The crown, however, had always in its hands the power of controlling this assembly, by possessing the prerogative of proroguing and dissolving. But at the Reformation an act was passed (25 Henry VIII. c. 19), which expressly deprived the convocation of the power of performing any act whatever without the king's licence. The act declares that the "clergy, nor any of them, from henceforth shall presume to attempt, allege, claim, or put in use any constitutions or ordinances, provincial or synodal, or any other canons, nor shall enact, promulge, or exercise any such canons, constitutions, or ordinances provincial, by whatever name or names they may be called in their convocations in time coming, which always shall be assembled by authority of the king's writ, unless the same clergy may have the king's most royal licence." By an act passed in 1665 (16 & 17 Chas. II. c. 1), the clergy were bound by the act, which was for the raising of a tax, just like the laity, and they were discharged from the payment of the subsidies hitherto granted in convocation. Though this act reserves to the clergy the right of taxing themselves in convocation if they think fit, it has never been attempted, and the clergy and the laity are now precisely on the same footing as to taxation. The clergy, instead of being represented by the lower house of convocation, are now represented in parliament in the House of Commons, not however as an ecclesiastical body, but simply as citizens; they can vote for a member in respect of their ecclesiastical freeholds, or in respect of any other qualification which they may have in common with the laity. The decisions of the convocation of the province of Canterbury have always had great authority in that of York; and sometimes the two convocations have acted as one, either by jointly consenting, or by the attendance of deputies from the province of York at the convocation of Canterbury. One of the most important of the convocations, that in which the Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical were established in 1603 [CONSTITUTIONS and CANONS ECCLESIASTICAL], appears to have been only attended by deputies of the Canterbury convocation; but the king's confirmation of the canons then made extends them to the province of York. No business beyond matters of form has been done in convocation since 1741. The practical annihilation of the convocation was a considerable change. It may be viewed as completing the victory obtained in England by the civil power over the ecclesiastical. The clergy can now make no canons which shall bind even their own body without the consent of the crown, that is, of the ministers of the crown; and it is certain that whatever canons they might make, even with the licence of the crown, would not bind the laity. In fact, the British parliament now makes canons for the clergy, as we see in the Church Discipline Act. [CLERGY.] The Anglican Church is now completely in the power of parliament, with no other weight there than the bench of bishops in the House of Lords, who may be considered as in some way representing the ecclesiastical estate. But though the convocation has become a nullity, the practice has been continued, and continues to the present day, of summoning the clergy to meet in convocation whenever a new parliament is called; and the forms of election are gone through in the dioceses, and the meeting for the province of Canterbury is held, usually in St. Paul's Church, when the form is also gone through of electing a prolocutor or speaker. The king's writ, as already stated, is directed to the archbishops, commanding them to summon the bishops and the inferior clergy. The archbishops, in compliance with this writ, summon the bishops, and command them to summon the archdeacons and deans in their respective dioceses, and to command the chapters to elect one proctor each, and the great body of the clergy in each diocese two proctors, to represent them in the convocation. When assembled, they form two houses in the province of Canterbury, but, as stated above, only one house in the province of York. In the upper house of the convocation of Canterbury sit the bishops; in the lower, the other clergy, in all 143; viz. 22 deans, 53 archdeacons, 24 canons, and 44 proctors of the inferior clergy. It is the usual practice for the king to prorogue the meeting when it is about to proceed to any business. There is no convocation for Ireland. The history of the English convocation may be collected from Gibson's Codex, and Atterbury's Rights, Powers, and Privileges of the English Convocation stated and vindicated, London, 1700; and from a Charge, delivered at a visitation of the Archdeaconry of Oxford, 1841, by Archdeacon Clarke. The sketch of the history of convocation here given may be tolerably correct as far as it goes, and it pretends to be nothing more. The complicated and inextricable difficulties which beset every attempt to restore the convocation, or to set it to work again, are fully stated in an article in the 'Quarterly Review,' No. 150. This article makes us acquainted with the strange fact (strange enough it seems to us, who have thus heard of it for the first time), that a parliamentary writ issues from the Petty-Bag Office [CHANCERY, p. 486] concurrently with the convocation writs from the Crown Office. The parliamentary writs are addressed to the archbishops and bishops of England and Wales, who are commanded to attend the parliament to be holden at Westminster. The same writ also commands the attendance of the dean of the bishop's church of Canterbury, Exeter, and so forth, and the archdeacons to appear also at Westminster in their proper persons; and each chapter by one, and the clergy of each diocese by two meet proctors. A similar notice is sent to the Irish archbishops and bishops. These ecclesiastics are summoned to