Privileges remain and were ever reserved though the Formality is obscured in a Great Cathedral Church This last Absurdity spoken of may be made to appear by these following Degrees N. I. First There never was a Time since the Foundation of the Cathedral within the Kings Castle of Old Sarum or since its Removal to the Close of New Sarum which Close must be distinguished in all our Discourses from the City which no body denies to be in the Bishops Jurisdiction and in the Sub-Deans two Years in three wherein the Bishop was or wherein the Dean of Sarum was not Immediatus Loci Ordinarius Let them name it and prove it who were bold enough to say there was such a Time as the Dean has named plainly and also proved the Space of Time of almost 300 Years between the Kings and Osmund's Charter on one side and the Infamous Composition on the other side by which the Bishop hath pretended some Jurisdiction over the Close five days in seven years though none at all before or after so great a space as seven years Which by the way is another Absurdity and Inconsistence No Instance can be given of any Will proved within the Close by any Bishop or any Letters of Administration granted or any matter of Instance tryed or any Fornication punished by any Bishop since the Foundation but only by the Dean of Sarum who is confessedly in the Statute of Bishop Roger himself though an high-flying Bishop Loci Ordinarius Immediatus See the Statute De Testamentis Decano insinuandis Now that is clearly an Immemorial Practice and Possession of the Dean which has been a Tempore per Tempus cujus contrarii memoria hominum non existit Which Allegation to the Archbishop for the Chapters Exemption from the Bishops Jurisdiction Bishop Ralph Erghum could not deny and thereupon was decreed against 2. Next the Decisions of Authority have been for the Dean and against the Bishop as often as Authority hath been appealed unto which has been seldom 1. In the Year 1301 when the then Bishop Simon de Gaunt endeavoured to invade the Decanal Jurisdiction over the Canons and other Members of the Cathedral Church of Sarum Petrus de Sabaudia then Dean of Sarum did by his Instrument in Writing on the Third of October Prohibit the Prebendaries or Canons and all other Members of the said Church and discharge them from submitting to the said Bishops Visitation N. II. No longer since than in the Year 1665 Iohn Elliot LL. Doctor Chancellor then to Dr. Alexander Hyde Lord Bishop of Sarum cited one Iohn Wickham Servant to Mr. Chafin living then in the Close of Sarum unto the Bishops Consistory for Incontinency c. Wickham not obeying the Summons was by the said Chancellor de facto Excommunicated Whereupon Mr. Richard Kent then Prebendary of Sarum and Surrogate to the Reverend Dr. Richard Baily Dean of Sarum perceiving the Invasion committed upon the Dean's peculiar Jurisdiction by Dr. Elliot the Bishops Chancellor in citing Wickham within the Close Absolves the said Wickham Whereupon the Bishop makes his complaint to the Archbishop Dr. Gilbert Sheldon The business came to an Hearing in St. Iohn's College Gallery in Oxford before the said Archbishop and Edward Earl of Clarendon Lord Chancellour of England the King then residing in Oxford And the Issue was this That the Bishop should not intermeddle with any Ecclesiastical Censures things or Persons out of his own Palace and Family but that the whole decision of Ecclesiastical Matters within the said Close did and do purely wholly and solely belong unto the Dean This is a True Copy of the whole Relation of the Matter from the Reverend Dr. Richard Baily received by me the Surrogate to the said Dr. Richard Baily Dean of Sarum It a testor Ricard Kent primo Jun. A.D. 1678. Sub-Dec Sarum N. III. Yea since the present Lord Bishops and the present Dean's Time there was a Crime committed within his Lordships own Pallace and by his Lordships chief Domestick which being a Crime of Ecclesiastical cognizance was by consequence to be punished by the King 's Ecclesiastical Laws The Bishop applied himself first by Letters to the Dean and Chapter conjunctim for the Punishing of the chief Party in that Commission proposing the Composition to them whereby his Lordship was in hopes a Correction de bene esse might be favourably inflicted The Dean and Chapter met on purpose in Dr. Drake's House to Read and to consider of the said Composition Which having done They unanimously agreed in this Judgment of which they sent his Lordship word That the whole Composition supposing it to be valid was wholly impertinent to the Matter in hand And that none but the Dean alone as the Sole Ordinary of the Close could Summon both Parties into his Consistory Court and put the Law in Execution The Dean however made a delay because the Principal Offender had committed the Fact in the Bishop's Palace which he was willing to esteem a place Exempted from the Decanal Jurisdiction And this he pleaded to the Lord Bishop whom he desired to correct his own Domestick in his own Family or in his own Court which the Dean said he would warrant his Lordship the doing of by Letters Dimissory or License under the Seal of his Decanal Office But his Lordship urged with great strength of Reason as well as Earnestness 1. That such a Liberty in the Close was more than either the Dean could give away lawfully or the Bishop receive 2. That the Party cited into his Court might appeal to the Arches from the Bishop tanquam a non Iudice and make the very Iudge of that Court a Criminal 3. That the Dean might Summon a Prebendary to appear in his Court by a certain day from any part of the Kingdom but 4. That the Bishop could not cite him into His however nearly an Inhabitant Whereupon the Dean of Sarum acknowledging the Bishop too hard for him in the Contest was forced to own his Unavoidable Authority in the Close as inseparably annexed to the Imperial Crown of these Realms which is the language of several Acts of Parliament and not without Trouble and Self denial did satisfie the Law upon both the offending Parties N. IV. Since which time also no longer since than on the 15th of September 1681. the present Dean was desired by Mr. Archdeacon Woodward then the Bishop of Sarum's Surrogate Now the Chancellor of this whole Diocess to permit and allow the People of Broad-Chalk in Wiltshire to ask the voluntary Benevolence of Persons living within the Close of Sarum To whom the Dean gave his leave or permission rather in these words following As far as the Laws of this Realm permit and being earnestly requested as well as moved with the Resentment of so many mens Losses within the Parish of Broad-Chalk I do allow the said Sufferers to try the Charity of the Inhabitants within my Peculiar of the Close of New Sarum
A VINDICATION OF THE KING' 's Sovereign Rights Together with A Justification of His ROYAL Exercises thereof in all Causes and over All Persons Ecclesiastical as well as by consequence over All Ecclesiastical Bodies Corporate and Cathedrals More particularly applyed to the KING 's Free Chappel and Church of SARUM Upon Occasion of The Dean of SARUM's Narrative and Collections made by the Order and Command of the most Noble and most Honourable The LORDS Commissioners Appointed by the KING's Majesty for Ecclesiastical Promotions By way of Reply unto the Answer of the Lord Bishop of Sarum Presented to the aforesaid most Honourable LORDS Printed only to save the Labour of Transcribing several Copies and to prevent the Mistakes thereby apt to be incurr'd and meerly for the Satisfaction of private Friends who either Want or Desire a most Impartial Information of that Affair A GENERAL TABLE OF THE CONTENTS THE Dean of Sarum superstructs the Ecclesiastical Rights in Thesi to things of humane Establishment upon the Foundation of the Regal as upon a Rock which cannot fail them And also the Rights of the Bishop of Sarum in Hypothesi upon the only sure Foot which it can possibly stand upon The Moral Necessity of distinguishing with the Judicious Bishop Sanderson between an Original and Derivative Right As also with the famous Chief Justice Coke between a Subordinate and the Supreme The KING in Law is The Founder Proprietor in Chief and Advower Paramount of All Arch-Bishopricks and Bishopricks Cathedrals Prebends and of All contained in them The Despotical Exercise of the Regality as in all Other Churches so Above All in the Church of Sarum The Church is never so much Betray'd as by Them who assert a Church-man's Right with an Exclusion of the King 's and strive to take down the Stairs to which they owe their own Advancement The Dean of Sarum does not ascribe an higher Prerogative to the KING than Iudge Coke himself and Bishop Sanderson the Common and Statute and Civil Laws yea no more than Pope Nicolas to Edward the Confessor and his Successors Kings of England And does but distinguish with the most excellent Paolo Sarpi That Oracle Life and Soul of the most famous Venetian Senate between Dominion and Dispensation Where any Bishop is Dispensator the KING is Dominus The Second Chapter THE King's Castle