November 4th, 1547. The Journals of the Lords show that a bill "for the Sacrament of the Altar" was read in that House on November 12th, again on November 15th, and twice on November 17th. On November 26th, a bill "for the receiving of the Sacrament sub utraque specie" was read and delivered to the Chancellor, Lord Rich. On December 3rd, a bill "pro Sacramento was read and committed to the Protector. The committing of the bills seems to have been utilised for their combination, which may perhaps have been the purpose for which they were committed.

On December 5th, a bill "pro Sacramento Corporis et Sanguinis Christi" was read in the Lords, and committed to two judges, Marvin and Portman. This was probably the bill resulting from the combination of the two measures, and the same which was read on December 7th, when it is described as a bill" pro sacrosancto Sacramento Altaris." On December 10th it appears again, as a bill "pro sacrosancto Sacramento Corporis et Sanguinis Christi": it was then read and approved" communi omnium procerum assensu," with five dissentients. These were the Bishops of London (Bonner), Norwich (Rugg), Hereford (Skip), Worcester (Heath), and Chichester (Day). Cranmer and nine other Bishops who were present1 appear to have assented to the passing of the bill. In the Commons its progress was rapid : it was read a first time on the same day on which it was passed by the Peers; the second reading followed on December 13th, and the third on December 14th. On December 17th it appears once more in the Journal of the Lords, where it is recorded that a provision to be annexed to the bill was sent to the Commons, "the which the Commons would not receive, because the Lords had not given their consent to the same." On the same day

1 These were the Bishops of Durham (Tunstall), Ely (Goodrich), Salisbury (Salcot), St. David's (Barlow), St. Asaph (Parfew, otherwise Wharton), Carlisle (Aldrich), Bristol (Bush), Lincoln (Holbeach), and Rochester (Ridley).

2 There is nothing to show the nature of this provision. The part of the bill relating to communion in both kinds appears to have received no addition or alteration after it was engrossed.

the bill was read once more in the Commons, and passed by them.

The Convocation of Canterbury met on November 5th, the day after the meeting of Parliament. After the election of the Prolocutor, the Lower House, on November 22nd, agreed upon four petitions, which were presented to the Upper House, but to which, apparently, no answer was ever returned. One of these petitions was that the clergy of the Lower House, according to the ancient customs of the realm and the tenor of the King's writ for the summoning of Parliament,' might be "adjoined and associated" with the House of Commons, or else that statutes and ordinances concerning matters of religion and ecclesiastical causes might not be passed without their "sight and assent." On November 30th, while the Lower House was still awaiting an answer to its petitions, the Prolocutor brought forward, in a session which is said to have been "anticipated," a document described as "the form of an ordinance," which he stated that he had received from the Archbishop, as to communion under both kinds. He himself and fifteen other members, out of fifty-eight who were present, signed the document in question. On December 2nd (probably the day to which an adjournment had been made on November 25th) the proposal made in the "anticipated" session was approved viva voce by all who were present, without expression of dissent.

It is uncertain what the "forma cuiusdam ordinationis " may have been which was produced on November 30th, and received a somewhat irregular assent on December 2nd. But it may be conjectured that it was a draft or summary of the bill which had been introduced in the House of Lords on November 26th, to which an objection may have been raised on the ground that the Convocation had had no opportunity of expressing an opinion

1 The reference is to the clause "Praemunientes" in the writ by which the Bishops were summoned to Parliament.

2 The methods of assent by subscription which had been applied on November 30th and was afterwards employed in a later session in the expression of an opinion on the marriage of priests was apparently abandoned in this session.

on the principle involved. If this had been the case, or even in the absence of such an objection, it is probable that the promoters of the bill may have thought it desirable to obtain from Convocation some declaration which might further the progress of their measure. It would appear that the document to which the clergy were asked to assent was not the form which was afterwards issued as the Order of the Communion, but something of the nature of an "ordinance"; and its character perhaps, rather than its contents, may have been the cause of the method employed for the declaration of assent on December 2nd. For on December 9th, in urging the Bishops to take steps for the fulfilment of two of the petitions presented on November 22nd, the Lower House pointed out that under the Act of the Submission of the Clergy they were unable, without licence from the King, which they had not received, to enact any canons or ordinances, and desired that such licence might be obtained.1 It is likely that the Lower House, having their position thus in view, would avoid the adoption, by their usual methods, of any form of "ordinance," regarding such a course as one which might involve them "in pain of peril promised," and would rather indicate their assent in some less regular and formal manner which could not be described as “enactment.”2

It is clear that Convocation did not move in the matter at all till after the bill "for the receiving of the Sacrament sub utraque specie" had made its appearance in Parliament. And whatever the document proposed to the Lower House may have been, the assent given to it on December 2nd had not, and was understood by the House not to have, any legislative effect. Of

1 The terms of the address may be seen in Dixon's History of the Church of England, vol. ii, p. 473, where they are cited from the Stillingfleet MS. 1108.

