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The Establishment of the Church of England: Its Constitutional and Legal Significance1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

F. W. Buckler
Affiliation:
The Graduate School of Theology, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio

Abstract

Among American churchmen and statesmen, there has been a tendency to regard the Establishment of the Anglican Church entirely in the light of a privilege conferred by the State on one church to the exclusion of others. Where the idea of the Establishment has been derived from the sight of the immunities and official endowment enjoyed by the church of the colonial governor, this point of view is natural. It determined the early statesmen of the young republic to dispense with a luxury which appeared to them to be pregnant with oppression and arrogance. Externally there is little to criticize in the view for it represents fairly accurately the relative position of the Anglican Church both in colonial and English history in the eyes of non-Anglican communions. Internally, however, the case is not as simple, as the Free Churchman, whether within or without the Anglican fold, has been ready to detect, and Cartwright here is in complete accord with Newman. The conflict was brought to an issue when the House of Commons rejected the proposals for the revision of the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 in two consecutive years, 1927 and 1928.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1941

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References

2 Cf. The Act of 06 2, 1692 (Maryland) ap. Mode, P. G., Source Bool and Bibliographical Guide for American Church History (Menasha, Wisconsin, 1921), 38f.Google Scholar: the opposition to the appointment of an Episcopate turned, to some extent, on the same point, v. Bishop Sherlock's report, Ibid., 251–255, particularly 253f.; for Jefferson's opposition to the Establishment, v. Mott, R. J.Sources of Jefferson's Ecclesiastical Views,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, III (1934), 267284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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4 (London, S. P. C. K., 1935); cited hereafter as Church and Marriage, 1935.

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6 1 Edw. 8. 1 Geo. 6. Ch. 57.

7 “Hitherto you have been upheld by your birth, your education, your wealth, your connexions; should these secular advantages cease, on what must Christ's Ministers depend? Is not this a serious practical question? We know how miserable is the state of religious bodies not supported by the State. Look at the Dissenters on all sides of you, and you will see at once that their Ministers, depending simply upon the people, become the creatures of the people. Are you content that this should be your ease?” Newman, J. H., Tracts for the Times, I.Google Scholar

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19 Cambridge Medieval History, V, 516. I am indebted to Professor J. T. McNeil for calling my attention to the excellent paper by Liehtenstein, W., “The Date of Separation of Ecclesiastical and Lay Jurisdiction in England,” Illinois Law Revisw, III, (1908-1909), 347353Google Scholar, in which he shows, I think conclusively, “that there is considerable doubt whether the two jurisdictions were separate before Stephen, but at the end of his reign the courts Christian tried criminous clerks, and settled all civil cases in which the church was party. By the reign of Henry II, the two courts are sharply separated; their laws are different, and now that the secular law is wielded by the strong hand of the great king, both jurisdictions are prepared to struggle for every inch of ground.”

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27 Gibbs, M. and Lang, J., Bishops and Reform, 1215–1272 (Oxford, 1934)Google Scholar, give a useful account of this period. Miss Lang's summary (174–179), which is sympathetic to Innocent III, suggests an echo of Bishop Stubbs (177), disguised under the waywardness of individual bishops.

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29 Stubbs, , Select Charters, 450–2, 495–6Google Scholar; also for the Writ Circumspecte Agatis, 469f.; id., Constitntional History, II, 158–160; on the ultimate fate of Archbishop Winchelsea, 161; the Statute of Carlisle, 163; Cambridge Medieval History, VII, 410.Google Scholar

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40 The term Praemunire is so frequently used merely as a species of clerical bogey that it may be well to point out its real significance. The Acts of Praemunire “fortified” the King “ahead of time” against excommunication by the Pope by placing at his mercy (in misericordia sua) anyone who exercised, without the royal permission, the functions of the Pope, or the Pope's agent, within the Kingdom. In other words, anyone offending under the act was ipso actu already an outlaw, and therefore an excommunicated person. The obsequious conduct of the Clergy was due to the knowledge of the vulnerability of their position.

