PRESENTED. FIRST READING. (Hansard, 11 March 1867)

§ THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY

My Lords, perhaps your Lordships will allow me to lay upon the table a Bill which has been prepared for the correction of certain ritualistic abuses which have crept into the Church of England. Your Lordships are perfectly aware how deeply the feelings of the people have been moved by the introduction into the service of the Church of innovations so little in accordance with the long-established system of public worship in our country, and more particularly by that which relates to sacrificial vestments. It is on that account that the Bill which I am about to introduce touches the question of sacrificial vestments alone; and for two reasons—first, because those vestments strike the eye and offend the sense of the country in a particular and unusual degree; and secondly, because there is some ambiguity in the law on the subject. With respect to other matters—candles, incense, and other matters of that description, I believe the law is not doubtful, and we can redress the abuses by prosecutions in the Courts of Law; but with respect to sacrificial vestments there is a doubt, and because there is that doubt I now venture to propose a Bill to your Lordships. My object is to give the force of law to a usage regulating ceremonials of public worship that has existed in this country for nearly 300 years down to the present time. That usage—if we may call it so—was first prescribed by a statute of the latter end of the reign of Edward VI. The Act was repealed in the time of Queen Mary; but the same usage was afterwards re-instituted by the injunctions 1625 of Queen Elizabeth, in the year 1564. These injunctions regulated the ceremonial of the Church until 1603, when Convocation embodied in a canon—the 58th of the canons of the Church of England—the usage that had existed in the time of Edward VI., and under the injunctions of Queen Elizabeth in 1564. That canon was formed by the Convocation of the two Provinces of Canterbury and York, and was ratified by the Crown. The canon runs in this form— Every minister saying the public prayers or ministering the sacraments or other rites of the Church shall wear a decent and comely surplice with sleeves; and if any question arise touching the matter, decency, or comeliness thereof, the same shall be decided by the discretion of the Ordinary. Furthermore, such ministers as are graduates shall wear upon their surplices, at such times, such hoods as by the orders of their Universities are agreeable to their degrees, which no minister shall wear, being no graduate, under pain of suspension. Notwithstanding, it shall be lawful for such ministers as are not graduates to wear upon their surplices, instead of hoods, some decent tippet of black, so it be not silk. I propose, my Lords, to give effect to this by means of the statute law without touching the rubric or the canons. I merely adopt the spirit of the canon which was agreed to by Convocation and ratified by the Crown in 1604, the year after. I submitted this Bill to the right rev. Bench, and many distinguished Prelates entirely concurred in its provisions. Since that time, however, I have heard that the most rev. Prelate the Archbishop of Canterbury intends to propose a Bill on the part of the Bishops to this House. I am glad that it is so; but nevertheless I must submit this Bill to your Lordships, because it is doubtful when the Bill of the most rev. Prelate may be propounded, whether it may not be delayed or defeated, and I am anxious that there should be some measure in readiness to meet the case of either of these emergencies. Moreover, I cannot but think it right that after much trouble and time have been devoted to the framing of this measure it should be submitted to the country with the view of obtaining its opinion upon it. I beg, my Lords, to move that this Bill be now read a first time.