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He granted to the clergy a charter, relinquishing forever that important prerogative for which his father and all his ancestors had zealously contended; yielding to them the free election on all vacancies; reserving only the power to issue a congé d'élire, and to subjoin a confirmation of the election; and declaring that, if either of these were withheld, the choice should nevertheless be deemed just and valid.
Johnson to Miss Hannah More, who had expressed a wonder that the poet who had written Paradise Lost should write such poor sonnets: "Milton, madam, was a genius that could cut a colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones." A gentleman having said that a congé d'elire has not, perhaps, the force of a command, but may be considered only as a strong recommendation.
Chron. The freedom of elections was secured to the clergy; the former charter of the king was confirmed, by which the necessity of a royal congé' d'élire and confirmation was superseded: all check upon appeals to Rome was removed, by the allowance granted every man to depart the kingdom at pleasure: and the fines to be imposed on the clergy for any offence were ordained to be proportional to their lay estates, not to their ecclesiastical benefices.
At any rate, it failed entirely of its purpose and was repealed after two years. In matters ecclesiastical, Parliament on its own account abolished the form of the conge d'elire, giving the appointments directly into the King's hands.
This was well enough, and eminently characteristic of his reverence for ancient forms of constitutional action; but what was more surprising was that, speaking from long and intimate experience of its practical working he maintained that the Congé d'Élire, even under the nullifying conditions now attached to it, was "a moral check upon the prerogatives of the Crown," which worked well rather than ill.
The statutes of Henry VIII. were the title- deeds of the English Church. Henry established the supremacy of the State by letters patent, praemunire, and conge d'elire. The old bluebeard Henry, who spent his whole time in murdering his wives, was a nursery toy. The real Henry put two wives to death by lawful means on definite and substantial charges of which death was the penalty.
King John tried to bribe the Church over to his side in the quarrel with the barons which preceded Magna Carta, by conceding that elections should be free that is, should take place in the chapter-house of the cathedral; but even he reserved the royal permission for the election to be held, and the conge d'elire in England and elsewhere was accompanied by the name of the individual on whom the choice of the electoral body should fall.
The number of letters in his name agrees with the asterisks given a few lines below. Ante, iii. 339, note 1, and post, p. 330. Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines congé d'élire as the king's permission royal to a dean and chapter in time of vacation, to choose a bishop. When Dr. Hampden was made Bishop of Hereford in 1848, the Dean resisted the appointment.
The usual course became that the King should send to the chapter a conge d'elire, that is, permission to elect, but accompanied by a recommendation of some particular person; and this nominee of the crown was so constantly chosen, that the custom of sending a conge d'elire has become only a form, which, however, is an assertion of the rights of the Church.
When some one said in his presence that a congé d'élire might be considered as only a strong recommendation: "Sir," replied Johnson, "it is such a recommendation as if I should throw you out of a two-pair of stairs window, and recommend you to fall soft." It is perhaps time to cease these extracts from Boswell's reports. The next two years were less fruitful.
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