at Old Sarum and the King's Free-Chappel in it and the Dean of it Before a Cathedral Church was built Before a Chapter was created Before the Indowments of the Sovereign and Subordinate Founders and during all Bishop Herman's Time are made Apparent and Undeniable by the Best and First Authors printed by which the Written Registers can be confirmed And That Register of Registers which was cited by the Dean but cheaply slighted by the Bishop is shewed to be as Authentick as any his Lordship can produce and for All the same Reasons which any Ordinary can urge for another Register Florentius of Worcester Eadmerus Will. of Malmsbury Roger Hoveden Simeon Dunelmensis All elder than Mat. Paris and M. Paris Himself with several others do all conspire in antecessum to prove the Authority of the Deans Register maugre Those who disesteem it for appearing too much in the Royal Cause Truth justified by its Opposers before they are aware and against their Wills in the very Act of their Opposition Two or three Bishops and many Earls had the King's Castle only as Keepers and during pleasure Thence 't was an Ambulatory Trust as is demonstrated by an Induction The Castle stood on the King's Soil The Lord Bishops Margin does only serve to Confute his Text. The Third Chapter THE Dean of Sarum's Jurisdiction in his Peculiars and particularly in That of Salisbury-Close which must be distinguished from the City which is the Bishops under the KING whereof the Dean is the Sole Immediate Ordinary was ever Exempted from the Bishop by the Charter of the Supreme and Subordinate Founder of the Cathedral the King and Osmund In comparison with which The most unlawful Composition was but a Novelty Almost Three Hundred years Younger than the Great Fundamental Statute That Composition was a Conspiracy of Pope Boniface the Ninth with the Then Bishop Dean and Chapter against whatsoever is Great or Sacred Against the Good Word of GOD. Against the Supremacy and Prerogative of the KING Against both the Common and Statute Law of the Land Against the very Foundation whereupon the whole Colledge and Church are laid and together with which they must Stand or Fall Against the Souls of Them that Made it and have Acted according to it both in regard of their own Oaths and the Founder's Curse And by reason of All the Nullities and Inconsistences that are in it against Common Sense and against It Self The Dean of Sarum's Jurisdiction exclusively of the Bishop's within the Close is strongly proved by the Confessions of the present Lord Bishop to the Dean Before his Lordship had been Incensed by the Dean's Services for the King and by his dutiful Obedience to the Lords Commissioners Command 'T is farther proved by All Decisions of Authority For the Dean's evident Right against the Bishop's Invasion of it An instance of it in the Sentence of the Lord Chancellor of England and the Arch-Bishop of the whole Province The Mischeivous Effects of the Composition Of no use to its Observers unless to make them in danger of incurring a Praemunire The Absolute Necessity of a Royal Visitation to set all Right The Appendix MR. Yeates in several Letters to persons of Honour and lesser Quality doth strongly assert unto himself his whole design of the Four Heads He irrefragably proves the Dean of Sarum not to have had an Hand in or Assent to or Connivance at or Knowledge of his Design Antecedently to the Command of the Lords Commissioners or to the First Notice sent him by the Lord Bishop and the Chapter His Two Inducements to it from his Right Reverend Diocesan and his None at all from the Dean of Sarum A VINDICATION OF THE King 's Sovereign Rights As in all Cathedral Churches so especially in the Church both of Old and New Sarum as asserted in the Dean of Sarum's Narrative drawn up and presented to the most Noble Lords Commissioners HAving laboured of Late under the Obloquy of Some and the Ill-will of Others and the impotent Revengefulness at least of One for having delivered what I had found of the King 's Sovereign Rights and his Royal Exercises thereof as well in All Causes as over all Persons Ecclesiastical All Bodys Corporate and Cathedrals more particularly applied unto His Majesty's Free Chappel and Church of Sarum tho' I did nothing of my self as a Voluntier but by Commission and Command from the most Noble and the most Honourable the Lords Commissioners appointed by his Gracious Majesty for Ecclesiastical Promotions whom God knows I did believe it my bounden Duty to obey I am induced to give the Reasons of my having
know not when or by which of our English Monarchs The Prebend of Shipton which was no more in our Monarchs to dispose of than All the rest was given away by King Iames I. as to the Patronage and Advowson unto the Chancellor and Scholars of the University of Oxford for the use of a Lay-man the King's Professor of Law there and to his Successors for ever with an Etiamsi Laicus sit sacros ordines non susceperit and this the King gave under the Great Seal of England wherein the Habendum and the Tenendum is not of the Bishop of Sarum of whom there is not the least Notice taken but of Him the said King and his Successors for ever Which Gift and way of giving it was afterwards confirmed by an Act of Parliament which I wonder to find alledged by the Right Reverend the Bishop in Derogation to the King 's Right of giving Prebends as if a King's Act were the less Regal or Legal for being done by the King twice First without a Parliament and a Second time in it Or as if the King of England had not Acted as the Proprietor because the Three Estates of Parliament did so esteem Him Nor hath any Reason been given that I have ever read or heard of why King Iames might not as easily have given away any other Prebend which had been founded in that Church that of Netherbury in Terra for Example which he really had given to his Divinity-Professor and to his Successors but that His Majesty found it too little and rather chose to give them a Greater Thing Nor is the King's Act in Parliament which we may no more distinguish from the King than we may distinguish the King's Prerogative from the Law more or less the King's Act than his Act in Council although perhaps of more force For the Three States which make the Body of a Parliament whereof the King is the Head tho a most Honourable Body and a whole Kingdom in Epitomy can but prepare Matter for Law and humbly propose it to the Sovereign to be ratified or rejected as his Majesty thinks sit But the Ratio Formalis of Legislation is fully and solely in the King whose Fiat or Le veult is the very Soul and Life of every Law made or to be made And really if the King of England is not the Founder the Sovereign Patron and Proprietary in Chief as well of the Prebends as of the Bishopricks the Bishop of Sarum can have no Right to his Prebend of Potern tho Installed and Admitted by the Dean and Chapter as other Prebendaries are much less can he have Right unto his other Prebend of Blewbery into which he was never so Installed or Admitted and which is reckoned in the Choir among the Alienated Prebends because transferred from the whole Chapter to the Bishop of Sarum who is indeed one of the Chapter as he is Prebendary of Potern but not at all as Prebendary of Blewbery And so his Lordship cannot have a Right to it tho he has Possession of it unless he hath it from the King which is Right enough and yet it is not enough in case the King is not de jure the Sovereign Patron and Proprietary in Chief 'T was never once held by any Bishop of Sarum but was a distinct and good Provision for one of the Simplices Canonici until the Reign of Hen. 8. by whom 't is pretended to have been pressed upon Bishop Salcot alias Capon and that in Exchange for the Mannor of Godalming in Surrey which could not possibly be de jure if indeed 't was so de facto in case the King had no Right to dispose of that Prebend as he thought fit I say if it was indeed so de facto because the Mannor of Godalming in Surrey with the Rectory and the three Copices and the perpetual Advowson of the Vicaridge was the Gift of King Hen. III. and is the Dean of Sarum's Corps and held of him by Lease to this very day Nor could such an Exchange be made if it ever were without the King's Fiat as Proprietary in chief And I hope 't will not be said that the King has only Right to Alienate what he will to the Bishop from any other but no right to give what Prebend he will to any other It is against Law and Reason that one Man in the same Church should have two Prebends at once And therefore when Hen. II. of England gave two to one Person Pope Alexander the Third complained of it Not at all questioning his Royal Right to give Prebends but the Evil Use of it Hence it follows that the Right of any Bishop of Sarum to bestow Prebends which I shall ever assert as the only sure Foot it can stand upon must needs be Subordinate to the King 's from whose Supream Right it was derived For the King if he would cannot legally confer a Sovereign Right upon any Subject much less upon a Bishop Dean and Chapter