writers indeed, by no means unfavourable to the Church, have construed this letter as prescribing a quadripartite division of his No wonder then that Dr. Lingard, in his Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church (p. 83), has contrived to build upon it a circumstantial account of the motives and mode of the enactment. Let us see, however, whether the document will bear the interpretation affixed to it; or whether we are not rather to understand it, with many of the best ecclesiastical antiquaries, as giving, in regard to Britain, a direct exemption from the rule. Gregory does indeed notice a quadripartite division as the custom of the Roman see; but at the same time he leaves Augustine entirely to the exercise of his own discretion. The letter is given at length by Mr. Hale, with the original Latin, (from Bede, i. 27.) in a note; but the concluding sentences will be sufficient to prove the exception in favour of the English Church.

Care must also be taken, and provision made, for their (married clergy's) stipend; and they must be kept to the rule of the Church, to be of good behaviour, to observe the hours of singing psalms, and by God's grace to keep their heart, and tongue, and body, from every unlawful deed. But what need have we to speak of making a division of revenues, of keeping hospitality, or of giving alms, in the case of persons who have all in common; since every thing which is above their wants is to be devoted to pious and religious uses-the Lord, our common Master, himself teaching, as for the rest give alms, and, behold, all things are clean unto you?"*-P. 18.

:

With respect to a tripartite division of tithes in England, the only support upon which it rests, is that of three canons of very questionable authority, among those of Theodore, A. D. 668, of Egbert, A. D. 743, and of Ælfric, A. D. 970. Two of these documents are confessedly compilations from foreign sources; and the third an episcopal address in which this division is spoken of as contained in a canon of the Fathers but in neither is there any proof whatever of the practice forming any part of the civil or ecclesiastical law of England. Had any of the Saxon kings or councils sanctioned the custom, these canons might have been corroborative of such sanction; but they are of no weight whatever against the total silence of all English laws and councils on the subject. The Dissenting Society have indeed contrived to misrepresent a solitary passage in Blackstone (Comm. B. I. c. 11.), in which he alludes to this division, for the purpose of shewing the manner in which the monks ousted the Rectors of the full possession of the tithes, into a positive limitation of the Rectors' right;

De eorum quoque stipendio cogitandum atque providendum est, et sub ecclesiastica regula sunt tenendi, ut bonis moribus vivant, et canendis psalmis invigilent, et ab omnibus illicitis, et cor, et linguam, et corpus, Deo auctore, conservent: communi autem vita viventibus, jam de faciendis portionibus, vel exhibenda hospitalitate, et adimplenda misericordia, nobis quid erit loquendum? cum omne quod superest in causis piis ac religiosis erogandum est, Domino omnium magistro docente, quod superest, date eleemosynam, et ecce omnia munda sunt vobis.'

but their cunning craftiness is abundantly exposed by Mr. Hale, who adduces the counter-evidence of Blackstone himself (Comm. B. II. c. 3.), enforcing the title of the Clergy to the tenth of the produce, as established by the law of the land. Some facts, which Kennett, in his History of Impropriations, has misinterpreted into a supposed evidence of a tripartite division of tithes, are then examined and explained; and we arrive, in conclusion, at a "summary account of the information we possess, relative to the English law of tithes, and the duty laid upon the Clergy to relieve the poor and repair churches." The main substance of this section we shall take leave to lay before our readers.

In

Tithes are very frequently mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon laws and early English councils. Though the payment of tithes, in England, is due by the common law, there is hardly any maxim of that law, the origin of which receives more illustration from references to ancient laws and canons. addition to the authorities quoted from Blackstone, we may adduce the Constitutions of Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury, A. D. 943, directing the payment of tithes. In the subsequent year, the same thing is repeated in a canon of the council of London; and in the year 959, in the canons of Edgar. The laws of Edgar, in 967, not only exact the payment of tithes, but also enforce it, under a penalty of a forfeiture of eight tenths of the crop, to be divided between the Bishop and the thane. Tithes were made payable by a canon of the council of Enham, and by the laws of Athelred, in 1012; by the laws of Canute, under the same penalty as that exacted in the law of Edgar; by the laws of Edward the Confessor, in 1052. They are recognised in the council of Winton, in 1076; in that of London, 1102; the full payment of them, without deduction of any kind, is enforced by the council of Durham, 1220; in that of Oxford, 1222; in the constitutions of Edmund, 1236; and in other later documents. But, strict and minute as are the laws for the payment of tithes, and frequent as is the mention of them for the period contained in the dates alluded to, amounting to more than four hundred years, in no one instance is any the slightest allusion made to any obligation laid upon the Clergy to reserve only one third of the tithes to their own use, and to apply the remaining two thirds to the maintenance of the church and poor. And this omission is the more remarkable, by reason of this circumstance; that, though the laws and canons now referred to, do, for the most part, treat rather of the laity's duty in paying tithes than of the Clergyman's in distributing them, still there are not wanting canons, which so precisely prescribe to the Clergy the duty of charity and hospitality, that, if these duties had been the consequence of a legal tripartite division, it is next to impossible that such a division should not have been formally mentioned. In the canons of Durham, the Clergy are specially commanded to be hospitable, according to their means, and not to be avaricious towards the poor; but the exhortation is founded upon the general ground of Christian duty, without reference to any legal title which the poor possessed of sharing, in a certain proportion, the revenues of the Clergy.