Westminster at the day appointed, to consent to what shall be advanced by the common counsel of the United Kingdom. According to the summons, the clergy ought to appear at Westminster as a component part of the Imperial Parliament; and the English clergy are required at the same time to appear in convocation at St. Paul's, London, for the province of Canterbury, and at St. Peter's, York, for the province of York. The parliamentary writ was no doubt the original one; and vocation writ was probably introduced to enable the clergy to save their privileges at the expense of their money. Since the conovcation writs have been issued, the practice has been for the clergy to obey the writ of convocation. CONVOY, in the military service, is a detachment of troops appointed to guard supplies of money, ammunition, provisions, &c., while being conveyed to a distant town, or to an army in the field, through a country in which such supplies might be carried off by the peasantry or by parties of the enemy. In the navy, the name is applied to one or more ships of war which are ordered to protect a fleet of merchant vessels on their voyage. COPPER, STATISTICS OF. Copper was at first obtained in this country in small quantities in working the tin-mines in Cornwall; but about the close of the seventeenth century mines were set at work purposely for copper. The first application of the steam-engine in drawing water from copper-mines was in 1710, and the quantity of ore raised has increased with each successive improvement in the steam-engine. In 1837 the number of steam-engines employed in the coppermines in Cornwall was 58. The produce of the Cornish mines is known with tolerable accuracy as far back as 1771, and there are accounts of the produce of other copper-mines since 1821. Improvements in the art of smelting have greatly increased the products of the mines, and ores which produce only three or four per cent. of metal are now smelted. The number of persons employed in the copper-mines in England and Wales, in 1841, was 15,407; and the number employed in copper manufactures was 2126. The average annual produce of the Cornish mines at different periods between 1771 and 1837, was as follows: it is suggested by the writer in the 'Quarterly Review,' that the concurrent con The value of the produce of all the British copper-mines is in good years about 1,500,000l. Four-fifths of the whole quantity is raised from the Cornish mines. The produce of the mines in Devonshire and Staffordshire was 871 tons in 1821, but it has not much exceeded 500 tons since 1827. In 1831 the mines in Anglesey produced 915 tons, which was above the average quantity. In 1843, 176 tons of ore were received from the Isle of Man. The total quantity of copper from all British mines in the following years has been as under :: 1823 9,679 1833 13,260 1830 9,157 1824 9,705 1834 14,042 1825 In the accounts of English produce 14,474 and manufactures exported, the Custom15,369 House statements include brass and 15,360 copper manufactures together: the total 13,958 quantity and declared value of these 1829 14,672 shipments averaged as follows for each 1830 1840 : 13,022 year in the four years ending 1831 and In the year ending 30th June, 1840, the mining and smelting operations in Cornwall and at Swansea were as follows: Ore raised Value CORNWALL. Metallic copper produced 159,214 tons 792,750l. Produce per cent. of metal 11,056 tons SWANSEA. 1843 272,141 1,221,737 1,280,506 1844 1,735,528 Quantity of copper 8,476 tons The quantities and declared value of Of the above, the following portion was the principal shipments in 1842 were as Produce per cent. of metal The copper yielded by the British mines being more than sufficient for the use of the kingdom, a considerable quantity is exported every year, both in its unwrought and in a manufactured state. The quantity of British copper retained yearly for use, on an annual average of France Cwts. £ 155,848 682,833 514,945 Holland 36,934 163,988 Italy and the Italian and countries. In the year 1843 the exports of British copper consisted of 8463 tons unwrought, in bricks, pigs, &c., 60 tons of coin, 8386 tons of sheet, nails, &c., 6 tons of wire, 598 tons of wrought copper; making a total of 17,515 tons. And the remainder to forty other States | per ton. It is a valuable return cargo to vessels trading to the Pacific, Australia, and especially the western coast of South America, which affords few commercial products. A high duty on such a commodity is more especially impolitic, as it may be an inducement to other countries to commence smelting operations on a large scale, and since the increase of duty in 1842 this has taken place in France, Holland, and the United States. Any diminution in the foreign supply, which now amounts to nearly three-sevenths of the copper made in Great Britain, would be seriously felt by the smelters and manufacturers of this country. Although the import of foreign copper is now so much greater than it was ten years ago, the price of British ore has not fallen, but is at present higher than it was in 1832, and the supply from our own mines has also steadily increased. Within the last twenty years a considerable quantity of copper-ore has been brought to England for the purpose of being smelted and re-exported in the metallic state. These importations amounted only to 2 cwts. in 1825, and have gradually but rapidly increased as follows: Tons. 18,491 30,000 30,195 Years. Tons. Years. 1826 64 1836 1827 32 1837 1828 334 1838 34,150 41,925 54,391 4 14 6 6 6 0 The duty on copper-ore from British possessions is 21s. per ton, but only 14 tons from Australia were imported. Coppermines have been recently discovered in South Australia, which, it is said, are likely to prove very productive. In 1843 we received 31,683 tons of ore from Cuba; 19,829 from Chili; 1200 from Mexico; 1151 from the United States of North America; and smaller quantities from Peru, the British West Indies, Italy, Spain, and some other places. The value of the foreign copper-ore imported in 1843 was about 900,000l., the freights varied from 21. 