who cannot hold what they have for Term Life Absolute being many ways subject to Deprivations Amongst many other Examples which might be easily given of that Judge Coke tells us of one Bishop of Exeter who fell into a Praemunire for not admitting one immediately who was presented by the King to the Church of Southwell And this was done in the prevailing Times of Popery 24 Ed. 3. much more easily may it be done by a Protestant King and hath been often who hath of Right an Ecclesiastical Supremacy and doth assert it without a Sacriledge or an Encroachment upon the Church and that by the Confession of all Loyal Church-Men I am sure I can name Many who once allowed much more to Cromwell And yet by two Statutes in force 't is downright Treason for any Subject of England either to Promise or Pay Obedience to any other than to the King his Heirs and Successors 'T would be as endless as it is easy to Muster up Instances of the Regale over Churches and Church-men and their Revenues even when they were as Great as the Pope could make them and at as high a pitch of Pride as that Usurper of Supremacy could raise them to The most Assuming Bishop of Rome that ever was was Pope Hildebrand against whose Tyrannies and Encroachments William the Conqueror was a Protestant yet he apparently so dreaded the growing Power of the then Bishops within this Kingdom that he Confirmed his own Power as well as shewed it by lessening Theirs Our Kings in a word are de jure Kings of France And the French King's Prerogative or Propriety cannot be greater in the Gallican Church than our Kings is in the Church of England Nor indeed near so great 'T is a little thing to say in the Church of Sarum only And yet the whole Clergy of the Gallican Church have lately declared their Opinion by the Mouth of the Arch-Bishop of Rheims notwithstanding their Popes Pretensions That the King hath a
clear Title to the Right of the Regale in all the Bishopricks of his Kingdom That a General Council cannot lessen it much less a Pope That no Present King can be deprived of what a former King had That the King 's Collating to Prebends is such an Act of Supremacy so the Historian does infer as shews the King to be Lord in Fee and by the Code made in the Time of Hen. 4. If a Chapter refuse to Install a Regalist Letters are to go out to compel them to it or else their Revenues are to be Seized on Briefly 't was confessed by the Bishop of Pamiees the stoutest Assertor of the Pope's Ecclesiastical Supremacy that The Foundation of Churches does prove the King 's Right of Patronage All which and much more may be Collected out of Dr. Burnet's elaborate History of the Rights of Princes c. And if the French Kings Prerogative is such who does not own an Ecclesiastical Supremacy in all Causes and over all Persons as our King does How much greater is the Regale of our Kings here in England ever since the Reformation I will conclude this Comparison of the King of France with the French King in the words of this King's Procurator General in Parliament to wit That the King can no more renounce the Right of the Regale in Ecclesiasticis either in whole or in part than he can destroy the Salick Law or quit the Sovereignty of any Provinces in France And further adds They would all quit their Employments rather than consent to the least Diminution of that Right There are some among Us who do not speak in that Strain though others do Sect. 4. Fourthly I observed a Maxim of Law in my Lord Coke which did Confirm me in my Distinction between a Supream and Subordinate Right The Maxim is that If the Title of the King and of a common Person concurr the King's Title shall be Preferred For the Law saith he respecteth Honour and Order Therefore if the King makes one Man a Resident whilst the Dean and Chapter is choosing and have a desire to Choose another the Dean and Chapter will prefer the King's Clerk and not dispute with his Majesty de jure Patronatus Several Instances may be given in several Churches Those of Sarum and Wells in especial manner So if the King presents One to a Prebend without Residence and the Bishop Another the Dean and Chapter will Install and Admit the King's Man because by express Statute-Law The King is the Advower Paramount immediate of all Churches and Prebends And accordingly our Kings the Last and Present in particular do not only Recommend but pro Imperio plane Despotico do expresly Command Obedience to and Compliance with them and that sometimes in the very same Line sometimes two or three Lines lower sometimes again in the Conclusion Yes and in variety of Despotical Expressions as great as any can be invented in Law to be Imperial Such as are for instance We will We command We will and require Willing and requiring you Our pleasure is Our express will and pleasure is This We will have done Any Use Custome Prescription or any other Matter or Thing to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding Again We Will and Our Pleasure is that You cause these our Letters to be entred in your Register to the end they may be produced when Occasion requires What French King did ever Write in a more Decretory Despotical and Masterly Stile than Le Roy le veult Car tel est son plaisir This was as far as Heaven from Hell from Expresly Disclaiming a Royal Patronage and Right and Iurisdiction I will add but one more which was both ways Despotical to wit by a signal Inhibition and by a Peremptory Command For having said that He had given unto his Chaplain Dr. Drake the Dignity and Office of Chancellor in that his Cathedral Church of Sarum with the Prebend thereto annexed His Majesty added these signal words We hereby Will and Require that no Other Person be Admitted or Elected into any Residentiaries Place now vacant or that shall be vacant until He the said Dr. Drake be received into the Rights and Profits of Residence And for so doing This shall be your Warrant Much more might be said of the King's Mandate for Dr. Whitby which yet I forbear till occasion serves Only of this I am assured by as Eminent a Lawyer as perhaps ever was That a false Suggestion in a Petition to the King does void the King 's Grant of the thing Petitioned for It being a Maxim in My Lord Coke The Grant is void where the King is deceived in his Grant Besides all this I sadly considered with my self how often Bishops Temporalities have been Resumed by our Kings upon light Displeasures How often Will. 2. did Resume his own Grants And how he at once took all the Profits of the Bishopricks of Canterbury Winchester and Sarum And how all Bishops were threaten'd by Hen. 3. With a Seizure of all they had if they presumed to intermeddle in any thing to the Prejudice of the Crown Lastly How all our Kings and Parliaments excepting one even from Hen. 3. until the 6. of Hen. 8. have used Acts of Resumption whereby to Repair the low Estate of the Crown The just and frequent way to do it said the learned Sir Robert Cotton in his Speech to the House of Commons 1 Car. 1. The Dean of Sarum as much as any Man is for the Bishop of Sarum's Rights though not exclusively of the Kings and would have it stand safely by standing for ever upon a Rock to wit The Prerogative of our Monarchs who in Law can never dye They tend to the Ruin of the Prelacy and all Cathedrals who labour to make their King Despotical in the Sence of the Greek Proverb only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Be a Family never so Great there is but one Servant in it and that is the Master of the House But the Learned Dr. Burnet affirms the King to be Despotical in a much better Sense For premising an Observation how frequently Christian Monarchs made Paenal Laws for Church-men the Pains of which were Suspension or Deprivation whereof the Instances are many both in the old Roman Laws and in the Capitulars He Infers the King's Mastership and gives a very sound Reason for it Indeed the Bishops of Rome for several Centuries of Years even in all their Publick Bulls and till the Death of Charles the Great did own the Emperors of their Times as their Lords and Masters And Richard Poor Bishop of Sarum did own King Iohn as his Master with greater Reason however that King de facto made himself the Pope's Vassal Postulans ab Eo tanquam a Domino suo manus adjutrices All agree the Monarchs of England have power to Suspend or Deprive a Bishop as Ours has done an Arch-Bishop and that for a lesser degree
