Diocese of Lincoln

“ Hervey, who by his courteous behaviour had ingratiated himself with the monks of Ely, promoted the scheme vigorously, and brought it to a successful issue. The council which sat in London at Whitsuntide 1108, under the presidency of Anselm, decreed that the diocese of Lincoln being too extensive for the effectual oversight of a single bishop, the county of Cambridge should be taken from it and constituted a new diocese with its episcopal see at Ely, and Hervey for its first bishop. ”

“ Not till lately has a suffragan bishop in the diocese of Lincoln taken the title of Bishop of Grantham. The dissolution of the chantries put an end to the “College,” and the vicars of the “prebendary church” in post-Reformation times had to be content with very small stipends. Puritanism raised its head in Grantham formidably, as in most parts of Lincolnshire; and the Corporation, though in the main orthodox, had, in 1620, established a weekly lecture in the church on Tuesday, to which they invited the most eloquent clergy of the neighbourhood. ”

“ We received also, by certain faithful Christians and zealous men for the catholic faith, of our diocese, a certain process made and had at another time against the same William, before the reverend father in God and lord, lord John, by the grace of God bishop of Lincoln, confirmed by the hanging on of the seal of the same reverend father, the lord bishop of Lincoln. ”

“ For all spiritual purposes, however, the diocese had been without a chief pastor ever since 1166. In 1181 therefore Pope Alexander III bade Archbishop Richard either compel the elect of Lincoln to receive consecration at once or consecrate some other man to the see. ”

“ The head shire of Lincoln now remains the whole diocese of its Bishop.
Among the small shires of Eastern Mercia one might somewhat relax the rule of a Bishop to each diocese. Huntingdon and Bedford might go together. But a separate bishopric for Leicester is as much needed as one for Suffolk. As we draw near to south-eastern England, the minds of "provincials" (not in the ecclesiastical sense) begin to be troubled: "metropolitan" (not in the ecclesiastical sense) vastness is too much for them. ”

“ The three chantries in the Perpendicular style which have been added to the angel choir were constructed at different periods by bishops of the diocese. The earliest of these, the Fleming Chantry, is on the north side. Richard Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College, Oxford, was appointed Bishop of Lincoln in the year 1419, and occupied the see for twelve years. ”

“ He set on foot and organised night schools for men and lads, which from the outset were remarkably successful. He introduced the university extension lectures into Lincoln. It has been truly said by his faithful coadjutor, Mr. Crowfoot, that 'he took Lincoln by storm.' Besides all this he founded a society of clergy for special evangelistic work in the diocese, of which he was himself the first warden. The holding of a general 'mission' in the city was mainly due to him, and he preached the mission himself in the principal parish church of Lincoln. ”

“ On being thus put in charge of the enormous diocese, which then contained the archdeaconries of Lincoln, Leicester, Stowe, Buckingham, Huntingdon, Northampton, Oxford, and Bedford, he at once set himself to reform all the abuses which his predecessors had left, directing his clergy to put down anything that tended to evil, such as games and parish processions leading to strife, drinking bouts, desecration of churchyards by their being used for games, private marriages, carelessness of mothers towards their children, the feast of fools, &c. ”

“ In 1236 he forbade it to [Pg 322] be held either in the cathedral or elsewhere in the diocese [1134] ; and two years later he included the prohibition in his formal Constitutions [1135] . But after another century and a half, when William Courtney, archbishop of Canterbury, made a visitation of Lincoln in 1390, he found that the vicars were still in the habit of disturbing divine service on January 1, in the name of the feast [1136] . ”

“ Similar letters were written to the counties of Oxford and Berks. Then comes a letter to Lincoln, which was now without a bishop: it commits into the hands of William de Cornhill, archdeacon of Huntingdon, and Gerard de Camville 'all lands and goods of abbots and priors and all religious, and also of all clergy of the Lincoln diocese, who from this time forth shall refuse to perform divine offices'. A like letter follows to Ely ”

