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FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON. D. D. 
 
 BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO 
 
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 OCT 3 1932 
 
 CATHEDRAL SERVICE, 
 
 ITS GLORY —ITS DECLINE, 
 
 AND ITS DESIGNED EXTINCTION. 
 
 11 When the intentions of Founders can be ascertained, as they can, to a moral 
 certainty, in the present instance, they ought to be strictly adhered to." 
 
 " This Bill contravenes, infringes and sets aside those rules upon which courts 
 of equity have hitherto interpreted the law of bequests and endowments, and in- 
 volves a principle which I hold to be contrary to all those principles of law and 
 equity on which trusts have hitherto been administered." — Speech of the Bishop 
 of London on the Dissenters' Chapels Bill. 
 
 " I greatly disapprove all unnecessary changes in the mode of performing divine 
 service in the Church ; and I cannot consider any as necessary which are not re- 
 quired by the laiv of the Church. No minister has a right to introduce any other 
 change whatever." — Letter from the Bishop of Exeter, Times, Dec. 21,1844. 
 
 LONDON: 
 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL AND CO., 
 
 STATIONER?' HALL COURT. 
 
 1845. 
 
Let my due feet never fail 
 To walk the studious cloister's pale, 
 And love the high embowed roof, 
 With antique pillars massy proof, 
 And storied windows richly dight, 
 Casting a dim religious light. 
 There let the pealing organ blow 
 To the full-voiced Choir below, 
 In Service high or Anthem clear, 
 As may with sweetness through mine ear 
 Dissolve me into extasies, 
 And bring all Heaven before mine eyes. 
 
 II Penseroso. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The following pages are reprinted from The British and 
 Foreign Review* by permission of the Proprietor, at the 
 request of many persons who are interested in the fate of 
 English Cathedral Music, and in the hope that they may thus 
 further contribute to excite attention to this important subject. 
 It is necessary to premise that they have no reference to 
 the disputes which unhappily disturb the peace of the Church, 
 and are neither designed nor calculated to further the attempts 
 of any party at present within its pale. Here will be found 
 no advocacy of rites and ceremonies which many of its excel- 
 lent and pious members view with suspicion and alarm, — no 
 endeavour to accomplish the revival of obsolete customs or 
 observances, no advice to " Cathedralize the service of the 
 Parish Church/ 5 to Gregorianize the Protestant Cathedral 
 chant, or insinuate the music of the Mass into our Choirs. 
 Here is no attempt to defend, no wish to suggest, innovation 
 of any kind. The Church of England here recognized is " that 
 
 * Numbers XXXIII. and XXXV. — The publications standing at the head of the 
 two articles which are here reprinted are the following : — 
 
 1. The Choral Service of the United Church of England and Ireland. By the 
 
 Rev. John Jebb, A.M., Rector of Peterstow, Herefordshire, late Prebendary 
 of Limerick. London : J. \V. Parker. 1841. 
 
 2. The Music of the Church, considered in its various branches, Congrega- 
 
 tional and Choral. By the Rev. J. A. Latrobe, M.A., Curate of St. Peter's, 
 Hereford. London : Seeley and Sons. 1831. 
 
 3. An Apology for Cathedral Service. London : John Bohn. 1839. 
 
 4. On the Choral Service of the Anglo-Catholic Church. London : G. Bell. 
 
 1844. 
 
 5. First, Second, Third and Fourth Reports from His Majesty's Commissioners 
 
 appointed to consider the state of the Established Church. 1835, 1836. 
 
 6. An Act to carry into effect, with certain modifications, the Fourth Report of 
 
 the Commissioners of Ecclesiastical Duties and Revenues. August 11, 1840. 
 
IV 
 
 " branch of the universal Church which God's own right hand 
 " hath planted, and which hath been watered with the especial 
 " dew of his blessing in this favoured kingdom," — " a body fitly 
 "joined together, and compacted by that which every joint 
 " supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure 
 " of every part," — " the Church of England, as distinguished 
 " from all Papal or Puritan innovations/ 5 
 
 The principles and practices herein recommended have re- 
 ceived the sanction and advocacy of the brightest ornaments 
 of the Church, in every period and through every state of 
 its existence, in prosperity and in peril, through evil report 
 and good report. The opinions here advocated are recorded 
 in the works and the acts of Parker, Jewel, Hooker, Hall, 
 Beveridge, Hacket, Lavington, Comber, Aldrich, Tillotson, 
 Sherlock, Home and Horsley. The weight of authority, in 
 fact, is alLon one side. It is a subject on which, after the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth, there may be said to have been no 
 controversy in the Church. The work of spoliation has been 
 progressive, but undefended : no Capitular body has publicly 
 justified its acts ; none has ventured even to apologize for 
 sweeping, habitual, and increased violations of those Statutes 
 which its individual members had severally and solemnly 
 sworn to obey and to administer. None have told us by what 
 authority they have done these things ; nor why, forget- 
 ting their character of administrators of the law, they have 
 usurped the functions and the power of law-makers. 
 
 The appeal is here made to those Statutes, to history and 
 to authority. These tell us what Cathedral Music was de- 
 signed to be, and what it was, — the evidence of our senses will 
 tell us what it is, — the Ecclesiastical Commissioners' Reports, 
 and above all their Bill, clearly indicate its future fate. 
 
 London, January 20, 1845. 
 
ENGLISH CATHEDRAL MUSIC. 
 
 It is time that the public attention be drawn to the subject 
 of English Cathedral Music, which at present seems destined 
 to be quietly thrust aside as a thing of nought, and, amidst 
 all the din with which the Church of England now resounds, 
 to be suffered to fade, and droop and die. If this is to be 
 its fate, let it be known, proclaimed and sanctioned, — let 
 us witness its decline and fall with our eyes open, with a 
 full knowledge of its destined doom, and with a clear antici- 
 pation of its approaching extinction. But we believe that 
 such is not the expectation, still less the wish, of the people 
 of England : we believe that so noble a bequest they will 
 not willingly let die, and that they only require to be in- 
 formed of its peril in order to bestir themselves in its defence. 
 They have the richest collection of devotional music in the 
 world ; they have the amplest endowments for its efficient 
 performance ; while their Cathedrals, the depositories of this 
 
store of genius and learning, the inheritors of all these muni- 
 ficent bequests, exhibit at this moment too generally the most 
 helpless decrepitude or the lowest vulgarity. Could the pre- 
 sent feebleness of our Cathedral choirs be placed in plain and 
 palpable contrast with their former strength, — could we on one 
 day see all the stalls in St. Paul's Cathedral filled with well- 
 trained singers, and hear " the service high and anthem clear " 
 of past ages, and on the following day witness the " counterfeit 
 presentment" of the present time, — the contrast would be too 
 humiliating for quiet endurance : the public voice would speak 
 in a tone too loud and too indignant to be disregarded. But 
 the work of destruction has been slow, gradual and insidious ; 
 it has gone on from age to age, from generation to generation; 
 it has proceeded step by step, until at length it approaches 
 consummation. 
 
 Before that period arrives, we desire to invite the attention 
 of our countrymen to the subject, and to tell them that it is 
 high time to awake out of sleep. Numerous as are the theo- 
 logical periodicals of the present day, fierce as are the con- 
 flicts of those who profess to range themselves under the 
 banners of the same Church, on the subject which now en- 
 gages our consideration they are dumb. It may be from in- 
 difference, it may be from ignorance, it may be from conscious 
 guilt : — they may care nothing about it, or they may be par- 
 ticipes criminis, — no matter, they know what is going on and 
 are silent. It is no party affair : Whigs or Tories have no- 
 thing to gain or to lose : there is no political game to fight, 
 or prize to win, and they are accordingly quiet. It is a cu- 
 rious fact that a single newspaper only has noticed and de- 
 nounced the deadly blow aimed by a recent act of parlia- 
 ment against Cathedral music. The Bishop of London was its 
 author, — the Tory papers were mute ; Lord John Russell 
 acquiesced in it, — the Whig journals were dumb. The sub- 
 ject has excited some attention, but only from individuals ; no 
 recognized organ of any party, in Church or in State, has dared 
 to touch it. The ( Quarterly Review' has had some articles on 
 the subject of music as connected with the Church, not un- 
 worthy its reputation ; but it has steered, with a degree of 
 adroitness little understood by its general readers, clear of 
 
the point to which we mean to direct our course. The Ca- 
 thedral Music of England, — what was it, — what is it, — what 
 will it be ? 
 
 To these questions perhaps few persons could give a satis- 
 factory reply, either historically or experimentally, and fewer 
 still prophetically. In the first place, Cathedral music is 
 known to the multitude historically only through the writings 
 of Burney and Hawkins, — the former very scantily informed 
 on the subject, the latter consulted like a dictionary, but 
 never read. Practically, Cathedral music is only known to 
 the inhabitants of cities, not towns ; Ely, with its nine hun- 
 dred inhabitants, knows more of it than Manchester with its 
 population of three hundred thousand. Hence, when a bill 
 for virtually abolishing the Cathedral service is brought 
 into the House of Commons, the members for Manchester, 
 Leeds, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Bradford, and so on, 
 beholding their Whig leader as its champion, conclude it to be 
 a salutary measure of reform, and give it their tacit support. 
 That leader himself, as able to understand its merits and its re- 
 sults as " to command the Channel fleet or rebuild St. Paul's/' 
 becomes the mere tool of a crafty priest ; and, in order to vin- 
 dicate his claim to know everything better than anybody else, 
 takes this bill under his patronage. Its effect is only visible 
 in part ; the ruins of our Cathedral music remain to us ; we 
 can imagine their fair and rich details from the scanty out- 
 line that survives; but before another generation shall aiise 
 even this will be obliterated, and not a vestige will appear of 
 the genius which reared the majestic and unrivalled fabric. 
 It may be too late to speak to any purpose to drowsy or in- 
 dolent legislators, but it is nevertheless right to disclose to the 
 English public the extent and amount of their loss. 
 
 Cathedral music has never wanted individual advocates, 
 nor is it now destitute of them, but they are few. One section 
 of the Clergy dislikes the Cathedral service, — another is deeply 
 implicated in the continuance of existing abuses, — another 
 hopes to be, (for deaneries and prebendal stalls would be less 
 desirable u prizes " if the choirs had their due), — nearly all are 
 ignorant of its history, character and requirements. Singing 
 is a thing to be turned over to mechanics, the unfit associates 
 for an aristocratic clergy. This is the doctrine of the present 
 
 B 2 
 
day ; no wonder that the Choral (or Cathedral) service of our 
 Church finds few able or zealous champions ! 
 
 The three first works which stand at the head of this article 
 are perhaps the best modern publications of their kind. The 
 second is the least valuable, and has excited little attention ; not 
 so much indeed as it deserves, but it deals too much in de- 
 clamation and too little with fact. We admit the difficulty of 
 the position of a clergyman who, residing in a Cathedral town, 
 volunteers a defence of Cathedral music ; a full revelation of 
 its history would be regarded by his capitular neighbours as 
 an attack on their possessions; his position therefore leads 
 him to generalize, to suppress, to soften. 
 
 The l Apology for the Cathedral Service 5 is written by a 
 man of whose class and character we did not think there was 
 a living example. He has the feelings, the spirit, almost the 
 language, of George Herbert, " who made, twice a week, a 
 " thankful pilgrimage from Bemerton to Salisbury for the sake 
 " of enjoying the Cathedral service, which when well and reve- 
 " rently performed," adds the author of the ' Apology/ " is one 
 " of the purest feasts to be enjoyed on earth. ... He enters 
 " upon these musings with no hostile feelings towards any part 
 " of the universal Church, but surely with especial love for that 
 " branch of it which God's own right hand hath planted, and 
 " which hath been watered with the dew of his blessing in this 
 " most favoured kingdom." The author of this unpretending 
 volume must surely dwell under the shadow of a Cathedral, — 
 perhaps the quiet inmate of some library, for his knowledge 
 of books is large and general. There is such a holy calm, 
 such unaffected piety, such Christian zeal pervading the 
 work, that no dignitary of the Church but might envy the 
 spirit that could prompt and the taste that could utter lan- 
 guage so pure and so eloquent. This work, like that of Mr. 
 Latrobe, has excited little attention : the clamorous pulpiteers 
 and conflicting partisans in the Church have no sympathy 
 with such a writer, and we never remember to have seen the 
 c Apology 5 mentioned or quoted, except by Mr. Jebb and the 
 author of the e Choral Service.' 
 
 The most recent, the largest and the best work, as a collec- 
 tion of facts, is that of the Rev. John Jebb. It is written in 
 a bold uncompromising spirit, with a competent knowledge 
 
of the subject, musically and historically. This is its tone at 
 the very outset: — 
 
 " In this inquiry no indulgence whatever can be shown to the corrupt 
 administrations, the grovelling notions, the irreverent innovations, which 
 mere modern custom and the tyranny of private caprice have established in 
 too many of our Collegiate foundations. The standard now appealed to is 
 the authority of the Church, clearly expressed by authoritative documents 
 and by the consistent practice of ancient times. In accordance with these 
 innovations, the maxim is virtually laid down, that in proportion as the 
 nation becomes more populous and prosperous, in the same proportion 
 those sacred bands, intended to minister a more solemn worship in the 
 chief temples of God, are to be diminished ; and that, instead of compelling 
 a more full and frequent attendance of his ministering servants, for which 
 the very stones of Canterbury, York and Lincoln are calling out, there is 
 hereafter to be established a more scanty and niggardly Service than in 
 the most impoverished part of Christendom since the foundation of the 
 Church. Instead of reverting to the noble theory of divine worship laid 
 down by the Church of England [and, it may be added, its former prac- 
 tice], advantage is taken of the degraded standard to which the notions of 
 her Cathedral Service had been reduced during an age of the Church above 
 all others the most grovelling and unspiritual. Hence the cold-hearted 
 calculations at how little expense God could be served ; hence the worse 
 than Procrustean measure which reduced the foundation of her greatest 
 Minsters to the level of her smallest and least conspicuous Colleges ; hence 
 the arithmetical canons, which, superseding time-honoured Statutes, sup- 
 pressing holy and honourable offices, adopt the sordid notions of the count- 
 ing-house, and that doctrine of ' more or less, which is treason against 
 property.' " 
 
 Mr. Jebb's book must command attention. The attacks of 
 a newspaper, however just, are transient: they are read once, 
 and never more ; but a record of facts cannot be smothered 
 or passed over. One of these is capable of daily verification 
 in the metropolis, where the melancholy illustration of " a 
 scanty and niggardly service " may be supplied to any passer- 
 by in the choir of St. Paul's. What Cathedral music is, may 
 be easily ascertained : — what it was, and what it ought to be, 
 must be known by a different process. 
 
 The work which stands last at the head of this article is 
 the production of a Temple Bencher, and is written with a 
 commendable zeal for the preservation of the Cathedral Ser- 
 vice, though not always " according to knowledge." It is, 
 in fact, little more than a compilation from Mr. Jebb's larger 
 
work, interspersed with frequent passages, therein'previously 
 quoted, from Bedford's e Temple Musick ' and the < Apology 
 for the Cathedral Service ; ' and it is only when quoting 
 from these books that its facts or opinions can be safely 
 adopted. The writer is treating of a subject on which his 
 information is very limited, and venturing to walk alone he 
 stumbles : thus he classes Blow, Purcell and Clark among 
 the composers of the time before the Restoration : Dr. Chris- 
 topher Tye is called " Charles Tye," and " Non nobis, Do- 
 mine/' is said to be " universally admitted to be Bird^s 
 [Byrd's] composition." Errors like these, occurring in con- 
 secutive pages, evince a superficial acquaintance with the 
 subject under discussion. The imperfection of the Service 
 as now performed is feelingly deplored, but the cause is left 
 unnoticed, or but obscurely hinted at. 
 
 Vain regrets and vague lamentations will avail nothing to- 
 wards a cure of the existing evil : the abuse must be laid bare, 
 the public must know why and how it comes to pass that 
 " the daily service is calculated to excite painful reflection," 
 and must learn the reason why the richest ecclesiastical 
 establishments in Christendom are the worst served by that 
 divine art, which was intended, and is peculiarly adapted, to 
 minister to devotion in our national temples. To this duty 
 we shall now address ourselves. 
 
 Nine of the English Cathedrals retain their original consti- 
 tution, as it existed before the Reformation; thirteen were 
 remodelled in the time of Henry VITI. With their other 
 officers we have, in connexion with our present subject, only 
 an incidental concern ; it is merely as far as their conduct 
 has influenced the state of Cathedral choirs that it will claim 
 our notice. The officers on whom the musical duties of the 
 Church devolve are the Minor-canons or Priest-vicars, the Lay- 
 clerks or Lay-vicars, and the (boy) Choristers. The office of 
 Organist in many Cathedrals is not recognized as a separate 
 and distinct appointment, it being assumed that all the cleri- 
 cal members of the choir are competent to fill it, and that 
 they will do so in turn. The proportions as well as the 
 numbers of the choirs are prescribed by the statutes of each 
 Cathedral, and were regulated by the original or later endow- 
 
ments or bequests for their maintenance. The several duties 
 of these officers, as well as their qualifications, are all 
 fined with clearness and precision. In many Cathedrals the 
 number of Minor-canons was twelve, of Lay-clerks twelve, and 
 of Singing- boys ten, forming a choir of thirty-four voices. 
 In some the number was larger, in others smaller. 
 
 The Statutes of the Cathedrals, remodelled by Henry VIII., 
 are nearly the same in all the particulars to which our inquiry 
 now extends. The following extract from " the Statutes and 
 " Orders for the better rule and government of the Cathedral 
 " Church of Gloucester, prescribed by command of King 
 " Henry VIII., in the thirty-sixth year of his reign " will ex- 
 plain the duties of the several members of its choir. We 
 preface the extract with a part of the Dean's oath : — 
 
 " J swear upon the Holy Evangelists that I will well and truly govern this 
 Church according to the Statutes and Ordinances of the same." 
 
 " We ordain and appoint that those six priests, whom we call Minor 
 Canons, as also the six Laick Clerks, and also the Deacon and Sub -Deacon, 
 all of whom we have constituted daily to celebrate the praise of God in 
 our Church, be, as much as may be, learned, of a good name and honest 
 conversation, and lastly that they be men of judgement in singing, which 
 shall be approved of those who well understand the art of music in the 
 same Church." 
 
 " We will and ordain that the residence of the Minor Canons and all 
 other clerks doing service in our Church, be perpetual : for it shall be lawful 
 to no one to be absent from our Church a whole day, without especial leave 
 from the Dean." 
 
 The above extract is from the translated copy of the Statutes 
 in Sir Robert Atkyns's ' Glostershire/ The corresponding 
 statute is from those of Rochester Cathedral. 
 
 " Cap. XIX. Ordinamus ut tam illi sex Sacerdotes, quos Minores 
 Canonicos vocamus, quam totidem clerici laici, ad hoc Diaconus et Sub- 
 diaconus qui Evangelium et Epistolam legent (quos omnes ad Dei laudes in 
 ecclesise nostro templo, assidue decantandas constituimus) sint, quantum 
 fieri potest, eruditi, fama? bonae, conversationis et honestce : denique can- 
 tandi periti, id.constare volumus judicio eorum qui in eadem ecclesia artem 
 musicam probe callent." 
 
 Extracts similar in import, if not in words, might be sup- 
 plied from the Statutes of other Cathedrals, but these will suf- 
 fice to establish the fact that the number of Minor-canons (as 
 of the other officers of the Cathedral) was fixed and prescribed ; 
 
that one of the qualifications for this office was skill in sing- 
 ing, and that their attendance on this duty was to be daily. 
 It is also clear that the Dean of every Cathedral swears " to 
 govern it according to its Statutes" 
 
 In all Cathedrals the Precentor held an important office, 
 which is thus defined in the Gloucester Statutes : — 
 
 "We decree and ordain that out of the Minor Canons, one elder and more 
 eminent than the rest be chosen Precentor, whose office it shall be skilfully 
 to direct the singing-men in the Church, and as a guide to lead them by 
 previous teaching, that their singing be not discordant. Him the rest shall 
 obey." 
 
