Untitled - Electric Scotland

1 860-68] DEBATES IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS 407
In that assembly three peers, Lord Ebury, Lord West-
meath, and Lord Shaftesbury, had been long maintaining,
each from his own point of view, that the rubrics of the
Church required reform. Lord Ebury had been the most
persistent of the three, and it was not in his opinion a
question of Ritualism alone. His principal gravamen,
indeed, was the compulsory use of the Burial Service, and
on this subject he had for years been urging that a Royal
Commission should be issued. His case was now
strengthened by the new and larger Rubrical difficulties
that had arisen, and many who had hitherto opposed his
annual motion were now ranged upon his side in asking
for a Royal Commission to consider not the Burial Service
only, but the whole rubrics of the Prayer Book.
Lord Shaftesbury was not among these. He was all
in favour of immediate legislation to set at rest the ques
tion of the Eucharistic vestments, and he obtained a half
promise of support from Archbishop Longley, and from
many other Bishops, for a bill which he proposed to intro
duce to that effect. The Archbishop, on further con
to introduce a bill of his own
sideration, preferred ;
but
this plan was abandoned, at the instigation of Bishop
Wilberforce, on the Government s announcing that a
Royal Commission would be issued. 1 Lord Shaftesbury
was thereupon pressed by Bishop Tait and others, includ
ing the Archbishop himself, to postpone his action for a
time, and to await the first Report of the Commission, but
he stoutly and bluntly refused to do anything of the sort,
and on May 14, 1867, he moved the second reading of
his Clerical Vestments Bill. The bill as proposed gave
the force of law to Canon 58, which enjoins "that every
minister saying the public prayers, or ministering the
i The story of what passed is told in Bishop Wilberforce s Life, vol. iii.
pp. 205-212.