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50 Sir Robert Phillimore in Martin v. Mackonochie, L. R. 2. A and E 116 at p. 153 qu. in Dale, J. M., “The Clergyman's Legal Handbook, 7th ed., rev, by Risley, J. S. (London, 1898), 2.Google Scholar; but see Maitland, F. W., Canon Law, 4050Google Scholar on Lyndwood.

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52 Cf. SirHales, Matthew, The History of the Common Law (1713), 27.Google Scholar

53 Infra, pp. 340f.

54 Church and State, 1935, 6, 10, 12–13, 26–29, 36, 41f., 57–60 etc.

55 Philip Yorke, 1st. Lord Hardwicke, (Lord Chancellor, 1737–1756). For particulars of his life Dictionary of Nationai Biography, lxiii, 346–353 (J. M. Rigg); Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed.), (B. J. MacNeill). Harris, G., Life of Lord Hardwicke, I, 292Google Scholar; II, 484ff., records his hostility to clandestine marriages, against which he was the author of the Act (26 Geo. II, c. 33) which bears his name.

56 John Middleton and his wife, v. Thomas Crofts, 1736, Str. 1056, 2 Atk. 650; confirmed, , Bishop of Exeter v. Marshall, 186618671868Google Scholar, L. R. 3 H. L. 17; followed R. v. Allen, 1872, L. R. 8 Q. B. 75; distinguished Jenkins v. Cook, 1875, L. R. 4 Ad. & Ecc. 489; see Mackonochie v. Lord Penrance 1881, 6 App. Cas. 445; followed R. v. Archbishop of York, 20 Q. B. D. 747. For the general setting of the controversy in 1603ff. v. supra n. 13.

57 On the process and writs of prohibition, v. Makower, , The Constitutional History, 238Google Scholar, nn. 7–8, 242, n. 4, 244 n. 10, 435, n. 153; SirPollock, Frederick and Maitland, F. W., The History of English Law 2nd ed., (Cambridge, 1911), I, 251, 479Google Scholar; II, 199–202, 596, 665; Holdsworth, W. W., History of English Law, (3rd ed., (1922), 553559, 610611Google Scholar; Adams, , “The Writ of Prohibition to Courts Christian ” (1936) 20. Minnesota Law Rev., 272.Google Scholar Writs of Prohibition have been abolished under the Administration of Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1938, 1 “the Court may make an order”… to “be called … an order of prohibition.” By sub-section (14) “No return shall be made to any such order and pleadings in prohibition shall be allowed, but the order shall be final, subject to any right to appeal therefrom.” I am indebted for the lust two references to the kindness of Professor E. N. Griswold of Harvard University; and to Dr. E. C. Wade for calling my attention to the change in the writ system contemplated under the statute.

58 4 Inst. 322.

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60 The reference is to the tests of legitimacy, v. supra, n. 28.

61 25 H. 8. c. 19, continued in 27 H. 8. c. 15, 35 H. 8. c. 16, 3 & 4 E. 6. e. 11.

62 Compare the statement up to this point with Jefferson's views, R. J. Mott, “Jefferson's Ecclesiastical Views,” n. 44.

63 A Consultation, is “a writ in the nature of a procedendo, whereby a cause, having been removed by prohibition from the Ecclesiastical Court to the King's Court, is returned thither again; for if the judges of the King's Court, upon comparing the Libel with the suggestion of the party, find the suggestion false or not proved, and therefore the cause to be wrongfully removed from the Ecclesiastical Court, then upon this consultation or deliberation they decree it to be returned, whereupon the writ in this ease obtained is called a consultation.” Wharton's Law Lexicon (14th ed. 1938), 243.

