Untitled - Electric Scotland

328 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. xm.
sovereign could not give Letters Patent, or confer a juris
diction ; but, on the other hand, it was absolutely without
precedent in the Church of England that Bishops should
be appointed without any control or intervention on the
part of the State, and it was clear that the question, in
whatever way it might be settled, must seriously affect
the relation of the whole Colonial Church to the Church
at home. So keenly was this difficulty felt that it was
even suggested in debate that the Missionary Bishops
might be consecrated as Suffragans under the Act of
Henry VIIL, and enter upon their missionary work as
Bishops of "Bedford," "Dover," "Colchester," and so
forth. 1 In 1859 and 1860 the subject was debated very
fully in Convocation, and each House drew up a careful
Report The opinion of the law-officers of the Crown
was obtained to the effect that, much as such a
"
novel
proceeding" was to be "deprecated and discouraged,"
"
statute or rule of common
they were unaware of any
law by virtue of which the Archbishops or their Suffragans
would incur any penalty from consecrating in this country
a Bishop among the heathen." The debates which fol
lowed were long and sometimes heated, and in order to
understand their drift it is necessary to bear constantly
in mind that, in varying degree, there was in those years
a quasi Establishment of the Church of England
throughout the Colonial Empire, and that in Australia,
for example, the bishops and clergy were above all things
anxious that no step should inadvertently be taken at
home which might have the effect of loosening that
2
tie."
Bishop Tait, eager as he had always
been in the
missionary cause, was so impressed with the importance
of maintaining the Royal Supremacy as a bond of union,
1 See Chronicle of Convocation, June 7, 1860, p. 285.
See, e.g. the petitions from the Australian Church, printed in the
Chronicle of Convocation for 1867, pp. 914-16.