Bishop Hall

“ Well, I think you may say that the candidates for ordination have been more numerous of late, partly owing to the fact that the Bishop and others have visited Oxford and Cambridge and addressed members of the Universities in college halls, with the result that many good men have been brought into the Diocese. Ordsal Hall has been established for the purpose of inducing graduates to continue their study under a well-qualified principal. At the same time, complaints are sometimes heard from the clergy that it is difficult to get curates to serve in some of the overgrown parishes. ”

“ These are the most material hardships which, according to the bishop's own account, happened to him, which he seems to have born with patience and fortitude, and may serve to shew the violence of party rage, and that religion is often made a pretence for committing the most outrageous insolence, and horrid cruelty. It has been already observed, that Hall seems to have been of an enthusiastic turn of mind, which seldom consists with any brilliance of genius ”

“ One important outcome of this appalling calamity was the foundation in the following year, 1350, by Bishop Bateman of the college at Cambridge, to which, as a mark of his special devotion to the blessed Trinity, he gave the name of Trinity Hall. The bishop's object in this foundation, which was designed solely for students of canon and civil law, was to recruit the thinned ranks of the clergy of his diocese with men trained in those studies. ”

“ They made the case stronger against the foreign reformed churches and the sabbatarians, and objected to the pope being called antichrist. Hall humbly accepted Laud's directions.
The latter years of the bishop's sojourn at Exeter seem to have been peaceful. He writes: ‘I had peace and comfort at home in the happy sense of that general unanimity and loving correspondence of my clergy till the last year of my presiding there, after the synodical oath was set on foot.’ This was the oath known as the et cetera oath, ordered by the convocation of 1640 to be taken by all clergymen. ”

“ Hollister, kept it in order, but it needs the authority of kinship to change a wall-paper or a carpet. Thus it was that the Bishop’s long hallway was hardly more his own than the pavement outside, or his own dining-room door before which he paused, hardly more his own than the doors along his familiar [Pg 12] River Street. His hand lingered on the knob, for, thinking of Mrs. Graham within, and of the testing now of his three years’ hope, he had grown apprehensive and wistful. Then his face flashed firm in a smile, as he looked toward Someone beside him there in the dim hall. ”

“ The beautiful Bishop's Palace was mainly built by Jocelin, who died in 1242. It consists of three sides of a quadrangle, the bishop's house being on the east, the chapel on the south, the kitchen and offices running alongside the moat on the north: on the west side there was formerly a gate-tower and a wall having a cloister within which led to chapel and hall. In addition to these buildings the great hall, now in ruins—forming, with the walls and outhouses, an outer court—was built to the south-west of the chapel. ”

“ Two or three hundred years ago people were much more controversial than they are now, and very fierce was the battle on the subject of the relative claims, from a Scriptural point of view, of Prelacy or Presbytery. One of the most distinguished champions of the former was Dr. Hall, Bishop of Norwich—a simple, godly, learned man, who deserves to be held in remembrance, if only for the way in which he got married. ‘Being now settled,’ he writes, ‘in that sweet and civil county of Suffolk, the uncouth solitariness of my life, and the extreme incommodity of that single housekeeping, drew my p. ”

“ Situate about six or seven miles from Barnard Castle, a trifle more than that from Bishop Auckland, and about a dozen from Darlington, Raby Castle, with its grand old park, lies close to the pretty little town of Staindrop, about which we shall say a few words later on. The castle itself, with its many massive towers and turrets, is built on rising ground, on a foundation of solid rock, and is surrounded and enclosed by a massive battlemented wall, the area of the edifice, within the wall, comprising about two acres of land. ”

“ Then if he was going to faint or if the trancelike feeling was to become altogether a trance—well, a bishop asleep in an armchair in the library of the Athenaeum is nothing to startle any one.
He thought of that convenient hidden room, the North Library, in which is the bust of Croker. There often one can be quite alone.... It was empty, and he went across to the window that looks out upon Pall Mall and sat down in the little uncomfortable easy chair by the desk with its back to the Benvenuto Cellini. ”

“ We were then shewn three halls, in which we found at least one hundred and fifty seminarists, ten or twelve schoolrooms, the refectory, the dormitory, the gardens for play hours, and every pain was taken to make me imagine life in such a place the happiest that could fall to the lot of a young man, and to make me suppose that I would even regret the arrival of the bishop. ”

“ It is now perhaps scarcely known by many persons not unversed in the constitution of their country, that, besides the bishops and baronial abbots, the inferior clergy were regularly summoned at every parliament. In the writ of summons to a bishop he is still directed to cause the dean of his cathedral church, the archdeacon of his diocese, with one proctor from the chapter of the former, and two from the body of his clergy, to attend with him at the place of meeting. ”

“ He wished he had not been saddled with Whippham's rather futile son as his chaplain. He wished he had a dean instead of being his own dean. With an unsympathetic rector. He wished he had it in him to make some resounding appeal. He might of course preach a series of thumping addresses and sermons, rather on the lines of “Fors Clavigera,” to masters and men, in the Cathedral. Only it was so difficult to get either masters or men into the Cathedral.
Well, if the people will not come to the bishop the bishop must go out to the people. ”

“ But since the middle of the nineteenth century, as the Anglican Church has become at once more threatened and more energetic, as more of the life of the nation has flowed into her and round her, the office of a bishop has risen in importance. People show more interest in the appointments to be made, and ministers have become proportionately careful in making them. Bishops work harder and are more in the public eye now than they were eighty, or even fifty, years ago. They have lost something of the antique dignity and social consideration which they enjoyed. ”

