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declaration of assent to the Thirty-nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordination Service, a declaration which includes also (1) an assertion of belief, that the doctrine of the Church as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer is agreeable to the Word of God; and (2) a pledge to use in public worship and in the administration of the sacraments (b) the forms thereby prescribed "and none other, except so far as shall be ordered by lawful authority." It is also requisite that the candidate shall, prior to ordination, take the oath of allegiance to the King (e), and the oath of canonical obedience to his bishop (d). Moreover, by the canon law, no person may be admitted into holy orders without a title, that is to say, he must produce to the bishop a presentation to some ecclesiastical living within the diocese, or a certificate that he is provided with a church or a place as minister then vacant; it will be sufficient, however, if he be a fellow or chaplain in Oxford or Cambridge, or master of arts of five years' standing in either of such universities, and living there at his own charge, or if the bishop himself intends shortly to admit him to some benefice or curacy (e). If the bishop ordains a man without a proper title, he is liable himself to maintain him.

The Church of England recognizes the episcopal orders of the following foreign churches, viz., the Greek and Roman churches, and probably also the Armenian and other Eastern churches, the American Episcopal, the Swedish Church, and the Old Catholics. But by the Colonial Clergy Act, 1874, no person ordained priest or deacon by any bishop, other than a bishop of a diocese in the churches of England or Ireland, may officiate in England unless either (i) he has written permission from the Archbishop of York or Canterbury, and has subscribed

(b) Clerical Subscription Act, 1865, ss. 1, 4.

(c) The form of oath is now that prescribed by the Promissory Oaths Act, 1868, s. 14.

(d) Clerical Subscription Act, 1865, s. 12; Promissory Oaths Act, 1868, s. 14.

(e) Can. 33 of 1603; Wats. C. L.

147.

the material portion of the declaration contained in the Clerical Subscription Act, 1865, or else (ii) he has previously held preferment or a curacy in England. The consent of the bishop of the diocese is also necessary (s. 4); and any appointments made contrary to the Act are void.

In order to enable them to attend the more closely to their duties, the clergy of the established church. have certain privileges and exemptions, principally the following:-A clergyman cannot be compelled to serve on a jury; nor can he be chosen to any temporal office, as bailiff, reeve, constable, or the like (ƒ); and during his attendance on divine service, that is to say, eundo, morando, et redeundo, he is privileged from being arrested in any civil suit, and the glebe and tithes of his parsonage are not liable to be seized in execution to satisfy a judgment in the same manner as lay property, but instead are made liable to a sequestration (g). Upon a sequestration, a writ of fieri facias de bonis ecclesiasticis is directed to the bishop, to levy the amount of the judgment debt out of the clergyman's ecclesiastical property, and the bishop appoints a sequestrator. Under the Sequestration Act, 1871, the bishop may, on a sequestration, after six months, appoint a curate to the benefice, and assign him a stipend in proportion to the population, and the sequestrator must pay this stipend in priority to any other claim; and the bishop may also, in his discretion, inhibit the incumbent from performing any service in the church while the sequestration remains in force. Upon the bankruptcy of a beneficed clerk, the profits of his benefice are sequestered in like manner (h), but in every case, due provision must be made for the service of the church. Since 2 & 3 Edw. VI. (1548) c. 21, it has been lawful for the English clergy to marry. As the clergy have their privileges, so also they have

(f) Finch. Common Law, ed.

1759, p. 388.

(g) Phillimore,

Ecclesiastical

Law, ed. 1895, p. 1074; Arbuckle v.

Coutan (1803), 3 Bos. & Pul. 326 ; Powell v. Hibbert (1850), 15 Q. B. 129.

(h) Bankruptcy Act, 1883, s. 52.

their disabilities. By the House of Commons (Clergy Disqualification) Act, 1801, they are made incapable of being elected members of the House of Commons; and by the Municipal Corporations Act, 1882, s. 12, of being councillors or aldermen in boroughs. They are also prohibited from farming or trading; for, by the Pluralities Act, 1838, ss. 28-30, (repealing some former enactments on this subject,) no spiritual person holding any cathedral preferment or benefice, or any curacy or lectureship, may take to farm for occupation by himself any lands exceeding eighty acres in the whole, without permission in writing from the bishop of the diocese; nor may such spiritual person, by himself or any other to his use, carry on any trade or dealing for profit, unless it be carried on by more than six partners, or unless his share in it shall have devolved to him by inheritance, or other like representative title. And, even in these excepted cases, it is illegal for him to act as director or managing partner, or to carry on the trade in person (¿). But, notwithstanding these prohibitions, a contract made by any spiritual person is, in general, enforceable against him (k); and the Act allows him to carry on the business of a schoolmaster, to deal with booksellers as to the sale of books, to be a managing director, partner, or shareholder in any benefit, fire insurance, or life insurance society, to buy or sell to the extent necessarily incidental to his lawful occupation of glebe and other land, and to sell minerals, the produce of his land,provided always that none of such transactions be personally conducted by him in any market or place of public sale.

