obviously add to the risk of separate provincial action. Such perhaps is the feeling of the two primates themselves, in calling attention at this time to the inconvenience of the 'zigzagged line' intersecting the National Church. Each has suggested a scheme for closer union between the two Convocations; and with the headlong zeal that characterizes so many of our modern reforms, the Church House already invites contributions as a home for the regenerated National Synod.

The time is come, then, for the practical discussion of the last great difficulty in the way of our revived Convocations. We submit that it can only be successfully dealt with from the historical point of view. We must beware of plunging into another protracted struggle with the law officers of the Crown. It is not a question that can be treated experimentally, like the Lay House which has no place in the constitution of the Church. The two Convocations are the fundamental elements of our ecclesiastical organization. They are older than the nation itself-the main links that unite it to the Catholic Church; older than the parishes, the cathedrals, and the greater part of our existing dioceses. They are the sources of all our Church law, worship, and discipline. Of such bodies the very life blood is precedent; if we want proof of its practical value in dealing with the question before us, we have only to compare the swift success of the historical process at York with the still fruitless efforts of the Lower House of Canterbury for its own reform. Our first object, then, is to review the relations of the two provinces from the historical point of view to know the course of their joint action in the past is the safest guide to improvement for the future.

We begin with dismissing the idle theory that the sacred Synod of this nation,' referred to in the 139th Canon, is a different body from the two Provincial Synods comprehended under the name of 'Convocation.' No such Synod as this theory imagines ever sat in this island. Our Provincial Synods have been united in a National Council; but whether united or apart, they always preserved their own constitution, and were 'the true Church of England by representation' in their respective provinces. The decrees of one became national by the concurrence of the other, just as Councils became General by the acceptance of national Churches, whether or no they were formally represented in the original Synods. The fact is so familiar to canonists that we should not have adverted to it, if we had not met with some worthy people in eager pursuit of a will-of-the-wisp that can only lead them into a bog.

A second elementary fact is that a Provincial Synod in this country implies an archbishop. Theodore was Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England, in a sense inherited by only three of his successors. They were sole archbishops of the English Church three centuries before an English kingdom existed. At no time, however, was England an 'Exarchate.' Theodore's mission was to unite the British, Scotch, and Roman successions in one national Church, under the superintendence of the Pope. He was substituted for Wighard, who was nominated by the kings of Northumbria and Kent, but died at Rome before he could be consecrated. There is no doubt that Wilfrid aspired to the pall, but his controversy with the Celtic bishops made him obnoxious in Northumbria, and being a Northumbrian himself, neither king nor bishops wanted him in Kent. Enjoying the temporal support of the two most powerful monarchs, Theodore was primate of the whole island-Oswy's archbishop as much as Egbert's, He has even been styled Archbishop of York;1 but there was no Archbishop of York, and consequently no Provincial Synod, till Egbert obtained the pall, A.D. 735. Paulinus himself did not receive it till after his flight from York, and the five intervening occupants of the see were only diocesan bishops. The Councils held by Theodore and Brihtwald in the several kingdoms were Pan-Anglican, though occasionally employed on local questions. They welded the English Church into the Catholic communion by receiving the creeds and the decrees of the Ecumenical Councils.

The existing provincial organization dates from the primacy of Egbert. It is not a subdivision, but a confederation of autonomous Churches. Northumbria was an independent kingdom, extending from the Trent to the Forth, and from the German Ocean to the Isle of Man. Its mother Church was not Canterbury but Iona. The Culdee name and discipline lingered at York Minster in the reign of Henry I.2 It was at the king's request that Theodore was invested with the primacy, and when the demand was made for a native primate, neither Rome nor Canterbury could gainsay the constitution of Gregory. The marvellous progress of the Northumbrian Church under the long primacy of Egbert, and of the three disciples that followed him, owed nothing to external influence. Five bishoprics supplied the synodal action, of which the fruits are seen in Egbert's Excerptions, and Wulfstan's Laws of the

Northumbrian Priests. Albert's magnificent minster with its thirty altars stood intact to the Norman Conquest. It was here that Eanbald, assisted by three of his suffragans, consecrated King Eardulf on June 25, 796. The School of York, with its splendid library, where Alcuin studied and taught, was the light of the English Church till quenched in the Danish invasion. The second Eanbald was a member of Charlemagne's literary coterie. In one of Alcuin's letters the great scholar asks his former pupil-the 'Symeon' of the imperial Court-to assist Ethelhard of Canterbury in his struggle to regain the Mercian primacy, which Offa had transferred to Lichfield. He is credited with the authorship of the York Use, which Canon Simmons holds to be neither more nor less than Charlemagne's palatial Missal.1 There could be no stronger proof of his independence of Canterbury, since a Council at Cloveshoo, about fifty years before, decreed the use of the Roman exemplar. It was at York that Alcuin conferred with the English divines on the Caroline Books, and we suspect that the Council of Frankfort thought much more of the Archbishop of York than of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The fall of Northumbria embittered the dislike of the Angles to the Saxons, whom they had always looked down upon. The kingdom was shattered to pieces by the Danish inroads. The Church not only converted the assailants, but preferred their alliance to the southron yoke. The conversion was the swiftest upon record; within a century from their first appearance in the Humber the thrones of Canterbury and York were both occupied by full-blooded Danes; still the gulf between the north and south was far from being bridged over. In spite of Athelstan's munificent gifts, Danish kings reigned in York for twenty years after the victory of Brunnenburgh. His archbishop, Wulstan, was deposed and imprisoned by Edred for complicity with the Danes. His successors, Oskytal and Oswald, though Danes themselves, had little influence in the north. York was practically a Danish city: it was thronged with Danish merchants, who made the commercial mart which was its glory in the Middle Ages.2 The earls who replaced the kings were more Danish than English. Canute was already King of Northumberland, East Anglia, and all the north of England, when the southern half fell to him on the death of Edmund Ironside; he became the first. undisputed King of England just fifty years before the Norman Conquest.