“ All bishops are appointed by the Patriarch, Holy Synod, or other head of their Church. They must be celibates, and so are practically always chosen from the monasteries. They must be thirty years old, and are consecrated by the Patriarch or chief Metropolitan of their Church (or by their deputy) assisted by two other bishops. [30] The idea that to consecrate a bishop involves jurisdiction over him still prevails in the East. Metropolitans (and other bishops) are addressed as "Your Beatitude," they are "most Blessed Lords," and are spoken of as the "Holy man" of such a place. ”

“ In England, every cathedral, which possesses post-reformation records, yields abundant evidence of the Child-Bishop customs. We found interesting mention of it in several places when setting in order the chaotic mass of capitular muniments at Lichfield. An inventory of 1345 names four small choir copes for the use of boys on the feast of Holy Innocents. The next century names a mitre, cope, sandals, gloves, and staff for the Nicholas Bishop. An invariable part of the proceedings seems to have been a sermon from the Boy Bishop, delivered from the usual pulpit. ”

“ An addition to the number of our spiritual peers is however not what we seek, but that our spiritual pastors may be more numerous.
The ancient bishoprics being baronies, the possessors of them might sit in parliament; while the new bishoprics, not having baronies attached, might only qualify for a seat in the upper house of convocation. The beginning of a new system was made on the erection of the see of Manchester, in 1847, since which time the junior bishop has no seat in the House of Lords.
DIOCESAN. A bishop, as he stands related to his diocese. (See Bishop.) ”

“ There was a procession, with the Centum quadraginta, at Matins. At Mass, the boys led the choir. At Vespers the baculus was handed over, while the Deposuit potentes was being sung [1204] . At Bayeux the feast followed the same general lines, but the procession at first Vespers was to the altar, not of the Holy Innocents, but of St. Nicholas [1205] . Precise directions are given as to the functions of the ‘bishop.’ He is to wear a silk tunic and cope, and to have a mitre and pastoral staff, but not a ring. The boys are to do him the same reverence that is done to the real [Pg 346] bishop. ”

“ Newbold murmured.
“It was at any rate not for my own sake that I refused to have an assistant,” the Bishop went on. “If I could have trusted the choice of my clergy! It is easy and natural, to choose the most popular, the most prominent. A bishop’s diocese is dearer than perhaps any one of his [Pg 44] clergy can understand. It is my little piece of God’s world, it is my Westbury in large. ”

“ It is his function to appoint and ordain the lower clergy. He is treasurer of the Church funds and custodian of her doctrine and discipline. It is the voice of the bishops that settles both the creed and the canons of discipline in the synods. Bishops have certain privileges and immunities. They are not to be sworn in courts of justice; they can act as intercessors; they preside at Church courts. Each bishop is strictly confined to his own parish. ”

“ Hall is known as the head of the most conspicuous church of his great denomination, as the pastor of one of the largest and wealthiest congregations in the county, as the active friend of charitable and benevolent agencies, and as the public-spirited citizen who studiously refrained from partisanship, while his influence always made itself felt, powerfully if unobtrusively, on the right side. ”

“ In 1837 he went to Highbury College, in training for the congregational ministry, graduated B.A. at London University in 1841, and in 1842 was ordained pastor of Albion Church, Hull. There he gathered a largo congregation, was in demand as a preacher, and in 1834 issued his first publication, a sermon on ’Christian Union.' His tract ’Come to Jesus,' issued in 1848, made his name widely known. Over 4,000,000 copies in some forty languages or dialects were circulated during the author's life. In 1854 Hall became minister of Surrey Chapel, Blackfriars, the scene of Rowland Hill's labours. ”

“ The College Hall is the old Guesten Hall, and retains the ancient open-work roof.
But somehow there does not shimmer round St Augustine’s the romance of history; it is too closely{102} in touch with to-day to allow us to dream of its yesterday. We meet no shadowy figures there of abbot or monk, of prince or soldier, hear no echoes of the clash of arms or of the voices of singers. It is as dead to us as the Cathedral and the quaint streets near by are alive.
From the city the Longport Road leads up a gentle ascent to St Martin’s. To whom this church was first dedicated is uncertain. ”

“ Though the minster had become a cathedral when the bishopric was instituted, yet the prior and convent were always custodians of the fabric, and apparently supreme therein; and there was nothing strictly corresponding to a capitular body. A memory of the fact that the bishop was in place of the abbot remains to this day in the position of the bishop's seat in the choir. There is no throne, properly so called. The bishop occupies what is in most cathedrals the dean's seat—on the south of the entrance at the screen. ”

“ The stalls are of seventeenth century work, and by no means a favourable specimen: those of the dean and canons are marked by canopies. The episcopal throne is meanness itself, and can hardly be distinguished without a most diligent search: on the prayer-books nearest to it, and nowhere else, are inscribed the words 'Christ-church Chapel,' as if to warn the Bishop off the forbidden ground. Nearly the whole area of the choir between the stalls is filled with benches looking west, and in which kneeling is all but [23] impossible. ”

“ When, in the course of time, the Christian church continued to expand, it became necessary for the larger congregations to engage more than one pastor. An immediate consequence was that one of them attained to higher eminence and was called the bishop by preference. Great deference was especially paid to the bishops of Rome, of Jerusalem, of Alexandria, of Antioch, and of Constantinople. The smaller congregations frequently sought their advice and requested their decision in difficult matters. But the power and the authority of the Roman bishops soon outstripped that of the rest. ”

“ A sum was allowed for their maintenance, 400l. a year being assigned to Hall. The bishops were now liberated from the Tower on bail, but the commons objecting to this, they were again arrested and confined for six weeks longer, when upon giving bonds for 5,000l. they were allowed to depart, ‘having spent the time betwixt New-year's eve and Whitsuntide in those safe walls.’ Hall now made his way to his new diocese of Norwich, which he had not yet visited. ”