Part 4

"Rural Felicity," however, though in a purer style than "Winifreda," can hardly be said to rise to poetry at all; and if the latter had been by the same author, it is most improbable that he would have excluded it from the volume containing the former. Looking at the two songs together, one is an evident imitation; and the conclusion I should come to with regard to the other is, that it was written by a man who _knew_ the feeling he describes; by one of whom it could not be said, "He has no children;" by one to whom that more than identity of interest that centres in the--

"Unselfish self, the filial self of twain,"

was a familiar feeling. Stevens, perhaps, had repeated the poem, or made a copy of it, and thus gained the credit of being its author.

I am surprised that your correspondent T. W. should find any difficulty in the passage he quotes from _Childe Harold_:

"Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant (_has wasted them_) since."

This mode of expression is only faulty when ambiguous; but here of ambiguity there is none.

SAMUEL HICKSON.

THE THREE ESTATES OF THE REALM.

(Vol. iv., pp. 115. 196.)

As CANONICUS EBORACENSIS considers that I have "not exactly hit the mark" in inferring that "the Lords, the Clergy _in Convocation_, and the Commons" are the "Three Estates of England" named in the Gunpowder Treason Service, I would claim, being not yet altogether convinced by CANON. EBOR.'S arguments that such is the case, a share of your space for discussing a question which must certainly be interesting to all who uphold "our Constitution in Church and State." My apology for prolixity must be, that having but just received "NOTES AND QUERIES" I have not had time to study brevity.

The passages, which contain the expressions referred to in the Service, are as under:--

"We yield Thee our unfeigned thanks and praise for the wonderful and mighty deliverance of our gracious Sovereign King James the First, the Queen, the Prince, and all the royal branches, _with the Nobility, Clergy, and Commons of England_, then assembled in Parliament, by popish treachery appointed as sheep to the slaughter, in a most barbarous and savage manner, beyond the examples of former ages."--The First Collect at Morning Prayer.

"By discovering and confounding their horrible and wicked enterprise, plotted and intended this day to have been executed against the King _and the whole State of England_, for the subversion of the government and religion established among us."--The Litany.

"Acknowledging Thy power, wisdom, and goodness in preserving the King, _and the Three Estates of the Realm of England_, assembled in Parliament, from the destruction this day intended against them."--The Communion Service.

"Who on this day didst miraculously preserve _our Church and State_ from the secret contrivance and hellish malice of popish conspirators."--After the Prayer for the Church Militant.

CANON. EBOR. asserts that these Three Estates (the word "estates" being used of course in its second intention, as meaning the representatives, and not the orders _en masse_) are "the Lords Spiritual," "the Lords Temporal," and "the Commons," representing severally the clergy, the nobility, and the commonality. As "the Lords Spiritual" are always placed before "the Lords Temporal," he is obliged to rank _the clergy_ before _the nobility_ in spite of the order of precedency observed in the Collect. This seems to show that the clergy are not represented by the bishops. And in the Coronation Oath they are separately specified:

"And will you preserve unto _the bishops and clergy of the realm_, and to the churches committed to them, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them or any of them?"

This in an older oath ran thus:

"Et quil gardera le peas de seynt Eglise _et al clergie_ et al people de bon accorde."

From these quotations it does not seem very faulty to infer, that the clergy as represented by Convocation are the second Estate of the realm; and are not, as represented by "the Lords Spiritual," the first, which is the Estate of the nobility represented by the Peers.

Against this CANON. EBOR.'S arguments are two: first, "that the phrase 'assembled in Parliament' has no application to the Convocation;" and next, that the "Convocation does not sit at Westminster."

With regard to the first, I have to say that it was somewhat late in our history that the point was settled that Convocation was not a part of Parliament. In Mr. Palin's recently published _History of the Church of England_, ch. x. p. 242., I read, with respect to the dissolution of the Convocation of 1701,--

"With the presentation of this document the Convocation dispersed, both the King and the Prolocutor being now dead; and in the act that empowered the Parliament to sit after the king's death, no provision was made to continue the Convocation. The Earl of Rochester moved, in the House of Lords, that it might be considered, _whether the Convocation was not a part of the Parliament, and whether it was not continued in consequence of the act that continued the Parliament_. But that was soon let fall; for the judges were all of opinion that it was dissolved by the king's death."

