the Bishop of London on the
Ecclesiastical Supremacy.' If I recollect right, while it dealt
little with theology, it was a more pregnant production than the
declaration, and it went much nearer the mark. It has been
repeatedly published, and is still on sale at Murray's. I am glad
to see that Sidney Herbert (a _gentleman_ if ever there was one)
also declined to sign. It seems to me _now_, that there is
something almost ludicrous in the propounding of such a congeries
of statements by such persons as we were; not the more, but
certainly not the less, because of being privy councillors.

It was a terrible time; aggravated for me by heavy cares and
responsibilities of a nature quite extraneous: and far beyond all
others by the illness and death of a much-loved child, with great
anxieties about another. My recollections of the conversations
before the declaration are little but a mass of confusion and
bewilderment. I stand only upon what I _did_. No one of us, I
think, understood the actual position, not even our lawyers, until
Baron Alderson printed an excellent statement on the points
raised.[236]

III

For long the new situation filled his mind. 'The case of the church of
England at this moment,' he wrote to Lord Lyttelton, 'is a very dismal
one, and almost leaves men to choose between a broken heart and no heart
at all. But at present it is all dark or only twilight which rests upon
our future.' He busily set down thoughts upon the supremacy. He studied
Cawdry's case, and he mastered Lord Coke's view of the law. He feels
better pleased with the Reformation in regard to the supremacy; but also
much more sensible of the drifting of the church since, away from the
range of her constitutional securities; and more than ever convinced how
thoroughly false is the present position. As to himself and his own work
in life, in reply I suppose to something urged by Manning, he says
(April 29, 1850), 'I have two characters to fulfil--that of a lay
member of the church, and that of a member of a sort of wreck of a
political party. I must not break my understood compact with the last,
and forswear my profession, unless and until the necessity has arisen.
That necessity will plainly have arisen for me when it shall have become
evident that justice cannot, _i.e._, will not, be done by the state to
the church.'