ection
of the person named in it. In the event of their refusing obedience or
neglecting to elect, the bishop may be appointed by letters patent under
the Great Seal without the form of election. Upon the election being
reported to the crown, a mandate issues from the crown to the archbishop
and metropolitan, requesting him and commanding him to confirm the
election, and to invest and consecrate the bishop-elect. Thereupon the
archbishop issues a commission to his vicar-general to examine formally
the process of the election of the bishop, and to supply by his
authority all defects in matters of form, and to administer to the
bishop-elect the oaths of allegiance, of supremacy and of canonical
obedience (see CONFIRMATION OF BISHOPS). In the disestablished and
daughter Churches the election is by the synod of the Church, as in
Ireland, or by a diocesan convention, as in the United States of
America.

In the Church of England the _potestas ordinis_ is conferred by
consecration. This is usually carried out by an archbishop, who is
assisted by two or more bishops. The essential "form" of the
consecration is in the simultaneous "laying on of hands" by the
consecrating prelates. After this the new bishop, who has so far been
vested only in a rochet, retires and puts on the rest of the episcopal
habit, viz. the chimere. After consecration the bishop is competent to
exercise all the spiritual functions of his office; but a bishopric in
the Established Church, being a barony, is under the guardianship of the
crown during a vacancy, and has to be conferred afresh on each new
holder. A bishop, then, cannot enter into the enjoyment of the
temporalities of his see, including his rights of presentation to
benefices, before doing homage to the king. This is done in the ancient
feudal form, surviving elsewhere only in the conferring of the M.A.
degree at Cambridge. The bishop kneels before the king, places his hands
between his, and recites an oath of temporal allegiance; he then kisses
hands.

Besides the functions exercised in virtue of their order, bishops are
also empowered by law to exercise a certain jurisdiction over all
consecrated places and over all ordained persons. This jurisdiction they
exercise for the most part through their consistorial courts, or through
commissioners appointed under the Church Discipline Act of 1840. By the
Clergy Discipline Act of 1892 it was decreed that the trial of clerks
accused of unfitness to