DR. HOOK'S ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. * IT is probable that some
twenty years hence, when Dr. Hook shall have reached the times of Sancroft and Tillotson, a future genera- tion of critics may have no fault to find with his performance of his task. The volume before us is decidedly the most satisfactory of those—and their number is not inconsiderable—which it has al- ready been our duty to review. In matters of detail distinct improve- ments have been made. The volume is divided into chapters, and the convenience of the reader is consulted by the addition of side- notes. If we could have had the additional assistance of running dates, instead of having repeated to us more than a thousand times the very limited information contained in the words, "Matthew Parker, 1559-75," we would have little left to ask for. Nor should we neglect to observe that the irrelevant and often grotesque references to events and personages of the present day which have disfigured previous volumes have been happily discarded. We have observed but one passage of the kind. The accusation con- veyed in the statement that Sandys, the Bishop of Worcester, "like the latitudinarian prelates of our own time, was found to be in his diocese despotic and particular," is too vague to be a serious offence, but it is certainly unbecoming to the dignity of an historian. With the general tone of Dr. Hook's comments on the acts of the contending parties, on the struggle that raged first between Rome and the Reformation, and then, in the bosom of the Reformed Church itself, between the Puritans and those whom he calls Anglo-Catholics, no fault can reasonably be found. He has not, indeed, the gift of sympathy, nor can he regard a question from the presumed point of view of those from whose opinion he differs, but he is painstaking and anxious to do justice. To do justice, indeed, to the subject of this volume must have been a matter of no difficulty. Parker was a man after Dr. Hook's own heart, a genuine Anglican, a sound and moderate theologian, not too fanatically logical, a lover of decent order in things ecclesiastical, a patron of learning and litera- ture, in which he himself acquired a more than respectable reputation, exactly representing, in fact, that type of man who, with a culture that suits the scholar rather than the apostle, a discretion that avoids great dangers, but never does great things, and a piety perfectly sincere, but not of over-mastering power, has been the strength and, in some measure, the weakness of the Reformed Church of England.
Parker's life naturally divides itself into two periods—his university career and his occupation of the Primacy—the two being separated by an interval of seclusion, the five years of Mary's reign. He was born at Norwich in 154 of respectable parentage. In 1522 he was sent to Cambridge, entering at Corpus Christi, or, as it was then more commonly called, Bene't College. In his first year he obtained a Bible-clerkship. He graduated in 1525, and
• Lives of the Am-leis/lops of Canterbury. By Walter Farquhar Hook, DD., Dean of Chichester. Vol. IV. New Series Reformation Period. London: Richard Bentley and Sons. 1875. seems to have attained no little academical reputation, for Wolsey offered him a position in his new foundation of Christ Church. Parker preferred to accept the fellowship which came in his way at his own college. In 1535, having by that time won no little fame as a preacher, he was appointed Chaplain to the Queen (Anne Boleyn). Anne's fall did not affect his prospects, for the King made him one of his own Chaplains in 1537. As Queen's Chaplain he had been presented to the deanery of Stoke, a rich piece of preferment, which possessed among other endowments an annual payment of eight thousand eels from Fordiam and Lacken- heath. Preferments now accumulated upon him. He became Rector of Ashen in 1542, and at the same time Prebend of Ely. In 1544 he exchanged Ashen for Burlingham, in Norfolk, and in the next year was further enriched by the living of Landbeach. A more important promotion, not so much, perhaps, for its value as for the position which it gave him, was his election, in 1514, to the Mastership of his College. Corpus Christi, indeed, was not in a flourishing condition. Its total income amounted to about 2,170 per annum ; its expenditure to about /190, includ- ing, however, what must have been an unusual item of £90 for repairs. The master received 26 13s. 4d. for stipend and commons (having, however, his income increased by a college living); each of the nine Fellows 2.5 6s. 8d., and each of the three Bible-clerks 12 each. To Corpus Parker was a munificent benefactor. He founded two fellowships and five scholarships, limiting the former to Norwich men. Such limitations were almost universal in those days, nor is there any reason for thinking that they were otherwise than beneficial. But it is interesting to observe that something of the feeling which has now finally condemned them was to be found even then, for Parker was accused of having " be-Norfolked his college." His other benefactions were numerous and considerable ; their total amount may be estimated at not less than 2,100 in annual value. But the gift which does most honour to his name was the founda- tion, or rather the restitution, of the library of Corpus, a library peculiarly rich in documents bearing on early English history and literature. Parker himself was a diligent and successful student in these fields of knowledge. In 1547 the courtiers of Edward VI. laid hands on the deanery of Stoke. Parker was consoled with a pension of 240, and in 1552 by the deanery of Lincoln: But troubles were at hand. Parker had married in 1547; and on Mary's accession he was, as a married priest, deprived of all his preferments, being allowed, however, in more than one instance, the singular privilege of nominating his successor. He does not appear ever to have been in danger during Mary's reign. Fox and others indeed speak of his having suffered the most cruel pri- vations, and having been forced to fly for his life. Dr. Hook seems right in conjecturing that whatever peril he was exposed to came from political rather than religious causes. Parker was, unluckily for himself, a man of note at Cambridge ; when the Duke of Northumberland passed through that town, in his futile attempt to support the cause of Lady Jane Seymour, Parker had waited on him. Thus he felt himself involved as a partisan of the fallen cause, and his flight, caused, however, by apprehensions of popular rage rather than of the action of the authorities, was the result.