 Mr. Jebb says : — 
 
 " To the Precentor the superintendence of the principal part of the Church 
 Service belonged. He examined and superintended the chanters, fixed the 
 services and anthems for the week, and was responsible for the appoint- 
 ment of the choir-boys. On the greater feasts he intoned or commenced 
 the Church hymns. Thus that most important and religious office of re- 
 gulating the Church music was regarded, as it ought to be, worthy the 
 personal superintendence of one of the chief dignitaries, who himself took 
 part in its performance," — Page 39- 
 
 The Prebendaries of our Cathedrals (who have long consti- 
 tuted themselves mere lookers-on) were also liable to be 
 called upon, not only to officiate at the altar, but to chant 
 the prayers, when required by the Precentor, or to read the 
 lessons, by the Chancellor *. In short a certain, and not a 
 very low degree of musical proficiency was either expressly 
 demanded of, or understood to be possessed by, every member 
 of a Cathedral. 
 
 The offices thus created, renewed or perpetuated, were also 
 distinctly and specially endowed. The members of the Choir 
 had houses and lands of their own, set apart for their espe- 
 cial and perpetual use and enjoyment: " In all the Cathedrals 
 (i of the old foundation, the inferior clergy and sometimes the 
 " lay members form corporate bodies, distinct from the Chap- 
 " ter, as far as their corporate property is concerned, but 
 
 * " Omnes Canonici ad Missarum niuuera obligentur lnscriptus aliquis Ca- 
 
 nonicus admonitusve, vel ad lectionem a Cancellario, vel ad cantum a Precentore, 
 prompte se exhibeat .... quod quidem fit semper in Festis majoribus, ut majores 
 canonici, etiam ex non residentibus, chorum regant, primas, antiphonas, psalmos, 
 hymnos incipiant, et ministranti ad summum altare assistant." — Appendix to Dug- 
 dale s St. Paul's. 
 
9 
 
 " in subjection to them, as regards the service of the 
 " Church*." 
 
 This property, being houses and lands, which sufficed for 
 the maintenance of the choirs at the time when their numbers 
 were fixed, has since increased tenfold in value, and a corre- 
 sponding increase both in the stipends and the numbers of 
 the choirs might have been anticipated as a matter of course. 
 We shall see how far either has been accomplished. 
 
 The regulations respecting the choir-boys, which are sub- 
 stantially the same in every Cathedral, we extract from the 
 Durham Statutes : — 
 
 " We decree and ordain that in the said church there be ten choristers, 
 boys of tender age, with good voices and musical capacity, who shall serve, 
 minister and sing in the choir. For the instruction of these boys, and to 
 guide them in their moral conduct, no less than to teach them the art of 
 singing (exclusive of the ten clerks before mentioned), one shall be chosen, 
 of good life and fame, skilled in singing and organ-playing, who shall care- 
 fully occupy himself in teaching the boys, chanting the service and playing 
 on the organ." 
 
 As it was evidently the design of those who framed these 
 Statutes, as well as of the founders and benefactors of our 
 Cathedrals, to train up within their own precincts a succession 
 of officers of various degrees to minister therein, a school 
 was connected with each such church, in which the classical 
 instruction of the choir-boys was the subject of especial care. 
 In some of these endowments provision was made for carry- 
 ing on the education of the most deserving and promising 
 boys, after the age at which, as boys, their official connection 
 with the church had necessarily terminated. Thus in the Sta- 
 tutes of Durham (cap. xxviii.) this enactment occurs: — 
 
 "We require that the boys of this our school be maintained at the ex- 
 pense of our Church till they shall have attained a competent knowledge of 
 the Latin tongue, for which purpose four years shall be allowed, or, by 
 permission of the Dean, five years. We also decree that no one be ad- 
 mitted to a poor scholarship of this Church who shall be more than fifteen 
 years of age. ' The choristers nevertheless of the said Church, though ex- 
 ceeding fifteen years of age, we allow to be admitted as scholars. And if 
 they are duly qualified, and have made good proficiency in music, and have 
 faithfully served in the choir, we ordain that they shall be chosen /// pre- 
 ference to others." 
 
 * Jebb, p. 96. 
 
10 
 
 To each of these schools one or two masters were appointed, 
 whose requirements are " experience, skill in the Latin and 
 Greek tongues, virtuous life and orthodox faith." 
 
 It was the principle and intent of these several ordinances 
 to elevate the character of every official member of the Church ; 
 to give to its boys a classical education, in order to enable 
 them, as men, to assume a becoming station in the holy bro- 
 therhood to w r hich they belonged, and to stimulate their young 
 industry by present advantages and prospective rewards*. 
 
 In such a form and spirit were the Statutes which regulate 
 our Cathedral choirs drawn up, with a clear and manifest de- 
 sign (to borrow an expression from one of them) "that no 
 drones be suffered to devour the honey of the bees," and yet, 
 it should seem, with some misgiving as to their future admi- 
 nistration. " No work," says King Henry, u is so piously 
 " undertaken, so carefully carried forward, so happily com- 
 (i pleted, which may not be undermined by negligence and 
 w want of care. No statutes are made so strict or bound by 
 " obligations so sacred, but that in process of time they may 
 " sink into oblivion, if not watched over with the constant 
 " vigilance of piety and zeal/' How far this has come to pass 
 will appear hereafter. 
 
 The " Injunctions " of Edward VI. rather recognized, than 
 specifically legislated concerning, Church music. The term 
 " Mass " was retained as descriptive of a portion of the ser- 
 vice, and the notices of singing are slight and incidental. In 
 many passages of the " Injunctions" of Elizabeth the words 
 of the former Injunctions remain, but the term " Mass " oc- 
 curs no longer, and her commands on the subject of Church 
 music are clear, definite and express. Fierce and obstinate, 
 there is no doubt, was the conflict in her reign on the sub- 
 ject of Cathedral worship : the kingdom was broken up into 
 three religious parties ; and Papists, Protestant Episcopalians 
 and Puritans engaged in ceaseless and bitter strife. The state 
 
 * " Every care should be taken to make the Lay- vicars more like what they were 
 originally termed, clergy of the second form, men who ought to share with the 
 clergy the respect of the people. Why should not the singing-men of Christ Church, 
 for instance, be as well educated and of as great esteem in the college as the lay 
 students 1 Their offices are more sacred." — Jebb, p. 1 16. 
 
1 1 
 
 of the Church of England at this time is thus described by 
 Heylyn : — 
 
 " There was not a sufficient number of learned men to supply the cures 
 which filled the Church with an ignorant and illiterate clergy. Many wen 
 raised to preferments, who, having spent the time of their exile in the last 
 reign in such churches as followed the Genevan form of worship, returned 
 so disaffected to the rites and ceremonies which they found by law esta- 
 blished here, that they broke out into sad disorders. The Queen's professor 
 at Oxford was among these Non-conformists. Cartwright, the Lady Mar- 
 garet's professor at Cambridge, was an inextinguishable firebrand, and 
 Whittington, though dean of Durham, was chief leader of the Frankfort 
 schismatics." 
 
 Of Cart wright's spirit and claim to the title which Heylyn 
 gave him, his own words may be quoted as the best proof: — 
 
 " It [the Cathedral service] hath no edification, according to the rule of 
 the Apostle, but only confusion. They toss the Psalms to and fro like 
 tennis-balls. As for organs and curious singing, though they be proper 
 for Popish dens (by which I mean Cathedral churches), yet some others 
 must have them also. The Queen's chapel, which should be a spectacle 
 of Christian reformation, is rather a pattern of all kinds of superstition." 
 
 While such was the language of the Margaret Professor of 
 Divinity, it was not to be expected that those w ithout the pale 
 of the Church would adopt a milder form of attack. In a 
 pamphlet published in 1586, and widely circulated, entitled 
 "A Request of all true Christians to the Houses of Parlia- 
 ment," it is prayed, among other petitions offered up in a like 
 spirit, " that all Cathedral churches be put down, where the 
 u service of God is grievously abused by piping upon organs, 
 u singing, and trowling of psalms from side to side, with the 
 " squeaking of chanting choristers disguised (like all the rest) 
 " in white surplices ; some in corner caps and silly copes, 
 " imitating the manner and fashion of Antichrist, the Pope, 
 " that man of sin, with all his other rabble of miscreants and 
 " shavelings." 
 
 Attacked on one side by the Puritans, — assailed by a por- 
 tion of the episcopal Church itself, — detested and conspired 
 against by the Papists, — a sovereign less firm in purpose and 
 decided in action might have been driven to surrender the 
 pomp and splendour of the Cathedral service, in order to win 
 the allegiance of a large portion of her Protestant subjects. 
 
12 
 
 To her dauntless and arbitrary character, her love of splen- 
 dour, and the delight which she took in music, we mainly 
 owe its preservation. The following press-warrant from the 
 hand of Elizabeth is a most significant commentary on her 
 character : the original is in the Chapter-house at Windsor : — 
 
 " Eliz : R : Whereas our Castle of Windsor hath of old been well fur- 
 nished with singing men and children, — We, willing it should not be of less 
 reputation in our days, but rather augmented and increased, declare that 
 no singing men or boys shall be taken out of the said Chapel by virtue of 
 any commission, not even for our household chapel. And we give power 
 to the bearer of this to take any singing men or boys from any chapel, our 
 own household and St. Paul's only excepted. 
 
 " Given at Westminster, the 8th day of March, in the second year of 
 our reign. 
 
 " Elizabeth R." 
 
 There is also extant a document, similar in spirit and for 
 the same purpose, addressed to "all and singular Deans, 
 « Provosts, Masters, all ecclesiastical persons and ministers, 
 " and all our loving subjects/' in which she says, — 
 
 " By the tenor of these presents, we will and require you that ye permit 
 our servant Thomas Gyles, and his deputy, to take up in any Cathedral or 
 Collegiate Church, and in every other place or places of this our realm, such 
 child or children as he or they shall find and like of : and the same child 
 or children, by virtue hereof, for the use and service aforesaid, to bring 
 away, without any let, contradiction, stay or interruptions to the contrary." 
 
 Tusser, the author of ' Five hundred points of Husbandrie/ 
 was, as he tells us, one of the imprest boys : — 
 
 "Thence*, for my voice, I must (no choice) 
 Away of force, like posting horse, 
 For sundry men had placards then 
 
 Such child to take : 
 The better breast, the lesser rest, 
 To serve the Queen, now there, now here : 
 For time so spent I may repent, 
 
 And sorrow make. 
 
 " But mark the chance, myself to 'vance, 
 By friendship's lot to Paul's I got ; 
 So found I grace a certain space 
 Still to remain. 
 
 * From Wallingford. 
 
13 
 
 With Redford* there, the like no when 
 For cunning such, and virtue much, 
 By whom some part of Music's art 
 So did I gain. 
 
 " From Paul's I went, to Eton sent, 
 To learn straitways the Latin phrase," etc. etc. 
 
 " The Queen," says Burnet, " had been bred up from her 
 " infancy with an abhorrence of Papacy and a love for the Re- 
 " formation : but yet, as her first impressions in her father's 
 " reign were in favour of such old rites as he had still retained, 
 " so, in her own nature, she loved state and magnificence in 
 " religion as well as in everything else. She thought that 
 " in her brother's reign it had been stript too much of exter- 
 " nal ornament and pomp." This feeling spoke plainly, em- 
 phatically and decisively in the following Injunction : — 
 
 " For the encouragement and the continuance of the use of singing in 
 the Church of England, it is ordained that, — Whereas, in divers Cathedral 
 and Collegiate Churches, there have been heretofore livings appointed for 
 the maintenance of men and children for singing in the Church, by means 
 of which the laudable exercise of musick hath been had in estimation and 
 preserved in knowledge — 
 
 " The Queen's majesty, neither meaning in any wise the decay of any 
 endowment that might tend to the use and continuance of the said science, 
 willeth and commandeth that no alteration be made in the disposition of 
 such assignments as have been heretofore appointed to the use of singing 
 or music in the Church, but that all such do remain : that there be a modest 
 and distinct song, so used in all parts of the common prayers of the Church 
 as that the same may be plainly understood. And yet, nevertheless, for 
 the comforting of such as take delight in musick, it be permitted that, 
 either at morning or evening prayer, there be such a hymn or such like 
 song to the praise of Almighty God, in the best melody and musick that 
 may be devised." 
 
 This Injunction is quoted by Heylyn with the following 
 comment : — 
 
 "Thus, as plain song was retained in parish churches, so in the Queen's 
 own chapel, in the quire of all Cathedrals and some Colleges, the service 
 was sung in a more melodious manner, commonly with organs. Nor is it 
 to be wondered at that such was the case, considering how the musical 
 service was admired and cherished by the Queen herself : for the Liturgy 
 
 * John Redford, Organist and Almoner of St. Paul's. 
 
11 
 
 was officiated every day, .both morning and evening, in the Chapel, with 
 the most excellent voices of men and children that could be got in all the 
 kingdom, accompanied by the organ." 
 
 This command of Elizabeth, although it failed to content 
 or silence the clamourers against the Cathedral service, gave 
 it perpetuity of form, and was designed to impart to it per- 
 manent vigour and efficiency. The revenues heretofore appro- 
 priated to the support of the Choirs were preserved to them 
 without diminution of any kind. 
 
 It remained now to mould anew the musical part of the 
 Cathedral service. This was an arduous undertaking: the 
 labours of the Protestant musician would be measured against 
 those not only of his English predecessors, but of his great 
 Italian and Flemish contemporaries, whose compositions were 
 known and sung throughout the kingdom. Happily the 
 genius and talent necessary for the work were at hand, and 
 Tallis produced his sublime Service. Its structure of course 
 is antiphonal, which in fact is the essential attribute and cha- 
 racteristic of the Cathedral service. Two full and complete 
 choirs, technically called u Decani " and " Cantoris/' respon- 
 sive or combined, continued to occupy the north and south 
 sides of the church, — an arrangement sanctioned by anti- 
 quity, and admirably fitted for the most perfect musical effect. 
 The same mental power and intellectual energy, which were 
 so abundantly displayed in a variety of forms during this 
 reign, appeared conspicuously in its music. The splendid and 
 ample choir of the Chapel Royal was the school in which the 
 musical talent of the age was chiefly nurtured *. To Tallis 
 and Tye, the English fathers of the art, were speedily and 
 successively added Byrd, Farrant, Morley, Bull, Weelkes, 
 Kirby, Farmer, Dowland, Bateson, Gibbons : of whom some 
 remained in London, while Bull at Hereford, Byrd at Lin- 
 coln, Bevin at Bristol, Weelkes at Winchester (and afterwards 
 at Chichester), Bateson at Chester, and Gibbons at Canter- 
 bury, enriched the land from north to south and from east 
 
 * The choir of the Chapel Royal at this time consisted of twenty-four chaplains, 
 thirty-two lay clerks and twelve boys, all of whom were required to be " well 
 skilled in music, clear voiced," and the men to be " sufficient in organ-playing." — 
 liar/. MSS., No. 293. 
 
15 
 
 to west with the products of their genius and industry. The 
 race of voiceless and incompetent priests was not then known ; 
 everywhere the choirs were filled with singers : Deans had 
 not tasted the sweets of Choir plunder, nor Chapters learned 
 to disregard the obligation of an oath. This is matter of hi- 
 story, but we have the further evidence of the fact in the 
 compositions written for choirs as they then were. There was 
 every inducement for such men as these to write ;— -leisure, 
 for they had a competent maintenance, — inclination, for they 
 loved their art, — ability, for they had mastered it, — and, above 
 all, the constant and able co-operation of their associates, cle- 
 rical and lay. They were a holy brotherhood, dwelling to- 
 gether, daily associated in the same honourable and sacred 
 duty, and emulous in its performance. We may imagine the 
 delight and pride, for example, with which the then noble 
 choir of Canterbury joined, for the first time, in the perform- 
 ance of their organist's sublime eight-part anthem " O clap 
 your hands," and the thanks and praises which Gibbons would 
 receive as he descended from the loft. And are such labours 
 of genius and erudition, such a rich and noble inheritance, to 
 be banished for ever from their birthplace and home, in order 
 to gratify a love of pelf and patronage ? We devoutly hope 
 not : we yet look forward to a pilgrimage to Canterbury to 
 hail the resuscitation of Orlando Gibbons. 
 
 But let us proceed w r ith our history. The attack on Choir 
 property seems to have been attempted early, even in the 
 reign of Elizabeth, as appears by the following letter from 
 Lord Burleigh, which is sufficiently indicative of her watchful 
 care of the interests of the Cathedral choirs, and her determi- 
 nation to secure to them the full and undisturbed possession 
 of their endowments. 
 
 " To ray very lovinge frendes, Mr. Attomie Generall and Mr. Solicitor, 
 or either of them. 
 
 " After my verie hartie commendations, — For that hir Majestie is pleased 
 to confirm unto the Vicars Choral of the Churche of Hereford the graunt of 
 their landes, which hath been sought by divers greedie persons to have 
 been gotten from them : therefore I praie you, as your leisures maie better 
 serve you, to peruse their former grauntes, and to drawe a newe Book of 
 confirmation, to passe from hir Majestie, according to hir Majestie's good 
 meaning, for their quietnes hereafter. And so I verie hartilic bid you fare- 
 well. From Westminster, this second of September, 1586. 
 
 " Your verie lovinge frend, " W. Burghley." 
 
 c 
 
16 
 
 The accession of the Stuart family operated most inju- 
 riously upon the interests of music generally in England. 
 The Tudors, themselves all musically educated by the best 
 English masters, fostered and patronized the musical talent 
 of their subjects : with what effect has been seen. James did 
 worse than nothing for Cathedral music. Busied in trimming 
 the balance between Calvinism and Arminianism, and bewil- 
 dered in the mazes of metaphysical subtlety, he left the choirs 
 to their fate ; who were soon made to feel how inefficient 
 are mere legal sanctions and provisions, when they have to 
 protect the weak against the strong. Their condition is re- 
 corded in a curious manuscript preserved in the British 
 Museum, to which no author's name is attached ; but it is a 
 memorial, which evidently either was, or was intended to be, 
 presented to those in power, on the injustice which had been 
 committed towards the Cathedral choirs, its immediate conse- 
 quences, and its future more disastrous effects on the Cathe- 
 dral service. The following extracts are from the chapter 
 headed, "The occasion of the decay of Music in Cathedral 
 and College Churches :" — 
 
 "The use of music in Cathedral churches among some divines is con- 
 ceived to be needless, and few of those prebends and canons which now 
 are, do think it other than only a tolerable convenient ornament for a 
 Cathedral church to have, to the end that themselves may have those 
 places which are left by the turning out of the singing-men from the Quire. 
 And whereas in times of popery divers benefactions have been given to 
 singing-men, and which have been confirmed by new grants by the late 
 Queen with intent that the same should be employed as before, these same 
 are now swallowed up by deans and canons. 
 
 '< Another cause of the great decay of music in the Church (in the com- 
 mendable sort it hath been) is the lessening of the number of singers. 
 Where there have been twenty, thirty or forty singers, there is now but half 
 or three parts so many as the foundation requireth, and either two men's 
 stipends are conferred upon one man to increase his living, or else that some 
 part of the stipends in this alteration may drop into the prebends' purses. 
 ********* 
 
 " No founder that ever was, before he began to erect a College or Ca- 
 thedral church for dean, prebends, canons, singing-men and choristers, 
 but by his last advice and counsel, he respected the eminency of the place, 
 the number and qualities of the persons, and the reward and maintenance 
 of all such members as he did purpose should be maintained in his founda- 
 tion. And for that purpose did estate and assure lands for the support of 
 every one. To a custos, dean or warden, and to a prebend or canon a 
 living meet for his maintenance, also lands to maintain singing-men and 
 choristers according to their quality and place. How, then, comes it to 
 
17 
 
 ' hat ever since the foundation of such Cathedrals to this day, the d< an 
 and maintains his estate like a dean, and the prebends and canons 
 
 like prebends and canons, while the rest of the poor singing-men do live- 
 like miserable beggars ? 
 
 " If the way to increase the stipends of singing-men should be by less- 
 ening of the numbers, in order to make their livings better, it would be the 
 occasion of overthrowing all ; for heretofore where there was double the 
 number, there is now but half, and if these few should yet again be dimi- 
 nished, there would remain so few to exercise and perform the service that 
 the Churches would rather seem to be parish churches than Cathedrals; 
 for if the original number of forty persons, which have now been diminished 
 to twenty, should be lessened to ten, how ahsurd would it be that such large 
 and stately buildings which were built, to the honour of the kingdom, for 
 the service of God, should be supplied by so few, whose voices in such spa- 
 cious buildings will only sound but as a little clapper in a great bell! 
 
 " Let the statutes of every foundation be examined, and there ye shall 
 find that the members thereof are sworn to preserve the lands of such 
 foundations to the true use and employment which the founder hath ap- 
 pointed them : for if the said lands be not employed to the true use and in- 
 tention of the founder, the foresaid oath is violated and broken, and the 
 abuse needeth reformation." 
 