2 Abbot Gasquet and Mr. Edmund Bishop, whose account of the proceedings in Convocation is here followed with regard to the sequence of events, seem inclined to think that the method adopted was chosen as an easier means of obtaining assent, when an attempt to obtain subscriptions by surprise on November 30th had failed. That is quite possible; but the circumstances seem to account for the method, apart from any idea of manipulation. See, however, Edward VI. and the Book of Common Prayer, ed. 1890, pp, 74-77.

the proceedings of the Upper House there is no record. Nothing suggests that the Bishops were asked to express any opinion on the matter of communion in both kinds, save in the House of Lords. It is true that Strype refers to this Convocation certain sets of questions touching the Mass, to the first of which answers seem to have been desired from seventeen Bishops. The second set of questions are answered only by three. The third set, which Strype describes as a reply by Cranmer to the answers of the three Bishops, has no answers appended. It is only in this third set that any mention is made of the question of communion in both kinds, and it is there referred to as a point already determined. The third set of questions may not have been drawn up for some time after the first set was framed. There must, indeed, have been some interval between the two, to allow of the preparation of the answers to the first set, the propounding of the second set, and the making of the answers which elicited the third. But the absence of any reference to the subject in the first series of questions seems clearly to point to its having been drawn up at a time when the views of the Bishops on the matter of communion in both kinds had already been ascertained. The purpose of the questions was apparently to obtain a declaration of their opinion on certain other matters which had not yet been brought into prominence, but which emerged when the Act for communion in both kinds had been passed, and

1 Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, Book ii, ch. 4. The first and second sets of questions, with the answers in full, may be seen in Burnet's History of the Reformation (Collections, Part II, Book i, No. 25): he does not print the third set of questions, which may be found in Cranmer's Remains (Parker Society, 1846). The fact that Bishops of the northern Province (Holgate of York, Aldrich of Carlisle, and Tunstall of Durham) are among the respondents to the first set of questions, suggests that they have no special relation to the Convocation of Canterbury. The seventeen respondents include all the Bishops who were present in Parliament on November 26th, 1547, with two exceptions (Chambers of Peterborough and Bird of Chester); they include all who were present on December 10th, with the addition of Holgate of York and Sampson of Coventry and Lichfield. The six Bishops who answer jointly are the five dissentients of December 10th with the addition of Parfew of St. Asaph. The second series of questions seems to have been addressed only to Skip, Day, and Heath, for purposes of annoyance.

when it became necessary to consider what directions should be given for carrying out its provisions, and expedient to consider how far it might be safe to make those directions a means of further change.

It would have been possible in this way to require that the opportunity of receiving should be given at every mass to others besides the priest; and to this point some of the questions seem to be directed. Others, if taken together, seem to contemplate the possibility not only of substituting English for Latin throughout the whole service of the Mass, but of making, by means of the introduction of a vernacular service, such changes in the rite and ceremonial as might bring the Mass into conformity with an ideal conception of its nature as it was "by Christ's institution." But the answers of the Bishops must have been felt to be on the whole adverse to these changes. On the question whether the custom by which the priest alone received the Sacrament should continue, only two, Cranmer and Ridley, express, without qualification the view that a return should be made to the custom of the primitive Church. The other Bishops who answer, while they agree that it is desirable that others should communicate with the priest, agree also in the opinion that the priest should not be hindered from celebrating and communicating by the lack of devotion on the part of the lay people,1 to which, in reply to another question, most of them had rightly attributed the origin of the prevailing custom. On the question, "whether, in the Mass, it were convenient to use such speech as the people may understand," two only, Holgate and Holbeach, are unreservedly in favour of the use of English throughout the Mass: Goodrich is in favour of it, but is open to argument2 : Aldrich is prepared to submit himself to his "superiors and

1 Holbeach, who generally agrees in his replies with Cranmer and Ridley, makes a qualification of this sort, though in less distinct terms than Tunstall, Goodrich, Bush, and the six who answer together.

2 "Haec iam mea est opinio, sed sic ut auditis melioribus cedam."