“ And what the Bishops of Lincoln were doing in their vast diocese, other bishops were also doing all up and down the country; the episcopal registers abound in records of these “taxations,” as they were called. [88] We take two or three examples from the register of Walter de Gray, Archbishop of York, 1215-1256.
The name of Kirkby Malamdale shows that it was an ancient parish. A charter of King John confirmed the gift of it by Adam Fitz Adam to the canons of West Dereham in Norfolk, quod suos in usus convertant proprios, salvâ tamen decenti et [Pg 103] honorifica administratione ejus ecclesiæ. ”

“ They were not by any means all given to priests in the diocese. A prebend was a very comfortable benefice, which might be held by anybody, and they were given to all sorts of people; e.g. two of them seem to have been held by the Dean and Precentor of Chichester. [383]
To assist the bishop in the spiritual oversight of this vast diocese, which embraced 8 counties, and extended from the Humber to the Thames, the bishop had 8 archdeacons, whose incomes and the sources of them are reported in the “Valor.” [384]
The Archdeacon of Lincoln received for procurations, £171 17s. ”

“ Moreover, no diocese in the Established Church of England has the power to select its own bishop. The King as temporal head of the Church appoints the bishops of all dioceses, and that power is exercised for the King by his prime minister. And during the colonial period in America the Governor of every colony other than Virginia and Pennsylvania appointed the rector of every Anglican parish and inducted him into office. ”

“ The Church in Virginia was left to itself to live or to die. It believed, according to the teachings of the Church, that bishops were necessary for the ordination of men to the ministry and for the performance of the spiritual rite of confirmation, whereby alone under the law of the Church of England baptized Christians could be admitted to the sacrament of the Holy Communion. A bishop was also necessary for the organization and leadership of a diocese, which was the governing body to which every parish and congregation must belong. ”

“ Nobly sustained, as the Government has been, by all the churches, I would utter nothing which might in the least appear invidious against any. Yet without this, it may fairly be said, that the Methodist Episcopal Church, not less devoted than the best, is by its greatest numbers the most important of all. It is no fault in others that the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses to the hospitals, and more prayers to Heaven than—any other. ”

“ But I must add that the United States Government must not, as by this order, undertake to run the churches. When an individual in a church or out of it becomes dangerous to the public interest, he must be checked; but let the churches, as such, take care of themselves. It will not do for the United States to appoint trustees, supervisors, or other agents for the churches. ”

“ A frame church, the first in California, was erected in that city for the use of the Catholic miners in 1849, and, as the different "camps" sprang up through the State, other churches were rapidly built up in the more important centres of population. The following year, a new diocese was formed of the territory lately acquired by the United States, and its government intrusted to the Right Reverend Bishop (now Archbishop) Allemany, who was called to that office from his Dominican convent in Kentucky. ”

“ In mapping out a new country we should make both shires and dioceses as nearly equal as physical circumstances might allow That in England they are not equal is one of the consequences of living in an old country, where things have grown up bit by bit. And I am sure that the gain of having shire and diocese the same quite outweighs any disadvantages which may spring from difference of size. Of course, the rule is only a general one, and need not be pressed inflexibly in every case. We need not press it so far as to ask for a separate Bishop for Rutland or to refuse two Bishops to Lancashire. ”

“ Il faut toujours observer comme une règle constante, que l'Évêque est le collateur ordinaire de tous les bénéfices de son diocèse, à moins qu'on établisse le contraire, ou par des titres précis, ou par une possession constante, qui fait présumer ce titre. ”

“ Not only the bishops had to confirm, ordain to all orders, consecrate, anoint, impose penance, and excommunicate, but they had to decide land questions concerning lands in frank almoin, all probate and nullity of marriage cases, and to do all the legal work of a king’s baron besides. The judicial duties lay heavily upon him. He used to say that a bishop’s case was harder than a lord warden’s or a mayor’s, for he had to be always on the bench; they only sometimes. They might look after their family affairs, but he could hardly ever handle the cure of souls. ”

