecrated him, and immediately, attended by the
same four Bishops, returns by the same door, vested in a white Epis
copal Surplice, and Chimere, (as they call it), of black silk and wearing
round his neck a certain collar made of valuable sables. In Uke
manner Chichester and Hereford were each vested in their Episcopal
habits of Surplice and Chimere, but Coverdale and the Suffragan
of Bedford wore only wooUen gowns. Then, going towards the
West door, the Archbishop gave white staves severaUy to Thomas
Doyle his steward, John Baker his treasurer, and Jolm Manch his
comptroUer, in this manner admitting them to their duties and offices,
' These things, therefore, having been thus done, in due order
(as afore said) the Archbishop leaves the Chapel by the West door,
those of his family who were of more noble blood preceding him,
and the rest foUowing behind.
' AU and singular these things were done and performed in the
presence of the Reverend Fathers in Christ Edmund GrindaU, Bishop
Elect of London ; Richard Cockes, Elect of Ely ; Edwin Sandes,
Elect of Worcester ; of Anthony Huse Esq. principal and chief
Registrar of the said Archbishop, Thomas ArgaU Esq., Registrar
of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury ; Thomas WiUett and John
Incent, Notaries Public, and some others.'

INDEX

Abbot, Archbishop, 114, 155
Abbots can join in consecrating
Bishops, 80
AUen, Cardinal, 149
Anson, ' Law and Custom of the
Constitution,' quoted, 61
Archduke Charles, 112
Assistant Bishops, do they con
secrate ? 112 seq.
Audeley, Lord Chancellor, 73
Augsburg, Confession of, 23
Augustine, St., of Canterbury,
115
Augustinian Canons, 2, 17
Ayscough, Sir F., 128

Bale, Bishop, 90
Barlow, Agatha, wife of William,
19, 160
Barlow, John, brother of Bishop,
14
Barlow, William : birth, 2, 3 ;
early Ufe, 2 ; prior of Bromehill,
3 ; heretical pamphlets, 3 ; sent
to France, 4 ; ' Dialoge on
Lutheran Faccions,' 5 ; prior
of Haverfordwest, 6 ; prior of
Bisham, 8 ; Bishop of St.
Asaph, 9, 64 ; goes to Scot
land, 9 ; Bishop of St. David's,
9, 64 ; House of Lords, 10 ;
delated for heresy, 11 ; goes
to Carmarthen, 12 ; Bishop of
Bath and WeUs, 13 ; sells
manors, 15 ; quarrels with
Dean, 16 ; resigns see, 17 ; in
exile, 17; retums and conse
crates Parker, 18, 87, 92 seq.,
loi ; Bishop of Chichester, 19 ;

dies, 19 ; his daughters marry
bishops, 19 ; absence of his
documents, 42, 80
Barlow, WiUiam, son of Bishop,
Archdeacon of Salisbury, 19
Bisham Priory, 8, 41, 62, 65, 72,
138
Bishop-elect, 63, 77; powers of,
79,80
Bishops, whether a distinct order,
27 ; method of appointment, 58
Bishops, assistant, at consecra
tions, I
Bishops within the realm, 87
Black Friars, 7
Boleyn, Anne, 6, 10, 24, 83
Boleyn, George, 4
Bonner, Bishop, 35, 50, 59, 65,
71, 95 ; trial, 95 seq.
' Bostleham Mountague,' 72
Bourne, Bishop, 87, 88
BramhaU, Archbishop, 20, 21,
149
Bridgwater, John, 149
Bristow, 89, 149
Broke, C. J., 38
Bromehill priory, 3
BuUingham, Bishop, 127 seq.