 The melancholy confirmation of these statements is found 
 in the gradually lessening numbers of Church composers, and 
 the lower standard of excellence which they were content — 
 perhaps compelled — to adopt. Henry and William Lawes, 
 Locke, Child and Rogers are the only names of any note 
 that occur in the reign of Charles I., who, with the predi- 
 lection for French musicians which other members of his 
 family displayed, appointed a very sorry composer named 
 Laniere (several of whose productions are, unfortunately for 
 his reputation preserved) to be the master of his music. Child 
 was an industrious and sound musician, the pulpil of Elway 
 Bcvin of Bristol, and the requital that his long services received 
 as organist of St. George's Chapel at Windsor may be related 
 in the words of Sir John Hawkins. 
 
 "Dr. Child was so ill-paid for his services at Windsor, that a long arrcar 
 of his salary had accumulated, of which he vainly solicited the discharge, 
 although it was withheld in equal defiance of law and justice. After many 
 fruitless applications to the Dean and Chapter, he told them that if they 
 would pay him what they owed him, he would pave anew for them the choir 
 of the Chapel. They paid him his money, and Child performed his promise: 
 neither this richly endowed body, nor the Knights of the most noble order 
 of the Garter, nor the Sovereign himself, manifesting the least inclination to 
 share with their poor organist any portion of so munificent an act." 
 
 c 2 
 
18 
 
 Rogers was also a member of St. George's Chapel at Wind- 
 sor at the time of its dissolution. During the Protectorate 
 he enjoyed the favour of Cromwell, and at the restoration he 
 became organist of Magdalen College, Oxford, whence he was 
 expelled by James II. and died in poverty and obscurity. 
 
 The Protectorate was a period of musical darkness. The 
 organs of the Cathedrals and Colleges were taken down ; the 
 choirs were dispersed, musical publications ceased, and the 
 gradual twilight of the art, which commenced with the acces- 
 sion of the Stuarts, now faded into total darkness. The Pro- 
 tector himself seems to have been its only patron : he caused 
 the organ of Magdalen College to be erected at Hampton Court 
 Palace, retained Hingston, a pupil of Orlando Gibbons, in 
 his service, continued Hemy Lawes (the friend of his foreign 
 secretary) in his place in the chapel, ordered the music-lec- 
 tures to be regularly delivered at Oxford, and compelled a 
 royalist who had robbed the music-school there of its library 
 to restore his plunder. 
 
 With the accession of Charles II. the restoration of the 
 Cathedral choirs was of course coincident, but from him 
 Cathedral music received no encouragement. It was at first, 
 of necessity, but imperfectly performed, the race of choir- 
 singers having become extinct. In the list of the gentlemen 
 of the Chapel Royal at the commencement of his reign, three 
 names only of any celebrity occur, — Dr. Child, Christopher 
 Gibbons and Henry Lawes, all of them old men. Until 
 boys could be trained, the treble part of chants, services and 
 anthems was either sung by men or played upon cornets. 
 Everything that Charles could do in order to lower and vul- 
 garize the character of Cathedral music, he did. He began 
 by forbidding the performance in the Chapel Royal of all the 
 best compositions for the Church, — from Tallis to Gibbons, 
 all were proscribed. Dr. Tudway, in the prefixed letters to 
 his valuable collection of Church music*, though inclined to 
 say as little as possible in disparagement of Charles's taste, 
 and still less disposed to censure his conduct, reprobates the 
 
 * This MS. collection, which consists of six large volumes, was made by Dr. Tud- 
 way at the request of the celebrated Earl of Oxford in the reign of Queen Anne. 
 It has preserved in existence much fine Cathedral music which would otherwise 
 have perished. To every volume is prefixed an historical and critical introduction. 
 The collection is deposited, with the other Ilarleian MSS., in the British Museum. 
 
19 
 
 introduction of the trashy and frivolous compositions which 
 were exclusively heard at the Chapel Royal. Tudway was a mu- 
 sician writing in the reign of a Stuart, and addressing himself to 
 and employed by Harley : hence, in the following extract, he 
 begins by palliation, though compelled to end with censure. 
 
 "The example which was set in the Chapel Royal was not fit to be imi- 
 tated in our Cathedrals generally, for they had not the fine voices and 
 graceful singers that his Majesty possessed, who were capable of perform- 
 ing light solos and other slight compositions. And indeed such frivolous 
 and airy songs do rather draw off our minds from the solemnities of devo- 
 tion than aid our serious thoughts. The effect was bad in another way : for 
 the Puritans, seeing the bungling work that many of our choirs made of such 
 compositions, which were neither suitable to devotion nor capable of being 
 performed by ordinary voices, denounced the Cathedral service altogether, 
 and have had the assurance to assert the superiority of their own heavy and 
 indeed shocking way of psalm-singing to the best of our performances." 
 
 This attempt, to mould the taste and fashion the composi- 
 tions of his musical servants to his will, seems not to have 
 been altogether successful. No wonder ; for Clark, Wise, Hum- 
 phrey, Blow and Purcell were among the number. These were 
 not precisely the men to sit at the feet of Charles II. and 
 learn wisdom. How they pursued their course we know ; that 
 which he adopted is thus recorded in the words of Evelyn : — 
 
 " I went to-day to the Chapel Royal, where one of his Majesty's chap- 
 lains preached : after which, instead of the grave and solemn organ, was 
 introduced a band of twenty-four fiddles, after the French way — better 
 suiting a play-house or a tavern than a church. We heard no more of the 
 organ. That noble instrument, in which our English musicians do so excel, 
 is quite loft off." 
 
 These men succeeded to a period of gross musical darkness ; 
 they had to create anew the reputation of English Cathedral 
 music. Every inducement, save one, was presented to lead 
 them away from the right path : royal favour, fashion, promo- 
 tion were arrayed on one side, — the homage due to their art 
 on the other. They made their decision, and saw their places 
 filled by a band of French fiddlers. Honour be to the memory 
 of the ejected musicians as well as of the ejected ministers ! 
 
 The labours of one of this illustrious band are without a 
 parallel in the history of his art. No man that ever lived, 
 finding his art as he found it, left it as Henry Purcell left it. 
 In every form in which it was known he outstript every pre- 
 decessor and every contemporary ; his genius was universal 
 
20 
 
 as his erudition was profound. With his productions for the 
 stage and his contributions to festive harmony, we have here 
 no concern : he comes across our path as the organist of 
 the Chapel Royal and of Westminster Abbey, and as the 
 most industrious and highly gifted composer for the service 
 of the Church that our country, and, it is our belief, any 
 other country, has produced. In some of his sacred produc- 
 tions he has evidently taken Palestrina, in others Carissimi 
 as his model, or rather he has entered the lists with each in 
 turn, and with like success : he is always at least the equal 
 of his original. But these compositions were mere trials of 
 skill and strength. Music was the language in which Pur- 
 cell thought and spoke. He called it "the exaltation of 
 poetry/' and employed it in order to give a more emphatic 
 delivery, a deeper and more enduring impression, to every 
 sentiment with which he chose to connect it, and with voices 
 single or combined as the sentiment of the words might dic- 
 tate. Thoroughly versed in all the arcana of his art, master 
 of all its difficulties, scattering throughout his compositions 
 canons of the most difficult construction, yet written with ap- 
 parent ease ; he united all the freedom and freshness of un- 
 taught genius to the boldness of innate power, yet always 
 guided by the steady light of acquired knowledge. Hence 
 his anthems and services exhibit every form of expression 
 that devotion can assume, uttered in the most just and ex- 
 pressive musical language, and assuming the most varied 
 forms of combination. 
 
 But Purcell and his contemporaries were " lights shining 
 in a dark place f 9 their natural guardians and patrons were 
 arrayed against them, while the alienation of the choir en- 
 dowments went on unchecked. Something was done by 
 William III. for the encouragement of Church music, at the 
 instance of Tillotson, then Dean of the Chapel Royal, in the 
 creation of the place of Composer to the King, — an appoint- 
 ment which was designed to be the reward of former exertion 
 and an incentive to future labour. It was the duty of this 
 functionary to compose a new anthem or service for the first 
 Sunday of his month in waiting. Blow was the first who 
 held the appointment, and in the discharge of its duties we 
 know, historically, that he wrote more than seventy anthems, 
 
21 
 
 of which however very few remain or are available for use*. 
 Blow wa3 followed by Croft, Weldon, Greene, Boyce, Dnpuis, 
 Arnold and Attwood ; and to this appointment we are in- 
 debted for the large and inestimable store of sacred music 
 which some of these masters of their art have bequeathed to the 
 world, since they fortunately preserved it from the fate of Blow's 
 compositions by publication. The place is now a sinecure. 
 
 The pitiful and reprehensible avarice which has occasioned 
 the loss of so large a portion of Blow's compositions, has 
 also destroyed the greater portion of the best music of the 
 English Church. We possess but the few fragments which 
 Boyce and Arnold have saved from the wreck. The first 
 collection of Cathedral music was published by John Bar- 
 nard (a Minor-canon of St. Paul's) in 1641, the different 
 parts being printed separately. Of this work not a single 
 complete copy is known to exist. The uniform practice in 
 Cathedrals, prior to the appearance of Boyce's Cathedral 
 Music in l760f, was to copy the anthems and services into 
 the choir-books, and to furnish the organist with a com- 
 pressed score. As these books wore out, they were not re- 
 
 * In order to illustrate the usual fate of compositions of this and the antecedent 
 time, for the use of the Chapel Royal and of Cathedrals in general, that of Dr. 
 Blow's Services and Anthems may be recorded. There is documentary evidence 
 to show that he wrote seventy-one anthems, — probably more, but certainly this num- 
 ber. They were chiefly produced in the discharge of his official duty as Composer to 
 the King, and therefore were in the Chapel Royal books. The ten anthems of 
 Blow which Dr. Boyce has printed in his ' Cathedral Music,' are for that reason 
 to be found in the Chapel Royal books, but no others. There are at least twenty 
 fragments of different anthems, such as a treble part of one set, the contra-tenor 
 of another, and the bass of a third, which prove the former existence of the whole ; 
 but without Dr. Boyce's timely and ill-requited labour, the Chapel Royal would 
 now have been destitute of a single perfect copy of any of Blow's compositions. 
 Such of these as have been preserved are in private collections. Of Dr. Blow's 
 Services the Dumber is not known, as the collections of words by Clifford and Dr. Croft 
 are those of Anthems merely. Odd parts of a Service in A minor, and another in D 
 major may be found in the Chapel Royal books ; but the perfect sets of these, and it 
 may be of others, are irrecoverably gone. The fate of Dr. Blow's Church music was 
 also that of the works of Humphrey, Wise, Clark, and other composers who intrusted 
 its preservation to a Dean and Chapter : — Ex uno disce omnes. Dr. Blow wrote 
 the Anthem for the opening of St. Paul's Cathedral, — what has become of this com- 
 position ? 
 
 f This inestimable collection of Cathedral music, which has preserved a few 
 compositions of the great English masters from the destruction that has fallen 
 upon the rest, and for which service alone every musician will revere the name of 
 Boyce, met with slender encouragement from those who ought to have been its 
 patrons. The memoir of Boyce, written by Sir John Hawkins, and prefixed to the 
 edition published after his death, will attest this discreditable fact: — 
 
 "The list of subscribers redounded little to the honour of those whose duty it is 
 to encourage choral service, and served only to show to what a low ebb it had 
 sunk. The second and third volumes were published at different periods, with 
 
22 
 
 placed ; new and often inferior compositions were substituted 
 for them, and the Cathedral libraries, instead of containing 
 the accumulated musical works of past ages, now comprize 
 little more than a few modern republications. Of all that 
 Creyghton wrote, his beautiful anthem " I will arise" alone 
 was known, until the publication of his Service in E-flat a 
 short time ago by Chappell. One only of Dr. Bull's volu- 
 minous compositions for the Church is now known to exist. 
 The libraries of Winchester and Chichester contain not a 
 fragment of what Weelkes wrote for them, and a Service 
 which Bateson composed for Chester, sung there within our 
 own memory, is nowhere to be found. The same reply is 
 generally given to every inquiry, and sometimes the trouble- 
 some inquirer is shown a single part of a volume of Services, 
 with the comment, " the rest are lost." Many hundreds of 
 such compositions have thus perished. 
 
 The following extract from the preface to Dr. Alcock's Col- 
 lection of Anthems, published in 1771? contains his reasons for 
 resigning his situation as organist of Lichfield Cathedral, and 
 preferring to occupy the same post at a parish-church : — 
 
 " I had to teach the lads twice every day, and personally to play at 
 church ; thus I was unable to attend my scholars more than two days in 
 a fortnight, my son (though perfectly competent) not being allowed to 
 take my duty. Some of the Vicars were permitted to be absent four or 
 five months together, while I can affirm that in twenty-two years I have 
 but twice missed attendance so long as a week. Yet, with all this strict- 
 ness towards me, the Cathedral service is sadly disregarded. All the time 
 I was organist, there was not a book in the organ-loft fit for use but what 
 I bought or wrote myself, for which I never was paid one halfpenny." 
 
 The history of Cathedral music from the time of Elizabeth 
 exhibits a gradual but regular decline. The choirs continued to 
 dwindle in numbers and in efficiency ; and Dr. Tudway, after a 
 well-merited eulogium on the musical labours of Dean Aldrich, 
 Dean Holder and Dr. Creyghton, and their zeal in preserving 
 their choirs in full efficiency, assigns, as one cause of this de- 
 cline, the growing musical ignorance of the clergy, adding 
 
 little better encouragement, so that, but for the delight the employment afforded, 
 him, the editor of this noble work had been left to deplore his having undertaken 
 so arduous a task as he found it to be, and the loss of time at period of life when 
 time, to a professional man, is most valuable. And it cannot but excite the in- 
 dignation of those who have encouraged the present edition of it to be told that, 
 after twelve years' labour employed upon it, Dr. Boyce did little more than re- 
 imburse himself the cost of engraving, printing and paper." 
 
23 
 
 these words : — " It has never been thought by those of the 
 " highest station in our Church to be below their dignity to have 
 " a competent knowledge of music. The statutes of many col- 
 " leges in both Universities enjoin it, and make it a qualifica- 
 " tion for fellowships to be ' mediocriter doctus in musica/ or 
 " at least skilful 'in piano cantu/ in order that they might 
 " take their places in choirs with skill and knowledge, or be 
 u qualified to govern them in case they should be promoted 
 " to be Deans, Prebendaries or Precentors of Cathedrals*." 
 
 The members of the choirs, being degraded from the po- 
 sition of fellow-labourers with their capitular brethren in the 
 house of God into mere hirelings, had only a reluctant pit- 
 tance doled out to them at the will of their superiors. "Ori- 
 " ginally," says Tudway, " wherever Cathedral choirs existed, 
 " their stipends were a maintenance ; but now Deans and 
 " Chapters, tying down the clerks to the same allowance, 
 u when money is not a fifth part in value to what it was then, 
 " have brought on a very general neglect of the service, and 
 " a very mean and lame way of performing itf." 
 
 At this very period the Church possessed in Dr. Croft one 
 of the brightest ornaments of his art, in whose compositions 
 and those of his honoured predecessor, devotional music may 
 be said to have attained its highest elevation and accomplished 
 its noblest purpose. Croft's services and anthems are instinct 
 with grandeur and beauty : they have an elevation and ma- 
 jesty which have seldom been attained and more rarely, if ever, 
 surpassed. With Purcell and Croft the race of our musical 
 giants ends. Greene, Boyce and Battishill, admirable as they 
 are, must take place in a lower rank : while the number of 
 those who have exhibited a still inferior degree of talent for 
 sacred composition is, necessarily, the largest in amount. The 
 art of writing for the Church has ceased ; or if it exists, there 
 is no indication of its vitality. There is no motive to write 
 or to publish. Dr. Boyce, in the discharge of his duty as 
 composer to the king, wrote at least sixty anthems for the 
 Chapel Royal. His biographer, Sir John Hawkins, says that 
 " having urged Boyce (in imitation of his predecessors Croft 
 " and Greene) to publish a collection of his anthems, his an- 
 " swer was, that he would never again solicit the aid of a sub- 
 
 * Tudway Collection, Preface to vol. iii. f Ibid. Preface to vol. v. 
 
24 
 
 " scription to enable him to publish what might fail of being 
 " well received." This was, no doubt, a correct estimate of 
 Church patronage for Cathedral music, and yet Dr. Boyce was 
 then known as the author of " By the waters of Babylon" and 
 u O where shall wisdom be found " ! 
 
 The editor of the only edition of PurcelFs sacred composi- 
 tions, published in 1832, complains that — 
 
 " His endeavours have been very little assisted by the clergy who have 
 the control in choirs, for which these anthems and services were designed ; 
 for, out of forty-two Cathedral and Collegiate establishments in England, 
 only three Chapters have come forward to give the least support to this 
 collection of Purcell's Sacred Music, and these three have subscribed for 
 only one copy each." 
 
 Even Samuel Wesley, with all his acknowledged and ex- 
 traordinary powers, could obtain for his Service the patronage 
 of only a solitary Chapter, and his multifarious and masterly 
 sacred compositions remain unpublished to this day. Here 
 and there some shallow- pated organist busies himself with 
 cutting up into shreds and patches the modern Masses of the 
 Catholic church, culls out their showy and pretty phrases, or 
 their brilliant operatic choruses, employs their violin passages 
 for the purpose of exhibiting his rapid finger, and perhaps 
 adds to his folly by printing these barbarous mutilations of 
 Mozart and Haydn under the title of ' a Collection of An- 
 thems/ — but the organists of our Cathedrals are mute. No 
 wonder; for though, among the inducements to labour which 
 were presented to their predecessors, pay or profit for what 
 they wrote never seems to have existed — composition being a 
 voluntary act, for which there is no reason to suppose they 
 ever received pecuniary remuneration — yet their salaries were 
 a maintenance, and their leisure hours were willingly devoted 
 to their art in its highest form : they had also the satisfaction 
 of at least knowing that what they wrote could be sung. The 
 Cathedral organist of the present day is driven to the drudgery 
 of his profession for a subsistence ; he knows that publication 
 will be followed by loss, and, though compelled to witness the 
 daily degradation of Gibbons and Croft, or to connive at their 
 works being quietly inurned, he is not inclined to subject his 
 own compositions to a similar fate. The only Service pub- 
 lished within the last ten years (with the exception of Dr. Wes- 
 ley's very recent one) was the composition of Sir John Rogers. 
 
25 
 
 The former organist of a Cathedral says, cc It was impos- 
 u sible forme to secure a practice-meeting of the choir. Some 
 ,k would surely be absent, — probably those whose duty it was 
 " to sing the music which needed practice publickly. This, 
 " I believe, is the case in all Cathedrals. Soon after my ap- 
 " pointment, I begged in the most careful, cautious manner to 
 " have the organ repaired : it was in a most wretched state. 
 u I was asked, in reply, to resign my situation." 
 
 It has been apparent that the process of Choir spoliation, 
 and its consequent effect, the decline of Cathedral music, 
 commenced with the reign of James I., — that it has been the 
 subject of repeated notice and censure from various historians, 
 and, it may be added, that no attempt at justification is upon 
 record. Conflict there has been none ; the attacks of Capitu- 
 lar bodies have been directed against weak and helpless in- 
 feriors, while the remonstrances which have been at various 
 times addressed to them through the press have been met by 
 a discreet silence. The Court of Chancery alone has had the 
 power to break it. The argument of force has been uniformly 
 arrayed against the force of argument. 
 
 The ample revenues of the Choirs have proved their destruc- 
 tion. There were lands and houses, sufficient at the time of 
 the Reformation for the maintenance of choirs varying from 
 thirty to sixty in number. Like all similar endowments, these 
 have been constantly increasing in value ; and, unless some 
 sinister influence had interposed to prevent it, the number of 
 every choir would have been kept up, if not augmented, and 
 the salaries of its members have received a progressive addi- 
 tion. " If," says Dr. Hayes, " the records of our Cathedrals 
 " were examined, it would appear that the stipend of each 
 " member was proportioned to that of the rest, in something 
 " like the following manner. If to the Dean 80/. a year ; to 
 " the Canon 40/. ; to the Minor-canon 20/. ; to the Lay-clerk 
 " 10/. ; and to the Singing-boy 5/. But the fact is that the 
 " two former (by what authority I know not) divide three- 
 " fourths of the revenues allotted to the Choir among them- 
 " selves, — a manifest and gross abuse of the intention of the 
 " respective founders *." 
 