The same assertion holds good with respect to sundry exhortations to hospitality, to be found in some canons of the Archbishops Peccham and Stratford, in the Liber Provincialis of Linwood, and also in a constitution of Othobon, "de institutionibus seu collationibus," (p. 126, Oxford, 1672.) ....... Now had the tripartite division of revenues formed part of the English canon law, either in the time of Othobon, or of these Archbishops, or when John de Athon wrote his Commentary at the conclusion of the thirteenth century, or when Linwood compiled his Liber Provincialis at the beginning of the fifteenth, it is next to impossible, that when so much care was taken to defend the poor against the evils of non-residence, the right of the poor to a third of the tithes should not

"

have been then distinctly recognised. The constitution of Othobon and the canons of the Archbishops are equally silent upon it: and one of the commentators takes notice, not of it, but of the old fourfold division; and without saying a word from which we can conclude that in his judgment the poor had in England any other than a general claim to the alms of wealthy ecclesiastics. . . . . And as to the fund out of which the Clergyman is thus to bestow his alms, Linwood most distinctly proves that, even in "those golden times of Popery," it was no legal third of his revenue which the Clergyman was bound to appropriate to this purpose, but the same sort of poor man's fund which every resident Incumbent now forms out of the surplus of his own necessities. The words of Linwood are "Talis sustentatio fiat de eo, quod alicui deductis necessariis et pro sustentatione propria et suorum, ac onerum sibi incumbentium, superest.' The authority of Linwood's Liber Provincialis, as an historical and legal work, is unquestionable; and he is explicit in limiting to the care of the choir the charge which is imposed upon the Rectors to repair the church, and in declaring, that as to the repairs of the nave the parishioners are bound to that according to their respective means. Indeed, the only mention which Linwood, as far as I have discovered, has made of the old fourfold division, is in connexion with the subject of the repair of churches, in his chapter 'De Archidiaconis,' wherein he not only lays down the legal duty of the Rector, but also the extent of the moral obligation imposed upon him to attend to the repair of the church; in this following the previous comment of John de Athon upon a constitution of Othobon (p. 113), who had expressed his opinion, that though a Clergyman does his duty in the eye of the law, by repairing the chancel, he is yet bound in conscience to see that the whole church is repaired by those upon whom custom has thrown that burden, a custom which is elsewhere termed a "laudabilis consuetudo" of the province of Canterbury. Whilst such evidence of the law and practice of England is in existence, we may safely affirm that nothing but ignorance can excuse those who still persist in asserting, that prior to the Reformation, the Clergy contributed any thing more than they now do, towards repairs of the church. P. 39-44.

From the reasonings and statements advanced by Mr. Hale, and of which we have given as full an analysis as our confined limits will allow, every unprejudiced and candid inquirer after the truth, must unhesitatingly admit the justness of the conclusion at which he arrives: viz." that, whatever proofs may be alleged in support of the prevalence of such a division in foreign countries, the supposition that it prevailed in England is perfectly gratuitous, is supported by no one fact, and is utterly irreconcilable with the mass of information which we possess respecting the origin and working of the law of tithes in England." We leave then the Society of “Evangelical Dissenters" to the Christian expectation of the fulfilment of their own prophecy, that "dearly will the claimants pay for their tithes, when God arises to take vengeance;" and we cordially thank the author of the Essay before us for one of the most valuable of the tributes to the Church, which her true sons, in these days of " trouble, and rebuke, and blasphemy," have not been wanting to pay.