1 Lay Folks' Mass Book, p. 353

2 Raine, p. 123.

In all this period there is not a trace-we might say there was no possibility—of any subjection of the northern primate to the southern. The alleged submission of Archbishop Adulph, which imposed upon Collier, is known to be one of the forgeries of the Cantuarians under Lanfranc. The prelate who signed it was bishop of Lindsey. The archbishop was indeed a suffragan of Canterbury by reason of the bishopric of Worcester, which he held in commendam with York ;-an arrangement which began with Oswald, and was continued to several of his successors, to supply the impoverishment of the northern primacy. By this way such unity of action as the times permitted was indirectly secured.

Lanfranc's attempt to exact a formal submission was a political measure in violation of all ecclesiastical precedents. The English Church was of no authority with the Normans. An archbishop of York had crowned the Conqueror in Westminster Abbey; another archbishop of York might perform the same office for a rival in York Minster. This was the danger that weighed with William and his Norman prelates at the Council of Windsor. Thomas had been long enough at York to know better. As often as the case was referred to Rome the forged bulls, from which the leaden seals had perished by time, while the parchment was miraculously preserved, were laughed out of court. Three PopesPaschal, Gelasius, and Calixtus-pronounced for the independence of York. The last gave a bull of exemption, which Thurstan promulgated in York Minster (1121). Two others to the same effect were issued by Honorius II. (1126), and by Alexander III. (1179). In 1306 Archbishop Grenefeld proclaimed in the Synod of Ripon that the Archbishop of York had no superior in spirituals except the Pope, and anathematized any of his subjects who should appeal to Canterbury.' This canon, save as regards the Pope, being undoubtedly among the number to which the Act of Submission gives the authority of statute law, it is surprising that a writer of Mr. Joyce's learning can still contend for the Windsor decree; and the more so that it has little or no bearing on the subject of Convocation.

The distinguishing feature of an English Convocation is the formal representation of the parochial clergy, and of this we have not a particle of evidence before the twelfth century. The Episcopal Councils before the Conquest were doubtless attended by many priests and deacons, as well as kings and

1 Trevor's Two Convocations, p. 83.

nobles and even abbesses. St. Hilda and St. Wilfrid (then an abbot), Agatho the priest, and James the deacon, besides the two kings, appear at Whitby. But there is no trace of formal representation, nor any clear evidence of the extent of their power. The Norman Councils were limited to the greater prelates-bishops and abbots; the Diocesan Synod was the proper utterance of the voice of the clergy. By the end of the eleventh century it had become usual to admit inferior prelates and capitular bodies to the Provincial Synod. Under the Papacy the provinces were held together by subjection to a common superior. The Roman legate developed from an amicus curiæ into the presiding judge: he cited the prelates and clergy before himself, displaced the archbishop, and dictated the constitutions. Still there was no change in the constitution of the Provincial Synods. The first use of the word 'Convocation' is at the Legatine Synod of 1125, and it appears that each was convened by its own archbishop, and included the archdeacons, abbots, and priors. The legate presided at the Council of Westminster (1176) when Roger of York was 'fustigated' for claiming precedence of Canterbury in right of seniority.

In the reign of Henry III. Archbishop Boniface was engaged in resisting the papal exactions, which, though at first opposed by the king and the laity, were supported by the whole power of the Crown when Henry had come to an agreement with Rome. The bishops and clergy were thrown upon their own resources, and the struggle tended to augment the interests of the lower clergy in the Convocation. The archbishop's Mandatum pro Convocatione (1257) now commands his suffragans to bring with them the deans and priors of their cathedral churches, the abbots and independent priors and the archdeacons, each armed with letters procuratorial from their several congregations and subject clergy. The king forbade the assembly on pain of forfeiture of all their lands, but the archbishop deeming his duty to the Church superior to the royal prohibition, the Convocation was held in defiance both of king and pope. In the next reign Kilwarby's Mandatum pro Convocatione summons the archdeacons and the procurators of the whole clergy, and as no directions are given for their election, it would appear the usage was now established. The parochial clergy, who had always appeared in the Diocesan Synod in person, henceforth had their proctors in the Provincial Synod or Convocation. These particulars.

1 Trevor's Two Convocations, p. 29.