 Without imagining that any systematic plan ha3 been 
 
 * Remarks on Avison's Essay. 
 
26 
 
 adopted by Capitular bodies to accomplish the end which they 
 seem all to have steadily kept in view and quietly effected, it 
 is certain that the means employed and the end attained by 
 nearly all these bodies have been the same. The Choirs, as 
 we have seen, are divided into two classes, — the Priest-vicars 
 or Minor-canons, and the Lay-vicars or Lay-clerks. They are 
 recognized in every Cathedral as members of its Choir ; they 
 are required by its statutes to be skilled in singing, and to 
 give their daily attendance and assistance as members of a 
 choir. These statutes every Dean and Chapter are sworn to 
 administer, nor have they any legal power to alter the duties 
 or qualifications of the members of the choir. Neither parties 
 are the makers of the laws ; and the more powerful — the ad- 
 ministrative party — if regardful of the solemn pledge they have 
 given, would not dare to violate it. It is a melancholy task to 
 trace the downward progress of the Cathedral service, — to see 
 it falling step by step, — to witness the gradual decline of its 
 glory, and its regular descent from sublimity to vulgarity, from 
 splendour to poverty, — and to see this, moreover, accomplished 
 by church dignitaries, in the mean spirit of overreaching traf- 
 fickers, and prompted by the same miserable love of pelf. But 
 thankless as is the duty, it must be done, if any hope of amend- 
 ment is to be entertained. 
 
 The clerical and the lay members of the choirs were assailed 
 in separate ways. The former thus : the capitular members, 
 in whom the appointment of this, as well as the other class 
 of choirmen resided, were also the patrons of livings, which, 
 by an impudent and dextrous manoeuvre, they substituted 
 in place of the legal stipends of the Minor-canons. The du- 
 ties of a parish priest and of the Minor-canon of a Cathedral 
 are wholly incompatible. But payment of a Minor-canon by 
 a living was so much clear gain to his Dean and Chapter, 
 and, in order to secure this, a power was illegally assumed to 
 free him from his statutary duty, — a power, which a regard 
 to their own pockets would alone have induced them to usurp. 
 This abuse was the fruitful parent of others : a system of fa- 
 vouritism was the speedy result : the Minor-canon of a Cathe- 
 dral was converted into a servile dependent, to whom much 
 or little remuneration (now given in the shape of preferment) 
 was doled out at the mere will or caprice of others. The sa- 
 
27 
 
 lary of a Minor-canon was, now, but nominal ; his income 
 depended upon accidental, sometimes unworthy influences. 
 The working of this system many an honest, able and upright 
 priest has found to his cost. 
 
 With regard to the Lay-clerks the process has been more 
 simple, — the mere opposition of might to right. We have 
 seen how early this began, and how systematically it has been 
 continued. In most Cathedrals there exists no mode of pay- 
 ing these functionaries other than that which their endow- 
 ments provided ; in order therefore to appropriate the lion's 
 share of these, it was necessary to reduce their numbers and 
 to lessen the stipends of those who remained. No very accu- 
 rate record of this process is attainable, if any be preserved : 
 the result is too apparent. In the metropolis the clever 
 scheme was devised of taxing the public for the maintenance 
 of the miserable wreck of a choir which may be daily seen 
 (scarcely heard) at St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The 
 buildings and their contents were converted into exhibitions, 
 the proceeds of which formed the chief item in their salaries. 
 By this happy expedient, just so much money as is taken at 
 the doors finds its way into the purses of the Capitular 
 members of these churches, in addition to all that portion of 
 the musical revenues which they had previously absorbed. 
 
 The Minor-canons being paid by livings, and the Lay-clerks 
 and organist by " Tomb-money" (to adopt the Abbey phrase), 
 a very inconsiderable fraction of their endowments was handed 
 over to the Choir. But this was not all. Some of the Lay- 
 vicars of St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey hold a much 
 higher rank in the profession than their brethren, and the 
 chance of obtaining eminent vocal talent for provincial pay 
 was small. And yet it looked well upon paper, and served to 
 carry on the cheat, to be able to assert that Knyvett, Vaughan, 
 Hobbs, Sale, Nield, and men of similar professional rank 
 were members of these choirs. Always fertile in expedients, 
 the Capitular members of these churches discovered that to 
 lessen the attendances of the Lay-clerks was the same thing 
 as to increase their salaries. By this notable device the same 
 person is enabled to hold the same situation in each church, — 
 duty being required of him only alternate months ; and at this 
 moment, in the Abbey, one of the Lay-vicars holds in his own 
 
28 
 
 person two situations in the same choir, or rather receives two 
 salaries ; another is not seen there ten times in the year, and 
 another not at all — as he never was able to sing. The organist 
 of St. Paul's is also a Lay-clerk. 
 
 It is needless to say that all these ce indigencies " are 
 usurpations, — direct and open violations of those Statutes 
 which command the daily attendance of every member of the 
 choir, clerical or lay, — Statutes which those who thus violate 
 them have sworn faithfully to administer, and which some 
 selfish or sinister end would alone induce them to infringe. 
 No body would dispense with the legally appointed and im- 
 portant service of others except they had some purpose of 
 their own to answer. 
 
 The condition of the provincial choir-man may be estimated 
 from a recent advertisement in a Northamptonshire paper : — 
 
 " Wanted, a Tenor Singer for Peterborough Cathedral. Testimonials 
 to character, voice and ability to be sent to Mr. Gates, the Organist. Sa- 
 lary Thirty-Jive Pounds a year/' 
 
 Now for this sum — for this fourteen shillings a week — the 
 candidate is expected to be competent to the most important 
 part of Cathedral duty (the Minor-canons having left off sing- 
 ing). He must not only be a good "sightsman," but be able 
 to sing the anthems of Purcell, Blow, Clark and Croft; that 
 is, to give fit expression to the finest, and in some respects 
 the most difficult church music in the world. At morning 
 and evening prayers, every day of his life, he must enter the 
 church first and he must leave it last ; that is, he must devote 
 himself to it. He is perhaps a mechanic, and would fain 
 eke out his pittance by work, but what master will employ a 
 man, three-fourths of whose best time is given to his church 
 duty and his meals ? No ; he must serve at the altar, and he 
 must also starve at it. The Peterborough salary is not the 
 universal one ; in some Cathedrals it is larger, in others 
 smaller. 
 
 On the present state of the clerical and lay members of the 
 choirs Mr. Jebb thus speaks : — 
 
 " As the offices of the former are no longer regarded as, in any way, dia- 
 conal, as preparative to higher places in the Church, the Vicars-choral are 
 
29 
 
 permitted to struggle with all the hardships of married poverty ; or, if they 
 do obtain a competence, its source is found in the accumulation of dutiei 
 that are, in their nature, incompatible. linked (for the truth must be 
 spoken, and it is spoken with an indignant conviction of the fact), the Vicars- 
 choral are looked upon as the drudges of the Chapter, — as an order of men 
 inferior in caste, though really their equals in ecclesiastical order ; for they 
 are priests as much as the Prebendaries, and are frequently, very frequently, 
 their superiors in years, learning, piety and accomplishments. The very 
 offices they hold, so honourable and holy in themselves, subject them to be 
 treated with a slight, which ought never to be shown to the humblest door- 
 keepers of God's house, much less to the Presbyters of his church. Of 
 course to this statement there are exceptions, but I appeal to general ex- 
 perience whether it is not just ; and I further appeal to the English Church, 
 whether such unchristian contumely, such meanness of secular pride ought 
 not to be put to open shame ? 
 
 " As to the lay-clerks, upon them, by ill custom, rests the chief burthen 
 of the Cathedral service : but, as if to degrade this service still further, 
 their stipends are generally miserable pittances ; the Canon's domestic ser- 
 vants are better paid. Instead of being taught to consider themselves as 
 the worthy instruments of God's praise, they are commonly looked upon 
 as if they were mere organ-pipes, mere channels of sound, and not as 
 Christian men and the officers of a Christian church.'' — Page 112. 
 
 On the present state of the Lay-clerks, the author of the 
 e Apology for Cathedral Service ' observes : — 
 
 "These lay officiates used to receive a secondary kind of ordination, and 
 upon them devolved, as it does still in some Cathedrals, the duty of reading 
 the first lesson at morning and evening service ; a plain proof that our 
 choirs were not meant to be recruited from the lower ranks of the com- 
 munity. ' There is not a place in the Church,' says Bishop Sherlock, ' of 
 so mean a consideration, but the public has an interest in having it sup- 
 plied by a proper, and in proportion to the duty of the office, an able man.' 
 And the functions of a Lay-vicar are of such a nature that no man could be 
 dishonoured by discharging them. Our Church offers but few invitations 
 to those of her sons who have little relish for the smoke and stir of the 
 world, to come out of it. The station of Lay-vicar is one which men of this 
 stamp, properly fitted for it, might accept with joy of heart, whereas it is 
 now only worthy the notice of a pauper. In some places (especially at the 
 Universities) the choir-men are permitted, in order to live, to be members 
 of several different choirs. If they run about from one to another, it is 
 easy to guess "how the duty must be performed by overtasked men ; if it be 
 partly intrusted to deputies, these persons should have the full appoint- 
 ment. Were they distinct bodies, we should find a generous emulation 
 springing up between contiguous choirs, whose performance is now marked 
 by slovenliness and apathy." — Paye 43. 
 
 " In some Cathedrals," say the Minor Canons of Canterbury, "one 
 person may now be found holding three or four separate offices, the united 
 incomes of which do not amount to that intended by the founder for any 
 
30 
 
 one of them. All inferior members of Cathedrals have to deplore grievances 
 of this kind ; and the houses which were intended for them, and which the 
 Chapters were bound by their Statutes to keep in repair, have been gene- 
 rally suffered to fall into ruin." — Case of the Minor Canons, etc. of Can- 
 terbury, pp. 4, 5. 
 
 We have spoken of the abuse of substituting for the legal 
 endowments of the Minor-canons payment by preferment, and 
 of some of its consequences. These have only been fully ma- 
 nifested within a comparatively recent period ; but when once 
 the Capitular members of Cathedrals had assumed to them- 
 selves the power of altering those Statutes which they had 
 sworn to administer, and begun to pocket revenues of which 
 they were the appointed guardians, the extent of change and 
 the amount of plunder would be altogether discretionary. 
 The progress has been, as it always is in such cases, from bad 
 to worse. The evils we have pointed out have been growing for 
 ages ; the crowning one was to come. Until within the last fifty 
 years, the statute which defines the qualifications and pre- 
 scribes the duties of a Minor-canon (in substance the same in 
 every Cathedral) was obeyed. Every Minor-canon was a singer, 
 and gave his daily attendance and assistance in the choir. 
 
 " Well do I remember," says an ear- witness, " the delight with which 
 I used then to listen to the service in Norwich Cathedral, when the Minor- 
 canons, eight in number, filed off to their stalls, Precentor Millard at their 
 head, whose admirable style and correct taste as a singer I have never 
 heard surpassed, — Browne's majestic tenor, Whittingham's sweet alto, and 
 Hansell's sonorous bass ; while Walker's silver tones and admirable reci- 
 tation found their way to every corner of the huge building. Vaughan was 
 then first boy, who acquired his musical knowledge and pure style under 
 his master, Beckwith. Frequently it would happen that the entire music 
 of the day was written by members of the choir, for Garland the organist 
 (a pupil of Dr. Greene) was a composer of no mean talent. Beckwith, then 
 master of the boys, was a most accomplished extempore player on the 
 organ, and his well-known anthem, ' The Lord is very great,' sufficiently 
 attests his talent as a writer for the Church, and of the Minor-canons and 
 Lay-clerks four had produced Services." 
 
 This was the state of a Cathedral choir only fifty years 
 ago. Since that time has arisen that last bold and impu- 
 dent violation of the Statutes — the appointment of Minor- 
 canons incompetent to sing ; that is, incompetent to the dis- 
 charge of the very duty they have to perform. The first in- 
 trusion of a voiceless priest into a choir was justly regarded 
 with astonishment by his competent brethren, but it was an 
 
.31 
 
 abuse against which they could only protest, and seven still re- 
 mained who were " well skilled in singing." Gradually however 
 the proportions were reversed, the exception has become the 
 rule, and a Minor-canon possessed of the statutary qualifica- 
 tions is rarely to be found. The necessary result is a dislo- 
 cation and distortion of the Cathedral service in every possible 
 way. In some choirs the priest-vicars, though ignorant of 
 music, contrive by daily practice to chant the preces; in 
 others they are unable to accomplish even this, — the prects 
 are read and the responses chanted ; while there are Cathe- 
 drals in which the service of the place is abolished, by the 
 substitution of reading for chanting throughout. At Norwich 
 the choir is ranged in a gallery under the organ, separated 
 from the Minor-canons, who ought to form its chief ornament 
 and support, and the antiphonal character of the Cathedral 
 service is thus destroyed. This havoc has been the work of 
 half a century only; scarcely a trace of that noble fabric 
 which piety and munificence endowed, and which genius of 
 the highest order adorned and consecrated, survives. 
 
 " It has been somewhere said that the music of our Cathedrals is too 
 good for the choirs : they who composed it for them did not think so : but 
 this notion is nearer than the prevalent one, that the choirs are too good 
 for the music. To witness a mutilated service in churches so well en- 
 dowed is enough to move one with deep sorrow, but alas ! it may be wit- 
 nessed in them too often ; for services and anthems, justly observes Sub- 
 Dean Bayley, cannot be performed without two contra-tenors, two tenors, 
 and two basses on each side. Whereas there are Cathedrals in which six 
 days in seven the ' verse' and ' full' parts of services and anthems are sung 
 by the same number of voices, owing to the imperfect attendance and in- 
 competency of the members of the choir. The words ' Decani' and ' Can- 
 toris,' which occur on every page of their books, are rendered meaningless, 
 and the beautiful and distinguishing characteristic of Cathedral service is 
 utterly sacrificed." — Apology, p. 46. 
 
 The present poverty of our choirs is mournfully apparent 
 by a reference to some of the noblest compositions of the 
 Church. Take one of the earliest, for example, the Service 
 of Tallis : the preces and responses of this Service are of un- 
 equalled propriety of expression, majesty of style and gran- 
 deur of harmony. They have never been re- set, and pro- 
 bably never will; but they demand the aid of a Minor-canon 
 educated as all such were in Tallis's time ; he intones the 
 prayers to a prescribed form of notes ; he leads the choir from 
 
32 
 
 key to key ; he is the master-spirit who guides the movements 
 of a finely constructed machine. The power of performing 
 this noble Service is now approaching its period of extinction : 
 one priest- vicar alone in the metropolis is able to fulfil his duty 
 as its conductor, and when Mr. Lupton is gathered to his 
 fathers Tallis's Service will be heard no more. The public 
 seem to be aware of this fact, for whenever the "Tallis day" 
 occurs, Westminster Abbey is thronged w T ith hearers. A still 
 greater attractive power is perceptible at the yearly comme- 
 moration of Purcell in the same place, when every stall, as of 
 old, is occupied by a singer, and a chorus of fifty voices fur- 
 nishes the means of performing compositions, w r hich, though 
 composed in and for that church, can only be sung on this 
 occasion, when the volunteer members of the Purcell Club 
 are added to its choir. 
 
 " The selection of Church music at Westminster Abbey/' says the 
 Bencher, " reflects the highest credit on the science, taste and religious 
 feeling of Mr. Turle : the best compositions of the old masters of [what he 
 is pleased to term with a convenient ambiguity] the Anglo -Catholic Church 
 music are performed there. From the crowded state of that venerable 
 sanctuary on a Sunday afternoon, and the devout attention of its congre- 
 gation, it may be seen how well the masters of that music knew how they 
 might reach the avenues of the human heart, and how powerful an influ- 
 ence they might exercise over its affections." — Choral Service, p. 58. 
 
 Nothing can be more true than this remark — nothing more 
 just than the encomium passed on Mr. Turle. Whether we 
 regard the selection of the music performed at the Abbey or 
 the manner in which it is accompanied, our commendation is 
 w holly unqualified : we are always made to feel that the or- 
 ganist is thinking, not of himself, but of his author ; and in his 
 preludes to the anthems of Purcell, Blow and Croft, it seems as 
 if he were moved by the spirit of his illustrious predecessors. 
 But this is all chance — of good or bad — which could not hap- 
 pen if the requirements of Cathedral Statutes were obeyed, — 
 if there were placed at the head of every choir a priest com- 
 petent to discharge the office of Precentor, — a man on whom 
 station would confer respect, whom the law would arm with 
 authority, and to whom the possession of sound musical know- 
 ledge would secure deference. An organist has no power 
 over the choir he accompanies, and he ought to have no re- 
 sponsibility. To the Precentor the Statutes have confided 
 
33 
 
 ample powers, and to him consequently the responsibility 
 attaches. He is now usually as ignorant as his brethren, and 
 every well-disposed organist of a Cathedral feels and deplores 
 this. The latter is continually liable to be assailed with re- 
 quests for " pretty chants" and " pretty anthems/' and from 
 quarters in which he knows not well how to refuse : in fact the 
 Precentor of a Cathedral is now often, practically, the wife or 
 daughter of a Dean or residentiary. A well-educated Precentor 
 would not only discountenance, but forbid, any childish folly 
 and impertinent interference of this kind : it might for once 
 provoke a smile or a frown, but it woidd not be repeated : 
 whereas the poor organist, however unwilling, is too often com- 
 pelled to receive his instructions with a complacent bow, and 
 to reserve his sigh till he has quitted the prebendal parlour. 
 
 It is lamentable to contrast the utter disregard which is 
 manifested by all the dignitaries of our Cathedrals, as to the 
 manner in which the finest Church music in the world is per- 
 formed, with the sedulous and unrelaxing anxiety displayed 
 by the Romish priesthood to render the music of their service 
 attractive. The Cathedrals of England, with their ample en- 
 dowments for the especial maintenance of the choirs, and 
 with a collection of music for their service unrivalled in ex- 
 cellence, display the most deplorable poverty and imbecility, 
 while at the Roman Catholic chapels of the metropolis music 
 is exhibited in its most attractive form. 
 
 ** To re-invest the Cathedral service with its pristine dignity," says the 
 author of the ' Apology,' " would be a noble work, and can never be more 
 wisely set about than at a time when the Roman Catholic religion seems 
 to be regaining some of that influence which, we had hoped, it had for ever 
 lost in this country. It has been said by one whose affection for the 
 Church of England is as ardent as his mastery of her language is conspi- 
 cuous, that ' they who think any of the abuses of the Church of Rome 
 were, in their origin, so unreasonable as to deserve the appellation of ab- 
 surdities, must have studied its history with less consideration and a less 
 equitable spirit than they ought. Its priesthood has possessed, in full per- 
 fection, the wisdom of this world ; it is for a better wisdom to separate the 
 helpful from the hurtful, and to retain all that may assist in winning hearts 
 to its service*.' This is sage counsel, and might well lead us to bewail and 
 teach us to put an end to the apathy with which everything relating to the 
 service of our Cathedrals has been regarded." — Page 66. 
 
 * Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, i. 86, ii. 98. 
 
 D 2 
 
34 
 
 No foreigner, competent to judge of what he heard, if who 
 should chance to attend Warwick-street Chapel in the morning 
 and St. Paul's in the afternoon, could avoid forming a most 
 erroneous opinion of the designed position of the two choirs, 
 and of the comparative excellence of the music on which they 
 were employed. In the one, he would hear a well-appointed 
 vocal band — principal and choral — every part filled by a com- 
 petent singer, and the entire performance indicative of ability 
 and discipline on the part of all who were engaged in it ; he 
 would find that even music of an inferior kind was made 
 attractive by the skill of the singers, and that every care was 
 employed to render the entire musical service pleasing and 
 popular. Let him wander to St. Paul's, and he would en- 
 counter poverty and slovenliness, a meagre and inefficient 
 choir, a careless performance, — neither principals nor chorus, 
 but a make-shift for both. Would he believe that the latter 
 choir was richly endowed, and that the former was altogether 
 dependent upon the "voluntary principle?" Could he re- 
 cognize in the miserable exhibition of the afternoon the choral 
 harmony of the English Church ? When the King of Prussia 
 visited this country a few years ago, he expressed his intention 
 to hear the service in the metropolitan Cathedral. Its digni- 
 taries knew the disgraceful state of their choir, and the Bishop 
 of London actually beat up for recruits for this occasion. The 
 stalls of the Cathedral were filled with men who had never been 
 seen in them before,, and his Prussian Majesty was cheated 
 into the belief that, in the array of surpliced singers before 
 him, he saw and heard the regular choir of St. Paul's. 
 