The divers ranks and degrees of the clergy, as recognized by the law of England, are the following, namely ;— archbishops and bishops; deans and canons; archdeacons and rural deans; rectors, vicars, and curates; and parish clerks and sextons.

(i) Section 29; and Trading Partnership Act, 1841.

(k) Lewis V. Bright (1855), 4 El. & Bl. 917.

I. Both ARCHBISHOPS and BISHOPS are constituted by election, confirmation, consecration, and installation; though an archbishop is more properly said to be enthroned and not installed (1). [Their election is by the chapter of the cathedral church, but only in virtue of a licence from the Crown; for although, in very early times, election proper, per clerum et populum, was the usual mode of elevation to the episcopal chair (m), yet the right of appointing to bishoprics, already in Saxon times, was in effect in the Crown (n), the investiture (which was originally per annulum et baculum, and subsequently per sceptrum) (o), operating as a complete donation.

Subsequently, however, King John, in order to obtain the protection of the pope against his discontented barons, was prevailed upon to give up, to all the monasteries and cathedrals in the kingdom, the free right of electing their prelates, whether abbots or bishops; and he reserved only the custody of the temporalities during the vacancy, the form of granting a licence to elect (on refusal whereof the electors might proceed without it), and the right of approbation afterwards, which was not to be denied without a reasonable and lawful cause (p). But, by the Act of Annates, in 1534 (2), the right of nomination, as it exists at the present day, was restored to and re-vested in the Crown. For by that statute, it was enacted, that on any future avoidance of an archbishopric or bishopric, the king may send the dean and chapter his usual licence (called his congé d'élire) to proceed to election; which is always

(1) Bishop of St. David's v. Lucy (1699), 1 Salk. 134; 3 Salk.

72.

(m) Bishop of Ossory's Case (1620), Palmer's Reports, p. 28; Sobrean v. Keran, 2 Rolle's Reports (1620), 101; M. Paris, A.D. 1095, p. 95.

(2) Palmer's Reports, 28; Selden, Jan. Ang. 1. 1, s. 39.

(0) Decret. 2, caus. 16, qu. 7, ch. 12 et 13; Encyclop. Britt. sub. tit. Investiture.

(p) M. Paris, A.D. 1214, p. 247; 1 Rym. Fœd. 198; Magna Carta, c. 1; 25 Edw. III. (1352), st. 6, c. 3.

(2) Revived by 1 Eliz. (1558) c. 1, s. 7. (The Act of Supremacy.)

[to be accompanied with a letter missive from the King, containing the name of the person whom he would have them elect. And if the dean and chapter delay their election above twelve days, the nomination shall devolve to the king, who may then by letters-patent appoint such person as he pleases; and this congé d'élire issues also (r) in the case of the bishoprics created by Henry VIII. himself, viz., Chester, Gloucester, Peterborough, Bristol, and Oxford, although these are in a sense donative (s), that is, in the gift of the Crown.

This election or nomination, if it be of a bishop, must be signified by the king's letters-patent to the archbishop of the province; and if it be of an archbishop, to the other archbishop and two bishops, or to four bishops. In either case, it requires them to confirm, invest, and consecrate the person so elected, which they are bound forthwith to perform (t); after which, the bishop elect sues to the king for his temporalities, making oath to the king and none other, and takes restitution of his secular possessions out of the king's hands only. And if the dean and chapter do not elect in the manner by the Act appointed, or if the archbishop or bishop refuse to confirm, invest, and consecrate the bishop elect, they incur the penalties of a præmunire, that is to say, the loss of all civil rights, with forfeiture of lands, goods, and chattels, and imprisonment during the royal pleasure.]

There are two archbishops for England and Wales (u); that is to say, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has

(r) R. v. Archbishop of Canterbury (1848), 11 Q. B. 513.

(8) Co. Litt. by Harg. 134 a, n. (*).

(t) Rex v. Archbishop of Canterbury, [1902] 2 K. B. 503. A bishop, when consecrated, must be full thirty years of age (see the rubric prefixed to the office of ordination in the Book of Common Prayer); but antiently there

seems to have been no such restriction. (See Godw. Comm. de Prasul. 693.)

(u) At one time there were three archbishoprics, the third being that of Carleon in Wales; but in the time of Henry the First, both that see and all Wales became subject to the Archbishop of Canterbury. (Rogers, Eccl. Law, 105.)

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