of Guilt than that of opposing the King's Prerogative as Q. Mary and Elizabeth did and of our Kings not a few So 't is on all hands confessed That their Royal Visitations either of All the Churches of England as Hen. 8. Ed. 6. and Q. Eliz. by their Commissioners may Abolish Old Statutes and Order New ones to be made and this for One if they please That No Prebend shall be conferred without the King 's express Mandate or Permission and Consent in a Conge d'Eslire This would be at once Despotical and yet according to Law however some in the World are willing to make them Inconsistent And every Statute would begin with a Statuimus Ordinamus or Volumus Mandamus Which being supposed I would ask What hurt would there be in it Or What Ill Consequence could therebe of it Is the King fit to be intrusted with All the greatest Promotions All the Bishopricks and Deaneries And is he not fit to bestow the Least It is convenient and of good Use and according to Law that he should make a Bishop of Sarum as well as the Dean and All the Residentiaries as at this Day and in Antecessum for Days and Years yet to come And is it Illegal or of Ill Consequence that he should sometimes tho' seldom bestow some Few of his own Prebends even on Men of great Learning and Holy Life and in full holy Orders and that for Term of Life only when his Progenitors gave so many even to mere Lay-men and their Heirs for ever The World takes Notice and 't is to be Written with a Sun-beam that generally speaking and taking one with another no Preferments are so well given as by the King and by the Lord-Keeper of the Great Seal and by the advice of the Lords Commissioners whom His Majesty hath appointed for Ecclesiastical Promotions 'T is certain the Bishops and the Deans and others whose Preferments are in the King 's sole Disposal not only in his Supream for which certain Bishops have a Subordinate Right derived are all exactly of this Opinion This I say is as certain as it is certain they have a competent good Opinion of themselves and their own Deservings They would not else have accepted much less would many of them have sought what many others had deserved as well as they And if 't is true that Neither the Bishop nor the Church of Sarum did suffer any prejudice at all by King Iames his giving a Prebend unto a mere Lay-man and to his Successors for ever at which saying of a Great Churchman many good Secular Men have wondered How much less can his Lordship think it any Prejudice at all to the Bishop of Sarum or to the Church or to the whole Order of Church-men if another Monarch of England shall confer another Prebend I do not say upon a Lay-man and his Successors for ever but upon One in Holy Orders and without a Nepotismo of Holy Life and of excellent Learning and for term of Life only or so long as he is seen and Notoriously known to continue to deserve the Enjoyment of it 'T is very well known what was the Judgment of Hen. 8. upon his Death-bed and of all his Executors after his Death whereof three were Eminent Church-men to wit Arch-Bishop Cranmer Tonstal Bishop of Durham and Dr. Wotton the famous Embassador who was at once Dean of Canterbury and York and humbly refused the Arch-Bishoprick of the great Province and also of All the Privy Counsellors of Ed. 6. when they decreed to the Earl of Hartford Six of the best Prebends at once and Three Hundred pounds per annum out of the Lands of the next Bishoprick which should fall to the King's Disposal After which 't was granted also at the said Earl's Suit that his Lordship should have a Deanery and a Treasurership in lieu of Two of the said six Prebends But very far was the Dean of Sarum from defending the Alienations of Ecclesiastical Endowments to Saecular Men as the Lord Bishop of Sarum does He was not so little verst in Logick as to argue a Facto ad Ius For when he related matters of Fact and what our Monarchs had done in the Church of Sarum he added Quo jure I humbly leave to the Judgment of my Superiors He only demonstrated that our Monarchs had acted as Founders and Proprietors which indisputably our Monarchs All are and have a strict Right as well as Power to bestow all our Prebends as well as Bishopricks upon God's proper Usu-Fructuaries deserving Church-men for term of Life But whosoever shall consider what Powers were given to the Lord Cromwel by Commission as Vicar General to Hen. 8. and also shall consider those famous Parliaments composed of the clearest and deepest Heads of those Times both Spiritual and Temporal who made the known Statutes of 27 Hen. 8. cap. 4. and 13. and 27. 28. and 1 Ed. 6. cap. 14. will at least excuse and pardon any Man living who now believes and with a much Greater force of Reason that our King hath a Supream and Sovereign Right from which and under which some of our Bishops as well as Deans have one Subordinate and Derived to dispose of Vacant Prebends now and then when they please in their own Cathedrals And as well may he dispose of All our Residentiaries Places as his now-Sacred-Majesty and his Royal Progenitors have done yes and return them if he thinks fit from six to seven from seven to twelve and from twelve to fifty-two and bind them to Residences in their Courses thirteen every Quarter according to our several Statutes both Old and Modern Sect. 5. Besides all this I find it said to the Lords Commissioners First by my Brethren of the Chapter That His Majesties Power within the Church of Sarum appears to us to be the same and no other than it is in All other Cathedral Churches in England Next by the King's Attorney General I cannot find that His Majesty hath any other Right in That Church than in any other Cathedral Churches These Assertions but especially the First because of its important Monosyllable All do seem at least to me to imply a Grant That His Majesty hath the same both Power and Right in the Cathedral Church of Sarum which he hath and ever had in the Churches of Worcester Norwich Rochester Bristol Gloucester Oxford Peterborough Westminster Windsor c. In All which Churches as well Cathedral as Collegiate Every one of the Prebends is in the King 's Sole not only Sovereign Disposal by Himself or Lord-Keeper and not one in any Bishop or Bishops whatsoever Yea even in the Arch-Bishop's Metropolitical Church of Cnanterbury the King has the Sole Disposal of Nine of the Twelve Prebends and the Arch-Bishop of but Three Tho' the Primate of all England and Metropolitan should have as much Power and Right a man would think within the Cathedral of his own Diocess as any one Inferiour Bishop both within his
Grace's Corrections also such as the Bishop of Sarum is And I do sometimes ask my self what Inconvenience could there be if the Bishop of Sarum or any other who is Subordinate to the Archbishop as the Archbishop to the King had no more Prebends to dispose of than the Archbishop hath Or if His Majesty now and then although but rarely only Fourteen or Fifteen in above 500 years should give a Prebend at large of Sarum to a Priest every way qualified with Want and Worth as well as he gives All the Prebends in All the Churches recited without Exception The Church and State might stand firmly as now they do and Christian Souls might be as salvable as now they are tho' the King's Power and Right were as much owned by All as it is by me The Bishops of London and of Lincoln and several others have a most undoubted Right to dispose of Prebends such at least as the Bishop of Sarum hath and that Right the more unquestionable by being held of the Supream and derived from it and Subordinate thereunto A Sole and Sovereign Right wholly exclusive of the King 's which is all I contend against and which my Lord Bishop of Sarum seems to aim at and effect or else his Lordship and I agree I am verily perswaded none of those Bishops will pretend to It cannot be said with any Truth that All the Bishopricks I have named wherein the King gives All the Prebends the Bishops none are not of Old but New Foundation For Worcester and Norwich are very Old Canterbury and Rochester two of the Oldest we have in England Besides that the King's Power and Right in the Church of Sarum is greater than in many others not only because of his Old Free Chappel which I shall prove in the next Chapter and cannot be disproved by some Negatives from some Interested and Passionate Opposers of the Prerogative but also because the Kings of England were the Co-Founders of that Cathedral in a Literal Sence as well as Founders in the Sence of our Common and Statute Law The Co-Founders at least because Osmund had his All from the Bounty of Will 1. and held his All of that King's Favour under Knights Service during Pleasure for which I cited Mr. Selden and Matth. Paris in the first Sect. of this Chapter King Hen. 1 in one day gave 20 Churches to that of Sarum besides the Tithes of New Forrest if the Record which was read by Sir Tho. Ridley said true which he mentions in his View of the Civil Law And passing by the lesser Bounties of Steph. and K. Hen. 2. it is confessed that Hen. 3. gave no fewer than 20 or 21 Prebends and other things even All the Tithes of all the Kings Forrests within Three Counties Wilts Berks and Dorset and the Removal of the Cathedral from Old to New Sarum is owned by Bishop Spondanus as well as others to have been at the King 's cost chiefly Next our Kings were Sole Founders in the Eye and Sence of the Law according to the Maxim cited before from Iudge Coke Instit. Cart 2. Chap. 33. upon Magna Charta p. 68. 