nd of York respectively, within
their ecclesiastical provinces, pursuant to a royal writ, whenever the
parliament of the realm is summoned, and which is also continued or
discharged, as the case may be, whenever the parliament is prorogued or
dissolved. These assemblies consist of two Houses, an upper and lower.
In the upper house sit the archbishops and bishops, and in the lower the
deans and archdeacons of every cathedral, the provost of Eton College,
with one proctor elected by each cathedral chapter and two by the
beneficed clergy in each diocese in the province of Canterbury (in the
province of York two proctors are elected by each archdeacon), with a
prolocutor at their head. When and how this convocation originated is
not historically clear. This much is known from authentic records, that
the present constitution of the convocation of the prelates and clergy
of the province of Canterbury was recognized as early as in the eleventh
year of the reign of Edward I. (1283) as its normal constitution; and
that in extorting that recognition from the crown, which the clergy
accomplished by refusing to attend unless summoned in lawful manner
(_debito modo_) through their metropolitan, the clergy of the province
of Canterbury taught the laity the possibility of maintaining the
freedom of the nation against the encroachments of the royal power. It
had been a provision of the Anglo-Saxon period, the origin of which is
generally referred to the council of Clovesho (747), that the
possessions of the church should be exempt from taxation by the secular
power, and that it should be left to the benevolence of the clergy to
grant such subsidies to the crown from the endowments of their churches
as they should agree to in their own assemblies. It may be inferred,
however, from the language of the various writs issued by the crown for
the collection of the "aids" voted by the _Commune Concilium_ of the
realm in the reign of Henry III., that the clergy were unable to
maintain the exemption of church property from being taxed to those
"aids" during that king's reign; and it was not until some years had
elapsed of the reign of Edward I. that the spirituality succeeded in
vindicating their constitutional privilege of voting in their own
assemblies their free gifts or "benevolences," and in insisting on the
crown observing the lawful form of convoking those assemblies through
the metropolitan of each province.

The form of the royal writ,