10s. to 61. COPYHOLD, a term in English law applied to lands held by what is called tenure by copy of court roll, the nature of which is thus described by Littleton (§ 73, 4, 5): "Tenant by copy of court roll is as if a man be seised of a manor, within which manor there is a custom which hath been used time out of mind of man, that certain tenants within the same manor have used to have lands and tenements to hold to them and their heirs in fee-simple or fee-tail, or for term of life, at the will of the lord, according to the custom of the same manor. And such a tenant may not alien his land by deed, for then the lord may enter as into a thing forfeited unto him. But if he will alien his land to another, it behoveth him after the custom to surrender the tenements in court into the hands of the lord to the use of him that shall have the estate. And these tenants are called tenants by copy of court roll, because they have no other evidence concerning their tenements, but only the copies of court rolls." From this it appears that the title to copyhold lands is not only modified but altogether constituted by custom; subject to the estates in them which the custom confers, they are held by the lord under the common law as part of the demesnes of his manor. For these customary estates were in their origin mere tenancies at will, though by | might maintain an action of trespass long usage they have in many instances against the lord for dispossession. acquired the character of a permanent inheritance, descendible (except where otherwise modified by custom) according to the rules of the common law; and as tenancies at will they continue to be considered in all questions relating to the legal as distinguished from the customary property in the land. The origin of copyholds is involved in great obscurity. The opinion generally adopted among our lawyers and antiquarians, and supported by the authority of Littleton, Coke, Sir Martin Wright, and Mr. Justice Blackstone, is, that copyholders have gradually arisen out of the villeins or tenants in villeinage who composed the mass of the agricultural population of England for some centuries after the Norman conquest, through the commutation of base services into specific rents either in money or money's-worth. (See Co. Litt., 58 a-61 a; Blackstone's Comm., ii. p. 92; Wright on Tenures, 3rd edit., p. 215. See also Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. iii., p. 254.) [VILLEINAGE.] The two great essentials of copyhold tenure, according to Blackstone, are: 1. That lands be parcel of and situate within that manor under which they are held; and 2, That they have been demised or demisable by copy of court roll immemorially. For immemorial custom," says that author, ii. p. 96, "is the life of all tenures by copy; so that no new copyhold can, strictly speaking, be granted at this day." The burdens to which a copy hold tenure is liable in common with free tenures, are fealty, services, reliefs, and escheats; besides which it has certain liabilities peculiar to itself in the shape of heriots and fines. A heriot is the render of the best beast or other chattel (as the custom may be) to the lord on the death of a tenant. Of fines, some are due on the death of a tenant, and others on the alienation of the land; they are sometimes fixed by the custom, sometimes arbitrary; but in the latter case it is an established rule of law that the lord cannot demand by way Although the change in the condition of fine upon the descent or alienation of of these classes of persons was accomthe land more than the amount of two plished gradually, it seems in the middle years, improved value of the property, of the thirteenth century to have begun to after deduction of the quit-rents to which assume a more decided character. There it is liable. The ordinary mode of are proofs of as early a date as the reign alienating a copyhold estate in fee-simple of Henry III. of a limitation of the is by surrender and admittance, which is services of villeins to certain specified effected in the following manner:-The acts which were recorded in the lord's copyholder appears in court and professes book. The descendants of persons so to surrender or deliver up his land to the privileged began to claim a customary lord (either in person, or, which is more right to be entered on the court roll on usual, as represented by his steward), exthe same terms as their predecessors, and, pressing the surrender to be to the use of in process of time, prevailed so far as to A and his heirs; and thereupon A is adobtain a copy of the roll for their security.mitted tenant of the land to hold it to him It is said in the year-book of the 42nd of Edw. III. to be "admitted for clear law that if the customary tenant or copyholder did not perform his services, the lord might seize his land as forfeited," which seems to imply a permanent interest in the copyholder, so long as he performed the services. This view of the law is confirmed by Britton in a passage cited by Lord Coke (Co. Litt., 61 a) and was adopted by the judges in Edward IV.'s time, who held that a copyholder and his heirs at the will of the lord according to the custom of the manor. He then pays a fine, and also (if required) does fealty. All these circumstances, or at least the surrender and admittance, are entered on the court rolls; and the new tenant, paying his fees to the steward, receives a copy of this fundamental document of his title. Surrenders are made in various forms, as by the delivery of a rod, glove, or other symbol, to the steward or other person taking the surrender. |