insufficiently
qualified, they are bound to institute him, or to license him, as the
case may be, to the benefice, and thereupon to send their mandate to the
archdeacon to induct him into the temporalities of the benefice. Where
the bishop himself is patron of a benefice within his own diocese he is
empowered to collate a clerk to it,--in other words, to confer it on the
clerk without the latter being presented to him. Where the clerk himself
is patron of the living, the bishop may institute him on his own
petition. (See BENEFICE.)

As spiritual peers, bishops of the Church of England have (subject to
the limitations stated below) seats in the House of Lords, though
whether as barons or in their spiritual character has been a matter of
dispute. The latter, however, would seem to be the case, since a bishop
was entitled to his writ of summons after confirmation and before doing
homage for his barony. Doubts having been raised whether a bishop of the
Church of England, being a lord of parliament, could resign his seat in
the Upper House, although several precedents to that effect are on
record, a statute of the realm, which was confined to the case of the
bishops of London and Durham, was passed in 1856, declaring that on the
resignation of their sees being accepted by their respective
metropolitans, those bishops should cease to sit as lords of parliament,
and their sees should be filled up in the manner provided by law in the
case of the avoidance of a bishopric. In 1869 the Bishops' Resignation
Act was passed. It provided that, on any bishop desiring to retire on
account of age or incapacity, the sovereign should be empowered to
declare the see void by an order in council, the retiring bishop of
archbishop to be secured the use of the episcopal residence for life and
a pension of one-third of the revenues of the see, or L2000, whichever
sum should prove the larger. Other sections defined the proceedings for
proving, in case of need, the incapacity of a bishop, provided for the
appointment of coadjutors and defined their status (Phillimore i. 82).

In view of the necessity for increasing the episcopate in the 19th
century and the objection to the consequent increase of the spiritual
peers in the Upper House, it was finally enacted by the Bishoprics Act
of 1878 that only the archbishops and the bishops of London, Winchester
and Durham should be always entitled to writs summoning them to the
House of Lords. The rest of t