house of Convocation, two-thirds of which were William’s nominees, naturally inclined to his side.  Both under William and Anne the dispute continued, and the lower clergy shrank from no opportunity of conflict.  They fought the king, the archbishop, the upper house.  They attacked the writings of Toland and Burnet, the latter’s book since recognized as one of the great treasures of Anglican literature.  In the main, of course, the struggle was part of the perennial conflict between High Church doctrine and latitudinarianism.  But that was only a fragment of the issue.  What really was in question was the nature of the State’s power over the Church.  That could be left unanswered so long, as with James I and Charles, the two powers had but a single thought.  The situation changed only when State and Church had different policies to fulfil and different means for their attainment.

The controversy had begun on the threshold of William’s accession; but its real commencement dates from 1697.  In that year was published the Letter to a Convocation Man, probably written by Sir Bartholomew Shower, an able if unscrupulous Jacobite lawyer, which maliciously, though with abounding skill, raised every question that peaceful churchmen must have been anxious to avoid.  The Letter pointed out the growth of infidelity and the increasing suspicion that the Church was becoming tainted with Socinian doctrine.  Only the assembly of Convocation could arrest these evils.  The author did not deny that the king’s assent was necessary to its summons.  But he argued that once the Convocation had met, it could, like Parliament, debate all questions relevant to its purpose.  “The one of these courts,” said Shower, “is of the same power and use with regard to the Church as the other is in respect to the State,” and he insisted that the writ of summons could not at any point confine debate.  And since the Convocation was an ecclesiastical Parliament, it followed that it could legislate and thus make any canons “provided they do not impugn common law, statutes, customs or prerogative.”  “To confer, debate and resolve,” said Shower, “without the king’s license, is at common law the undoubted right of convocation.”

Here was a clear challenge which was at once answered, in The Authority of Christian Princes, by William Wake, who was by far the most learned of the latitudinarian clergy, and the successor of Tenison in the see of Canterbury.  His argument was purely historical.  He endeavored to show that the right to summon ecclesiastical synods was always the prerogative of the early Christian princes until the aggression of the popes had won church independence.  The Reformation resumed the primitive practice; and the Act of Submission of 1532 had made it legally impossible for the clergy to discuss ecclesiastical matters without royal permission.  Historically, the argument of Wake was irrefutable; but what mostly impressed the Church was the uncompromising