the pestilential virus should have yielded to the rigours of returning winter. On the 3d of December, a bill was brought into the House of Commons to allow the ordination of married men, and on the 6th it was passed. On the following day another bill was introduced, having for its object the allowance of marriage to men already in orders. This additional indulgence was conceded by the Lower House on the 13th of December, and the whole question was then transmitted to the Lords. This more dignified branch of the Legislature long debated upon the propriety of restoring to their clerical fellow-subjects the undisputed exercise of that discretion which the unquestionable word of God, and the unfettered regulations of civil society have freely granted to every man. On the 19th of February, however, the majority of their Lordships agreed to this measure, so plainly dictated by a regard to sacerdotal purity, individual comfort, sound policy, and even-handed justice. The dissentients were the Bishops Boner, Tunstall, Repps, Aldrich, Skip, Heath, Bush, Day, and Kitchen, together with the Lords Morley, Dacres, Windsor, and Wharton. In the preamble to the act it is said, "That it were better for priests, and other ministers of the Church, to live chaste, and without marriage; whereby they might better attend to the ministry of the Gospel, and be less distracted with secular cares: so that it were much to be wished, that they would of themselves abstain. But great filthiness of living, and other

inconveniences had followed from the laws that compelled chastity, and prohibited marriage; so that it was better they should be suffered to marry than be so restrained: therefore all laws and canons that were made against it, being only made by human authority, are repealed." All divorces, however, which had taken place in obedience to the act of Six Articles, together with marriages consequent upon them, were confirmed, and the indulgence conceded by the present act was refused to any priests who should decline conformity to the new service-book. The royal assent being given to this act, the clergy of England were thus formally reinstated in a right which, since the thirteenth century, they had exercised but rarely and clandestinely. From the repeated canons enacted by the papal creatures in that age, it is obvious, that a considerable proportion of the parochial clergy then lived either in lawful matrimony, or in avowed concubinage; probably with females whom they had secretly espoused. Attempts to force upon

• Burnet, Hist. Ref. II. 142.

e Collier, II. 262.

f At the time of the council of Oxford, holden under Archbishop Langton, in 1222, it seems likely that the attempts of Lanfranc and Anselm to force celibacy upon the parochial clergy had only answered so far as to furnish immoral priests with a pretence for living in concubinage; for one of the Oxford canons is levelled against such ecclesiastics as kept mistresses in their houses, or resorted to such persons in a public and scandalous manner. (Nec alibi cum scandalo accessum habeant publicum ad easdem.) The following canon voids any legacies bequeathed by beneficed clergymen to these unfortunate women, and allows the

clergymen the yoke of celibacy had been made by various ascetics during the early periods of

bishop to confer such sums upon the testator's late church. (Const. Prov. 123.) A canon attributed to Richard Weathershed, who succeeded Langton, and filled the see of Canterbury, from 1229 to 1231, enjoins clergymen to leave their wives, if they should have married after taking the subdiaconate, and forbids married men generally, from holding preferment. (Lindwood, 94.) One of Otho's canons, enacted in 1237, provides, that married clergymen should be deprived, their property acquired from the church confiscated, and their sons rendered incapable of ordination without the Pope's leave. This canon speaks of the married clergy as " many," and ridiculously charges them with a negligence of their own salvation. (Multi propriæ salutis immemores. Const. Leg. 31.) Their wives, however, seem to have been retained with some shew of privacy, and it appears that they commonly took care to leave such documents behind them as were sufficient to establish the validity of their marriage. The Cardinal's next canon is against clergymen who publicly kept mistresses. Unless such scandalous offenders dismissed their paramours within a month, they were to be suspended, and if they should be found to be incorrigible, they were to be deprived. To this canon succeeds one prohibiting a son from succeeding his father in a benefice, and ordering that all such incumbents be. deprived. It seems probable, that this Italian Cardinal's interference prevented the English clergy from marrying so avowedly as heretofore, and that, accordingly, all females cohabiting with ecclesiastics were obliged to pass under the humiliating name of concubines. As, however, many of them, undoubtedly, could lay claim to the respectable character of wives, archdeacons appear to have been commonly lax in prying into the secrets of such clerical families, and bishops unwilling to inflict the prescribed penalties. Hence Othobon, in his legatine constitutions of 1248, repeats the canon of his predecessor, with this addition, that such negligent or considerate individuals, being bishops, should be suspended from the use of the dalmatic, tunic, and sandals; being archdeacons, from enter

Christian history, but the wisdom of councils opposed this delusive and pernicious rigour. Ecclesiastics of distinction, however, were commonly single, and the prejudices in favour of such as declined marriage were constantly gaining ground during the dark ages. Still it was not until after an arduous struggle, that Hildebrand, in the eleventh century, found means of forcing the celibate upon individuals in holy orders. Nor were his arbitrary mandates upon

ing the church. (Const. Leg. 73.) Friar Peckham, among the constitutions of Reading, enacted under him, as Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1279, adds severity to Othobon's canon, so far as archdeacons are concerned; a plain proof, that the persevering career of iniquity and tyranny which the Italian party had been enabled to run during the feeble and miserable reigns of the Kings John and Henry III. had failed of enslaving the whole clergy of England. The same Archbishop, at another council, repeated the substance of former canons against clergymen's sons. Nevertheless, it is evident that ecclesiastics continued to marry, but probably when they did it with some degree of publicity, they contented themselves with filling such offices as prescribed duties not strictly clerical. There is, accordingly, a constitution of Archbishop Chichley's, who took possession of the see of Canterbury in 1414, inhibiting married ecclesiastics from exercising any spiritual jurisdiction, or from acting as registrars. (Lindwood, 91.) The engagement by which, upon the continent, clergymen were considered as obliged to celibacy, was the answer given on ordination to the subdiaconate. It was asked, “Wilt thou follow chastity and sobriety?" The reply was, "I will." In England the question was not asked. (Burnet, Hist. Ref. II. 147.) By these words, however, a man no more binds himself to abstain from marriage in obedience to the Pope, than he binds himself to abstain from wine in obedience to Mahomet. See Hist. Ref. under King Henry VIII. I. 42, 344, II. 318.

three members of the Lower House assented to the proposition. But now seventy divines in that House, consisting of deans, archdeacons, doctors, and heads of colleges, approved by their signatures the principle of conceding to clergymen the exercise of that discretion which had been wrested from them under the papal usurpation".

After a short recess during the festivities of Christmas, the new book of Common Prayer furnished keen debates within the walls of Parliament. A bill to authorise this important compilation was brought into the House of Commons on the 9th of December, and on the following day it was offered to the Lords. Among these

"As we learn from one (John Rogers) who seems to have been a member in that Convocation, or at least well acquainted with the transactions of it." (Strype, Eccl. Mem. II. 209.) The following statement, made upon the most unexceptionable contemporary authority, and of which many in the Convocation must have known the truth, should, perhaps, be subjoined. "Archbishop Parker, who has treated this subject at large (Defence of Priest's Marriages by an anonymous author, published by Abp. Parker, with some insertions of his own) relates, that those called concubines to the English clergy were many of them lawfully married. Thus, to use his own words, There be no small arguments, that some bishops and the best of the clergy, living within the memory of man, did continue; and elsewhere divers of the clergy lived secretly with wives, and provided for their children under the names of nephews, and other men's children in which lived Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury, (1244.) (Vulgus eum sæpe ut uxoratum exprobrabat. Antiqu. Brit. 284.) and other bishops of old days, and some also of late days; though all the world did not bark at the matter." Collier, II. 262.