 Having described Cathedral Music as it was, and as it is, 
 our limits warn us, for the present, to conclude. Our specu- 
 lations as to what it will be, and we may add what it must 
 be, unless some prompt and vigorous effort be made in its be- 
 half, are therefore deferred to another time. As the law at 
 present stands, its doom is certain. 
 
ENGLISH CATHEDRAL MUSIC. 
 
 REPORTS OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSIONERS AND THE 
 EFFECTS OF A RECENT ACT OF PARLIAMENT ON CATHEDRAL 
 MUSIC. 
 
 We propose to resume the subject of English Cathedral 
 Music. What it vxis, and what it is, has been already made 
 apparent : we have now to contemplate its future prospects and 
 position, and to show that, as surely as any result can be pre- 
 dicted from an adequate cause, so certainly may the fate of Ca- 
 thedral Music be foreseen and foretold. Those who live long 
 enough — and not many years will be required — may witness 
 this consummation. As regularly as the sand of the hour- 
 glass diminishes and at length runs out, so will the music of 
 our churches progressively decline and come to an end, un- 
 less some adequate expression of public feeling shall induce 
 our legislators to review their decisions and retrace their 
 steps. Meanwhile the unchanged policy of its assailants may 
 be stated in a word^-silence. As long as the abolition of Ca- 
 thedral Music was sought as a matter of principle the contro- 
 versy was long and severe, but now (to repeat our own words*) 
 " conflict there is none ; the attacks of Capitular bodies have 
 u been directed against weak and helpless inferiors, while the 
 
 * See above, page 25. 
 
36 
 
 "remonstrances which have been at various times addressed 
 "to them through the press have been met by a discreet 
 " silence." Our former article on this subject has attracted the 
 attention of persons well informed on the subject of which it 
 treats ; but we have looked in vain for any impeachment of 
 the correctness of our statements : they are uncontroverted, 
 and, we believe, incontrovertible. Our case was, that the 
 English nation possesses " the richest collection of devotional 
 " music in the world, and the amplest endowments for its 
 " efficient performance ; while their Cathedrals, the deposito- 
 u ries of this store of genius and learning, the inheritors of 
 " all these munificent bequests, exhibit at this moment too 
 Ci generally the most helpless decrepitude or the lowest vulga- 
 " rity." The first part of this statement rests upon historical 
 and documentary evidence, of which enough, in our judge- 
 ment, was quoted (though much more was at hand) to esta- 
 blish it. Of the second part, the inhabitant of any city is 
 able to judge for himself. We cited the Statutes which pre- 
 scribe the numbers and define the qualifications of every 
 member of a choir : the evidence of his senses will suffice to 
 satisfy any inquirer whether they are obeyed or violated. 
 
 We proceed to trace and record the measures which have 
 placed the Cathedral Service in its present position. These 
 are, in fact, the recommendations of a body called Eccle- 
 siastical Commissioners, which have in due time received the 
 assent of the Legislature and become the law of the land. 
 Although these recommendations, embodied in successive 
 Reports, bear the alternate signatures of Whig and Tory 
 ministers, they all bespeak a common origin ; they all aim at 
 the same end, they are all cast in the same mould, " their 
 unanimity is wonderful." There is another curious circum- 
 stance connected with the proceedings of this body, — they 
 appear to have satisfied only their contrivers : every section 
 and party in the Church has, in turn, denounced and attacked 
 them. But with the general scope and design of the changes 
 which they propose to accomplish, and which are yet but 
 partially visible, we have at present no concern. It is not 
 our intention to survey the new episcopal map of England 
 and Wales, but simply to examine the design and spirit of 
 these Reports and the Act of Parliament founded upon them, 
 
37 
 
 as far as they relate to and affect Cathedral Choirs and the 
 Cathedral Service. 
 
 This formidable Commission was created in 1835, conse- 
 quently in the reign of William IV., and comprized, in addition 
 to the Lord Chancellor (Lyndhurst), Sir Robert Peel, Mr. 
 Goulburn, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the 
 Bishops of London, Gloucester, Lincoln, and a few persons 
 of less note. Among other powers, they obtained the autho- 
 rity (worded with convenient latitude of phrase) "to consider 
 u the state of the several Cathedral and Collegiate Churches 
 " in England and Wales, with a view to the suggestion of such 
 " measures as may render them conducive to the efficiency of 
 " the Established Church." The first part of the first Report 
 is devoted to a statement of the episcopal "territory" and 
 " revenue" of the kingdom, and the proposed new apportion- 
 ment of both ; and then, under the head " Patronage," ap- 
 pears what the old divines called " the practical improve- 
 ment of the subject." — " It will be expedient that the 
 " Bishops shall possess a certain portion of patronage, in 
 w order that they may reward deserving clergymen within 
 u their Dioceses." This principle being asserted and assumed, 
 ample provision is made in subsequent reports for giving it 
 effect, the Bishops claiming to be the sole judges of what 
 constitutes desert. In this Report the state of the several 
 Cathedral and Collegiate Churches is dismissed, with a pro- 
 mise that it shall be taken into consideration forthwith. 
 
 In a few T months from the date of the first Report the minis- 
 try was changed ; a new Commission was appointed, and the 
 names of Lord Cottenham, Lord Melbourne and Lord John 
 Russell appear in the place of those of their official predeces- 
 sors ; but there remain Charles John, Lord Bishop of London, 
 and his brothers of Gloucester and Lincoln, and there remains 
 also the spirit of the former Report. The change of ministry 
 effects no change in this measure, and Whigs are here found 
 by their episcopal guides ductile and docile as Tories. 
 
 The Commission whence these parties derive their autho- 
 rity, and under which they act, enjoins them "to consider 
 " the state of the several Cathedral and Collegiate Churches 
 " in England and Wales with reference to ecclesiastical du- 
 " ties and revenues ;" that is, it would be supposed, to ex- 
 
 e 2 
 
38 
 
 amine their foundations and their statutes, and to ascertain 
 whether these were strictly adhered to and faithfully admi- 
 nistered, — whether their "state" was such as these required 
 and enjoined, — whether their revenues were appropriated to 
 their designed uses, — whether the persons filling the various 
 offices necessary to carry on the Cathedral Service were 
 competent to the discharge of their various and prescribed 
 duties, and in point of fact whether they did discharge the 
 duties required of them by statute, — whether the numbers of 
 the Choirs (that is, the number of persons who perform the 
 Service) conformed to the legal requirement, — whether in 
 the schools attached to Cathedrals the statutary course of in- 
 struction was adhered to, — in short, whether the capitular 
 members of Cathedrals were faithful and honest administra- 
 tors of those laws which they had sworn faithfully and 
 honestly to administer, and trusty guardians of those revenues 
 of which the distribution, through their hands, was defined 
 and prescribed; or whether they had forgotten and violated 
 their duty as administrators of the law, and assumed the 
 power of law-makers. To these points it would be imagined 
 that any persons to whom such a power was delegated would 
 have necessarily addressed themselves. This was no case in 
 which the design of a founder had to be made out by infe- 
 rence, or concerning which there could be even a shadow of 
 doubt; nor was there any change in the form or structure of 
 the Service concerning which the inquiry was to be made. 
 The buildings, — the Book of Common Prayer, — the Rubric, — 
 the officers, — the music, not only in form but in substance, — 
 the statutes, — the revenues, — were all what they were centu- 
 ries ago, save that time had given them its added sanction and 
 increase. Nothing had needed change, — nothing had been 
 changed. The fitness of the building for the service, and of 
 the service for the building, had been tested and proved : it 
 had been abolished, but it had never been patched and muti- 
 lated. It had been the theme of admiration of the wisest, 
 most devout and most learned men in the Church. 
 
 " I crave only/' said Bishop Taylor, " that I may call to mind the 
 pleasures of the Temple, the order of her services, the beauty of her build- 
 ings, the sweetness of her songs, the decency of her ministrations, the assi- 
 duity of her priests, the daily sacrifice, and that eternal fire of devotion 
 that went not out by dav or by night. Those were the pleasures of our 
 
39 
 
 peace, and there is a remanent felicity in the very memory of these spiritual 
 delights, which we there enjoyed, as antepasts of heaven and consignations 
 to an immortality of joys*." 
 
 And we find even the Unitarian preacher warming into 
 eloquence as the Cathedral Service presents itself to him : — 
 
 "The natural sentiments of worship have been the parents of all that is 
 great in sacred art. Architecture, music, painting and poetry first allied 
 themselves with religion, not condescendingly, but reverently : to receive 
 from it their noblest consecration. They put themselves submissively into 
 its hands, willing to take whatever form its plastic power should impress, 
 so they might but serve as its outward voice and manifestation. The Ca- 
 thedral aisle sprung up and closed over the house of prayer : and Christen- 
 dom feeling that the mere inarticulate speech of man was harsh when it 
 took up the Holy name, adopted Music as its natural languagef." 
 
 Before we proceed to a further analysis of the labours of 
 this Ecclesiastical Commission, it will be expedient to refer to 
 the controversy which was so long maintained in the Church 
 respecting the use and fit employment of music in its service. 
 Inasmuch as the battle has now to be fought anew we ought 
 to understand the ground which both parties then occupied, 
 — who were the respective combatants, — their names, sta- 
 tion, associates and design, — in order that it may be apparent 
 to which section of them the present assailants of Cathedral 
 music bear the closest resemblance. It will be seen that 
 the conflict began early and continued long : we give the 
 material facts in the words of Strype : — 
 
 "At the convocation held in 1562, certain members of the lower house 
 (to the number of thirty-three) put in request that the psalms appointed 
 at common prayer be sung distinctly by the whole congregation [that is, 
 instead of antiphonal chanting], and that all curious singing as well as 
 
 plaving upon organs be removed That the use of copes and surplices 
 
 be taken away," and " that all Saints' feasts and holydays, bearing the name 
 of a creature, be clearly abrogated J." 
 
 This document was signed by the Deans of St. Paul's, 
 Oxford, Lichfield, Hereford, Exeter ; the Provost of Eton, 
 twelve Archdeacons and fourteen other clergymen. 
 
 "The disciplinarians in 1572 were creating new trouble and disturb- 
 ance, — labouring for a further reformation. They published two books, 
 ■ The Admonition to the Parliament,' and ' A View of Popish Abuses yet 
 
 * Preface to the ' Apology for authorized and set forms of Liturgy.' 
 f Preface to a Collection of Hymns, by James Martineau, Minister of Paradise 
 Street Chapel, Liverpool. 
 
 X Strype, 'Annals of the Reformation,' vol. i. p. 335. 
 
40 
 
 remaining. ' The Universities were much heated with these controversies. 
 In Cambridge were Cartwright [the Lady Margaret professor] Browning, 
 Brown, Millain, ('hark, Dering and many of St. John's, who, being men 
 of learning, made a strong impression upon the younger students*." 
 
 The design and character of these publications may be 
 gathered from the following extracts : — 
 
 " Lordly lords, archbishops, bishops, suffragans and deans, with the 
 rest of that proud generation, must down. Their tyrannous lordships can- 
 not stand with Christ and his kingdom. The Book of Common Prayer is 
 an imperfect book, culled and picked out of that Popish dunghill, the Mass- 
 book, full of all abomination. As for the singing of Benedictus, Nunc 
 dhnittis and Magnificat in the common prayer, it is no other than a clean 
 profaning of the holy Scripturesf-" 
 
 " The regiment of the Church is anti-christian, and we may as safely 
 subscribe to allow the dominion of the Pope over us as to subscribe to it. Let, 
 then, all Cathedral churches be pulled down, which are no other than dens 
 of loitering lubbers ; and all deans and prebendaries be clean taken away J." 
 
 The zeal and firmness of Parker, Whitgift, Jewel and other 
 eminent divines, backed by the well-known partiality of Queen 
 Elizabeth for the Cathedral Service, sufficed to preserve our 
 cathedrals and their choirs intact ; but the assault was con- 
 tinued in the same tone and temper till the period of the civil 
 war. An extract or two from the various pamphlets which 
 appeared during this interval will serve to show that its vio- 
 lence had not abated : — 
 
 " We need not such assistance as is borrowed from leathern bellies or 
 horrid shouts, which confound the sweetness of a hymn, and which is 
 destroyed by organs and quires. These cores in our devotion let us strive 
 by all means to cut out, as careful confectioners from apples and pears, that 
 so they may preserve the fruit itself §." 
 
 "To fancy the great God pleased with a pompous and noisy ostentation 
 in paying him public homage, were to represent him as possessed with 
 human vanity and folly ; and as for the practice of singing alternately, I 
 must need put on new spectacles before I can read its authority or decency. 
 Let this sort of music, then, be driven out of our Cathedrals, as a prophane 
 hindrance of divine worship ||." 
 
 Meanwhile the Cathedral Service had no want of able and 
 zealous champions, whose language, when employed in its 
 defence, breathed a warmth and eloquence which experience 
 
 • Strype, vol. i. f Strype, vol. ii. p. 187. X Strype, 38 App. 
 
 § * The Holy Harmony, or a pica for (ho abolishing of Organs and other Mu>iek 
 out of the Protestant Chun Ins of Great Britain, ' 1633. 
 
 ' The Kibe and Antiquity of Cathedral Worship rou.sidcied.' 
 
11 
 
 and conviction alone could have inspired* Dean Comber, 
 
 speaking of it, says, — 
 
 "Such music will mind us of the harmony of the celestial choir ; it will 
 calm our souls and gently raise our affections, putting us into a fit posture 
 to glorify our Father which is in heaven : for sure he is of a rugged tem- 
 per and hath an ill-composed soul who feels not the effect of this grave 
 and pleasant harmony." 
 
 To the same purport, but with more beauty and force of 
 language, are the words of Hooker : — 
 
 " Harmony delighteth all ages, and beseemeth all states. It is as sea- 
 sonable in grief as in joy — as decent when added unto things of greatest 
 weight and solemnity, as in cheerful and becoming festivity. There is that 
 draweth to gravity and sobriety ; there is also that carrieth, as it were, into 
 extacies, filling the mind with a heavenly joy, and for the time, in a man- 
 ner, severing it from the body. So that even if we lay aside the considera- 
 tion of ditty or matter, the very harmony of sounds, being framed in due 
 sort, and carried from the ear to the spiritual faculties of our souls, is by a 
 native puissance and efficacy greatly available to bring to a perfect temper 
 whatsoever is there troubled : apt as well to quicken as to allay the spirit, 
 sovereign against melancholy and despair, forcible to draw forth tears of 
 devotion, able both to move and moderate all affections. Therefore doth 
 the Church, at this present day, retain it as an ornament to God's service 
 and a help to our devotion. 
 
 " In church music, wanton, light or unsuitable melody, such as only 
 pleaseth the ear, and serveth not the matter that goeth w T ith it, doth rather 
 blemish and disgrace what we do, than add either beauty or furtherance to 
 it. On the other hand, such faults prevented, music, when fitly suited with 
 matter sounding to the praise of God, is in truth most admirable, and doth 
 much edify, if not the understanding, yet surely the affection, because there 
 it worketh much. They must have hearts very dry and tough from whom 
 such melody and harmony doth not sometime draw that wherein a mind 
 religiously affected doth delight*." 
 
 Passages similar in spirit and in tendency might be cited 
 without number from the early and able divines of the Church 
 of England. But many persons will probably now inquire, 
 * Is it possible that such effects can be produced by the music 
 of our church ?" To which it must be replied, certainly not 
 in its present state. The divines of a former period described 
 what they heard, and its effect ; they listened to the perform- 
 ance of a numerous and well-trained Choir, of from thirty to 
 fifty voices, employed on music constructed with a direct 
 reference to its aggregate strength and individual ability, and 
 
 * Eccles. Polity, p. 238. 
 
42 
 
 they accurately recorded its power over their own minds. 
 Hooker's is no poetical flight, but the simple record of an 
 existing state of things. His successors of the present day 
 would not dare to employ his language, even if they possessed 
 the ability to utter it. 
 
 It will have appeared, from the above extracts, that the 
 assailants of Cathedral Music are not a recent section of the 
 Church ; but that from the time of Cartwright and Whitting- 
 ham down to that of Blomfield and Monk, such persons have 
 existed, — not in lineal and uninterrupted descent, nor always 
 employing the same means, since the former adversaries pro- 
 ceeded by open assault, and the latter have worked by sap 
 and mine. It is not until the time of the Long Parliament, 
 however, that we find the arguments for reducing Cathedral 
 establishments assuming the form and substance of legislative 
 enactment. In 1641 Sir Edward Dering brought in a bill for 
 the appropriation of Cathedral revenues to other purposes ; 
 and this is the precedent — the sole precedent — for the act of 
 4th Victoria, Cap. cxiii. The bill of the Roundhead and that 
 of the Bishop alike assume that it is " expedient" (conveni- 
 ent term) to make certain alterations in Cathedral and Col- 
 legiate Churches ; and having established this principle, the 
 Presbyterians of old and the prelates of the present day have 
 carried it out just as suited their respective purposes. In the 
 former case the attack came from an avowed enemy to epi- 
 scopacy, which he described as the " immedicabile vulnus" of 
 the Church of Christ. The motive, however mistaken, was 
 an honest one ; it veiled no selfish or sinister purpose, — the 
 object avowed was the object really sought. 
 
 " The purposes of both these measures declared that they sought opposite 
 results by the same means ; and, as one only of them can be right, and a 
 vital interest is involved in the conclusion, it is not too much to claim, in 
 a spirit of true affection, the most thoughtful regard to consequences, among 
 those who have been the authors of this unsatisfactory coincidence *." 
 
 That attention to petition and remonstrance which was 
 denied to the advocates of Cathedral establishments in the 
 present day, was granted by the Long Parliament, before 
 whom Dr. Hacket, then Canon of St. Paul's, delivered his 
 
 * • Thoughts on the Ecclesiastical Duties and Revenues Bill/ by a Clergyman, 
 1840, p. 4. 
 
43 
 
 speech in their defence, resting it chiefly on the following 
 grounds : — " That in a well-governed church it is fit that there 
 " should be places where daily thanksgivings and supplica- 
 " tions should be made unto God ;" — that Cathedrals were the 
 fit places of abode and reward for men of learning and piety, 
 where, exempt from the labours of parochial duty, and " sup- 
 M plied with large and copious libraries, they might utter that 
 " which should endure the test and convince gainsayers f* 
 — that " the principal grammar-schools in the kingdom were 
 u maintained by those churches, the care and discipline of 
 " them being set forward by their oversight, fit masters pro- 
 " vided for them, and their method in teaching frequently 
 " examined ; " — that Cathedral endowments have answered 
 their purpose in " training up the charioteers and horsemen of 
 " Israel, champions of Christ's cause against the adversary of 
 " their learned pens* ;" — that " the structures themselves, the 
 first monuments of piety in this kingdom," claim the care 
 and respect of succeeding generations ; and that u it were an 
 u ill presage that those churches which were the first harbours 
 u of the Christian religion should suffer from those persons 
 " who are entrusted with their reparation and have the care 
 " and custody of them." 
 
 Little did Dr. Racket dream, when uttering this defence, 
 that he was in fact pronouncing the severest censure upon 
 his successors and the capitular members of Cathedrals in 
 following ages, who have destroyed every plea that he urged. 
 What is now the daily worship ? — maimed rites and a mere 
 shadow. Where are the champions of Christ's cause ? where 
 the learned and laborious toilers in his vineyard ? — not in our 
 Cathedral precincts. Where the grammar-schools attached to 
 
 * With this intent, and for this purpose especially, were the Canonries and Pre- 
 bendal stalls of our Cathedrals founded and endowed. Whether in times past they 
 fulfilled their design may be ascertained from the following list of divines, all of 
 whom held some official situation therein ; and those among them who were after- 
 wards raised to the episcopal bench obtained their promotion as the fit recompense 
 of learning and ability already displayed when capitular members of Cathedrals. 
 Walton, Castell, Kennicott, Patrick, Louth, Graves, Home, Sherlock, Beveridge, 
 TilloUon, Barrow, South, Hall, Prideaux, Shuckford, Townshend, Hooker, Cave, 
 Heylin, Comber, Wake, Waterland, Bull, Pearson, Bramhall, Butler, Lightfoot, 
 Hammond, Whitby, Bentley, Stillingfleet, Casaubon and Potter. This list, we are 
 aware, is a very imperfect one, but it will suffice to show the "fruits" of these 
 endowments, to justify Dr. Hacket's defence of them, and therefore to prove the 
 impolicy (to say nothing of other considerations) of their recent abolition. 
 