ART. III.-Martyrological Biography. Memoirs of the Life and Martyrdom of John Bradford, M. A. Fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge; with his Examinations, Letters, &c. arranged in Chronological order. Together with a Translation of Bishop Gardiner's Book, "De Vera Obedientia ;" and Bonner's "Prefatory Letter;" both in Defence of the Supremacy and of the Divorce of Henry VIII. By WILLIAM STEVENS. London: Fenn. Cambridge: Stevenson. 8vo. 1832. Pp. cciv. 428.

SINCE the appearance of Dr. Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography, the attention of the clerical world has been called to the lives of some of our most distinguished Prelates; most of which have been edited in a masterly style; and this delightful and useful "study of mankind," has led to a research into the early annals of the Reformation,-a research calculated to produce the most beneficial results. It has often been a source of regret that so little is known of the career of these distinguished individuals to whom, under Providence, the Church of England is so deeply indebted for the purity of her doctrine, and the evangelical simplicity of her offices; and this regret has been enhanced by the fact, that to the supineness of contemporary, or immediately succeeding generations, this lack of knowledge is mainly attributable. It is not, however, even at this eleventh hour, too late to wipe out the stigma of neglect. The British Museum, the libraries of our universities, and many private collections, abound in materials; and although the details of private life and habits, or even the precise dates of some important events, may be difficult to arrive at, still sufficient records are extant, in many instances, to supply all that is requisite for a due estimation of character, and a proper appreciation of the motives which led the early martyrs of the Reformation to brave the bigotted fury of papists, and seal their belief at the stake or upon the scaffold.

This is evidently the case in the life of "Holy John Bradford," as the subject of the volume before us was styled, not only by Fox, but by the celebrated Bishop Godwin. In his history, little can be gleaned beyond what is related by the venerable martyrologist; and we are constantly obliged to draw all additional information from his voluminous correspondence, which Mr. Stevens has ranged in a highly satisfactory manner.

Bradford was born at Manchester, but in what year we are uninformed; and we hear no more of his parents than that they brought him up in learning from his infancy, by which he was qualified to become secretary to Sir John Harrington, who held a post of some trust during the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. It appears to have been his intention, at one time, to have followed the profes

sion of the law; for we find that he was entered a student of the Inner Temple, on the 8th April, 1547; when he is described, as of Exton, in the county of Rutland.

It is from this place that his earliest letters are dated, which Mr. Stevens has introduced into the narrative, in the order in which they were written. "A perusal of these," in the language of his biographer, "will afford the best evidence of the progressive state of the author's mind; and how it became gradually matured, 'as by the Spirit of the Lord,' to prepare him for that noble and conspicuous testimony, which God, in the mysterious dispensations of his providence, had appointed our illustrious martyr to bear to the truth of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ."

It is not at all improbable, that his intercourse with the venerable Latimer strengthened him in his resolution to enter the Church, which must have been adopted within a year after his being admitted of the temple; as, in 1548, he became a student of Catherine Hall, and, in less than another year, "had made such proficiency in his studies, that the University conferred upon him the degree of Master of Arts;" shortly after which, at the invitation of his friend Bishop Ridley, then master of Pembroke College, he accepted a fellowship on that foundation. In this situation he attracted the attention of the celebrated Martin Bucer, with whom he became most intimate; and Ridley, being translated to the see of London, insisted upon his taking deacon's orders; which, after some resistances (in consequence of an objection he entertained, in common with Hooper, to some of the ceremonies) he did; and was presented by his patron to a stall in St. Paul's Cathedral, and appointed one of his domestic Chaplains.

Here

Our reformer performed his duty of a preacher in an exemplary manner, for the space of three years, teaching faithfully, and labouring diligently, in many parts of England, but probably more generally at St. Paul's. He exposed and reproved sin with severity; preached Christ crucified sweetly; forcibly attacked the prevailing errors and heresies; and earnestly exhorted his hearers to holiness of life.-P. 29.

That this apostolical conduct should be displeasing to the Papists, is by no means marvellous. Accordingly we find that shortly after the death of Edward VI. he was deprived both of his official dignities, and personal liberty, by Queen Mary. Of the immediate (we would rather say, the ostensible cause) of this proceeding, Mr. Stevens has given us the following concise and interesting

account:

The circumstances were as follow:-On Sunday the 18th of April, 1553, Gilbert Bourn, who had been appointed by Bonner, then Bishop of London, a Canon of St. Paul's, delivered an inflammatory discourse at Paul's Cross in