Note 348 — Chapter XVI · ON THE STATE OF THE CONSTITUTION IN THE REIGNS OF ANNE, GEORGE I., AND GEORGE II.

"It was first settled by a verbal agreement between Archbishop Sheldon and the Lord Chancellor Clarendon, and tacitly given into by the clergy in general as a great ease to them in taxations. The first public act of any kind relating to it was an act of parliament in 1665, by which the clergy were, in common with the laity, charged with the tax given in that act, and were discharged from the payment of the subsidies they had granted before in convocation; but in this act of parliament of 1665 there is an express saving of the right of the clergy to tax themselves in convocation, if they think fit; but that has been never done since, nor attempted, as I know of, and the clergy have been constantly from that time charged with laity in all public aids to the Crown by the House of Commons. In consequence of this (but from what period I cannot say), without the intervention of any particular law for it, except what I shall mention presently, the clergy (who are not lords of parliament) have assumed, and without any objection enjoyed, the privilege of voting in the election of members of the House of Commons, in virtue of their ecclesiastical freeholds. This has constantly been practised from the time it first began; there are two acts of parliament which suppose it to be now a right. The acts are 10 Anne, c. 23; 18 Geo. II. c. 18. Gibson, Bishop of London, said to me, that this (the taxation of the clergy out of convocation) was the greatest alteration in the constitution ever made without an express law." Speaker Onslow's note on Burnet (Oxf. edit. iv. 508).