§ THE EARL OF ELLENBOROUGHbegged to call the attention of the noble Earl the President of the Council to the vacancy which had recently taken place in the united dioceses of Gloucester and Bristol. He personally deplored the late lamented event that had occurred. During the last twenty-five years he had had the good fortune to be intimately acquainted with the late Dr. Monk, and he considered his death to be a great loss to the Church. He was a man distinguished for learning, for great kindness of disposition, and for magnificent liberality. He had at heart an object which he (the Earl of Ellen-borough) rejoiced to say he, in a great degree, succeeded in accomplishing—namely, the extension of religious instruction in his diocese. When Dr. Monk was appointed Bishop of Gloucester he held that bishopric alone, and he then resided in the middle of the county and in the county town. At that time the right rev. prelate was in the habit of holding constant communication, not only with the clergy, but with the laity of his diocese, and he was thereby in every way enabled to keep a constant and vigilant watch over the spiritual wants of his diocese. He believed that the right rev. Prelate had never at any time any desire to have the 1154 bishopric of Bristol annexed to that of Gloucester. A large palace had been built at Gloucester, which was, he believed, very expensive to keep up, and that circumstance, combined with others, induced the Bishop to reside permanently at Stapleton, near Bristol, and abandon altogether his original residence. The consequence was that, in point of fact, during the last ten or fifteen years, there had virtually been a non-resident Bishop. He would not say that the ecclesiastical duties of the diocese had been neglected; he believed that they had not been; at the same time it was impossible not to feel the absence of that total want of personal communication with the gentlemen of the county which a Bishop was enabled to keep up when resident in a county town; and which increased to a great extent his usefulness. A petition to Her Majesty was at the present moment in circulation throughout the county, and, from what he had heard several months ago as to the feelings of the Members for the county and of the county gentlemen, he believed that petition would express almost universally the sense of the county in favour of the separation of the two dioceses. Under these circumstances, he would express not only the hope, but the confident expectation, that the Government would adopt no measure whatever for the purpose of filling up the existing vacancy in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol until they had had the opportunity of ascertaining the feelings of the inhabitants of Gloucestershire on the subject he had alluded to,
§ LORD REDESDALEthought it impossible for any clergyman to carry on the duties of the extended see of Gloucester and Bristol in the manner in which they ought to be performed. The union of Gloucester and Bristol was effected at a time when it was determined that the number of bishops should not be increased, and it was with that object that four sees were united—namely, Bangor and St. Asaph, and Gloucester and Bristol—in order that the two new sees of Manchester and Ripon might be created. In the case of Bangor and St. Asaph the opposition to the union of those sees had proved successful; but the two dioceses in question were not so large as Gloucester and Bristol, and he thought, therefore, that the inhabitants of the latter dioceses had a decided claim upon Parliament for the separation of the two sees.
§ EARL GRANVILLEsaid, the question was one of a very difficult character, and one which could not be decided without grave consideration. In several other sees great complaints had been made of the extended area comprised within them, and of the heavy duties, therefore, devolving upon the occupants of those sees. The separation of Gloucester and Bristol was not, therefore, a question to be decided upon by itself; the other cases to which he had referred must be taken into consideration at the same time. All he could say was, that after what had passed there that evening, he had no doubt the successor to the late Bishop, whoever he might be, would be appointed subject to any future arrangements which might be come to with regard to the separation of the diocese.