64 Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity Book, VIII, with an introduction by B. A. Honk (New York, 1931), 6870, 7376, 80, 153167Google Scholar; Calvin's view of the relations of Church and State, v. Mackinnon, J., Calvin and the Reformation (London, 1936), 251261, 265270.Google Scholar The reference to Calvin's debt to Civil Law recalls a remark made by Figgis: “What I have tried to show is that this error is not of modern origin, that it did not come into our world at the Renaissance, though it may have been accentuated then, but that it is part of the damnosa hereditas from the Civil Law of the Roman Empire, of whieh Stubbs once said that, whenever it had been dominant, it destroyed any real idea of civil and religious freedom.” Churches in the Modern State, 226.

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67 Cardwell, E., The Reformation, xiiGoogle Scholar; Mactear, G. F. and Williams, W. W., An Introduction to the Articles of the Church of England (London, 1909) 2122.Google Scholar

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69 Ibid., cf. 158, 176, 177.

70 Allen, J. W., A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1928), 182.Google Scholar

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72 14 C. 2. cap. 4. (Gee and LHardy, , Documents, 601–2).Google Scholar

73 Sykes, Norman, Edmund Gibson (London), 144173.Google Scholar

74 v. Church and State, 1935, 13, 15–17, for a modern statement of the “Act of Toleration” in terms of disadvantage to the Church. Gwatkin points out the attempts of the Tories to take the virtue out of the Act (Church and State to the Death of Queen Anne, 378f., 385f., 390; Cambridge Modern History, V, 336f.Google Scholar). Henson, H. Hensley, Anglicanism (London, 1921), 97.Google Scholar Even Catholic Emancipation was a stumbling block; Stewart, H. L., A Century of Anglo- Catholicism (New York, 1929), 83.Google Scholar The best criticism yet written on the Report is by ProfessorSykes, Norman: “The fundamental weakness of the Report lies precisely in the lack of any evidence of appreciation of the responsihility and duty of the Church of England towards the Nation.” The Church and the Twentieth Century (London, 1936), 45.Google Scholar

75 Sykes, Norman, The Church of England in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1933), 310ff.Google Scholar

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79 Henson, H. Hensley, Anglicanism, 228230.Google Scholar For a fuller account of succeeding events v. Buckler, F. W., “Church and State in England since the war 1919–1935,” The Episcopal Pulpit, I 1936, 7785.Google Scholar

80 The Church and Marriage, 1935, 24. The sectarian character of this document is revealed by the paragraph “The Church and its own members” (italics mine) 17f., and the appeal to Canon Law, which precedes it. For a sketch of English opinion on divorce by a lawyer, v. Kitchin, S. B., A History of Divorce (London, 1912), 171208Google Scholar; for the Pre-Reformation position, 59–88. This may be the proper place to point out that, mutatis mutanilis, Mr. A. P. Herbert's Holy Deadlock is the masculine counterpart of Mt. V. 32, which appears to be, likewise, a reductio ad absurdum of the “one cause.”

81 The Matrimonial Causes Act, 1937 [1 Edw. 8 ]

82 Ibid., sec. 12.

83 Drs. Forse and Hayward.

84 The Times” (London, 11 20, 1937)Google Scholar. Contrast with the views expressed by Archbishop Lang the late Professor J. M. Creed's review of the Report on Church and State, 1935, J. T. S., xxxvii, (1936), 302–3.Google Scholar As an instance of the opportunities of a “free ehurch” to violate its own constitutional limitations with apparent impunity, owing to the impotence of the lower clergy to act in face of probable penalization, I might quote the action of the House of Bishops in the Church of England in Canada. I have been credibly informed by a layman that the House resolved that the marriage of a party to divorce proceedings during the lifetime of the other party, should not be permitted to be celebrated in an Anglican Church, or by an Anglican clergyman. The Lower House was not consulted. A more flagrant instance of hyper-Pseudo-Isidorian episcopocratic usurpation it is hard to find outside the annals of Rome or Laudian England.

85 Quoted from Angoff, Charles, A Litcrary History of the American People (New York, 1935), I, 320–1.Google Scholar