Today is exactly the 450th Anniversary of the consecration of His Grace Matthew Parker as Archbishop of Canterbury, at 6am on Sunday 17th December 1559 in the chapel of Lambeth Palace in London. This consecration gave rise to the post-reformation Anglican hierarchy, and every Anglican bishop, priest and deacon alive today traces his Holy Orders to this act in which the Apostolic Succession was secured, preserved and transmitted for the Anglican part of Christ's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. The consecrating bishops were William Barlow, Bishop of Bath and Wells, John Scory, Bishop of Chichester, Miles Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter, and John Hodgkins, Bishop Suffragan of Bedford. Bishop Barlow and Bishop Hodgkins had been consecrated according to the Latin Sarum Pontifical; Bishop Scory and Bishop Coverdale had been consecrated according to the Edwardine Anglican Ordinal of 1550. All four recited the ancient form of consecration, Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, at the laying on hands. Through them and their sacramental action, the Apostolic Ministry was assured for the Church of England and her daughter Churches for posterity. Let us thank Our Blessed Lord for the inestimable benefit of our Anglican heritage and for the divine gift of Apostolic Orders in the Anglican succession!
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Much is written about the battles between Roman Catholics and Anglican Catholics, but not much is written about the battles between Anglican Catholics and Puritans. After the martyrdom of King Charles, the Puritans dug up the body of Matthew Parker and tossed it on a dung heap. Not to mention their desecration of anything they considered Anglo-Catholic.
Roman Catholics like to speak of the non-Roman English as though, during the Reformation, they could all be grouped together in one homogeneous clump. I remember watching EWTN years back and hearing an RC scholar (I'm using the term in a loose manner) proclaim that Shakespeare must have been Roman because in his plays the characters pray kneeling, which Protestants don't do. That is some serious argumentation. As Father David mentioned, the distinction between Anglican and Puritan is often overlooked by not so serious Anglican and Roman scholars--Abp. Parker, Elizabeth I, Charles I, Abp. Laud, etc., and their battles with the Puritans are all left by the wayside. If there is any mention of it at all it is chalked up to Laud being a secret Papist. Bad history seems to create bad theology.
Brilliant piece! And equally brilliant comments by Father David and Father Hassert.
If Laud had been a secret papist he might have accepted the cardinal's hat which he was offered three times. And while at that point even laymen could be made cardinals, I think the fact that it was even offered to Laud indicated that Rome at that point knew that he was canonically and validly consecrated to the episcopate.
We still have those among us who claim to be Anglican but who consistently act as if the puritans and their interpretation if not disregard for the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer are the highest and best form of Anglicanism. We should give them the lie by our obedience to the prayer book and its authentic tradition.
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