Читать книгу: «Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850», страница 4

J.W.H.

REPLIES

CHURCH HISTORY SOCIETY

I am much obliged to your correspondent LAICUS for his inquiry respecting the proposed Society (Vol. ii., p. 464). Will you allow me to express to him my confident hope, that the proposed plan, or some modification of it by a committee (when one shall exist) may in due time be carried out. But there seems to be no reason for haste; and in the formation of such body it is desirable to have as many avowed supporters to select from as possible. I do not think that the matter is much known yet, though I have to thank you for a kind notice; and I need not tell some of your correspondents that I have received very encouraging letters. But, in truth, as I did not expect any profit, or desire any responsibility as to either money or management, and only wished to lay before the public an idea which had existed in my own mind for some years, and which had obtained the sanction of some whom I thought competent judges; and as I had, moreover, published pamphlets enough to know that a contribution of waste paper to any object is often one of the most costly, I did not feel myself called on to go to so much expense in advertising as I perhaps might have done if I had been spending the money of a society instead of my own. I sent but few copies; none, I believe, except to persons with whom I had some acquaintance, and whom I thought likely to take more or less interest in the subject.

I trust, however, that the matter is quietly and solidly growing; and from communications which I have received, and resources on which I believe I may reckon, I feel no doubt that if it were considered desirable, friends and money enough to set such a society going might be immediately brought forward. It is one advantage of the proposed plan, that it may be tried on almost any scale. A society so constituted would NOT begin its existence with great promises of returns to subscribers, and heavy engagements to printers, papermakers, and editors. Its only necessary expenses would be those of management; and if the society were very small, these expenses would be so too. It is, indeed, hardly possible to imagine that they should be such as not to leave something to be funded for future use, if they did not furnish means for immediate display; but it seems better to wait patiently until such real substantial support is guaranteed as may prevent all apprehension on that score.

S.R. MAITLAND.

DEFENDER OF THE FAITH

(Vol. ii., p. 442.)

It is quite startling to be told that the title of "Defender of the Faith" was used by any royal predecessor of Henry VIII.

Selden (Titles of Honour, ed 1631, p. 54) says:

"The beginning and ground of that attribute of DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, which hath been perpetually, in the later ages, added to the style of the kings of England, (not only in the first person, but frequent also in the second and in the third, as common use shows in the formality of instruments of conveyance, leases and such like) is most certainly known. It began in Henry the VIII. For he, in those awaking times, upon the quarrel of the Romanists and Lutherans, wrote a volume against Luther," &c.

Selden then states the well-known occasion upon which this title was conferred, and sets out the Bull of Leo X. (then extant in the Collection of Sir Robert Cotton, and now in the British Museum), whereby the Pope, "holding it just to distinguish those who have undertaken such pious labours for defending the faith of Christ with every honour and commendation," decrees that to the title of King the subjects of the royal controversialist shall add the title "Fidei Defensori." The pontiff adds, that a more worthy title could not be found.

Your correspondent, COLONEL ANSTRUTHER, calls attention to the statement made by Mr. Christopher Wren, Secretary of the Order of the Garter (A.D. 1736), in his letter to Francis Peck, on the authority of the Register of the Order in his possession; which letter is quoted by Burke (Dorm. and Ext. Bar., iv. 408.), that "King Henry VII. had the title Defender of the Faith." It is not found in any acts or instruments of his reign that I am acquainted with, nor in the proclamation on his interment, nor in any of the epitaphs engraved on his magnificent tomb. (Sandford, Geneal. Hist.) Nor is it probable that Pope Leo X., in those days of diplomatic intercourse with England, would have bestowed on Henry VIII., as a special and personal distinction and reward, a title that had been used by his royal predecessors.

I am not aware that any such title is attributed to the sovereign in any of the English records anterior to 1521; but that many English kings gloried in professing their zeal to defend the Church and religion, appears from many examples. Henry IV., in the second year of his reign, promises to maintain and defend the Christian religion (Rot. Parl., iii. 466.); and on his renewed promise, in the fourth year of his reign, to defend the Christian faith, the Commons piously grant a subsidy (Ibid., 493.); and Henry VI., in the twentieth year of his reign, acts as keeper of the Christian faith. (Rot. Parl., v. 61.)