Campion, Edw., 149
Canons, Augustinian, 2, 17
Canterbury, Archdeacon of,
Register, 36, 41
Canterbury, Dean and Chapter
o*. 4°, 87. 135
Carmarthen, 13
Catherine of Aragon, 83
Cecil, WiUiam, 88, 90, 96, 118,
125, 144

192

INDEX

Certificate of consecration, 34, 59,
67
Champney, 19, 158
Character, Episcopal, 92
Charles IX of France, H2
Chester, new See of, 52
Chichester, 18, 19, 76
Christian III, King of Denmark,
31
Co-celebration, 117
Collation of Bishops, BiU for, 89
Commendam, 11, 18, 41 ; law of,
65, 66 ; capere, 66 ; perpetual,
reserved to the Pope, 66 ; reti
nere, 66, 127
Commission, to administer oath,
89
Commission, issued to Bishops,
51
Congi d'ilire, 53, 59, 62, 176
Convocation, 37 ; votes Supre
macy, 48
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,
87, 119, 126
Courayer, le, 38, 143
Coverdale, Bishop, 90, 93, loi, 123
Cox, Bishop, 89, 94
Cranmer, Archbishop, 28, 30, 67,
73, 178
Cromwell, Thomas, 7, 24, 31, 43 ;
Vicar-General, 49 ; warrant of,
76
Curteys, Bishop, 162 ; consecra
tion of, 163
Curwen, Hugh, Archbishop, 173
Custody of temporalities, 68, 71,
179 ; garbled grant published
by Mason, 156, 182

De Dominis, Archbishop, 114
Denmark, Episcopal Succession
in, 31, 83
Diocesan Registers, 134
' Dispensation of Retainer,' 41
Dominicans, 7
' Dyer's Reports,' quoted, gg

Edward VI, appointment of
Bishops under, 53
EUzabeth, Queen, 55, 109, in,
118 ; her death, 166 ; Act 8
Eliz. cap. I, 106
Embden, 17

England an Empire, 46
Estcourt, Canon, quoted, 88, 159
Evans v. Ascuith, quoted, 37

Ferrar, Bishop, 142
Finch, Barlow's real name, 2
Fisher, Bishop, 25
Fleet prison, 17
' Form,' sacramental, 114, 117
Foxe, Bishop, his instructions, 23
Frankfort,' ' The Troubles of, 2
FuUie, 151, 154

Gardiner, Bishop Stephen, 13,
29, 102, 145
Gest or Guest, Bishop, 127
Godwin, Bishop, 154
Goodman, John, Dean of Wells,
14, 16
Goodrich, Bishop, 41
Great Cressingham, held by
Barlow, 3
Gregory, St., 115
Grindal, Bishop, 89, 94, g6

Harding, 149, 151
Haverfordwest, priory, 6 ; Do
minicans of, 7
Hawley, Thomas, his ' dyetts,'
77
Heath, Archbishop, 86, 87
Henry VIII, writes against
Luther, 23 ; adopts Lutheran
doctrine, 26 ; seizes power of
Pope, 43, 49 ; erects new Sees,
52 ; issues ' Signed BiU ' for
Barlow's appointment, 64, 67
Henry VIII. Acts of Parliament :
24 H. VIII, cap. 12 ; 46
25 H. VIII, cap. 20; 48, 98,
App. 174
37H. VIII, cap. 13; 48
Heralds' College, 89
High treason, punishment of, 96
Hodgkins, Bishop, 90, 93, 94
Holcroft, Thomas, 8
Hooker, 159
Home, Bishop, 96 seq., 108
Howard, Katherine, 31
Huse, Anthony, 122, 163

INDEX

193

' Immediate Warrant,' 62
Incent, John, 163

James V, King of Scotland, 9
Jewel, Bishop, 89, 94, 151, 153
Jurisdiction, power of, 56

Kitchin, Bishop, 87, 90

Leases, Bishops', do not depend
on consecration, 39
' Legate of the Apostohc See,' 73
Leo XIII, BuU of, ng
Letters Missive, 87
Letters Patent, Bishops appointed
by, 52. 53, 8g
Lingard, Dr., quoted, 31
Lisle, Lady, 76
Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer,
Rolls of, 136
Lords, House of, 10, 36, 75
Luther, Martin, 5, 23, 45

