Sees of England some years before his death, in 735, exhorted King Egbert to increase the sees by converting many monasteries into cathedrals. However, the advice was not followed; and at the period of the Conquest the number of sees was still 21. During the centuries that elapsed till the Refor mation, while the population increased from 1J to 4 mil lions of souls, only two new bishoprics were formed, namely, that of Ely in 1109, and that of Carlisle in 1133. In the reign of Henry VIII. it was proposed to establish 20 new dioceses, but only 6 came to be formed, one of which, that of Westminster, had no long existence. Three centuries again elapsed after the Reformation till any more sees were founded, the first new creation being that of Ripon, estab lished in 1836. Eleven years afterwards, in 1847, the bishopric of Manchester was founded ; while the lapse of another twenty years saw the establishment of two more bishoprics in those of St Albans and Truro. The following is a list of the thirty archiepiscopal and episcopal sees of England and Wales the latter arranged in alphabetical order, with date of their establishment, and fixed incomes attached to them : Ecclesi astical . Commis siouers. PROVINCE OF CANTERBURY. Canterbury (Archbishopric) 597 Bangor 550 Bath and Wells 909 Chichester . 1070 Ely 1109 Exeter 1050 Gloucester and Bristol 1540 Hereford 687 Lichfield 655 Lincoln 1067 Llandaff 550 London 605 Norwich 1091 Oxford 1540 Peterborough 1540 Rochester 602 St Albans 1877 St Asaph 550 St David s 550 Salisbury 1058 Truro 1877 Winchester 635 Worcester 680 PROVINCE OF YORK. Yonc ( Archbishopric) 625 Carlisle 1133 Chester 1540 Durham 990 Manchester 1847 Ripon 1836 Sodor and Man 850 Year of Foundation. Income.
15000 4200 5000 4200 5500 4200 5000 4200 4500 5000 4200 10000 4500 5000 4500 4200 4500 4200 4500 5000 3000 7000 5000 10000 4500 4500 8000 4200 4500 2400 The formerly variable incomes of the archbishops were fixed by a number of statutes, arising out of the establish ment, in 1832, of a parliamentary " Commission to inquire into the Revenues and Patronage of the Established Church in England and Wales." In 1836 the members of the com mission, after having made a close investigation into all the sources of church revenue, were constituted, by Act 6 and 7 William IV. c. 77, a perpetual corporation, under the title of " Ecclesiastical Commissioners for England and Wales," with power to administer the financial affairs of the church, to pay fixed salaries to the principal church dignitaries, to re-arrange, under approval of the Queen in council, the boundaries of dioceses and incumbencies, and to take other measures " conducive to the efficiency of the established church, and the best mode of providing for the cure of souls." In the government of the Church of England, the arch bishops and bishops are assisted by 30 deans and 74 arch deacons, the former having fixed incomes, paid by the [RELIGION. Ecclesiastical Commissioners, but the latter dependent Clergy chiefly on preferments, held independent of their dignity. f The more immediate supervision of the parochial clergy, estimated to number about 13,000, is in charge of 610 rural deans, who have no salaries as such, but are entirely depen dent on that derived from their preferments, or "livings." The incomes of these vary extremely, being excessively low in many cases, while in others approaching the revenues of the dignitaries of the church, To raise the value of the smallest " livings " has been among the chief labours of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and they have been aided in the task by the endeavours of various societies, both lay and clerical, among them that of the " Bishop of London s Fund," established in 1864, Foremost among the older organizations stands the " Queen Anne s Bounty," founded in 1703, to increase the incomes of the poorer clergy. The commissioners under the Act of Queen Anne which established the "Bounty" found no less than 5597 livings under ,50 per annum in England and Wales ; but since that time the number greatly decreased, and although there are no official returns on the subject, it may be estimated that there were not 1000 preferments in the country in 1877 endowed with such small incomes. Education. The spirit of reform which made itself feltrrogrea in the church by the institution of the Church Inquiry and of educa Ecclesiastical Commissions exhibited itself to a far more t ! 011 m vigorous degree during the same period by promoting the a ,^ upp cause of education. The work of educational reform began middle with the upper and middle class schools, and gradually classes. went downwards, till it reached the lowest classes of the population. Parliament began occupying itself with the condition and management of the public schools of England in 1818, when a commission made a report upon them, ex posing many evils. Though little action was taken at the time, the work of inquiry continued in various forms, lead ing to the close inspection of more than 2000 endowed schools. Many of these were compelled to undergo exten sive reforms in their mode of teaching, so as no longer to ex clude science, art, and modern languages; while the revenues of nearly all of them were regulated, and made to servo larger objects than before. It was the leading aim of the educational reformers in parliament both to deepen and widen education, giving the largest possible number the best possible instruction, and a variety of measures were passed for this purpose. From 1834 direct annual grants were voted, the first of =20,000, for the promotion of education, and in 1839 the Committee of the Privy Council on Education was instituted for the distribution of the money. An Act for the establishment of industrial schools was passed in 1857 ; and in the same year the universities of Oxford and Cambridge consented to undertake " middle- class examinations " in some of the chief towns of England. These local university examinations began in the summer of 1858, and proved most successful in promoting higher educa tion. It was stimulated no less by an Act passed in 1869, 31 and 32 Viet. c. 118, reforming the government, teaching, and discipline of the seven great public schools of England, Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, Shrewsbury, the Charterhouse, and Westminster. This statute greatly widened their field of instruction. While these efforts were made to improve the education Progress of the middle and upper classes, the lower classes of the of educa population were not altogether forgotten. Still the achieve- tion ments in this direction, naturally vastly more difficult, were thTiowe for a time inconsiderable. The first impulse given towards classes. more determined exertion was by a great educational con ference, under the presidency of the Prince Consort, which took place in London in June 1857, and passed resolutions that were soon echoed all over the land. The first result
of the conference was the appointment, in the session of