without due
process of law. The Church of England is thus theoretically coextensive
with the English nation, each unit of which is legally assumed to belong
to it unless proof be brought to the contrary. To state the theory is,
however, to risk giving an entirely false impression of the facts. In
practice the Church of England is no longer regarded as coextensive with
the state; nor is nonconformity any longer, as it once was, an offence
against the law. Since the abolition of the Test Acts and the
emancipation of the Catholics no Englishman has suffered any civil
disability owing to his religion[14]; and the progress of democracy has
given to the great so-called "Free Churches" a political power that
rivals that of the Established Church. In the matter of the estimation
of their relative strength the main grievance of the Nonconformists is
that the law classes as members of the Church of England that enormous
floating population which is really conscious of no ecclesiastical
allegiance at all.

The Church of England, both in constitution and doctrine, represents in
general the mean between Roman Catholicism on the one hand and the more
advanced forms of Protestantism on the other (see EPISCOPACY). Though
its doctrine was reformed in the 16th century and the spiritual
supremacy of the pope was repudiated, the continuity of its organic life
was not interrupted, and historically as well as legally it is the same
church as that established before the Reformation. The ecclesiastical
system is episcopal, the whole of England (including for this purpose
Wales) being divided into two provinces, Canterbury and York, and 37
bishoprics (including the primatial sees of Canterbury and York). These
again are subdivided into 14,080 parishes (1901), the smallest
ecclesiastical units, which are grouped for certain administrative
purposes into 810 rural deaneries. The sovereign is by law the supreme
governor of the church, both in things spiritual and temporal, and he
has the right to nominate to vacant sees. In the case of sees of old
foundation this is done by means of the conge d'elire (q.v.), in that of
others by letters patent.[15] The bishops hold their temporalities as
baronies, for which they do homage in the ancient form, and are
spiritual peers of parliament. Only 26, however, have the right to seats
in the House of Lords, of whom five--viz. the two archbishops and the
bishops of London, Durham and Winchester--always sit, the