Parker's religion, sincere as it doubtless was, was not likely to bring him into trouble. He belonged to that vast body of the English clergy who were prepared to accept with resignation, if not with pleasure, the repeated changes which altered so often the rule of doctrine and discipline from the time of Henry's revolt against Rome till that final settlement in which Parker himself took the leading part. He was singularly careful about commit- ting himself on doctrinal points, and in practice he was not un- willing to conform. On the point of transubstantiation, on which, if on anything, he must have stood firm, he was not called upon to express his views. We do not undervalue the sincerity of his character or the value of what he did for the Church, when we say that the great work of the sixteenth century would never have been done if there had been none but men of Parker's stamp to do it. We cannot but think it a great defect in Dr. Hook's character as an historian that he fails, in his entire devotion to " Anglican " moderation, to recognise this fact.
For the peculiar work, however, which Parker had to do for the English Church he was eminently suited. Dr. Hook thinks that he had the great fault of "despairing of the Republic." It may be so, but he certainly did his best to save it. It is certain that his nob o episcopari when the Primacy was offered to him was the expression of genuine feeling. The dignity was offered, on his refusal, to others, even, it is said, to Feckenham, ex-abbot of West- minster; but Parker was marked out as the man, and accordingly, on the 18th of July, 1559, a conge d'elire was sent to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, permitting them to elect another Arch- bishop for the cathedral church, "by the natural death of the most reverend father and lord in Christ the Lord Reginald Pole, Car- dinal, the last Archbishop thereof, now vacant, and destitute of the solace of a pastor." About Parker's ordination a vast mass of controversy has gathered. The "Nag's Head Story," according to which one Neale, who had been Bonner's chaplain, peeped through a chink in the door of a room in the Nag's Head tavern, and saw Dr. Scory, Bishop Elect of Hereford, but not himself in episcopal orders, lay a Bible on the heads of the others who were present, may be safely pronounced, on the authority of Dr. Lingard, if on no other, to be a ridiculous fable. Nor can there be any reasonable doubt that Barlow, the presiding Bishop at Parker's consecration, was possessed of genuine orders. No record of his consecration, it is true, exists ; but the same, as Dr. Hook observes, may be said of Gardiner, and not a few others. If Barlow had stood alone, the consecration, though irregular, would have been valid. John Hodgkins, too, Suffragan Bishop of Bedford, was also a genuine Bishop, and so was Miles Coverdale, in whose consecration Hodgkins himself, with Cranmer and Ridley, had taken part. Dr. Hook passes lightly over another objection which the Roman Catholic canonists have raised to the form of consecration. They say that the Second Ordinal of Edward VI. was so vague—the words of consecration not specifying the office to which the consecrated person was called—as to be invalid. To make a Bishop, they say, you must specify that it is the office of a bishop which you confer. And the form certainly does want the particularity which the earlier Ordinal and that now in use among us possess. There is, too, a remarkable difference between the First and Second Ordinal of Edward VI. ; the symbol of the pastoral staff was present in the first, but was dropped out of the second. On the other hand, the Second Ordinal implies throughout that the person consecrated is to be made a Bishop.
The great work of Parker's Primacy was the settlement of the Thirty-Nine Articles. Dr. Hook's account of this part of his life is satisfactory and complete. On the whole, we gain from it the impression that the Primate did his work as well as it could be done, and left the Church as little bound as might be. No one who compares the Forty-Two Articles which were the material with which he had to work with the Thirty-Nine as he left them will fail to acknowledge that the Church of England owes some- thing to his moderation and good sense. It certainly ought to be grateful to him for the help which he gave in delivering it from the proposed bondage of Dean Nowell's Catechism. The Lower House of Convocation had accepted it, but the Upper, not for the first or last time the wiser of the two, rejected it.
The Primacy was not an easy post. The See, indeed, though it had suffered some spoiling during the vacancy, was rich, having an income of nearly $3,500, a curious contrast with the poverty of his old college. But Parker had fallen upon evil times. A Queen who hated the new order of things —married bishops were her especial aversion—greedy courtiers, and a divided and disaffected clergy, looking either to Rome or Geneva, rather than to the quiet via media which Parker loved, troubled his days sadly. Even after his death the disgraceful fanaticism of the soldiers of the Commonwealth did not permit his bones to rest ; they were dug up and thrown upon a dunghill. Still, the impression left upon us by Dr. Hook's very interesting volume is that he was not an unhappy man. From public affairs he could always turn to litera- ture, with a genuine fondness which few English Churchmen in that century possessed. A long list of his publications is given,— they number sixty-three. It is not too much to say that few men have led a more industrious, a more blameless, and, on the whole, a more useful life.
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