Parker, Archbishop, 87, 96, 163
seq.; consecration of, 93 seq.,
118
Parker, Matthew, son of Arch
bishop, 161
'Parhament Pawns,' 138
Patent Rolls, 33, 35, 186 ; mutila
tion of, 139, 141
Perpetual Commendams, 138
Pilgrimage of Grace, 25
Pilkington, Bishop, 159
Pi tra. Cardinal, quoted, ng
Pole, Bishop, 87
Pole, Cardinal, 25
Praemunire, 16, 33, 47, 176
Prayer Book, Edward VI, 85
Precentor at St. David's, head of
Chapter, g, 11
Privy Council Records, 137
Privy Seal, 3g, 61, 62, 74
Privy Seal, Lord, 6i

Questions on the Sacrament,
28 seq.

Machyn, Diary, 18, 36, 150
Manors, ahenated by Barlow, 15
Marshalsea, prison, 96
Martene, quoted, 116
Mary, Queen, 18, 55, 143
Mason, Bishop Francis, ig, 75,
146, 156, 182
 ' Vindiciae Ecclesise Angh
canae,' ig
 'Consecration of Bishops,'
75, 146, 156, 182
' Menevensis,' Barlow so signs, 75
Meyrick, Bishop, g4
More, Thomas, Lord ChanceUor,
25, 73

Nag's Head Fable, 156
' New Learning,' meaning of
term, 2g, 95

Order, power of, 56, 80, 112
Ordinal of Edward VI, 107, nS
' Outer lemayne,' 53

Randolph, gg
RawUns, Bishop of St. David's,
7.8
Register, Barlow's missing, 131,
143
 Cranmer's, ig, 144
 Parker's, 94, 120 seq., 163 ;
aU in one hand, 124 ;
first shown, 155
 Warham's, 145
Repps, Bishop of Norwich, 76,
142
Rewley Abbey, 2
Rituum ac Ceremoniarum, &c., 122
Royal Assent, 33, 59
Royal Supremacy, 43 seq., 85
Rymer, ' Foedera,' 52

St. Asaph, 9, 135
St. David's,, 8, 10, 12, 13; docu
ments for, 64, 75; Chapter
deceived, 81
Sahsbury, Bishop, 90
Sampson, Bishop, 76, 142
Sandys, Bishop, 94

194

INDEX

Schmalcaldic League, 25, 31
Scory, Bishop, 87, 93, 94, loi,
156
Scotland, embassy to, 9
Scott, J. R. Hope, quoted, 91
Seal for ecclesiastical matters,
81
Shaxton, Bishop, 59, 67
Sherburn, Bishop, 76
' Signed BiU,' 39, 62, 64, 136
Signet, 34, 61 ; records destroyed,
34
•Significavit," 33, 39, 54, sg, 60,
103, 136, 176
Somerset, Duke of, Lord Protec
tor, 13, 15, 160
Southwell, Lady, 166
Spalato, Archbistiop of, 114
Spiritualities, 86
Standysh, Bishop, 8
Stapleton, Th., 89, 149, 153
Stokesley, Bishop, 4
Stubbs, Bishop, quoted, 77
Succession of Bishops : England,
170 ; America, 170 ; Colonies,
170; Scotland, 170; Ireland,
171

Supplentes, clause, 90
Supreme Governor, 85, go
Supreme Head, 48, 87
Temporalities, custody of, be
longed to Crown, 69, 84 ; could
be assigned, 6g ; Restitution
oi, 35, 40 ; to a Bishop con
firmed, 35, 71
Tower of London, 17
Transmutation, phrase used excep
tionally for Barlow's transla-
tion,being still unconsecrated,63
Tunstall, Bishop, 87
TurbeviUe, Bishop, 87
Waite, Anthony, 76
Wake, Archbishop, 38, 143
Watson, Bishop, 128
WeUs, Dean of, 14, 16
Wells, deanery, 14
Wells, diocese of, 14, 15
Welsbourne, Agatha, ig
Wharton, Bishop, 186
Wivehscombe, 16
Wolsey, Cardinal, 3, 47

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