In the admonition used in the investiture of a knight with the insignia of the Garter, he is told to take the crimson robe, and being therewith defended, to be bold to fight and shed his blood for Christ's faith, the liberties of the Church, and the defence of the oppressed. In this sense, the sovereign and every knight became a sworn defender of the faith. Can this duty have come to be popularly attributed as part of the royal style and title?

The Bull of Leo X., which confers the title on Henry VIII. personally, does not make it inheritable by his successors, so that none but that king himself could claim the honour. The Bull granted two years afterwards by Clement VII. merely confirms the grant of Pope Leo to the king himself. It was given, as we know, for his assertion of doctrines of the Church of Rome; yet he retained it after his separation from the Roman Catholic communion, and after it had been formally revoked and withdrawn by Pope Paul III. in the twenty-seventh year of Henry VIII., upon the king's apostacy in turning suppressor of religious houses. In 1543, the Reformation legislature and the Anti-papal king, without condescending to notice any Papal Bulls, assumed to treat the title that the Pope had given and taken away as a subject of Parliamentary gift, and annexed it for ever to the English crown by the statute 35 Hen. VIII. c. 3., from which I make the following extract, as its language bears upon the question:

"Where our most dread, &c., lord the king, hath heretofore been, and is justly, lawfully, and notoriously knowen, named, published, and declared to be King of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and the Church of England and also of Ireland, in earth supreme head; and hath justly and lawfully used the title and name thereof as to his Grace appertaineth. Be it enacted, &c., that all and singular his Graces' subject, &c., shall from henceforth accept and take the same his Majesty's style … viz., in the English tongue by these words, Henry the Eighth, by the grace of God King of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and of the Church of England, and also of Ireland, in earth the supreme head; and that the said style, &c., shall be, &c., united and annexed for ever to the imperial crown of his highness's realms of England."

By the supposed authority of this statute, and notwithstanding the revocation of the title by Pope Paul III., and its omission in the Bull addressed by Pope Julius III. to Philip and Mary, that princess, before and after her marriage, used this style, and the statute having, been re-established by 1 Eliz. c. 1., the example has been followed by her royal Protestant successors, who wished thereby to declare themselves Defenders of the Anti-papal Church. The learned Bishop Gibson, in his Codex (i. 33, note), treats this title as having commenced in Henry VIII. So do Blount, Cowel, and such like authorities.

WM. SIDNEY GIBSON.

Newcastle-on-Tyne, Dec. 1850.

P.S. Since writing the above, I have found (in the nineteenth volume of Archæologia, pp. 1-10.) an essay by Mr. Alex. Luders on this very subject, in which that able writer, who was well accustomed to examine historical records, refers to many examples in which the title "Most Christian King" was attributed to, or used by English sovereigns, as well as the kings of France; and to the fact, that this style was used by Henry VII., as appears from his contract with the Abbot of Westminster (Harl. MS. 1498.). Selden tells us that the emperors had from early times been styled "Defensores Ecclesiæ;" and from the instances cited by Mr. Luders, it appears that the title of "Most Christian" was appropriated to kings of France from a very ancient period; that Pepin received it (A.D. 755) from the Pope, and Charles the Bald (A.D. 859) from a Council: and Charles VI. refers to ancient usage for this title, and makes use of these words:

"—nostrorum progenitorum imitatione—evangelicæ veritatis—DEFENSORES—nostra regia dignitas divino Christianæ religionis titulo gloriosius insignitur—."

Mr. Luders refers to the use of the words "Nos zelo fidei catholicæ, cujus sumus et erimus Deo dante Defensores, salubriter commoti" in the charter of Richard II. to the Chancellor of Oxford, in the nineteenth year of his reign, as the earliest introduction of such phrases into acts of the kings of England that he had met with. This zeal was for the condemnation of Wycliff's Trialogus. In the reign of Hen. IV. the writ "De Hæretico comburendo" had the words "Zelator justitia et fidei catholicæ cultor;" and the title of "Très Chrêtien" occurs in several instruments of Hen. VI. and Edw. IV. It appears very probable that this usage was the foundation of the statement made by Chamberlayne and by Mr. Christopher Wren: but that the title of Defender of the Faith was used as part of the royal style before 1521, is, I believe, quite untrue.

W.S.G.