44 Ed. 3 cap. 24. And our King at this day according to that other Maxim in Coke 2 Inst. in Statute of Employments p. 742. Whatever Right our Former Kings had our King hath now It seemeth strange to most men who have considered the matter throughly that the King who gets the Right of giving every Ecclesiastical Possession in England not only where Church men but where Saecular men are Patrons by promoting an Incumbent unto a Bishoprick should immediately loose All even in That very Church where he makes the Bishop Or that the King who hath All in his own Disposal during the Vacancy of All the Bishopricks in England should have nothing to dispose of without the Bishop's good leave as soon as the Vacancies are filled tho' filled up freely by himself They are Betrayers of the Churches Rights who go about to undermine and betray the King's And they tempt the King and his Royal Successors to let their Bishopricks lye void as Q. Eliz. and her Ancestors thought fit to do even as far as for 20 or 30 yea for 40 years together Signal Instances of which in the most of our Churches if not in All 't were too easy for me to give if it would not occasion too great a Length Alas we may judge of the King's Regale within the Cathedral Church of Sarum supposing there had been never a Royal Chappel in the Old Castle which yet I shall shortly make apparent by the Exercises of it in other Churches They having in their Pleasures and Displeasures Created some Bishopricks and Supprest them soon after whereof Westminster is an Example Dissolved and Restored whereof Durham is an Example United two into one and again Divided into Two an Instance of which we have in Worcester and Gloucester Taken three out of one as Hen. 1. took Ely out of Lincoln Hen. 8. Oxford and Peterborough out of the same Tho' the Diocess of Lincoln is still the greatest ' its Parishes being no fewer than 1255. Ordered one Bishoprick to be held with Another in Commendam as that of Bristol with that of Gloucester for 23 years together Gave the Bishoprick of Hexam in Augmentation to the Archbishoprick of York from which it was taken again in the 37. of Hen. 8. Converted Canons Saecular into Regular vice versa made the Prior and Convent of Westminster a distinct Corporation from the Abbot Conferred the Patronage of a Bishoprick upon a Subject as Hen. 4. that of Man upon the Family of the Stanleys Gave Temporalities and Reassumed them as in 14 Ed. 3. cap. 3. deprived Bishops for very small Failings Examples of which are elsewhere given Subjected them to the Statute of Praemunire and to the Judgments of Saecular Men As All at once to the Lord Cromwel and Sir Io. Tregonwel to that of Sarum Made Inferiour Clergymen to be the Judges of their Superiors as the Dean of St. Pauls over Bonner Bishop of London Translated Bishops in Displeasure from the Greater Bishopricks to the lesser As Nevil from York to St. Andrews in Scotland and Iohn Buckingham from Lincoln to Litchfield which was not then half so good Made a Saecular Man a Dean as the Lord Cromwel Dean of Wells In a word the same Authority which took four Bishopricks out of Sherburn and added Sherburn with about 40 Parishes about it to the Dean of Sarum's Iurisdiction And gave away the Jurisdiction of the Rest of all Dorsetshire from the Bishop of Sarum to that of Bristol but never gave away one from the Dean of Sarum can give a Prebend of Sarum or a Residentiaries Place to any man in full Orders and that de Iure for to a Lay-man and de facto it has frequently been done And if the Corporation of Dean and Chapter is not of the King's Foundation when the Bishoprick is
by all Confessions and by the frequent Declarations of the Law why have our Kings disposed oftener of the Residentiaries places than of the Canonries at large without Residence Why should any man dispute against his Kings being his Founder Can he pretend to have a better Or will he pretend to have none at all 'T is true that Osmund was a Secondary and Subordinate Founder of many Prebends But His Founder and Royal Master was worthily reckoned as the Supreme with which Distinction it is as true the Dean and Chapter have a Right to choose their Bishops as well as Residents But both in a subserviency and subordination to the Supreme wherewith their own must stand or fall The Reverend Arch-Deacon Fulwood hath enough whereby to clear the King's Patronage of the whole English Church and he cites Archbishop Bramhall producing several Laws for it The Assize of Clarendon the Statute of Carlile the Statute of Provisors All asserting the Power and Patronage to be de jure in the King which was de facto in the Pope and by Usurpation The Parliament told the King plainly That the Right of the Crown is such and the Law of the Land too that the King is bound to make Remedies and Laws against Incroachment on his Prerogative Sect. 6. Lastly I must in my Narrative in imitation of the most Learned and most Judicious Bishop Sanderson assert the Bishops Right as well as the Chapter 's and mine Own both as jointly with them and as Separate from them upon what I think the surest and safest Ground Only I could not find in my heart to take down that Scaffold or to invalidate those stairs unto which we all owe our own Advancement I was really afraid to betray the Church by asserting the Churchmen's Right with an Exclusion of the Kings as I am sorry some do to the endangering of the whole Body For 't is to Expose her as an Orphan to a very unkind world sadly stripped of the Patronage and so the Protection of the King who is her Guardian and Nursing Father to whom the Church owes her Safety if not her Being and without whose Royal Patronage she cannot comfortably subsist The Church in our Laws being evermore a Minor ever a Pupil under Age as utterly destitute of help as ever any Expositious and Forsaken Child was without that Guardianship and Patronage that Royal Right and Prerogative which some who live by it have lately attempted to Undermine In this my Sentiment if I have erred it is with the Great Man I just now mentioned as my Exemplar in that Book which he composed by the special Command of King Charles the First of Glorious Memory proving Episcopacy in England not at all Prejudicial to Regal Power which some would make Destructive of it by the same way of arguing which I have used The shortest Accompt which I can render of it is this All Episcopal Power is either of Order or Iurisdiction hereof the latter is either Internal or External and this last is either Directive or Coercive the first is from God the Second wholly from the King as is declared by our Laws and acknowledged by the whole Loyal Clergy Yea that Power which is from God as that of Preaching Ordaining Absolving and the like is so subject to be Inhibited Limited and otherwise Regulated in the outward Exercise of that Power by the Customs of the Land as that the whole Execution of that Power does still depend upon the Regal Now All Iurisdiction being Confessedly from the King it seem's to follow that all Prebends as well as Residentiaries places of the Old Foundation which have a Iurisdiction belonging to them as those of Sarum are known to have are disposable by the King when and as often as His Majesty sees Good Pope Nicholas could not deny it and therefore Granted it very cunningly to Edward the Confessor with a Vobis Posteris committimus Advocationem c. We commit the Advowson of all the Churches of England to you and your Successors Kings of England So that if the Popes Grants are of any value before the Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire by which the Composition in it self Evil was made much worse as having been when those Statutes had made it Criminal for the Subjects of England to petition a Bishop of Rome for a Confirmation the Regal Right I plead for has a double Title and is not questionable by the Papalins much less by the men of the Church of England Now whereas I did distinguish with the Judicious Bishop Sanderson between an Original and Derivative Power of Jurisdiction wherewith I have been twitted in derogation to the Kings Honour to whom it seems I ascribed more than Malignity will allow tho' no more than Bishop Sanderson whose Loyal performance justifies mine And after shewed the Great Extent with the greater Intensiveness of my Derivative Jurisdiction as Dean of Sarum which had been a most Extravagant and Unaccountable Iurisdiction if the first Deans of Sarum had not been Deans of the Kings Free Chappel before the Cathedral Church was built and before Bishop Herman was the first Bishop of it as well as during all his time which I shall prove to be as clear as the Sun at Noon in a fair day I will justify my self in my so magnifying my Office out of mere Gratitude to the King and to show his Royal Bounty as well as Power in the words of the said meek and most Learned Prelate The more a Derived Power is extended and inlarged in the Exercise thereof so as to be Regular the more it serveth to set forth the Honour and Greatness of that Original Power which granted it Since the vertue of the Efficient Cause is best known by the Greatness of it's Effect For Propter quod unumquodque est Tale Illud ipsum est magis Tale as the warmth of the Room doth not lessen the Heat of the fire upon the Hearth but is a sign of it's Greatness c. From all which it follows that the Dean who does as modestly as he does thankfully distinguish between his own but derivative and Subordinate Rights and the Rights of the King which are Original and Supreme cannot magnify his Office or defend his Jurisdiction according to his Oath and bounden Duty with too much Zeal whilst they who hate that Distinction as by me it hath been used and will have the Sole Right to dispose of this or That Exclusively of the Kings are neither so modest nor so thankful as I sincerely wish they were They maligning their Maker's Power whereby they are what they are I will add ex abundanti what may conduce to Their Conviction in this great Article of our Religion who would be thought of the Church of England It is a Principle in Law that of every Land there is a Fee simple in some body But the Fee simple of the Land of a Prebend cannot be in the Bishop
