the oath of homage he was required to take to the King, took also an oath of obedience to the Pope.1

:

1 Oath to the Pope :"I- bishop or abbot of from this hour forward shall be faithful and obedient to S. Peter, and to the holy church of Rome, and to my lord the pope and his successors canonically entering. I shall not be of counsel nor consent, that they shall lose either life or member, or shall be taken, or suffer any violence or any wrong by any means. Their counsel to me credited by them, their messengers or letters, I shall not willingly discover to any person: The papacy of Rome, the rules of the holy fathers, and the regality of S. Peter, I shall help and maintain and defend against all men. The legate of the see apostolic, going and coming, I shall honourably entreat. The rights, honours, privileges, and authorities of the Church of Rome, and of the pope and his successors, I shall cause to be conserved, defended, augmented, and promoted. I shall not be in counsel, treaty, or any act in the which any thing shall be imagined against him or the Church of Rome, their rights, seats, honours, or powers. And if I know any such to be moved or compassed, I shall resist it to my power, and as soon as I can, I shall advertise him, or such as may give him knowledge. The rules of the holy fathers, the decrees, ordinances, sentences, dispositions, reservations, provisions, and commandments apostolic, to my power I shall keep, and cause to be kept of others. Heretics, schismatics, and rebels to our holy father and his successors, I shall resist and persecute to my power. I shall come to the synod when I am called, except I be letted by a canonical impediment. The thresholds of the apostles I shall visit yearly personally or by my deputy. I shall not alienate or sell my possessions without the pope's counsel. So God help me and the holy evangelists."

Extracts from Cardinal Adrian's oath of fidelity to King Henry VII for the bishopric of Bath and Wells:

"Cum omnes et singuli Archiepiscopi et Episcopi hujus nostri inclyti Regni, quorum omnium nominationes, et promotiones, ad ipsas supremas dignitates, nobis attinent ex regali et peculiari quadam Praerogativa, jureque municipali, ac inveterata consuetudine, hactenus in hoc nostro Regno inconcusse et inviolabiliter observata, teneantur et astringantur, statim et immediate post impetratas Bullas Apostolicas, super eorundem promotione ad ipsam nostram nominationem, corum nobis et in praesentia nostra, si in hoc Regno nostro fuerunt, vel coram Commissariis nostris, ad hoc sufficienter et legittime deputatis, si alibi moram traxerunt, non solum palam, publice, et expresse, totaliter cedere, et in manus nostras renunciare omnibus, et quibuscunque verbis, clausulis, et sententiis in ipsis Bullis Apostolicus contentis, et descriptus, quae sunt, vel quovis modo in futurum esse poterunt, praejudicialia, sive damnosa, nobis, haeredibusque de corpore nostro legittime pro

We are told that "no man can serve two masters," and this impossible task becomes possible only when the spheres of allegiance are accurately defined. Such definition was never possible, and we find the bishops and abbots doing their best to adhere to their twofold allegiance. In the Provisor's Act of 1365 they recorded a caveat that they "assented to nothing that could be turned to the prejudice of their own estate or dignity.' In that of 1390 they attached a protest against anything that should tend "in restrictionem Potestatis Apostolicae aut in subversionem enervationem seu derogationem ecclesiasticae libertatis."

Besides all this the position was complicated by the fact that the laws in England were twofold in their authority and origin. The statute law came from King and Parliament, and the canon law rested upon a papal authority and decretals. Whilst the Archbishop of Canterbury was made Legatus Natus, no English bishop or English provincial synod had any power to repeal or override the constitutions of the Legates a latere who were sent to England, or to put a statutory interpretation on them in a case of ambiguity.1

No one knew where canon law ended and statute law began; nor what subjects might not conceivably belong to the former.

An illustration of the working of the whole system is

creatis Angliae regibus, Coronae aut Regno nostro, juribus vel consuetudinibus aut Praerogativis ejusdem Regni nostri,

"Bullasque et alias Literas Apostolicas validas et efficaces in debita Juris forma, super eisdem causis et negotiis impetrare et obtinere absque fraude, dolo aut sinistra quavis machinatione quantum in me erit, cum omni effectu enitar, operam dabo et conabor; ac easdem valiter expeditas, cum ea quam res expostulat diligentia, suae Serenitati, transmittam aut per alios transmitti, tradi et liberari curabo, et faciam. Servitia quoque et homagia pro temporalibus dicti Episcopatus, quae recognosco tenere a sua Celsitudine tanquam a Domino meo supremo, fideliter faciam et implebo. Ita me Deus adjuvet et haec Sancta Dei Evangelia. In cujus, etc. T. R. apud Westm. 13 die Octob.

"Per Ipsum Regem." 1 Maitland, Canon Law in the English Church, Essay I.

afforded in the questions which arose touching the "benefit of clergy.'

