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In 1486, Archbishop Berchtold of Mainz, Primate of Germany, issued an edict, full of impassioned malice against German translations of the Bible, and against laymen who sought edification from them.

There seems to have been a general impression that the position of the Primate was extremely critical, and he was besieged by advisers who urged submission, by messengers from pope and cardinals, by panic-stricken churchmen. Beset on all sides the Primate wavered, and at last promised to swear obedience to the "customs of the kingdom."

Hilary was Bishop of Chichester during that historic period when Becket opposed Henry II. He attempted, like the rest of the bishops, to heal the breach; and Tennyson, in "Becket," adopting a phrase he used, makes him say to his Primate, "Hath not thine ambition set the Church this day between the hammer and the anvil ... fealty to the King, obedience to thyself?"

During the banquet an orchestra was stationed in that gallery and played the organ36 and various other instruments; and when they proposed a health the trumpets thundered in chorus; the vivats followed in orderly succession, the first to the health of His Majesty the King, then to the Primate,37 then to Her Majesty the Queen, then to the Gentry and the whole Republic.

"Good father prior," said the King, on whose timorous conscience this kind of language seldom failed to make an impression, "you surely argue over rigidly in this matter. It was during my last indisposition, while the Earl of Douglas held, as lieutenant general, the regal authority in Scotland, that the obstruction to the reception of the Primate unhappily arose.

Primate Malachy died at Clairvaulx, in the arms of Saint Bernard, in the year 1148, after having been fourteen years Archbishop of Armagh and ten years Bishop of Down and Conor. His episcopal life, therefore, embraced the history of that remarkable second quarter of the century, in which the religious reaction fought its first battles against the worst abuses.

But William Rufus, who had in the mean time succeeded to the throne of the Conqueror, did not at once appoint any one to the vacant See, since he had seized and used its revenues to the scandal of the nation and the indignation of the Church. For five years there was no primate in England and no Archbishop of Canterbury.

Then he became a little more explicit and said that he, Hugh's spiritual father and primate, had often been most bitterly provoked, and that really his forgiveness was most indispensible. The reply he got was more bracing than grateful. Archbishops rarely hear such naked verities.

He preached zealously against the long hair and curled locks which were then fashionable among the courtiers; he refused the ashes on Ash-Wednesday to those who were so accoutred; and his authority and eloquence had such influence, that the young men universally abandoned that ornament, and appeared in the cropped hair, which was recommended to them by the sermons of the primate.

They appealed to the primate to "throw over" the constitution altogether, and to start afresh on what they considered more churchlike principles. Such was the ecclesiastical situation for the next three years 1862 to 1865. The position was serious, and there was just the possibility of a schism. But it was hardly more than a possibility.