or in the Prebendary both being at most for Term of Life and both Subject to Deprivations for less then Treason or Felony therefore 't is in the King as Original Founder whose Royal Right can never dye King Hen. 8. and Ed. 6. did act accordingly and the same Authority which was made use of by Hen. 8. and Ed. 6. was declared by Parliament to be in Q. Eliz. her Heirs and Successors Nor can any Discontinuance be any prejudice to a King 's Right who therein hath this Prerogative Quod nullum Tempus occurrit Regi And when a King ordains any thing for the Honour of God and the Church he Wills not saith my Lord Coke that it turn to the Prejudice of Him or his Crown but that his Right should be saved in all Points Besides the Church is for ever in Law a Minor as I observed before semper in Custodia Domini Regis And 't is unnatural that the Guardian should have nothing to dispose of not so much as a Prebend in the Minority of his Pupil to which he is a Nursing Father The King's Possession and Rights saith the same Oracle of the Law are called Sacra Patrimonia Dominica Corona Regis So that 't is Sacriledge to invade them Nor can he so make them away but that at one time or other they will revert unto the Crown He is in Law Summus Dominus supra Omnes still the words of Chief Justice Coke of whom are held either mediately or immediately All the Free Lands of England much more all Ecclesiasticals for term of Life onely or Quam diu bene se gesserint Possessores Lastly The King is not only the Legal Founder and Patron of all the Bishopricks in England and of all contained in them as Causa Causae is ever Causa Causati But he is himself in Person the Supreme and Sovereign Bishop of every Diocess in England It being the true and known saying of Constantine the Great an Englishman born and King of Britain as well as Emperour of Rome and Constantinople in his Speech unto the Fathers of the first Nicene General Council 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And every body knows that the perpetual Advocation or right Patronage of is a Lay Fee as peculiar to many Lay Subjects much more to the Sovereign qui intra Ecclesiam potestatis Culmen habet say the Canonists themselves as Institution to a Subordinate Bishop or other Ordinary and Induction to an Archdeacon Especially when the thing presented to is without Cure of Souls as Prebends are For where a Parsonage is the Corps of any Prebendary at large and demised for three Lives to a Secular man as most commonly it is the cure of Souls is wholly devolved and incumbent upon the Vicar if at least there is a Vicaridge endowed and if not upon the Curate But the Rector and his Tenent are both Exempt Briefly our Monarch has a Right as well by Common as Statute Law and the Deans of Sarum have ever been largely Partakers of it by Royal Bounty to Exempt what Place he will from every Bishop's Jurisdiction and when he will from the arch-Arch-Bishops such as Pool and other places in the possession of Sir Iohn Webb Every Ordinary in England such as is the Dean of Sarum in the Close is an immediate Officer to the King's Courts And to the King Appeals lye even from the Court of Arches His Majesty being in Law Le dernier Resort de la Iustice yea in Places exempt no Archbishop may intermeddle according to 25 Hen. 8. c. 19. 6. and c. 21. § 20. And all Iurisdiction Ecclesiastical being both derived from and inseparably annexed to the Imperial Crown of this Realm and that for ever by Acts of Parliament from thence it is that a Convocation cannot meet without the King 's Writ nor treat at their meeting without his Commission nor Establish any thing when Commissioned without his Royal Assent and Fiat They who say less than this Do make Episcopacy Prejudicial to Monarchy which Bishop Sanderson could not endure and set up a Papal like Supremacy in a Protestant Kingdom A Loyal Subject and Son of the Church of England will conscientiously distinguish with Padre Paul and the Canonists between Dominion and Dispensation and then he will dutifully concede That where the Bishop is Dispensator the King is Dominus CHAP. II. WHat I said in my unprinted Narrative of the King's Castle at Old Sarum and of the King 's Free Chappel in it before the Cathedral Church was built All which is gain-said by the present Lord Bishop of Sarum in his Answer to the said Narrative I take upon me to prove and to place beyond Dispute by not a few of the best Historians who have written of those Times whose printed Writings are extant and do confirm what was produced out of the Dean of Sarum's Register which was extracted out of the Registers for the most important Part of it of the Ancient Bishops of Sarum and which I thought had been Sufficient without the Confirmations of it which now ensue Sect. 1. First 'T is plain from William of Malmsbury that the said Castle was the Peculium of the King and stood upon the King's Soil Castellum Salesberiae Regij Iuris Proprium erat Sect. 2. Next 't is Evident from the same and from other old Authors of greatest Note such as Eadmerus Florentius Wigorniensis Roger Hoveden Simeon Dunelmensis All elder than Matthew Paris and Matthew Paris himself and several others that the said Castle was a Place of Usual Resort for the Kings of England and sometimes for Extraordinary Meetings As for Example A. D. 1086. Aug. 1. William the Conqueror pointed his Bishops Barons Sheriffs and their Milites to meet him at Saresbury where and when the said Milites took their Oaths of Fidelity to him So saith Florentius of Worcester the Ancientest Writer who hath mentioned the Church of Old Sarum and Roger Hoveden This precisely was the Year wherein was compiled the Doomsday-Book as the same Authors and the Book it self Witness A. D. 1096. W. Rufus held a Council in his Castle at old Sarum as the same Authors testify when Osmund was present and took the Confession of William de Alvery before he went to Execution A. D. 1100. Henry I. le Beauclerc newly Crowned held his Court in the same Castle Arch-Bishop Anselm repairing thither to His Majesty among the rest So saith Eadmer p. 55 He also held an Assembly of the Three Estates at Old Sarum which had from that Time the Name of Parliament A. D. 1116. The same King called a Meeting of the Bishops and Great Men of the whole Kingdom at the same Place there to do their Homage to his Son William So saith Eadmer pag. 117. Florentius and Hoveden Hitherto is no mention of City Town or Village but of the King's Castle only Which W. Malmsb. thus describes
therefore is it for men to lessen that Monarch in his Prerogative who did not only make them but does still keep them Great How often had the Hierarchy been trodden utterly under foot if the King singly had not Sustained them How many Parliaments may be convened who will Vote down All Bishops and Deans and Chapters ab Actu ad potentiam optime valet Argumentum if the King will prompt them to it or but Consent when it is done They who look downwards upon themselves but neither backwards nor forwards on the years that are passed and the years to come do not consider what Protections they have received from the King at the King 's great cost or what Protections for the future they may have a sad Occasion to wish and pray for And here I should have ended this 2d Chapter but for a Passage out of the Annals of Burton Abby MS. 1245. Which shews that even then in the Time of Hen. 3. long enough after Osmund and Will 1. the King of England had Many Free Chappels and was resolved to keep them Free Indeed so many that diverse Parish Churches which did but Neighbour on the King's Castles were apt to pretend to that Priviledge Yea the Chappels in the King's Castles were Confirmed in their Immunities Exemptions and Liberties by Popes themselves As appears by that Kings Proclamation Dated at Westminster March the 3d. in the 30. Year of His Reign Wherein he strictly Commanded that the said Freedom of his Chappels should be Perpetual Et ne Aliquis contra praedictum Privilegium aliquid audeat attemptare Nor hath any of our Monarchs taken away or surrendered that glorious Branch of their Prerogative whatever Subjects have attempted by joining with