44 
 
 our Cathedrals ? where the " fit masters/' the u careful over- 
 sight/' " the frequent examination ?*" 
 
 One objection on the part of the Presbyterian assailants 
 was the performance of music in Cathedrals by a separate 
 and paid Choir, and the great excellence of the music and its 
 exquisite performance were also attacked. Those who desire 
 to know what the Cathedral Service then was, in matter and 
 in manner, in material and execution, need only call to re- 
 membrance the well-known passage from 'II Penseroso,' which 
 records its effect upon Milton's mind when a boy at St. Paul's 
 school. To this objection Dr. Hacket thus replies : — 
 
 '* I have heard that the service of Cathedral churches giveth offence to 
 divers for the exquisiteness of the music, especially that in late years it is 
 not edifying nor intelligible to the hearers. If it serve rather to tickle the 
 ear than affect the heart with godliness, we wish the amendment of it. 
 But the solemn praise of God in church music hath ever been accounted 
 pious and laudable ; yea, even that which is compounded with art and ele- 
 gancy : for St. Paul speaks as if he had newly come from the quire of 
 Asaph, when he requireth us to praise God in psalms, in hymns and in 
 spiritual songs. • .* * And give me leave, I beseech you, to speak thus 
 much for the quire-men and their faculty of music, that they maintain a 
 science which is in no small request with divers worthy gentlemen. By 
 the education of choristers from their childhood in that faculty, you have 
 musicians that come to great perfection in that skill — few others but prove 
 to be no better than minstrels or fiddlers. " 
 
 If we can so far give the reins to our fancy as to conceive 
 a similar objection being urged now, — if we can imagine a 
 present Canon of St. Paul's to be publicly attacked on account 
 of the "exquisite performance "of the Service, — his reply would 
 not adopt in spirit or substance the tone of his predecessor, 
 but would rather (if it spoke the truth) assume something 
 like the following form : — " You make the exquisite perform- 
 ance of its music a ground of objection to the Cathedral 
 Service. I can only reply, that we have done our best 
 to degrade and destroy it: if it yet retain any portion of 
 beauty or grandeur, the fault is not ours. We have alienated 
 the revenues of the Choir, — we have reduced its number, — 
 
 * Those who desire information on this point, or seek an answer to this question, 
 are referred to the ' Correspondence and Evidences respecting the Ancient Colle- 
 giate School attached to St. Paul's Cathedral,' 1832. It is hardly necessary to re- 
 mark, that the Institution known by the name of St. Paul's School has no connection 
 with the Cathedral, but is solely governed and ordered, under Dean Colet's will, by 
 the Company of Mercers. 
 
1.) 
 
 even from the few that remain we require only occasional 
 attendance, — the voices of half our clerks are ' in another 
 parish/ — we pay them less than our grooms. We have si- 
 lenced the Priest-vicars, for, if by accident any are appointed 
 who are able to sing, we never tax their musical powers. We 
 expend nothing in the purchase or copying of music, — we 
 discourage the publication of works intended for the Church 
 Service, — we have rendered it impossible that the finest com- 
 positions for the Church should be performed. What more 
 can we do ? " 
 
 It remained only to legalize these acts of injustice and usur- 
 pation, which had hitherto been committed by the mere exer- 
 cise of superior might. Whenever the right of the Choirs to 
 their endowments had been contested in a court of law or 
 equity, the result had been to restore and confirm them. 
 Witness the suits of the Dublin Choir and that of Bangor with 
 the Dean and Chapter of their respective Cathedrals. The 
 contest in the latter case was not entered upon until every 
 method of petition and remonstrance had been found hopeless. 
 Lord Eldon discouraged the prayer of the petitioning Choir ; 
 the suit was protracted, at a ruinous cost, for eight years ; but 
 the case of the petitioners was too strong to be resisted, and 
 they obtained a decree in their favour. It happened, in this 
 case, that Dr. Pring was a man of courage and of substance ; 
 but those only who have lived in a Cathedral town can under- 
 stand the position of an organist, minor- canon or lay- clerk who 
 dares to array himself, however just his quarrel, against his 
 capitular superiors. He is, from that moment, as far as they 
 can effect it (and they generally can effect it), doomed to 
 poverty and misery. Aware of the illegality of their acts, 
 these bodies have in some instances habitually guarded them- 
 selves against any legal scrutiny or question of them, by re- 
 quiring of every member of a choir, on his induction, an 
 undertaking that he will not prosecute any claim beyond that 
 of his agreed and stipulated salary, — a precaution somewhat 
 supererogatory from stipendiaries of fourteen shillings a- week. 
 
 The Second Report of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, as 
 we have stated, was made during Lord Melbourne's adminis- 
 tration, and we proceed to examine its treatment of Cathedral 
 Music. This is no agreeable duty, since every paragraph 
 
46 
 
 connected with this subject betrays either a total disregard of 
 truth, an insidious suppressio veri, or such a dexterous em- 
 ployment of language in order to disguise and distort facts, 
 that the largest exercise of candour can scarcely admit even 
 the discreditable plea of ignorance to be urged in its writer's 
 behalf. We shall take the paragraphs as they stand, adding 
 a running commentary. 
 
 " Our attention has been drawn to the condition of those 
 " ministers in the Cathedral and Collegiate Churches who are 
 " known by the names of Minor Canons, Vicars-Choral, Priest- 
 te Vicars, or Chaplains. The Service is performed by them, 
 " or some of them, in all these churches, twice and in some 
 " three times a-day, throughout the year." — Second Report, 
 p. 13. 
 
 It is kept out of sight that, whereas the Statutes of all Ca- 
 thedrals require the daily attendance of every member of the 
 choir, clerical as well as lay, and require also that every cle- 
 rical member should be a competent singer, such members in 
 fact only give their attendance in iurn, that very few of them 
 can sing, and that scarcely any do sing. The service, as re- 
 quired by the Statutes, is not performed. 
 
 " The number in St. Paul's Cathedral is twelve ; in others 
 " there are eight, six, four, and in the Collegiate Church of 
 " Manchester two." — Ibid. 
 
 In St. Paul's it is true that twelve persons erroneously 
 styled Minor Canons receive a salary ; but it is equally true 
 that there is not one who gives any evidence of his being 
 qualified to hold his office by a discharge of its duties. This 
 assertion admits of easy verification. Let any person walk 
 into St. Paul's, morning or afternoon, and satisfy himself 
 whether twelve Minor Canons are there, assisting in the per- 
 formance of the anthem and service for the day. He must 
 have better fortune than has fallen to our lot for some years 
 past if he ever find one. The residents in Cathedral towns 
 can, in like manner, as easily ascertain how far the provincial 
 corresponds to the metropolitan practice. 
 
 " The emoluments are almost as various as the numbers. 
 U At Durham some of the Minor Canons receive as much as 
 " 170/. a-year; in some churches they have not more than 
 " 30/. ; but the majority receive from 50/. to JOl" — Ibid. 
 
47 
 
 This sentence confirms what we stated on a former occasion, 
 that the salaries of Minor Canons, as such, have long been 
 little more than nominal. For " as much" we ought to read 
 "as little." The Minor Canonries at Durham were well en- 
 dowed before the time of the Reformation with lands and 
 houses, which were then confirmed to their existing and all 
 future occupants by law, and have been since wrested from 
 them by force or fraud. The addition of mockery to injustice 
 might have been spared. 
 
 u In consequence of the smallness of their salaries, in almost 
 u all Cathedrals, we find a prevalent custom of giving to these 
 " ministers Chapter-livings, which they hold together with 
 " their places in the Cathedral." — Ibid. 
 
 If the whole truth had been related in this sentence, it would 
 have run thus: — In consequence of the injustice which suc- 
 cessive capitular bodies have exercised towards the Minor 
 Canons of all Cathedrals, by despoiling them of those endow- 
 ments which were bequeathed or given for their especial 
 maintenance, it has been found necessary to resort to another 
 exercise of power, equally illegal, unjust and arbitrary ; and 
 the incomes of the Minor Canons have been made up by 
 Chapter-livings, that is, by imposing on them a duty wholly 
 incompatible with that which the Statutes of every Cathedral 
 require, — daily attendance and assistance in its choir. 
 
 " We are of opinion that the interests both of the Cathe- 
 " drals and of the parishes would be consulted by retaining 
 " only so many of these ministers as are sufficient for the 
 " service of the Cathedrals, and giving them such salaries as 
 " may preclude the necessity of their holding benefices toge- 
 " ther with their offices in the Cathedral." — Ibid. 
 
 Truly this is a piece of as cool and self-complacent effron- 
 tery as can well be imagined. Disregarding all the intentions 
 of pious and liberal founders, casting to the winds the Statutes 
 of every Cathedral in the kingdom, in defiance of the concur- 
 rent opinion of the ablest advocates of the Church, and forget- 
 ful of the real and important duty which had devolved upon 
 them, these degenerate successors of Parker, Hooker, Taylor 
 and Tillotson*, decked in their little brief authority, pro- 
 
 * To the influence of Tillotson we owe the appointment of "Composer to the 
 King," and therefore many of the labours of Blow, Croft, Greene, Travers, Boyce 
 and the other eminent musicians who until the present time successively held it. 
 
48 
 
 claim their design to fashion according to their own notions 
 of expediency the venerable and admirable structure of the 
 Cathedral Service, — how, will be seen hereafter. " Does 
 " the sagacity of an enlightened age," asks the author of the 
 ( Apology for Cathedral Service/ " consist in finding out that, 
 u by the prodigality of our ancestors, more servants have been 
 " assigned to the Most High than are needful, and in so con- 
 u ducting Cathedral Service, for which munificent provision 
 " had been made by large-souled men, as if it had to look for its 
 u support to the penurious grudgers of church-rates, — beings 
 " who would have exclaimed, when the precious box of spike- 
 " nard was poured out, ( Why was this waste }'" The utili- 
 tarian standard, by which it was intended to measure and cut 
 down those establishments, is not here announced ; but the 
 spirit of this sentence sufficiently indicates its probable scanty 
 dimensions. Did it never occur to these modern lights of the 
 Church, that the number of " ministers sufficient for the ser- 
 vice of the Cathedral" was probably as well known to those 
 who apportioned and endowed them as to themselves ? Do 
 they imagine that by such endowments it was intended to 
 create a number of useless sinecures in the shape of Minor- 
 canonries, or that every Priest-vicar was not, as he was de- 
 signed to be, a daily labourer in the house of prayer ? They 
 probably know better, but such is the impression attempted 
 and designed to be conveyed in this sentence. 
 
 The origin and effect of a similar ecclesiastical commission 
 for Ireland was thus justly described in the ' Times' news- 
 paper : — 
 
 " Thus, then, the matter stands. A remedy is wanted for abuses which 
 have crept into the temporalities of the Church. Endowments intended to 
 secure certain definite and very necessary ministrations find their way into 
 the pockets of persons who never perform them. What is the remedy? Is 
 the trust enforced ? Does the Legislature step in and restore the misap- 
 propriated endowment to its proper use ? Does it compel the man who 
 receives the money to insure the performance of the duty? Neither the 
 one nor the other. No, it appoints a Commission, which abolishes alto- 
 gether any connexion between the payment and the trust. It takes the 
 money into its own hands, and lumps it all together, with other similar 
 gains, into a central fund, to be disposed of by itself. The local endow- 
 ment for the local purpose is swamped, and nothing is substituted for it. 
 It is handed over to this central board, who are to apply it, not by any 
 means for the purpose of the original foundation, but as the said Commis- 
 
19 
 
 sion, having an eye to the general welfare (and their own salaries), may 
 see fit." 
 
 It has been sufficiently apparent that they were not very 
 scrupulous as to the means by which this power was to bt 
 obtained, — less concerned about the accuracy than the effect 
 of what they said, — less anxious that it should be true, than 
 that it should pass for truth. But let us proceed a little 
 further with the text and our commentary. After enumera- 
 ting the Cathedrals and Collegiate Churches, both on the old 
 and new foundations, to which the proposed measures apply, 
 the Report says : — 
 
 " In all these Churches the daily performance of the Choral 
 " Service is maintained out of the revenues of the Dean and 
 " Chapter." — Second Report, p. 9. 
 
 Now what are we to say to an assertion like this? How are 
 we to deal with it ? To say that it is utterly false would but 
 imperfectly characterize it ; it is the very opposite of true ; 
 the fact being, that the Dean and Chapter apportion to them- 
 selves, and therefore are in part maintained out of, the reve- 
 nues given, bequeathed and designed for the daily performance 
 of the Choral Service. Having in a former article given the 
 historical and documentary evidence in proof of this fact, it 
 will be unnecessary to do more than refer to its unimpeached 
 statements, with the addition of a few other corroborative tes- 
 timonies. The members of the Choirs, clerical and lay, were 
 always designed and regarded as members of the Cathedral, 
 not hirelings of a capitular body; "the inferior clergy, and 
 " sometimes the lay members, forming corporate bodies, di- 
 " stinct from the Chapter as far as their corporate property is 
 " concerned, but in subjection to them as far as regards the 
 " service of the Church*." 
 
 Dugdale says : — 
 
 "The Petty Canons were twelve in number, having their habitation in 
 distinct houses, some within the precinct and some without. Towards the 
 maintenance of these, to sing divine service daily in this church of St. Paul, 
 King Edward III. gave certain lands of the value of 67. 13s. 4c?. per annum 
 to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's. But in the eighteenth year of 
 Richard II. they obtained the king's letters patent to be a body politic for 
 the future, and called the College of the Twelve Petty Canons of St. Paul's 
 Church, whereof one to be the warden, and also to have a common seal, 
 
 * Jebb's ' Choral Service.' 
 
50 
 
 etc. At which time, in augmentation of their maintenance, divers lands 
 and rents were by the said king's licence granted to them*." 
 
 The case of St. Paul's was substantially that of other Ca- 
 thedrals. In a few instances the buildings appropriated to 
 these collegiate establishments yet remain to attest their for- 
 mer existence : — 
 
 "In former times their members had, as at the Universities, a chapel, 
 hall and common table. The college-buildings still remain at Hereford, 
 Wells and elsewhere. The college of Wells, with its beautiful little chapel, 
 and its arched passage, communicating with the north transept of the Ca- 
 thedral, is singularly interesting. At St. Paul's all vestiges of the common 
 buildings, which were standing in Bishop Grindal's time, have long disap- 
 peared, and the Minor Canons have no residence as such. At York the 
 extensive college-buildings remain, but they have been altogether alienated 
 from their original destination, with the exception of the chapel, which is 
 sometimes used by the (civic) corporation. All the members together 
 formed the Choir, and by the very nature of their office all, clerical as well 
 as lay, were expected constantly to be presentf." 
 
 That the Choirs were separately endowed, chartered and 
 maintained from their own revenues, prior to the Reformation, 
 is an unquestioned fact; that all their revenues were secured 
 to them at the Reformation is equally certain ; and that to 
 question or deny the tenure by which these were secured to 
 them would be to unsettle and invalidate the tenure of church 
 property universally, may be an unpalatable truth, but it is an 
 unassailable one. To all this mass of historic evidence and 
 of documentary testimony, illustrated and confirmed in every 
 way, is now, for the first time, opposed a simple and unsup- 
 ported denial. Let this pass, and with those who take the 
 pains to examine its value, it will pass for what it is worth. 
 To proceed : — 
 
 "The ordinary expenditure [of Deans and Chapters] ap- 
 " pears to us in general economical and moderate, and such 
 " as is required for the due performance of Choral Service, the 
 a care and maintenance of the fabric, and the decent propriety 
 <€ of a Cathedral establishment." — Second Report, p. 14. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to remark, that " the due perform- 
 ance of the Choral Service" is wholly incompatible with "the 
 economical and moderate expenditure" which finds a com- 
 placent assent in the words of the Commissioners. The Ca- 
 
 * Dugdale's 'St. Paul's,' p. 17. t Jebb, p. 101. 
 
51 
 
 thedral Service was constructed for two sufficient and respon- 
 sive choirs ; it demands two complete and separate sets of sing- 
 ers. Many services and anthems cannot be performed at all 
 without two contra-tenors, two tenors and two basses on each 
 side, and even this number of voices is quite insufficient to give 
 them their due and designed effect. They may be performed 
 pro forma — scrambled through, burlesqued — with a smaller 
 number of voices, but they cannot be sunt;. " Whenever this 
 number is not present," says Archdeacon Bay ley, "the Service 
 suffers mutilation;" and the choir-books will confirm his as- 
 sertion. Some part must be omitted, transferred or inverted ; 
 some outrage on the symmetry and beauty of the Service 
 must take place. Again we exhort our readers to appeal to 
 the evidence of their own senses ; — let them enter any Cathe- 
 dral, and say whether they find this number of voices in the 
 choir ; they will then judge whether this " economical" pro- 
 vision is consistent with u the due performance of the Church 
 Service." But why is this "moderation" and "economy" 
 alluded to in terms of such complacency ? Why are the Com- 
 missioners desirous of sanctioning a transfer of the Choir 
 revenues to persons and purposes for whom they never were 
 designed ? Why, but for the convenient value of the prece- 
 dent? The purpose they had in view was to seize a certain 
 portion of Cathedral property and convert it to such other 
 uses as they might see fit. Hence, to commend the similar 
 acts of capitular bodies, was effectually to silence Deans and 
 Chapters, and to justify the spoliation of spoliators by an 
 appeal to their own deeds. As far as the capitular bodies 
 of Cathedrals were concerned, never was there an act of more 
 complete retributive justice. They had plundered the inferior 
 members of their churches, and now their superiors quoted 
 their own proceedings as a sufficient justification for plun- 
 dering them. Under such circumstances the obvious duty 
 of the Commissioners was to inquire into the state of every 
 foundation, to note every deviation from its plan and purpose, 
 to examine into and report on all alienations of property, all 
 violations of trust, all habitual neglects of duty, all un- 
 warranted innovations. But on these points the Commis- 
 sioners are silent. Two other clauses in the same Report 
 sufficiently indicate the intentions of its framers, and the use 
 
52 
 
 which they design to make of the precedent with which they 
 had been furnished : — 
 
 "We recommend that such regulations should be adopted, as may leave 
 it in the power of Deans and Chapters, under certain restrictions, to give 
 preferment to the members of their own body, and to the Minor Canons, 
 who may reasonably look to them for reward after a certain period of ser- 
 vice : and that where the presentation to any benefice in their gift is not 
 required for these purposes, it should pass, in some cases to the Crown, 
 and in others to the bishop of the diocese, in which either the Cathedral 
 or the benefice may be respectively situate. * * * * We likewise recom- 
 mend, that, in general, the livings, the patronage of which belongs to the 
 Prebends which are to cease, and those in the gift of the Deans and Resi- 
 dentiaries, in right of their separate estates, shall, after the present Incum- 
 bencies, fall to the presentation of the respective Bishops." — Second Re- 
 port, p. 14. 
 
 It is worth while to remark the convenient uncertainty 
 in which many of these recommendations are involved : — 
 "under certain restrictions," — " in certain cases," — "in 
 general," — " subject to modification," — " reserved for fur- 
 ther consideration," and phrases of like import continually 
 occur, all in truth having the same purpose in view, that 
 there shall be a perpetual appeal necessary to, and a perpe- 
 tual control vested in, the body of Ecclesiastical Commis- 
 sioners, who alone are to have power to give meaning and 
 significance to these " ambiguous givings-out." The inten- 
 tion was however sufficiently manifest, and the members of 
 the various Capitular bodies were not slow to take the alarm, 
 — astounded, doubtless, that the design of Sir Edward Dering 
 in the Long Parliament, for despoiling the Cathedrals, had 
 been taken up by a royal Commission of the present age at 
 the suggestion of a Bishop. Much pious horror and holy in- 
 dignation were expressed at the attempt to alienate Cathedral 
 endowments ; their most powerful, certainly their most hu- 
 mourous champion, being one of the residentiaries of Bishop 
 Blomfield's own Cathedral. But of what avail were eloquence 
 and wit from such a quarter ? The reply was obvious : — 
 " The lesson you have taught me I will execute, and it shall 
 go hard but I will better the instruction." It seems never 
 to have occurred to these persons, that, in any censure uttered 
 against the menaced episcopal attack, they were pronouncing 
 their own condemnation, or that they had themselves fur- 
 
59 
 
 nished a precedent for the spoliation which they now dis- 
 covered to be sacrilegious and unjust; that they had turned 
 a deaf ear to memorials and petitions complaining of similar 
 wrongs, for which no redress was ever obtained but by the 
 strong arm of the law. How forcibly do the words of Archbi- 
 shop YVhitgift describe the conduct of modern church digni- 
 taries in the character of trustees, and how utterly regardless 
 are they of this and such like exhortations ! " When they 
 u that serve at God's altar shall be exposed to poverty, their 
 " religion itself will be exposed to scorn and become con- 
 temptible. And, therefore, as you arc intrusted with great 
 B power over the Church's lands, dispose of them for Jesus' 
 u sake, as you have promised to man and vowed to God, — 
 u that is, as the donors intended." 
 