In _A Reconciling Letter, &c._, a pamphlet published in 1702:

"Pray inform me to which notion I may subscribe; whether to the Convocation being a Parliamentary body, and _part of Parliament_, as Dr. A. has made it? Or to the Convocation having a Parliamentary relation, and such an origin and alliance," &c.

On going back to an earlier date:--In Statutis 21 Richard II. c. 2., and 21 Richard II. c. 12. the preambles state that--

"These statutes were made by the assent _of the procurators of the clergy, as well as_ of other constituent members _of parliament_."

And we know that the _Procuratores Cleri_ occasionally sat in parliament in the Lower House, as the Judges do now in the Upper: in a treatise quoted by Coke (_De modo tenendi Parliamentum_)--

"It appeareth that the proctors of the clergy should appear, 'cum præsentia eorum sit necessaria' (which proveth they were voiceless assistants only), and having no voices, and so many learned bishops having voices, their presence is not now holden necessary."--4 Inst. 5.

Perhaps they were not altogether voiceless, for we find that on Nov. 22, 1547, a petition was presented by the Lower House of Convocation to the Upper, the second clause of which was--

"2dly. That the clergy of the lower house of Convocation may be admitted _to sit in Parliament with the House of Commons_ according to antient usage."

In support of this, the clause _Præmunientes_ in the writ directing the elections of Proctors was appealed to. This "Præmunitory Clause," which at a later period of the history of Convocation was the cause of much discussion, ran thus:--

"The Bishop was commanded to 'give notice to the (Prior or) Dean and Chapter of his Cathedral Church, and to the Archdeacons and all the clergy of his diocese, that the Prior, Deans, and Archdeacons, in their own persons, the chapter by one, and the clergy by two, proper proxies, sufficiently empowered by the said chapter and clergy, _should by all means be present at the Parliament with him_ to do and to consent to those things, which, by the blessing of GOD, by their common advice happened to be ordained in the matters aforesaid, and that the giving this notice should by no means be omitted by him.'"

"The clergy _thus summoned to Parliament_ by the King and Diocesan, met for the choice of their proxies; for this purpose the Dean or Prior held his chapter, and the Archdeacon his synod. The representatives being chosen in these assemblies _were sent up to Parliament_, with procuratorial letters from the chapter and clergy to give them an authority to act in their names, and on the behalf of their electors."--Collier's _Eccles. Hist._, Part II. book iv.

Also--

"All the members of both Houses of Convocation have the same privileges for themselves and their servants as _the members of parliament_ have, and that by statute."--Chamberlayn's _Mag. Brit. Notitia_, p. 94.

It may be reasonably doubted, whether a little research would not afford further reasons for thinking that there was some ground for applying the phrase "assembled in Parliament" to Convocation.

With respect to the Convocations sitting at Westminster. The first Convocation of 1283 sat "at the New Temple;" the next was summoned on St. Matthew's day, 1294, to meet _at Westminster_. On April 22, 1523, a National Synod of both Convocations was held _at Westminster_ by Cardinal Wolsey, the Papal Legate. The Convocation sat _at Lambeth_ in 1555 and 1558. In 1586 and 1588, we find Convocation often sitting _at Westminster_. In 1624 the Upper House sat _at Christ Church_, Oxford, and the Lower _at Merton College_. On May 16, 1661, the Convocation met in "the Collegiate Church _at Westminster_." The first Convocation of William III. had its amended commission brought to it on the 4th of December, while both Houses were sitting together _in Henry VII.'s Chapel_. The last Convocation of the same king met on the 10th of February, 1701, at St. Paul's, where they heard divine service, and then went to the chapter-house, where they chose for their prolocutor Dr. Hooper. On the 25th of February, the Lower House was sitting in Henry VII.'s Chapel; and on the 6th of March they were both sitting _in the Jerusalem Chamber: where_ twice in this present year it has sat. It is true that the writ which summoned James I.'s first Convocation called the clergy to appear before the archbishop "in our cathedral church of St. Paul in London, the twentieth day of March then next ensuing, or elsewhere, as he should have thought it most convenient;" and it seems that they did assemble "at the time and place before-mentioned;" yet, supposing they were not at Westminster then, they were in almost equal danger from the Popish Plot, as it is not likely they would have received any greater mercy at the hands of the conspirators.

