the old english archbishop was always a prince in the old times, but the english archbishop is a prince no longer in these latter days. he is still a nobleman of the highest rank,—he of canterbury holding his degree, indeed, above all his peers in parliament, not of royal blood, and he of york following his elder brother, with none between them but the temporary occupant of the woolsack. he is still one before whose greatness small clerical aspirants veil their eyes, and whose blessing in the minds of pious maidens has in it something almost divine. he is,{2} as i have said, a peer of parliament. above all things, he should be a gentleman, and,—if it were always possible,—a gentleman of birth; but he has no longer anything of the position or of the attributes of a prince.
and this change has come upon our archbishops quite in latter times; though, of course, we must look back to the old days of papal supremacy in england for the prince archbishop of the highest class. such careers as those of thomas à becket or of wolsey have not been possible to any clergymen since the days in which the power of the pope was held to be higher on matters ecclesiastical than the power of the crown in these realms; but we have had among us prince archbishops to a very late date,—archbishops who have been princes not by means of political strength or even by the force of sacerdotal independence, but who have enjoyed their principalities simply as the results of their high rank, their wealth, their reserve, their inaccessibility, as the result of a certain mystery as to the nature of their duties,—and sometimes as the result of personal veneration. for this personal veneration personal{3} dignity was as much needed as piety, and was much more necessary than high mental power. an archbishop of fifty years since was very difficult to approach, but when approached was as urbane as a king,—who is supposed never to be severe but at a distance. he lived almost royally, and his palace received that respect which seems, from the nature of the word, to be due to a palatial residence. what he did, no man but his own right-hand chaplain knew with accuracy; but that he could shower church patronage as from the east the west and the south, all clerical aspirants felt,—with awe rather than with hope. lambeth in those days was not overshadowed by the opposite glories of westminster. he of york, too, was a northern prince, whose hospitalities north of the humber were more in repute than those of earls and barons. fifty years since the archbishops were indeed princes; but now-a-days we have changed all that. the change, however, is only now completed. it was but the other day that there died an archbishop of armagh who was prince to the backbone, princely in his wealth and princely in his use of it, princely in his mode of life, princely in{4} his gait and outer looks and personal demeanour,—princely also in the performance of his work. he made no speeches from platforms. he wrote no books. he was never common among men. he was a fine old man; and we may say of him that he was the last of the prince archbishops.
this change has been brought about, partly by the altered position of men in reference to each other, partly also by the altered circumstances of the archbishops themselves. we in our english life are daily approaching nearer to that republican level which is equally averse to high summits and to low depths. we no longer wish to have princes among us, and will at any rate have none of that mysterious kind which is half divine and half hocus-pocus. such terrestrial gods as we worship we choose to look full in the face. we must hear their voices and be satisfied that they have approved themselves as gods by other wisdom than that which lies in the wig. that there is a tendency to evil in this as well as a tendency to good may be true enough. to be able to venerate is a high quality, and it is coming to that with us, that we do not now venerate much. in{5} this way the altered minds of men have altered the position of the archbishops of the church of england.
but the altered circumstances of the sees themselves have perhaps done as much as the altered tendencies of men’s minds. it is not simply that the incomes received by the present archbishops are much less than the incomes of their predecessors,—though that alone would have done much,—but the incomes are of a nature much less prone to produce princes. the territorial grandeur is gone. the archbishops and bishops of to-day, with the exception of, i believe, but two veterans on the bench, receive their allotted stipends as do the clerks in the custom-house. there is no longer left with them any vestige of the power of the freehold magnate over the soil. they no longer have tenant and audit days. they cannot run their lives against leases, take up fines on renewals, stretch their arms as possessors over wide fields, or cut down woods and put acres of oaks into their ecclesiastical pockets. they who understand the nature of the life of our english magnates, whether noble or not noble, will be aware of the worth of that territorial position of which our{6} bishops have been deprived under the working of the ecclesiastical commission. the very loss of the risk has been much!—as that man looms larger to himself, and therefore to others also, whose receipts may range from two to six hundred a year, than does the comfortable possessor of the insured medium. the actual diminution of income, too, has done much, and this has been accompanied by so great a rise in the price of all princely luxuries that an archbishop without a vast private fortune can no longer live as princes should live. in these days, when a plain footman demands his fifty pounds of yearly wages, and three hundred pounds a year is but a moderate rent for a london house, an archbishop cannot support a semi-royal retinue or live with much palatial splendour in the metropolis upon an annual income of eight thousand pounds.
