unite them into one powerful body, was one congenial at once to his courageous temper and his genius for organisation. In this place, however, the matter comes under our notice, not so much from the point of view of Calvin's motives in suggesting it, as of the mode in which it was received by Parker. So far as appears from Strype's account,[1] drawn, as he tells us, from his own manuscripts, Parker seems to have consulted no bishops or divines about the matter, but to have gone straight to the Queen and her Council, and taken from them his instructions as to how Calvin's proposals were to be received. These were, in effect, that the Council ' liked his proposals, which were fair and desirable; yet, as to the government of the Church, to signify to him that the Church of England would still retain her episcopacy, but not as from Pope Gregory, who sent over Augustine, the monk, hither, but from Joseph of Arimathaea, as appeared by Gildas, printed first, anno 1525, in the reign of King Henry VIII.'
An attempt, made by Home, Bishop of Winchester, to enforce the Oath of Supremacy upon Bonner, at that time a prisoner in the Marshalsea, and therefore within his jurisdiction as diocesan, led to a lawsuit in the Queen's Bench, in which Bonner's main ground of objection was that Home was not lawfully Bishop of Winchester at all, and therefore had no authority to require him to take the Oath. This case was before the Court in Michaelmas Term 6 and 7 Eliz.; and whatever miglit be the real force of Bonner's plea, it appears to have been considered necessary, in consequence of it, to bring a Bill into Parliament, which finally took the form of a very notable Act, viz., 8 Eliz. c. 1, entitled an 'Act declaring the making and consecrating of the archbishops and
- ↑ Strype, Annals, vol. i. pt. ii. pp. 2-8.