Boniface the 9th CHAP. III. WHereas 't was affirmed by the Bishop of Sarum to the Lords That there never was a Time when either the Dean and Canons were exempt from all Iurisdiction of the Bishop of Sarum The contrary to it is confessed and strongly proved by his Lordship himself in the very next Words following wherein his Lordship cites The Composition that was made between Bishop Waltham Dean Montacute and the Then Chapter of the said Church which was no longer since than in the Year 1391. whereas the Absolute Exemption of the Dean and All the Canons from the Bishops Jurisdiction was in the Year 1095. Between which two Dates there was an Interval of almost 300 Years Which Composition so called was indeed a Conspiracy of the said Bishop Dean and Chapter with Pope Boniface the Ninth by whom it was confirmed and for which by the Laws of England even c Then in force they did incur a Praemunire Which All the Bishops ever since are humbly conceived to have incurred who have presumed to Act according to That Conspiracy I. Against the Supremacy and Prerogative of the King II. Against the Common and Statute Law of the Land III. Against the Fundamental Statute of our Subordinate Founder Osmund IV. Against their own Souls in two respects first in respect of the Several Oaths which have severally been Sworn by all the Bishops Deans and Chapters That they would keep and cause to be kept as much as in them lay that Fundamental Statute of Osmund with all the Priviledges Dignities Immunities and Exemptions therein contained of which Oaths the said Conspiracy or Composition is a Professed Violation as shall be shewn in its proper place Secondly in respect of the heavy Curse which Osmund denounced against All those who should dare to pervert the said Fundamental Constitutions in any kind V. Against its own Being by reason of its several Inconsistences with it self and of the several Nullities contained in it Lastly Against the Well-being if not against the very Being of the whole College within the Cathedral Church of Sarum by reason of its most scandalous and most mischievous Effects But of each in its Order § 1. First It was a Conspiracy against the King of England and his Prerogative who is in Law declared to be the Founder as well as Patron of all the Archibishopricks and Bishopricks in England but took care in his Original Charter granted to his Favourite Osmund sealed first with the Seal of Will I. and then with the Seal of Will II. to exempt his Dean and All his Prebendaries or Canons from the Bishops Jurisdiction in as full and as plain a manner as Latin words could express an Exemption by In words so carefully contrived against all possible Affectation of Jurisdiction over the College of Dean and Chapter in any succeeding Bishop of Sarum that what the present Lord Bishop of Sarum would make an Argument for himself and his Affected Jurisdiction makes quite against him For the Voice and the Place which the Bishop has in Chapter common to him with all the 52 Canons he has as Prebendary of Pottern not as Bishop of Sarum nor has he so much as a Second Voice as he is Prebendary of Blewbery because he was never admitted to it by Installation nor lawfully could be For when Hen. 2. had given two Prebends to One man in one Church Pope Alexander the Third complained of it in his Letter as Unlawful and Uncanonical Not denying the King 's Right of conferring Prebends but the Evil use of it So that the Bishop in Capitulo has but one single Vote and the liberty to propose what he thinks may tend to the good of the Church or to complain of what he takes to be amiss as every other Prebendary has as free liberty to do and to be punished or amended by the Authority of Dean and Chapter Nor is it said to be the Duty but the Dignity of the Dean and of all the Canons ut Episcopo in nullo respondeant nisi in Capitulo To which 't is added in the next words what his Lordship does not mention judicio Tantùm Capituli pareant where the word Tantum excludes the Bishops Iudgment or definitive Sentence of any matter limits it wholly to the Body of the Great Chapter consisting of All the Canons Non-Resident and Resident whereof the Dean is the Head and the Prebendary of Pottern a worthy Member but the Bishop as Bishop is neither of them Nor was this Signal Exemption only in the Foundation of the Cathedral made at once by the Supreme and the Subordinate Founder but it was Repeated and Confirmed by Hen. III. and Bishop Poor in the Removal of the same from Old to New Sarum in the years 1220. And the same Oaths for the due observance of it have been ever since Sworn by all the Bishops Deans and Chapters without Exception All which was alledged with effect in the Chapters Accusation of Bishop Erghum to Archbishop Sudbury 1375 whom they charged before his Grace at once with Perjury and Usurpation for affecting a Jurisdiction over the Canons when the Dean was Dead and the Deanry Vacant at a Time wherein the Bishop had a little colour for it
though not in any other Place under the Decanal Iurisdiction of Tho. Pierce Decan Sarum Now it is to be noted that the Parish of Broad-Chalk is under the Bishop's Jurisdiction and that the Lord Bishop was then at home in his Palace within the Close and that his Leave had been sufficient without the Deans had he had any Jurisdiction within the Close much more had his Jurisdiction been Archiepiscopal or Regal and so Superior to the Deans Lastly That the Bishops Surrogate knowing well that his Lordship had none at all within the Close though his Lordship and the Sub-Dean have all between them in the City did therefore make his Application to the Dean and the Dean only In like manner the Collection which was made within the Close for the rebuilding of St. Paul's London the Redemption of Captives and the like was made and returned by the Dean only and his Officers according to the King's Order and Direction N. V. If we step as far back as to the Year of our Lord 1584. we shall find the great difference between a Bishop of Sarum who was first Dean of Sarum and a Bishop who never was Dean of the same Church For Dr. Iohn Pierce whilst Dean of Sarum did in conjunction with his Chapter and by Command of Queen Elizabeth to whom he was Almoner many years upon the 17th of October 1573. begin the good work of abolishing Superstitious and Popish Statutes without the consent or the assistance of the then Bishop Edmund Ghuest Though he so swept the Church as to leave some Dust behind the Door But being afterwards Bishop of Sarum as after that Archbishop of York he got a Commission from the Archbishop of the Province to visit the Church upon occasion of the Case of Dr. Zouch and said he was fultus Iurisdictione Metropolitana knowing well and confessing that as Bishop of Sarum he had no right to Visit the Choral Vicars much less the Chapter much less the Dean for if he had he would not have needed any Commission from the Archbishop of the whole Province N. VI. The said Exemption of All the Canons of the greater and lesser Chapter who make a Superiour Corporation whereof their Dean is the Head may be yet farther proved by the Exemption of All the Vicars who are an Inferiour Corporation from the Bishop of Sarum's Power and Jurisdiction For it appears by the Vicars Charter which they enjoy from the Crown of England as the Dean and Chapter do Theirs that they are only subjected to the correction of Dean and Chapter not at all to the Bishops who can neither put in nor punish much less put out a Vicar or a Lay Clerk however criminal And accordingly the Vicars as well as the Lay Clerks take an Oath at their Admission of paying Obedience unto the Dean and to the Dean only whilst he is present and in the Dean's Absence to the Deans Locum-tenens authorized under the Seal of the Decanal Office But none at all to the Bishop whether Present or Absent which was eminently acknowledged by this present Bishop in his own Palace when in the presence of the Dean and Chapter and all the Vicars his Lordship protested three several times to Mr. Hardwick the Vicars Procurator and Prolocutor and to his Brethren then present That if it were in his Power he would expel them every one for their then Recalcitration and Opposition both to the Bishop and to the Chapter when good Lawyers told the Vicars they had the Law on their Side The Vicars were not a little pleased at his Lordship 's Brutum Fulmen and confession of his No-Power over the Vicars within the Close three times repeated Nor could any but the Dean bring those Vicars to a Submission and full compliance which he soon after did with the best effect N. VII Even since my coming to keep my Residence at Sarum the 20th of this instant Iune I find two Notorious and Publick Confessions in effect of the Lord Bishop of Sarum his having no Power to Visit within the Close whether the Dean will or no or without the Dean's Leave Concurrence and Consent under the Seal of his Decanal Office as well as under his own Hand which being sought but refused very honestly and prudently by the Dean's Surrogate in his absence and