 The Reports are written in a careless, flippant and insolent 
 tone, indicating a too fatal certainty of their final result to 
 render the labour of reasoning or even of correct writing 
 necessary; and the conviction that Cathedral endowments, 
 once the spoil of Presbyterianism, were now to be u gorged by 
 prelaty" increased with every fresh episcopal manifesto. By 
 men " coming on a sudden from a mean and plebeian life to 
 " be lords of stately palaces, rich furniture, delicious fare and 
 u princely attendance, whose mouth cannot open without the 
 (i stench of avarice, was the treasury of the Church to be em- 
 bezzled*." 
 
 Yet these men, " more audacious and precipitant than those 
 of solid and deep reach," of whose labours in and for the 
 Church of Christ the world has yet to learn, presume to array 
 themselves against the opinions, and to set at naught the 
 counsel of their learned and pious predecessors, to contemn 
 their precepts, to despise their warnings. Let us listen to 
 the words of Bishop Beveridge : — 
 
 " When anything hath once been settled, either by law or custom, so as 
 to be generally received and used for a long time, it cannot be afterwards 
 put down and a new thing set up in its stead, without giving great offence 
 and disturbance, and perplexing people's minds with fears and doubts, and 
 inclining them to have an ill opinion of the Church ; for nothing is a 
 greater blemish to a Church, nor gives more just cause to suspect that 
 all is not right in her, than her not being stedfast, but shifting and 
 changing. Let us have respect to the labours of those who carried on 
 
 * Milton. 
 
 f2 
 
54 
 
 and finished the great work of the Reformation ; let us take heed how we 
 meddle with what was done at that time ; at least not so as to lay it aside. 
 If we do, we shall soon find the want of it ; for notwithstanding all our 
 high conceits of ourselves, we shall find it difficult, if not impossible, to 
 substitute anything in its place which will answer the end for which it was 
 designed so well as that doth*." 
 
 The same reverential attachment to the existing structure 
 and ordinances of the Church influenced those who effected 
 the last revision of the Book of Common Prayer : — 
 
 " The form and order of her Service have continued the same unto this 
 day, and do yet stand firm and unshaken, notwithstanding all the impetu- 
 ous assaults that have been made against it by such men as are given to 
 change, and have always discovered a greater regard to their own private 
 fancies and interests than to that duty which they owe to the publicf." 
 
 The voice of prophetic warning given in later times, to which 
 their attention was directed by the author of the ( Apology,' 
 it might have been supposed, would not have been equally 
 unheeded by those innovators,, presumptuous and self-suffi- 
 cient as they were : — 
 
 " Men," said Burke, in reference to a former class of spoliators, " who 
 undertake considerable things ought to give us ground to presume ability ; 
 but the physician of the state who, not satisfied with the cure of dis- 
 tempers, undertakes to regenerate constitutions, ought to show uncommon 
 powers. 
 
 " In the scheme of these men, I confess myself unable to find anything 
 which displays the work of a comprehensive and disposing mind. Their 
 purpose everywhere seems to have been to evade and slip aside from diffi- 
 culty. This it has been the glory of the great masters in all the arts to 
 confront and overcome. It is the want of nerves of understanding for 
 such a task, it is the degenerate fondness for tricking, short cuts, and 
 little fallacious facilities, that has in so many places in the world created 
 governments [and invested commissioners] with arbitrary powers. The 
 difficulties which they had rather eluded than escaped meet them again in 
 their course ; they multiply and thicken on them ; they are involved 
 through a labyrinth of confused detail in an industry without limit and 
 without direction ; and, in conclusion, the whole of their work becomes 
 feeble, vicious and insecure. They commence their work of reform with 
 abolition and destruction. But is it in pulling down and destroying that 
 skill is displayed ? Your mob can do this as well as your assemblies : the 
 shallowest understanding is equal to the task. Rage and frenzy will pull 
 down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation and foresight can 
 build up in a hundred years. 
 
 " It is in the principle of injustice that the danger lies, and not in the 
 
 * ' Defence of the Book of Psalms, collected into English metre,' 1710. 
 f Preface to the Book of Common Prayer. 
 
description of persons on whom it is first exercised. It prescription be 
 once shaken, no species of property is secure, when once it becomes an ob- 
 ject large enough to tempt the cupidity of power. When once the com- 
 monwealth has established the estates of the Church as property, it can 
 consistently hear nothing of the more and the less. Too much and too 
 little are treason against property. What evil can arise from the quantity 
 in hand, while the supreme authority has the full sovereign superintend- 
 ence over this, as over all property, to prevent every species of abuse, and, 
 whenever it notably deviates, to give it a direction agreeable to the pur- 
 poses of the institution ?* " 
 
 These remarks, so pregnant with wisdom, though unheeded 
 by our Commissioners, most accurately depict the sort of men 
 who undertook to new-model our Church, and the temper 
 and talent which they brought to the task. These sufficiently 
 appear, says the author of the s Apology, 5 " in the haste and 
 " hurry by which their various propositions are distinguished, 
 i( (and even the composition of their reports characterized) ; 
 " in the necessity to which they have been reduced by this 
 " inconsideration, of changing some and abandoning others 
 u of their plans, and the absence of all appearance of the great 
 " minds of former ages having been consulted in concocting 
 " them ; in the singular character of their remedies, and their 
 u utter disregard or forgetfulness of what was designed by the 
 u builders-up of those glorious foundations which they are 
 u disturbing f." 
 
 The Third Report, dated May 20th, 1836, contains five 
 pages, embracing fifty-four propositions, by which England 
 and Wales are parcelled out into episcopalian allotments, ac- 
 cording to a new and improved method, — the illustrations 
 consisting of coloured maps. In this Report the subject of 
 Cathedral endowments is not touched. 
 
 The Fourth Report, dated June 24, 1836, is a digest of the 
 entire plan, ready for embodiment in the form of a Bill. Mean- 
 while the members of Capitular bodies, in their corporate or in- 
 dividual capacity, persevered in endeavouring to avert their im- 
 pending doom. Speaking of the wholesale prebendal transfer, 
 the Archdeacon of Winchester rightly observed : — " It would 
 " be a waste of words further to illustrate my assertion, that 
 " abolition is the proper word for reducing the order from 
 
 * ' Reflexions on the French Revolution.' 
 f ' Apology for Cathedral Service,' p. 141. 
 
56 
 
 " near 600 to 130." The possible and probable effect of the 
 example, so convincingly stated by Burke, was again urged. 
 " It would be most unwise," said the Master of the Temple, 
 " by sanctioning a sudden and extensive revolution of a large 
 " mass of property, to give an example of spoliation, which 
 " might be most fatally acted upon as a precedent by the 
 " advocates of changes of a very different description. The 
 " Commissioners appear to have taken an opposite view, for 
 " they have acted upon the opposite principle*." Some mem- 
 bers of Capitular bodies hastened to the rescue with more 
 zeal than knowledge, — among them the Dean of Norwich, who, 
 not content with having destroyed the Cathedral Service in 
 his own church, had the folly to assert that "if half the Minor 
 " Canons were abolished, Cathedral Service would be carried 
 " on in a more regular and efficient manner than it is at 
 " present ; " and to denounce chanting, which he believed 
 (well-informed man !) to be, according to its present plan, " a 
 " relic of the Church of Rome, and a practice which our judi- 
 " cious reformers could not have approved." It is rather 
 singular that so many of them should have defended it, — 
 among others, that "the judicious" Hooker should have thus 
 spoken of it : — 
 
 " When and how this custom of antiphonal singing came up in the 
 Church is not certainly known ; but this we know, that it is a thing which 
 Christian Churches in all ages of the world have received, — a thing which 
 was never found to have any inconvenience in it, — a thing which filleththe 
 mind with comfort and heavenly delight, — stirreth up fragrant desires and 
 affections, — watereth the heart to the end it may fructify, and maketh the 
 virtuous in trouble full of magnanimity and courage." 
 
 It was easy to foresee that the march of the Bishops would 
 not be impeded or delayed by such opponents as Dr. Pellew ; 
 nor were his brethren, although better informed and more 
 discreet, more successful. They had put themselves out of 
 court; the answer to all attacks from this quarter was at 
 hand, and of the highest authority : " With what judgemeut 
 " y e j u dge 5 ye shall be judged; with what measure ye mete, 
 " it shall be measured to you again." The work of degrada- 
 tion and plunder, so long progressive, was now complete. 
 The Minor Canons, first rendered dependent, with every 
 
 * ' Letter to the Bishop of Lincoln.' 
 
57 
 
 temptation to become preferment- hunters, were now for the 
 most part incompetent, — mute, and therefore useless ; while 
 the poor Lay-Clerks were almost spurned by the very ver- 
 gers : " with bated breath and whispering humbleness/' 
 cringing to the Dean's butler as an acknowledged superior, 
 or receiving orders in a Residentiary's hall from his footboy. 
 There exists not a class in England more degraded and bereft 
 of the port and dignity of manhood than the men by whom 
 the daily worship of God is now carried on in our Cathe- 
 drals*. 
 
 Of all this the Bishop of London must have been well 
 aware. That the office of a Minor Canon had been generally 
 converted into a sinecure, he must have known. His obvious 
 duty, as a member of an ecclesiastical commission appointed 
 to inquire into and report upon the state of Cathedrals, was 
 to notice this fact with a view to its reform. This duty he 
 left wholly unperformed ; and, instead of endeavouring to cor- 
 rect a notorious abuse, he silently availed himself of its exist- 
 ence as the pretext for abolishing the office with which it was 
 connected, and transferring the amount of patronage so created 
 into his own hands. This was a consummation wholly un- 
 looked for by Deans who had been quietly substituting their 
 incompetent favourites to Minor Canonries. For these and 
 other violations of trust, they thought there was nobody 
 to call them to account ; when lo ! no sooner was the work of 
 degradation complete, than Bishop Blomfield pounced upon 
 them, upbraided them with the possession of so much useless 
 patronage, and wrenched it from their grasp. He waited till 
 the fruit was ripe, and then he plucked it. 
 
 We see here the consequence of violated Statutes, disregard- 
 ed obligations and unheeded oaths. Fifty years ago this could 
 not have happened. Whoever then entered a Cathedral found 
 at least six Minor Canons occupied in the discharge of their 
 daily duty. Who would have ventured to dispossess able 
 and competent men from an office daily required and regu- 
 larly performed ? But whoever now enters a Cathedral will 
 usually find one Minor Canon, and one only, engaged in 
 
 * Wc forbear to substantiate this assertion by proofs, solely from an unwilling- 
 ness tu subject the sufferers to fresh indignity and persecution. The facts of which 
 
 we are cognizant would hardly be believed. 
 
58 
 
 chanting, or perhaps only reading, the Service, — the rest, if 
 present, idle. To this notorious fact is the appeal made, and 
 upon it is grounded a plea for the abolition of the office ; and 
 if Deans and Chapters were the only parties concerned, the 
 act would be one of strict retributive justice ; unfortunately 
 they are the least sufferers ; but upon this point more here- 
 after. 
 
 In the earlier periods of the reformed Church the admini- 
 stration of the funds intended for the support of the Cathe- 
 dral Service was subjected to the periodical scrutiny of the 
 diocesan, the Statutes of each Cathedral forming the ground- 
 work of the investigation. Thus the following "Articles" of 
 Archbishop Parker in fact resolve themselves into the general 
 question — " Is the Statute to which each article relates ob- 
 served ? and if not, why not?" 
 
 " Articles to be inquired of in the metropolitan visitation of Matthew, 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, in all and singular Cathedral and Collegiate 
 Churches within his province : — 
 
 " Whether your Prebendaries be resident, or how many of them ? Where 
 every one of the rest be ? 
 
 " Whether your divine service be used in manner and form prescribed by 
 the Queen's Majesty's injunctions, and in none other way? Whether it be 
 sung and said in due form ? 
 
 " Whether your Grammar-school be well ordered — whether the number 
 of children thereof be furnished — how many wanteth — and by whose de- 
 fault? Whether the statutes, foundations and other ordinances touching 
 the same school, masters and scholars be kept ? By whom they are not 
 kept, and by whose fault ? And the like, in all points, you shall inquire 
 and present of your choristers and their singing-master." 
 
 The other " articles " are not cited, as they have no direct 
 reference to the subject of our present inquiry; but these will 
 suffice to show that, if the same salutary scrutiny had con- 
 tinued, the choirs would have retained their numbers and 
 their efficiency ; Cathedral schools would have continued to 
 be the nurseries of a musically-educated priesthood, and pre- 
 bendal stalls would have been occupied by resident and work- 
 ing clergymen. 
 
 It is worthy of remark that none of the Commissioners' Re- 
 ports take any notice of the Cathedral schools, their design, 
 their indispensable utility, their endowments, or their present 
 state. This can be no undesigned omission ; on the contrary, 
 it seems to be part of the systematic plan for the gradual 
 
59 
 
 abolition of the Cathedral Service. The subject of Cathedral 
 schools is no novel one to the Bishop of London; it has been 
 unwclcomely thrust upon him in all its length and breadth. 
 He knows full well what they ought to be, and what they are, 
 and is therefore aware that without some such provision the 
 race of competent Minor Canons must cease ; — he knows that 
 it has ceased, and he knows why. Hence on the present state 
 of the Cathedral schools he looks with a complacent smile. 
 Here, again, he sees that the Deans and Chapters have 
 played his game. No longer can they assert, with Dean 
 Hacket, that "the principal grammar-schools in the king- 
 dom are maintained by these churches," and that they also 
 u bring up musicians that come to great perfection in that 
 faculty." He takes care, accordingly, to leave them as they 
 are, observing a profound and politic silence even with regard 
 to their existence. 
 
 We have thus examined these several Reports, — fit preludes 
 to the forthcoming Bill, — Reports containing such an array of 
 principles, precedents and practices as might be anticipated 
 from the principal mover in the affair. To these, as we have 
 stated, are subscribed the names, among others, of Lord Chan- 
 cellor Cottenham, Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell, 
 in connexion with that of " C. J. London." These Whig- 
 ministers, in their ambition of legislation and in the fullness 
 of their ignorance, commit themselves into the hands of their 
 episcopal overseer, and proceed, just as he urges,in their helter- 
 skelter attack upon Cathedral establishments. They seek no 
 information — they heed no warning ; they stop not to ask what 
 will be the effect of this measure [inter alia) upon the Ca- 
 thedral Service, which any boy from Westminster xVbbey could 
 have explained to them : they know not — they care not. It 
 might have been anticipated that Lord Melbourne's knowledge 
 of the world would have led him to pause, to doubt and to 
 examine, before he committed himself into the hands of a 
 man whose constant aim and object had been priestly power 
 and domination, and to hesitate before he gave countenance 
 to a measure of which the avowed purpose was to centre 
 patronage in episcopacy, and virtually to make one Bishop 
 the author and giver of all good things, — to create that most 
 
60 
 
 odious of all jurisdictions an ecclesiastical commission, and 
 to uproot and destroy those venerable institutions which piety 
 had founded, which munificence had endowed, and which 
 learning and genius had adorned. On this occasion the Pre- 
 mier's usual discernment forsook him : the Bill was brought 
 into the House of Lords by the Bishop of London, who ex- 
 plained, as suited him, its provisions. He was master of his 
 subject, — he knew all its operations and effects, immediate 
 and remote : no other peer seemed to do so, or probably did. 
 It passed : the Bill became law. With its numerous trans- 
 fers and alienations of Prebendal stalls we have now nothing to 
 do : they are a series of very sufficient precedents for some 
 future Sir Edward Dering, but our present concern is with its 
 effect upon Cathedral Music and the Cathedral Choirs. The 
 first clause which relates to these is the 45th : — 
 
 " Be it enacted that from henceforth the right of appointing 
 " Minor Canons shall be in all cases vested in the respective 
 " Chapters, and shall not be exercised by any other person or 
 il body whatsoever ; and that, so soon as conveniently may be, 
 " and by the authority hereinafter provided, regulations shall 
 " be made for fixing the number and emoluments of such 
 " Minor Canons in each Cathedral and Collegiate Church ; 
 " provided that there shall not, in any case, be more than Six 
 " nor less than Two." — Act of Parliament, p. 1113. 
 
 As "the authority hereinafter provided" is the Ecclesiasti- 
 cal Commission, of which the Bishop of London is the re- 
 puted chief and director, this clause must, in order to a right 
 understanding of its intent and designed interpretation, be 
 taken in connexion with his comment. In the speech with 
 which he introduced the bill his Lordship said, " It is not our 
 intention to tax the musical powers of the Minor Canons" — a 
 commentary which, it seems, provoked "a laugh" from his 
 noble hearers. Taken in connexion with this significant hint, 
 we may be assured that the lowest will be the future real num- 
 ber of Minor Canons. In fact, if they are not to sing, two is 
 one too many. If the subject were not too serious in itself 
 and in its consequences for a jest, the coolness with which a 
 bishop of the Church of England could thus, and in sucb 
 terms, propose to abrogate a vital and essential portion of tht 
 
61 
 
 Statutes of all our Cathedrals, to overturn those provision! 
 whose wisdom and efficacy had been proved for centuries, and 
 to convert the Cathedral Service into a shapeless ruin, might 
 have provoked us to echo the laugh of his hearers. But 
 this is no subject for unseemly mirth. We rather desire " to 
 " claim our right of lamenting the wrongs of the Church, 
 u when others, that have ventured nothing for her sake, have 
 " not the honour to be admitted mourners." We may not 
 live to see it, but this clause seals the doom of the Cathedral 
 Service; it lops off the right arm of every Choir and termi- 
 nates its efficiency. Those who ought to be, those whom the 
 Statutes expressly require to be, those who for centuries were, 
 the mainstay of every choir, are now to be for ever silenced ; 
 the music of Purceli and Croft is henceforth, by warrant of 
 law, to be committed to day-labourers at a shilling a time. 
 A few of these hirelings will crawl into their stalls and utter 
 some kind of sounds, — the organ will play, and the Deau and 
 his verger will keep their wonted state ; but the Cathedral 
 music of the English Church is gone. The effect of this 
 clause is not immediate, — no Minor Canon is to be ejected ; 
 death is to accomplish the Bishop's object, gradually and im- 
 perceptibly ; one by one Minor Canons will drop off, and none 
 will be allowed to supply their places. A few years, and the 
 work will be done. Mute for ever will be the heavenly voices 
 of Purceli and Gibbons, of Boyce and Battishill; unheard, 
 unsung will be their matchless harmonies. When this time 
 arrives, look round from your episcopal throne, Lord Bishop 
 of London, and say, "This is my work !" 
 
 The abuse by which Minor Canons are compensated for the 
 alienation of their revenues by livings, instead of being recti- 
 fied, is legalized and perpetuated by this act of Parliament, so 
 that even the two will be found to dwindle down to one. As 
 if in mockery, it is enacted " that no Minor Canon hereafter 
 " to be appointed in any Cathedral or Collegiate Church shall 
 " be allowed to take and hold together with his Minor Canonry 
 " any benefice beyond the limit of six miles from such church." 
 If he is not present and performing his statutary duty in the 
 Cathedral, what matters it whether he is in the adjoining 
 street, six miles or six hundred miles off? The duties of a Minor 
 Canon and those of a parish priest are wholly incompatible, — 
 
62 
 
 they had been declared to be so by the Commissioners them- 
 selves * : what new light had now dawned upon them ? 
 
 The immense yearly income arising from the confiscation 
 of Cathedral property of all kinds, it is enacted, " shall accrue 
 " and be vested absolutely in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, 
 " without any conveyance thereof or assurance in law other 
 " than the provisions of this Act;" and this not as a trust 
 of which they are to render an account as a public and re- 
 sponsible body, but absolutely and entirely, " for the cure of 
 " souls, in such manner as shall, by their authority, be deemed 
 " most conducive to the efficiency of the Established Church." 
 Truly a most convenient, loose and comprehensive arrange- 
 ment of words, so skilfully put together as to mean anything, 
 and to sanction any kind of expenditure which this secret 
 ecclesiastical conclave may think fit to order ! There is no 
 abuse which this clause will not legalize ; the door is open 
 to oppression, jobbing, trickery, prodigality, profligacy of 
 every kind ; and, since the existence of the Star Chamber, 
 no such fearful tribunal has exercised its power in England. 
 Secrecy, immense influence and yearly augmenting wealth, 
 extending to every parish, irresponsibility, virtual self-elec- 
 tion, — such are the attributes and powers of the Ecclesiastical 
 Commissioners. 
 