and then, above all, the archbishops have laid aside their wigs.
that we shall never have another prince archbishop in england or in ireland may be taken to be almost certain. whether or no we shall ever have prelates at canterbury or york, at armagh or dublin,{7} gifted with the virtues and vices of princely minds, endowed with the strength and at the same time with the self-willed obstinacy of princes, may be doubtful. there is scope enough for such strength and such obstinacy in the position, and our deficiency or our security,—as each of us according to his own idiosyncrasy may regard it,—must depend, as it has latterly been caused, by the selections made by the prime minister of the day. there is the scope for strength and obstinacy now almost as fully as there was in the days of thomas à becket, though the effects of such strength or obstinacy would of course be much less wide. and, indeed, as an archbishop may be supposed in these days to be secure from murder, his scope may be said to be the fuller. what may not an archbishop say, and what may not an archbishop do, and that without fear of the only punishment which could possibly reach an archbishop,—the punishment, namely, of deprivation? with what caution must not a minister of the present day be armed to save him from the misfortune of having placed an archbishop militant over the church of england?{8}
the independence of an archbishop, and indeed to a very great, though lesser extent of a bishop, in the midst of the existing dependence of all others around him, would be a singular phenomenon, were it not the natural result of our english abhorrence of change. we hate an evil, and we hate a change. hating the evil most, we make the change, but we make it as small as possible. hence it is that our archbishop of canterbury has so much of that independent power which made thomas à becket fly against his sovereign when the archiepiscopal mitre was placed upon his head, though he had been that sovereign’s most obedient servant till his consecration. thomas à becket held his office independently of the king; and so does dr. longley. the queen, though she be the head of the church, cannot rid herself of an archbishop who displeases her. the queen, in speaking of whom in our present sense of course we mean the prime minister, can make an archbishop of canterbury; but she cannot unmake him. the archbishop would be safe, let him play what tricks he might in his high office. nothing short of a commission de lunatico inquirendo could attack{9} him successfully,—which, should it find his grace to be insane, would leave him his temporalities and his titles, and simply place his duties in the hands of a coadjutor. should an archbishop commit a murder, or bigamy, or pick a pocket, he, no doubt, would be liable to the laws of his country; but no lawyer and no statesman can say to what penalties he can be subjected as regards the due performance of the duties of his office. a judge is independent;—that is, he is not subject to any penalty in regard to any exercise of his judicial authority; but we all know that a judge would soon cease to be a judge who should play pranks upon the bench, or decline to perform the duties of his position. the archbishops, as the heads of the endowed clergymen of the church of england, are possessed of freeholds, and that freehold cannot be touched. it is theirs for life; and so great is the practical latitude of our church, that it may be doubted whether anything short of a professed obedience to the pope could deprive an archbishop of his stipend.
it may, therefore, be easily understood that a prime minister, in selecting an archbishop, has a{10} difficult task in hand. he is bound to appoint a man who not only has hitherto played no pranks, but of whom he may feel sure that he will play none in future. in our church, as it exists at present, we have ample latitude joined to much bigotry, and it is almost as impossible to control the one as the other. such control is, in fact, on either side absolutely impossible; and, therefore, archbishops are wanted who shall make no attempts at controlling. and yet an archbishop must seem to control,—or, else, why is he there? an archbishop of canterbury must be a visible head of bishops, and yet exercise no headship. he must appear to men as the great guide of parsons, but his guidance must not go beyond advice, and of that the more chary he may be, the better will be the archbishop. of course it will be understood that reference is here made to doctrinal guidance, and not to moral guidance—to latitude or bigotry in matters of religion, and not to the social conduct of clergymen. how difficult then must be the position of a minister who has to select for so dangerous a place a clergyman who shall be great enough to fill it, and yet small enough; and one who shall also be{11} just enough to remember always that he is bound to retain that quiescence for which credit was given him when he was chosen? the archbishop must be a man without any latent flame, without ambition, desirous of no noise, who shall be content to have been an archbishop without leaving behind him a peculiar name among his brethren. he should hope to be remembered only as a good old man, who in troublesome times abated some trouble and caused none, who smiled often and frowned but seldom, who wore his ecclesiastical robes on high days with a grace, and exercised a modest and frequent hospitality, having no undue desire to amass money for his children.