without his knowledge the Dean's Locum-tenens for the Chapter as the Sub Dean Mr. Kent is the Dean's Surrogate for his Court and his peculiar Jurisdiction wherewith the Chapter hath nothing to do nor any mortal Besides the King and the Arch-Bishop of the Great Province did as absurdly as unfaithfully clap the Common Seal of the Dean and Chapter of the Dean chiefly as the Head and of the Chapter as his Members by usurping my Name in it and by counterfeiting my Will against my Will my Interest my Jurisdiction without asking my Consent or Permission without so much as saying By your Leave Sir yea studiously and in haste without my knowledge even when He and the Rest knew I was but few Miles from them and even then coming tho' not yet come to my House at Sarum Being come I soon found Two Citations in the Choir made by a Fiction of my Name and of my Name only beginning Thus Thomas Pierce Sancta Theol. Professor Ecclesiae Cathedralis Sarum Decanus ejusdem Ecclesiae Capitulum Universis Singulis c. Finding This to be done 1. Without my knowledge and 2. With my very great Abhorrence 3. Against my Judgment 4. Against my Right of Jurisdiction 5. Against the King of whom I hold my Jurisdiction under the Great Seal of England and unto whose Imperial Crown my Iurisdiction is annexed by 32 Acts of Parliament 6. Against my self in mine own name and Poetically brought in upon the stage Citing my self and the Bishop as the Prebendary of Blewbery but not as Prebendary of Pottern which the Bishop is also Comically personated whether I will or no like a Puppet moving by Wires 7. Against Express Statute to the contrary 8. Against the Oaths of the Members of the Chapter who had an Hand in the usurpation which I am sure but few had 9. Against the Trust reposed in my Deputy and 10. Against the very License or Constitution whereby I had enabled him in my Absence to call Chapters for the taking care of God's worship the keeping of Statutes and Laudable Customs of the Church as far as they agree with the Word of God and with the Law of the Land and for the Correction of the Canons and Members but so limited as I have said not for the using the Common Seal at all much less at his Pleasure without my knowledge and consent and against my self I say finding This and a world of Absurdities too many and too great to be recounted in this Pinch of Time I inferred their Conviction of my sole Right as Dean to cite the 52 Prebendaries and all other members who had sworn obedience to me from
went hence to the See of Chichester That and Bishop Poor's Register are to this day concealed from me I will Conclude with this one signal Observation That of All the Monarchs of England who have deprived the Bishops of Sarum of many Jewels in their Mitres not any One of them ever took any thing from the Deans because Originally the Deans of their Royal Chapel and Virtualiter ever since AN APPENDIX TO THE PREMISSES SHewing the Dean of Sarum's Innocence if not his Merit in his Services for the King by the Lords Commissioners special Order and in his Obedience to their Lordships express Command and also in his perfect Ignorance of Mr. Yeats his Address to the said great Lords with his Four Heads of Information until the Lord Bishop and the Chapter of Sarum gave the Dean his First knowledge and notice of it So that the Controversie ensuing it might possibly have been Raised by the said Bishop and his Adherents Before it was so much as possible to have been Raised by the Dean without his knowing any thing of it till so informed But seeing All men are subject to be Mistaken and Abused by men of Malice it is the honour and the duty of All the Dean of Sarum's Friends in the number of whom I profess my self to convert or to shame those Fanatical Enemies to the Government who do pretend to suspect him though indeed they do not and cannot suspect him in Reality of having dealt underhand in the Design of Mr. Yeats or of having acted otherwise towards any the least Occasion of any Controversie or Difference with any Creature Antecedently to the Command of the Lords Commissioners the Evidence of the contrary is so manifold and convincing But yet they hitherto Resolve to pretend suspition when they have None whereby to justify or excuse their Diabolical Defamation of an innocent Man If yet it is a Defamation or a Crime to prompt a Pious and Learned Person to serve his Sovereign as he is able The Real cause of their Malignity being too Criminal to be owned to wit the Dean of Sarum's Loyalty and Love of Truth and Compliance with the Commands of the most Noble Lords Commissioners who are impowered by the King to command us All. This alone is the True Ground of some mens Pretending to a Suspicion whereby to revenge themselves on the said Dean for having dared to be Dutiful to his Superiours These Artificers and Inventors of Evil Things having not at all either the Grace or even Humanity to consider that They Themselves must have obeyed as ill-affected as they are to Any Commissioned by the King had they been so commanded as the Dean of Sarum was But I will no longer detain the Reader in this Preface to an Appendix from Mr. Yeat's his own Letters sent to several Persons of Honour and to some others of lesser Quality strongly asserting unto Himself the whole Design of the Four Heads which he addressed to the Lords Commissioners and confuting those Malignants who out of Envy to his Performance would have him taken to his Disparagement for Another man's Tool Nothing is added to the said Letters besides a few Deductions Thence and some Reflections thereupon An APPENDIX to the Three foregoing Chapters § 1. MR. Yeats was so unwilling that either the Dean of Sarum or any other of that Church should have any share with him in the Honour or in the Blame of his Project of the Four Articles that he writ an honest Letter to a Person of Quality in the Countrey as before to some at Court and to the Lord Bishop himself who permitted the Dean's Son to transcribe as much of it as he thought would conduce to his Father's Service and Satisfaction And 't is as follow 's I am heartily sorry that any should be so Atheistical as still to suspect the Dean's privity to my design after so much evidence and conviction to the contrary and therefore to shame them I am ready to undergo whatever Test shall be put upon me to declare that the Dean was neither directly nor indirectly nec per se nec per alium acquainted with my design but every way as ignorant thereof as the Child unborn and much less abetting me therein than the Bishop himself from whom I had indeed two Inducements but from the Dean none nay less than none this being the only way I had to incur the Dean's Displeasure but withal to procure a Favour from the Bishop or at least from the King himself The only offence that I Can charge my self herein to be guilty of and for which I do and must ever beg the Pardon of Mr. Dean is not only that I drew up those Articles without his Privity or Assistance but also without his knowledge or consent referr'd my self for Proof of them to Books and Papers in his Hands Truth is the knowledge I had of the chief things suggested by me to the Lords Commissioners was principally from a Sheet of Reasons whereof Copies had been dispersed into several mens hands as well of both Houses of Parliament as private Persons One of which Copies I have here with me penned by the Dean about Six Years since which Sheet was Entitled Certain Memoirs of things pleadable against a Bill then prepared for the taking away of all Peculiar Jurisdictions c. wherein among others I found this very observable Passage The Dean and Canons of Sarum had their abode before the Conquest in Old Castle called Caesar's Burg and corruptly Sarisberg by the Brittains Sorbiodunum It was at the first the King 's Free Chappel as Windsor is at this day wherein the Dean under the King had more than Episcopal Jurisdiction Vide Vetus Registr Miscell Registr Dom. Richardi Episc. Sarum 'T was from this and certain other Passages there following seconded by what I heard from some Persons better known as I thought in the Affairs and Records of that Church than I can be supposed to be that I thought I had reason enough humbly to tender those Four things to be inquired into by their Lordships But for the Reverend Dean of Sarum he had no manner of knowledge of my Design or of my Two Inducements â—o it nor of the Petition of the Mayor and Magistrates of Marlborough nor of those Noble Persons who did promote it and therefore as I have highly though undesignedly disobliged him by acting as I did without his Privity and as I found since against his Will so I have and do and ever will beg his Pardon which whether I ever obtain or not I will be ever his Vindicator in the bottom of my Heart from his having had the least share or so much as knowledge of my Rashness and Precipitancy § II. Thus far Mr. Yeats word for word and as truly as ever any man spake He offered also to confirm it in open Court upon Oath which makes me say that those men are unworthy and must not expect to be