I have always imagined that it was still a moot-point as to whether all the Estates ever _deliberated_ together in the presence of the sovereign. It is not generally known, I think, that they all re-assemble for the formal passing of every act: and with respect to the authority of all three being recited in the preamble, I beg to point out to CANON. EBOR. the following exceptions:--In the Act of Uniformity, the style of "Lords Spiritual" is omitted throughout, as every one of the bishops voted against it. It has also been ruled by the judges that the King may hold a parliament without any Spiritual lords; and, in fact, the first two parliaments of Charles II. were so holden.

I will presume CANON. EBOR. intended to say that Prelates do not sit in the Upper House as _Peers_, otherwise the charge of "mistake" will fall upon Blackstone, _Comm._ book i. ch. 2.:

"The next in order are the Spiritual lords. These consist of two archbishops and twenty-four bishops; and at the dissolution of monasteries by Henry VIII. consisted likewise of twenty-six mitred abbots, and two priors: a very considerable body, and in those times equal in number to the temporal nobility. All these hold, or are supposed to hold, _certain ancient baronies_, under the king: for William the Conqueror thought proper to change the spiritual tenure of frank-almoign, or free alms, under which the bishops held their lands during the Saxon government, into feodal or Norman tenure _by barony_; which subjected their estates to all civil charges and assessments from which they were before exempt: and in right of succession to those baronies, which were unalienable from their respective dignities, the bishops and abbots were allowed their seats in the House of Lords."

Sir Matthew Hale divides the king's extraordinary councils into two kinds: 1. Secular or temporal councils; 2. Ecclesiastical or spiritual: the king's extraordinary secular councils being the Houses of the Peers and of the Commons; and the extraordinary ecclesiastical, the Upper and Lower Houses of Convocation.

Some illustration of this may be perhaps found in the following extract from an appendix to _A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Lower House of Convocation_, published by T. Bennet, London, 1701, in which _Prelates_ are Spiritual Lords, whether Bishops or Abbots; and the phrase "full Parliament" seems equivalent to the ones used in the Gunpowder Treason Service:--

"When the several Estates were assembled in _full Parliament_, and received the King's commands concerning the business which they were to consider, and were adjourned by him to another day of _full Parliament_, in which they were to meet, and give their answer: the Clergy, and Lords, and Commons consulted in the mean time separately, ... Instances of this are not necessary, but one may be seen among the Records in the appendix to a late book call'd _Essays concerning the Balance of Power_, &c., and 'tis this: 6 Edw. III. Part 3. N. 1., on Tuesday in Full Parliament the King charged the Prelates, Earls, Barons, and other Great Men, and the Knights of the Shires, and the Commons, that having regard to the honor and profit of his Realm, they should give him their counsel. The which Prelates with the Clergy by themselves, and the Earls and Barons by themselves, and the knights and others of the counties and the Commons by themselves, treated and consulted till Friday next, the day assigned for the next session, and there _in full Parliament_, each by themselves and afterward all in common, answered."

The formation and development of Convocation, at least that of Canterbury, presents a great analogy to the English Parliament; as that of York does to the Scottish Parliament.

We must remember that before the Norman times, the clergy were exempt from all taxation; inasmuch as "they held in Frankalmoigne," that is, held their lands, &c., on free alms "in liberam eleemosynam." Littleton (lib. ii. c. 6. s. 135.) says:

"And they which hold in Frankalmoigne are bound of right before God to make orisons, prayers, masses, and other divine services for the soul of their grantor or feoffer, and for the souls of their heirs which are dead," &c.