it is not, perhaps, too much to say that the sort of man exactly wanted may be selected for any post, and be found adequate to the required duties so long as the sword of deprivation or dismissal can be made to hang over the occupant’s head. but it is very difficult to find a man who shall do his work, not after the fashion which may seem best to himself, but in the way which seems most desirable to others, who, when once placed, cannot be removed from his{12} place. will your groom or your gardener obey you with that precision which you desire when he comes to know that you cannot rid yourself of his services? and human nature is the same in gardeners and in archbishops. it is not that the man is void of conscience and that he resolves to disobey where he has promised to obey, but that he tells himself that in his position duty requires no obedience. your gardener with a taste for tulips would, under such circumstances, grow nothing but tulips; and what is to hinder your archbishop from putting down the miracles or putting up candlesticks? with lambeth all ablaze with candlesticks the archbishop would still hold his place.
the same thing may be said of the bishops; but among so many bishops it is felt to be well that there should be some few who shall have a flame of their own. in the house that has many rooms the owner may indulge in many colours on the walls, and some of them may be of the brightest; but in the house that has but one or two chambers the colours should be chosen with a due regard to the ordinary quiescence of every-day life. had we not high church and low{13} church among our ordinary bishops, were we to be deprived of our dear —— and our dear ——, we should miss much that we feel to be ornamental to the establishment and useful to ourselves. there are a few among us of course who would be glad to see lights of the same splendour, even though so dangerous, at canterbury and at york; but it behoves a prime minister to be a moderate man, and a man moderate, above all things, in religion. in the religion of to-day moderation is everything. and, therefore, whatever else he may be, let the archbishop be a moderate man. let him always be throwing oil upon waters. nothing should shock him—nothing, that is, in the way of religion. nothing should excite him; nothing should make him angry. he should be a man able to preach well, but not inclined to preach often. in his preaching he should charm the ears of all hearers, but he should hardly venture to stir their pulses. he should speak, too, occasionally from platforms and chairs; only let him not make himself too common. he should be very affable on mondays and tuesdays, secluding himself somewhat on the other five days of the week, answering{14} his correspondents with words which may mean as little as words can be made to mean, and carefully watching that he commits himself to nothing. how hard it is to find the man who shall have talent enough for this, and yet the self-command never to go beyond it, even though no penalties await him, except such as may come from the venomous baiting of other clergymen.
but it must not be supposed that the archbishop of to-day can be, or should be, an idle man. it is his duty to be the precursor—probably the unconscious precursor—of other men in that religion which shall teach us that the ways of god are very easy to find, though they may not be so easy to follow; that forms are almost nothing, so that faith be there. of all men, an archbishop should be the least of a fanatic. can any one imagine an archbishop of the present day abhorring a dissenter, or refusing to dine with a roman catholic because of his religion? and to do this is much, even though it be done unconsciously. an archbishop thus leading the van against bigotry has to stand with placid unmoved front against assailants by the hundred. let us only{15} think of the letters that are addressed to him, of the attacks made upon him, of the questions asked of him. against every attack he must defend himself, and yet must he never commit himself. he must never be dumb, and yet must he never speak out boldly. he must be always true to the thirty-nine articles, and yet never fight for any one of them. in the broad his creed must be infallible, but he himself may make a standing-point on no detail. to carry an archbishop’s mitre successfully under such circumstances requires much diligence, considerable skill, imperturbable good humour, and undying patience.
the selections that have been made by the ministers of the crown for the last twenty or twenty-five years have all apparently been made on the principle of selecting such archbishops as have been here described, and english churchmen in general seem to think that the ministers of the crown have exercised wise discretion in the appointments which they have made.