By canon law the clergy were exempt from civil jurisdiction. A man might commit murder, robbery, theft, or any crime against the State, and claim exemption from civil jurisdiction if he belonged to the ranks of the clergy. The peculiar privilege called "benefit of clergy" came to be extended far beyond priests, deacons and monks, and included all who had taken orders of any kind, including door-keepers and minor church. officers. Most persons guilty of crime preferred to be dealt with by the Church. Here the theory of punishment was to bestow it pro salute animae, and whilst bishops and abbots had prisons of their own, the usual form of punishment was fine or penance, and there was always a hope of escaping from these by obtaining an indulgence. The system had extended so as to become a peril to national well-being. Early in the reign of Henry VIII a temporary act was passed limiting the power to claim clerical privilege. The Abbot of Winchcombe denounced the act in a sermon at Paul's Cross as contrary to the law of God. Henry VIII called a council to consider the matter, and one voice alone, that of the Warden of Greyfriars (Dr. Standish), maintained that the act was no invasion of the Church's privileges. Dr. Standish was summoned before convocation to answer for his heresy, and against this he appealed to the King. The judges declared their opinion that the clergy in convocation by the part they had taken against Dr. Standish had incurred a Praemunire. Wolsey then appears on the scene, kneeling before the King and imploring him to send the question for decision by the Pope. Henry VIII's answer was memorable, "We are, by the sufferance of God, King of England; and the Kings of England in times past never had any superior but God. Know, therefore, that we will maintain the rights of the Crown in this matter like our progenitors. And as to your decrees, we are satisfied that even you of the spiritualty act expressly against the words of several of them, as has been well shown you by some

of our spiritual counsel. You interpret your decrees at your pleasure; but, as for me, I will never consent to your desire any more than my progenitors have done."

This took place in 1515, some twenty years before the final repudiation of Rome was carried through Parliament. It would have been well for Wolsey if he had remembered these words. The speaker was young, fascinating in person and manner, the idol of his court and people, and the very embodiment of kingly qualities. They bespeak that same imperious will which triumphed over kings and emperors and popes. This is not the place in which to speak of Henry VIII; Froude attempted to reinstate him in public confidence, but his treatment of Catherine of Arragon and his unbridled lust, passion and greed in later years write him down as immoral. Our contention, however, is that apart from the question of the divorce or the immorality of Henry VIII there were just and sufficient causes for the Church legislation in his reign, and that the beginnings of the English Reformation were the result of the pent-up feelings of indignation against oppression which had been persistently pursued in the name of Rome through many centuries of time. The mental ideas of the Middle Ages had come to their end at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The new learning had established itself in England, and the whole atmosphere was charged with the spirit of inquiry. Institutions like the monasteries were on their trial. A profound mistrust of many doctrines taught by the Church had entered men's minds. The moral law had been degraded by the shameless use of indulgences and by the greedy exaction of fines and payments to Rome for benefices and bishoprics. A new era had come, and in the light of it the agelong abuses loomed large in their hideous deformity.

It is not necessary that we should credit all the stories of immorality which gathered round the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Though they had fallen from their high estate, and the worst forms of worldliness had invaded these ancient homes of piety and learning, there were plenty of faithful and devout monks and nuns.

The parish priests, though ignorant, could be found throughout the country serving their parishes well, and the bishops were not all hypocrites and time-servers. The English Church in the Middle Ages produced many noble bishops and abbots who served God in both Church and State.

What was done in the Reformation Period?

It is time now that we ask ourselves what the Reformation was. The final settlement did not come until 1662, when, the Commonwealth days having ended in general disgust, the country welcomed King and Church as rulers in civil and ecclesiastical life.

The Reformation was the reform of the English Church, whose legal continuity was preserved and whose ecclesiastical continuity was maintained in the succession of the ancient Orders. There was not, as some people suppose, any single act called the Reformation.

Under the one name most people include many events extending_over many years. "In popular language,' says Dr. Freeman, "the Reformation sometimes means the throwing off of the authority of the Pope, sometimes the suppression of the monasteries, sometimes the actual religious changes, the putting forth of the English Prayer Book and the Articles of Religion. Here are three sets of changes, all of which are undoubtedly connected as results of a general spirit of change; but, as a matter of fact, they were acts done by different people at different times, and those who, at any stage, wrought one change had no thought that the others would follow."

On the legal side he adds, "No act was done by which legal and historical continuity was broken. Any lawyer must know that, though Pole succeeded Cranmer, and Parker succeeded Pole, yet nothing was done to break the uninterrupted succession of the Archbishopric of Canterbury as a corporation sole in the eye of the law."1

1 "We must take some pains to understand a fact which more than any other differentiates the English Reformation-I mean the continuity of the Anglican Church. There is no point at which