The king's succeeding William the Conqueror tried to make the clergy contribute to the public exchequer, but were effectually resisted. In order to surmount the difficulty, King John (A.D. 1206) summoned all the priors and abbots _to parliament_, and obtained from them a vote of a _thirteenth_: and then wrote to the archdeacons to get the same from the clergy generally. Edward I. rendered this scheme for the taxation of the clergy complete. He applied to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to assemble, by _their canonical authority_, the convocations of each province; and these Metropolitans, moved by the King's writ (the same practice is settled now), summoned these bishops and clergy.

The earliest royal writ, summoning a provincial synod, is dated Nov. 24, 1282, and calling them to meet at _Northampton_: "Venire ... _coram nobis_ apud Northampton."

This Convocation assembled at Northampton; and we find another mandate from the Archbishop to the dean of the province, directing him to summon the bishops and clergy to a Convocation for the 9th of May, 1283, at the _New Temple_ (now the Inner and Middle Temples), pursuant to a resolution of the Convocation of Northampton. At this Convocation, the proctors of the clergy refused to pay the tenth. Eleven years after, we find Edward summoning the whole body of the bishops and clergy to _Westminster_ on St. Matthew's day, 1294. His writ orders "The dean and archdeacon to appear in their proper persons, the chapter by one, and the clergy of the diocese by two procurators." The clergy objected to this writ as uncanonical, and claimed to be convoked only by their Metropolitans; as tending to abolish their provincial synods convened by regular ecclesiastical authority, and to establish in their place a parliamentary chamber under secular authority. The King, finding them so opposed to his project of thus making them a part of the Third Estate, reverted to the established practice, and addressed his writs to the Archbishops; whereupon the Metropolitans issued their mandates, Convocations met, and subsidies were voted.

An important result followed this struggle (see 2 Lingard, p. 375.), viz., that the procurators of the common clergy of each diocese (in compliance with the direction on the Kings writ) were admitted as _constituent members_ of these and all subsequent Convocations; the archdeacons, before this time, being considered as their representatives, who probably were furnished with letters of procuration from them.

The constitution of the English Convocation may be said to be finally established in the reign of Edward I., and it has so continued to the present day; except that in 1665 the clergy in Convocation gave up the privilege of self-taxation, and received in return that of voting for the House of Commons, losing thereby one distinctive sign of their being "an Estate of the Realm."

WILLIAM FRASER, B.C.L.

P.S. The error which my former note was intended to correct was not utterly a "cockney" one, as the following Proposition, condemned in 1683, by the University of Oxford, together with several others contained in the books of the time, as "damnable and destructive," will show:--

"The sovereignty of England is in _the Three Estates, viz. King, Lords, and Commons_. The King has but a co-ordinate power, and may be overruled by the other two." _Lex Rex. Hunter of a limited and mixed Monarchy._ Baxter's _H. C. Polit. Catech._ See Collier's _Eccl. Hist._, Part 2. Book ix.

MEANING OF WHIG AND TORY.

(Vol. iv., p. 57.)

The derivation of these terms, as applied to the two extreme parties in politics, is a much vexed question, which will probably never be satisfactorily settled. That staunch Tory, Roger North, in his _Examen_, has referred the origin of the name of his party to their connexion with the Duke of York and his popish allies.

"It is easy (says North) to imagine how rampant these procurators of power, the Exclusioners, were under such circumstances of advantage as at that time prevailed; everywhere insulting and menacing the royalists, as was done in all the terms of common conversation, and the latter had the wind in their faces, the votes of the house and the rabble into the bargain. This trade, then not much opposed, naturally led to a common use of slighting and opprobrious names, such as Yorkist. That served for mere distinction, but did not scandalize or reflect enough. Then they came to Tantivy, which implied riding post to Rome. Observe, all the while the loyal church party were passive; the outrage lay wholly on the other side. These observing that the Duke favoured Irishmen, all his friends, or those accounted such by appearing against the Exclusion, were straight become Irish; thence bog-trotters, and in the copia of the factious language, the word _Tory_ was entertained, which signified the most despicable savages among the wild Irish; and being a vocal and clear sounding word, readily pronounced, it kept its hold, and took possession of the foul mouths of the faction."