“ In America no trace of this historic independence has ever existed. The power of appointing and removing bishops is held absolutely and exclusively by the pope and exercised through the Congregation of the Propaganda. The power of ordaining and assigning priests is held by the bishop, who also holds or controls the title to the church property in his diocese. ”

“ And that night, carried away by the old impulse, which had grown now almost into a habit, David went to the Episcopal Church: went to number the slain. The Bishop of the diocese, as it happened, was preaching that night—preaching on the union of Christian believers. He showed how ready the Episcopal Church was for such a union if the rest would only consent: but no other church, he averred, must expect the Episcopal Church ever to surrender one article of its creed, namely: that it alone was descended not by historical continuity simply, but by Divine succession from the Apostles themselves. ”

“ The men of affairs and the men of learning, in this age, were interchangeable persons. Consequently when Richard’s attention was directed to Lincoln and its bishop, when he noticed that it was a centre for sound and steady clerks whose wallets were by no means unstuffed, and when he reflected that he had failed to lay hands upon the bishop’s money, he resolved to have something at any rate from this fine magazine. ”

“ The character of the energetic bishop is given in a few words by the historian Henry of Huntingdon—small in stature, but great of heart, swarthy in colour, but comely in deeds (statura parvus, sed corde magnus, colore fuscus, sed operibus venustus) . His successor was Robert Bloet, Chancellor to William Rufus, but Thomas of York objected to his consecration as bishop of Lincoln. "He might be Bishop of Dorchester, like his predecessors; but Lindesey, part of the spiritual conquest of Paulinus, was of ancient right subject [10] to the metropolitan authority of York. ”

“ One may allow the divine or apostolic right of Episcopacy, and their great superiority over presbyters, and yet dispute the methods of exercising the latter, which being of human institution, are subject to encroachments and usurpations. I know, every clergyman in a diocese has a good deal of dependence upon his bishop, and owes him canonical obedience: but I was apt to think, when the whole representative of the clergy met in a synod, they were considered in another light, at least since they are allowed to have a negative. ”

“ Once he said, 'Sitting here, where all the avenues to public patronage seem to come together in a knot, it does seem to me that our people are fast approaching the point where it can be said that seven eighths of them are trying to find how to live at the expense of the other eighth."
A year or more before Mr. Lincoln's death, a delegation of clergymen waited upon him in reference to the appointment of the army chaplains. The delegation consisted of a Presbyterian, a Baptist, and an Episcopal clergyman. ”

“ This Norwich minister was not alone among the clergy, for the sermons of the three sects, Baptist, Separatist, and Congregational, "connected with one indissoluble bond the principles of civil Government and the principles of Christianity." The laity of the Episcopal church were, as a body, patriots, and so, also, were many of their clergy; but party spirit, roused by the discussion of the episcopate and of their relation to the King, as head of their church as well as head of the State, tended to Toryism. ”

“ Another reason for dividing a diocese, and establishing a new see, has been recognized by the church as duly existing “if the sovereign should think fit to endow some principal village or town with the rank and privileges of a city” (Bingham, lib. xvii. c. 5) . But there are canons for the punishment of such as might induce the sovereign so to erect any town into a city, solely with the view of becoming bishop thereof. Nor could any diocese be divided without the consent of the primate.
In England an act of parliament is necessary for the creation of new dioceses. ”

“ His administration, none the less, did much to preserve peace. He strained every nerve to induce his clergy to accept his ruling on the questions of the reservation of the Sacrament and of the ceremonial use of incense in accordance with the archbishop’s judgment in the Lincoln case; but when, during his last illness, a prosecutor brought proceedings against the clergy of five recalcitrant churches, the bishop, on the advice of his archdeacons, interposed his veto. One other effort on behalf of peace may be mentioned. ”