Burton, in vol. ii. of his _Parliamentary Diary_ on the state of Ireland, under date of June 10, 1657, has the following passage:

"Tory is said to be the Irish word _Toree_, that is, _Give me_, which was the summons of surrender used by the banditti, to whom the name was originally applied."

In support of this assertion it may be as well to state that Tory or Terry Island, on the coast of Donegal, is said to have taken its name from the robbers by whom it was formerly infested. Dr. Johnson also supports Burton's derivation of the word; he calls it a cant term, which he supposed to be derived from an Irish word, signifying a savage. Mr. G. O. Borrow (alias Lavengro), who has devoted much attention to the Celtic dialect, in a paper which he contributed some years back to the _Norfolk Chronicle_, suggested that the etymology of the word Tory might be traced to the Irish adherents of Charles II. during the Cromwellian era; the words _Tar-a-Ri_ (pronounced Tory, and meaning _Come, O King_), having been so constantly in the mouths of the Royalists as to have become a by-word to designate them. So much for the word _Tory_, which from these premises is evidently of Irish origin. We now come to consider the derivation of the term _Whig_, concerning which there is not quite such a diversity of opinion. The first authority we will quote shall be Burnet, who says:

"The south-west counties of Scotland have seldom corn enough to serve them round the year; and the northern parts producing more than they need, those in the west come in the summer to buy at Leith the stores that came from the north; and from a word, Whiggam, used in driving their horses, all that drove were called Whiggamors, and shorter, the Whiggs. Now, in that year (_i.e._ 1648), after the news came down of Duke Hamilton's defeat, the ministers animated their people to rise and march to Edinburgh; and they came up marching on the head of their parishes with an unheard-of fury, praying and preaching all the way as they came. The Marquis of Argyle and his party came and bearded them, they being about 6000. This was called the Whiggamors' inroad, and ever after that, all that opposed the court came in contempt to be called Whiggs; and from Scotland the word was brought into England, where it is now one of our unhappy terms of disunion."--Burnet's _History of his own Times_, vol. i. p. 43.

Such is Burnet's account of the derivation of this word, in which he is followed by Samuel Johnson, who has transcribed the above passage in his _Dictionary_. Kirkton also, in his _History of the Church of Scotland_, edited by C. K. Sharpe, Esq., in 1817, adheres to the same opinion: under the year 1667, he says:

"The poor people, who in contempt were called Whiggs, became name-fathers to all that owned one honest interest in Britain, who were called Whiggs after them, even at the court of England."

That the term Whig was originally from Scotland, I believe is a well-ascertained fact; but while some of our etymologists follow the opinion of Burton, others, with (as I think) greater show of reason, adhere to the opinion of Roger North and the historians Laing and Lingard, all of whom were of opinion that the original Scotch Whigs were called so, not, as Burnet supposes, from the word used by them in driving their horses, but from the word Whig being vernacular in Scotland for sour whey, which was a common drink with the people.

DAVID STEVENS.

Godalming.

THE RECOVERY OF THE LOST AUTHORS OF ANTIQUITY.

(Vol. iii., pp. 161. 261. 340.)

"[Greek: Pher', ô, talainê cheiri tou trisathliou orthôs prosarmosômen eutonon te pan sôm' exakribôsômen, eis hoson para.]"

_Eurip. Bacch. Supplement._

"With a wretched hand, "Come let me this thrice wretched corse compose, And careful as I can the limbs collect."

The foregoing lines, from Burgess's able restoration of this splendid scene in the _Bacchæ_ of Euripides, published in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for Sept. 1832, and afterwards without the Greek text in the _Literary Gazette_ for Oct. 11, 1845, form a fit motto for the undertaking in which I am engaged, and of which I now present a sort of report to literary men interested in such matters.