 This mighty machine will, in fact, be worked by a few 
 hands. In addition to the Archbishops, Bishops and two 
 Deans, the Commissioners consist chiefly of persons appoint- 
 ed by themselves, or of functionaries who, they well know, 
 are already overburdened with public duties, — the Lord 
 Chancellor, the Secretaries of State, the Chief Justices of the 
 courts of Queen's Bench, Common Pleas and the Exche- 
 quer ; the Judge of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury and 
 the Judge of the Court of Admiralty. Six laymen are ap- 
 pointed by the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 The working of this part of the act is already visible. The 
 Bishop of London (always on the spot) and a few obedient 
 laymen, practically make up the Ecclesiastical Commission. 
 A strange face is now and then seen : occasionally a stray 
 Bishop or two wander into the room, — the Judges never, — the 
 
 * Sec quotation from the Second Report quoted above at page 47. 
 
63 
 
 Ministers never, when they can avoid it. We cannot doubt 
 that all this was foreseen, designed, arranged: it was plainly 
 intended by the author of this Act that ecclesiastical patron- 
 age and power should center in himself, and it does. The 
 effect is only partially visible at present, although every sub- 
 sequent session of Parliament has brought to light some new 
 and unexpected result, at which legislators uplift their eyes 
 in wonder and their voices in indignation. Its operation, as 
 designed, is gradual and stealthy : death silently and regularly 
 transfers wealth to the hands of its new distributors, who 
 " will pay none but such as they find conformable to their 
 u own interests and opinions ; and the clergy will too often 
 " frame themselves to that interest and those opinions which 
 " they see best pleasing to their paymasters." The operation 
 of this piece of legislative impiety and folly may be stated in 
 the answer of the Bishops of a former reign to a somewhat 
 similar attempt* : — 
 
 " It overthroweth the foundation and statutes of all cathedral and col- 
 legiate churches, and taketh away the principal reward for learned 
 preachers. 
 
 " It taketh away daily service used in these churches (which were im- 
 piety), unless it be said and sung by such as are no ministers, which is 
 absurd. 
 
 " It will breed a beggarly, unlearned and contemptible ministry. It is 
 the very way to overthrow all colleges, cathedral churches and places of 
 learning, and to breed great confusion in the church and commonwealth." 
 
 That the effect of this Act of Parliament was but imper- 
 fectly understood by the Legislature and the public is certain. 
 They committed themselves into the hands of Bishop Blom- 
 field, and are now alarmed and angry at the consequences. 
 These are significant evidences of a prevalent conviction, that 
 the plea of church extension was only urged with the design 
 and for the purpose of transferring an enormous addition of 
 Church patronage to the episcopal bench. We take the fol- 
 lowing passage from the 'Times' of March 30, 1844, as one 
 among many illustrations of this state of public feeling : — 
 
 u The Bishop of London had immense patronage on his promotion to 
 the see of that name : but the suppression of the Minor-Canonries, we are 
 assured, has vastly increased his patronage, as well as that of the other 
 
 * ' Answer from the Bishops to the Book of Articles offered to the last Session 
 of Parliament.' (Eliz. Anno 23, 1580.) 
 
64 
 
 Bishops throughout the kingdom. ***** We have specified a part of 
 the error committed by increasing the episcopal patronage. The Church 
 is feeling at this moment the consequence of the abuse of that patronage. 
 * * * There is a species of benefice in the Church called donatives, or pecu- 
 liars, to which Lord Cottenham alluded in the debate of Tuesday. These 
 benefices, universally small ones, are generally also in the free gift of private 
 persons. We are not aware that anything has been publicly proved, or 
 even alleged, as to the manner in which they are either obtained or served ; 
 and yet, in all the movements of Church Reform, so called, we observe that 
 the efforts of the Bishops have been directed to deprive these benefices of 
 their free character, and to render them subject to their jurisdiction. If a 
 case of public necessity, or even convenience, can be made out, of course 
 the private owners and ordinaries of these livings have nothing to do but 
 to submit to a deprivation which certainly wears some appearance of injus- 
 tice. But it must abate the zeal of Churchmen to enlarge the sphere of 
 episcopal jurisdiction, when they find the Bishops themselves glad of ex- 
 cuses not to exercise it in the most atrocious cases. Moreover, are the 
 holders of these donatives, or peculiars, worse than certain episcopal no- 
 minees whom we could mention ? " 
 
 If these remarks are correct when connected with the 
 Church property of individuals, with how much greater force 
 do they apply to the alienation of public property designed 
 for public uses. In the one case it is simply a forcible trans- 
 fer of patronage from A to B ; but in the other, the offices 
 themselves, with all their duties and public advantages, are 
 swept away. Enough has already transpired in courts of 
 justice, in petitions to parliament, and in facts which are 
 perfectly notorious in various neighbourhoods, to furnish a 
 reply to the question with which this paragraph concludes. 
 These are lamentable evidences of the working of the new 
 system, and grievous indications of the mode and the means 
 by which Church preferment may now be obtained. 
 
 Whoever is at all conversant with the writings of the 
 Fathers of the Church cannot fail to be struck with the entire 
 discordance of tone and opposition of sentiment, which sub- 
 sist between these and the Reports of Bishop Blomfield and 
 his coadjutors ; as well as with the coincidence of opinion, of 
 reasoning and sometimes of language, between these recent 
 innovators and the most potent adversaries of the Establish- 
 ment. " These Church revenues/ 5 says Milton, " are likely 
 " to continue endless matter of dissension in the Church, and 
 " there will be found no better remedy for the evil than to 
 " convert them to such profitable uses as shall be judged motf 
 
C5 
 
 " necessary.'' 9 The words of the Report are, to apply them " in 
 " such manner as shall be deemed most conducive to the cj/i- 
 " ciency of the Church*." These facts are significant and sus- 
 picious, — sufficiently so, it might have been expected, to have 
 put statesmen and legislators on their guard, and have warned 
 them to trust to no mere assertion from obviously interested 
 parties, but rather to have examined competent witnesses — 
 to have called for documentary evidence — to have paused, 
 hesitated and looked around them, in order to ascertain the 
 certain and the probable consequences of their decision. 
 But the subject wanted the excitement of a party contest or 
 a personal squabble, and therefore aroused neither inquiry, 
 attention nor discussion in the lower House, while in the 
 upper one it was treated as a mere question of patronage, 
 in which the only parties interested were the existing and the 
 proposed possessors. 
 
 In this point of view it was too generally regarded by the 
 public, among whom of the present generation, it must be 
 borne in mind, there exists little knowledge of what English 
 Cathedral music really is. In stating our own conviction 
 that it is the richest collection of music for the noblest pur- 
 pose in the world, we do but echo the opinion of all com- 
 petent judges, of all who have weighed its merits against the 
 devotional music of other churches. But of this fact the 
 public cannot be cognizant. " How can they reason but 
 from what they know?" The knowledge of a musical com- 
 position is derived either from reading or hearing; the former 
 source of knowledge is not possessed, in this kingdom, by 
 
 * The framers of the Reports and the Bill appear to have studied Milton dili- 
 gently and to some purpose. " Touching church reformation," says he, " we must 
 not hiive recourse to ecclesiastical canons, though never so ancient, so ratified and 
 established in the land by statutes, which for the most part are positive laws, 
 neither natural nor moral, and so by any parliament, for serious considerations, 
 without scruple, to be at any time repealed." This was natural and consistent 
 in Milton, who in the preceding page had thus eulogised the Parliament for 
 having dealt in like manner with kingly authority. " The Parliament of England, 
 assisted by a great number of the people who appeared and stuck to them faith- 
 fullest in defence of their religion and their civil liberties, judging kingship by long 
 experience a government unnecessary, burdensome and dangerous, justly abolished 
 it, turning regal bondage into a free commonwealth." His argument is this : — Par- 
 liament has a similar control over the powers of the King and the revenues of the 
 Church — the former maybe "justly abolished," — the latter "converted to such 
 profitable uses as may be judged moat necessary." The Commissioners have 
 adopted Milton's exhortation only in part ; his more consistent imitators will not be 
 inclined to stop midway, but will go with him wholly and entirely. 
 
66 
 
 one man in ten thousand ; and of the comparatively few who 
 have obtained it, but a small number have the means of ap- 
 plying it to Cathedral music. The scanty lists of subscribers 
 to Boyce's volumes and to Purcell's Sacred Music, tell us how 
 insignificant a portion of their countrymen possess these 
 invaluable collections. The probability is, that Liverpool, 
 Manchester and Birmingham together could not furnish 
 a dozen copies of either. Thus is " knowledge at one en- 
 trance quite shut out." Nor let any person, on entering a 
 Cathedral, labour under the mistake that he hears there the 
 music which was written for it, as it was designed to be sung : 
 he will merely hear an illustration of the corruptio optimi, 
 for reasons which we have already detailed. The people of En- 
 gland, therefore, know nothing of the music of their Church ; 
 those who chance to hear it are impressed with a conviction 
 that it is a compound of dullness and imbecility, and that if 
 it must be sung for form sake, the less that is heard of it the 
 better ; hence the total indifference to those provisions of this 
 Bill which have ensured its destruction. The fate of a few 
 dissenting endowments was sufficient to set the kingdom in 
 a flame, and to produce hundreds of petitions from members 
 of the Church, about property in which they had no concern : 
 but our Cathedral Music was doomed without the uplifting 
 of a single voice in its favour in either house of Parliament. 
 The public acted as if they had no interest in the issue of 
 what they regarded as a mere squabble between Bishops and 
 Deans about a certain amount of patronage. This is a fatal 
 mistake, as a little examination of the facts will suffice to 
 show. 
 
 Art in its various forms of display, genius in its diversified 
 modes of exhibition, are the sources of a nation's wealth and 
 greatness. The labours of the poet, the sculptor, the painter, 
 the architect, the musician, are but exemplifications of like 
 talent and demonstrations of similar intellectual power ; and 
 their excellence is the standard by which we measure the 
 rank and stature of a nation's mind. Yet is this a truth to 
 which many will give only a partial assent. They assign 
 a subordinate rank not only to the labours of a single artist, 
 but to an entire region of art which they have never happened 
 to study, and to which they are therefore unable to apply the 
 
i>7 
 
 test of criticism. It was said by a competent judge thai 
 Purcell is as much the pride of England as Shakspeare, Mil- 
 ton or Newton. This assertion such persons would doubt, 
 if not disbelieve ; they would wonder to see a musician thus 
 associated ; but their wonder would cease, if they were able to 
 read and understand what he wrote. They would then discern 
 the same self-sustained power, the same creative fancy, the 
 same bright and original thought, the same intellectual vigour, 
 in his productions as in those of the poet or the philosopher. 
 Every work of genius forms a part of that foundation on which 
 a nation's character, station and fame are erected, and their pre- 
 servation is as much its interest as it ought to be its pride. We 
 apply these remarks to the Music of the English Church, and 
 we say, apart from its use, and without any reference to that 
 highest purpose for which it was written and to which it ought 
 to be applied, that it is a heritage of genius strictly national 
 and of unequalled excellence. This constitutes its claim to 
 the admiration and therefore to the sedulous care of the 
 people to whom it has been bequeathed. If they value the 
 buildings as monuments of art, for which this music was 
 written, — if they preserve and restore the Minster of York 
 with willing liberality and anxious solicitude, — if they call 
 into new existence the architectural beauties of the Temple 
 Church, — the same feeling should lead them to preserve 
 those similar evidences, of genius, the services and anthems 
 which were written for the purpose of being daily sung in 
 these and other Cathedrals and collegiate churches, as 
 well as to maintain in their full efficiency the means which 
 have been provided and bequeathed for their performance. 
 Whatever of grandeur or grace, of majesty or beauty belongs 
 to the English school of music, has been nurtured and reared 
 in our Cathedral and Collegiate Churches. If we have 
 reached any musical eminence, we owe it to these institu- 
 tions : they gave us Tallis and Byrd, then Gibbons and 
 Blow, then Lock and Lawes, Clark and Wise, then Henry 
 Purcell, then Aldrich, Weldon and Croft, then Greene and 
 Travers, lastly Boyce, Cooke and Battishill. For centuries 
 did these men keep alive (often under most discouraging 
 influences) the sacred fire of the altar, consecrating to the 
 glory of their Maker the exalted powers with which he had 
 
 G 
 
68 
 
 endowed them. The immediate product and result of their 
 labours for the Church we know, since a portion of what 
 they wrote has descended to us ; but who can calculate that 
 wide-spreading and beneficial influence of their genius upon 
 the art in all its branches, which we trace through succeeding 
 generations and in various directions ? Our madrigal writers, 
 for instance, the successful rivals of their great Italian and 
 Flemish contemporaries, were the offspring of our Cathe- 
 drals. Byrd,Morley, Weelkes, Este, Farmer, Bennett, Hilton 
 and Bateson were all the children, afterwards the organists 
 and singing-men, of our Choirs. Who was the founder of, 
 and the richest contributor to, our dramatic music, and of 
 whom was it truly said by Dr. Boyce, that " he possessed 
 a genius superior to that of any of his predecessors, together 
 with a depth of musical erudition not inferior to the most 
 learned of them, while his talents, not confined to any 
 particular manner or style of composition, displayed equal 
 excellence in everything he attempted?" — a boy brought 
 up in the Chapel Royal, and to the end of his life the or- 
 ganist of Westminster Abbey. And where was reared the 
 most accomplished singer that this country ever produced ? 
 — in the same choir. These are advantages to the art in 
 general directly traceable to this source; but the benefits 
 which it has indirectly received cannot be estimated. The 
 music of the Cathedral is the only music of a high cha- 
 racter that is open to the English people. Concerts and 
 operas are for the few, — for such as can afford to purchase an 
 expensive luxury; but the doors of our Cathedrals are open, 
 not one day in seven, but " day by day ;" and in these abun- 
 dant provision was made for performing the finest music 
 in the best manner. This of itself is no inconsiderable boon, 
 yet, when compared with the indirect advantages which such 
 endowments have conferred upon the art, it sinks into insig- 
 nificance. The Cathedrals were schools where a number of 
 musicians were constantly trained, where the choicest vocal 
 compositions were presented to their attention, and where a 
 correct taste w T as generated and diffused, not merely in the in- 
 dividual choir, but over the entire circle of which a Cathedral 
 town was the centre. Musical academies were planted from 
 end to end of the kingdom, — from Canterbury to Carlisle, and 
 
69 
 
 from Llandaff to Norwich. The beneficial influence of such 
 a provision is no matter of inference or conjecture; we know 
 how advantageously the presence of such men as Gibbons, 
 Weelkcs and Bateson, Aldrich, Rogers and Child, and in 
 more recent time of Hayes, Crotch and Beckwith, was felt in 
 the towns where they resided. Nor was this all : copies of 
 the Anthems and Services written for various Cathedrals were 
 circulated and used in their vicinity, and thus, not only the 
 cultivation of good music was stimulated and aided, but the 
 compositions themselves were perpetuated. Had not these 
 found their way into private collections many would have pe- 
 rished. Dr. Tudway, in one of his letters to Humphrey Wan- 
 ley concerning the collection of Cathedral Music which he was 
 employed to make for the first Earl of Oxford, says, " I have 
 " received more help from honest James Hawkins than from 
 " all the Cathedrals in England and Ireland f* and many of 
 Dr. Blow's anthems, whose existence only is recorded in the 
 books of the Chapel Royal, will be found in the library which 
 Lord Fitzwilliam bequeathed to the University of Cambridge. 
 Still greater has been the advantage resulting from the pub- 
 lication of Cathedral music. The collections of Boyce, Arnold 
 and Page — the volumes of Purcell, Croft, Greene and Battishill 
 — are known and studied by every English musician. They 
 form his text-books and models ; they are the authorities to 
 which he appeals, — the originals he strives to copy ; and it 
 is gratifying to see that the demand for a consequent supply 
 of these works is increasing. The collections of Boyce and 
 Arnold are in the course of republication, and Mr. Chappel 
 has rendered the yet more acceptable service of printing, for 
 the first time, some admirable morning or evening Services 
 by Dr. Tyc, Dr. Creyghton, Dr. Croft, Jer. Clark, P. Rogers, 
 Barrow, Hilton, Kelway and Robert Cooke, several of which 
 are printed from copies in the possession of the editor, Dr. 
 Rimbault. 
 
 This is a cheering fact, as it indicates a growing anxiety 
 for the possession and preservation of Cathedral music. The 
 law, as it now stands, has doomed their choirs, but so much 
 of their music as now remains is safe. The time will come 
 when the public voice will demand — not the repeal of a single 
 clause in this piece of heedless and sacrilegious legislation — 
 
 g2 
 
70 
 
 not the rescue of a single Cathedral from the grasp of an 
 ecclesiastical commission, but the restoration of Cathedral 
 plunder and an apportionment of Cathedral revenues, accor- 
 ding to the requirements of their statutes and foundations. 
 And as at the former abolition of the choirs, their music had 
 been preserved by individual zeal and care, so that at the 
 restoration they found again upon their desks the works of 
 Tye, Farrant, Tallis and Byrd, in like manner when the time 
 of their second restoration shall come, future Choirs will find 
 these, with the copious additions of subsequent composers, 
 ready for their use. 
 
 The large additions which have resulted to various chari- 
 table institutions from the cultivation and performance of 
 sacred music are well known. One of these, directly arising 
 out of a friendly annual meeting of the three Choirs of 
 Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford, is more immediately 
 connected with our present subject. In the year 1724, when 
 the members of these Choirs, with other lovers of music, 
 held their annual meeting that year at Gloucester, it was pro- 
 posed and unanimously agreed, " that at these Meetings there 
 a should be a collection made after morning service at the Ca- 
 " thedral door, for placing out or assisting to the education and 
 " maintenance of the orphans of the poorer clergy belonging to 
 " the dioceses of Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford, or of the 
 " members of the three respective Choirs, to be disposed of by 
 " six stewards, members of the society, a clergyman and a gen- 
 u tleman respectively belonging to the said dioceses." In his 
 sermon preached at the anniversary in 1 729, held at Hereford, 
 Dr. Bisse, then Chancellor of that diocese, thus advocated 
 the employment of music in aid of the greatest of Christian 
 duties : — 
 
 " In this our yearly assembling, religion may be said to have not so pro- 
 perly a share as the sole interest. Piety laid the foundation, charity hath 
 built thereupon : the promotion of both is found in the groundwork and in 
 the superstructure. May it subsist unto many years, yea generations ! 
 tending to the furtherance of God's glory, in the exaltation of his holy 
 worship, to the improvement of our Choirs and the credit of our founda- 
 tions, to the benefit of our cities, to the comfort of the fatherless, to the 
 delight of ourselves and all that come around us. Upon these grounds it 
 commenced, and upon these let our brotherly love continue." 
 
 The titles of most of the sermons preached by many emi- 
 
71 
 
 nent dignitaries of the Church arc sufficient to show the im- 
 portance they attached to its music. We quote a few as 
 evidences of the fact : — c On the Efficacy of Sacred Music to 
 prepare the mind for good impressions ;' — ' Church Music 
 vindicated ;' — ' A Defence of Church Music ;' — ' On the Anti- 
 quity, Dignity and Advantages of Church Music ;' — 'The im- 
 portance of Church Music in the sacrifice of Thanksgiving;' 
 — e The Divine Influence of Church Music' The men who 
 preached these sermons had some other notion of the divine 
 art, when associated with the worship of the Most High, than 
 of a service which was to be performed no matter how, pro- 
 vided it were done at a sufficiently cheap rate. Equally ap- 
 parent is it, from the history and origin of this charity, as from 
 numberless other facts, that the clergy of former times were 
 accustomed to regard the members of a Cathedral choir, not 
 as abject dependents and low-bred hirelings, but as brethren 
 and fellow-labourers*. The " wages" of the Lay-clerks were 
 then probably more than fourteen shillings a-weekf. This 
 voluntary association of the Choirs had, in the year 1811, pro- 
 duced to the charity for w T hich it was designed no less a sum 
 than 27,186/. 45. Td.% Verily if the Church has beggared the 
 Choirs, they have, in this instance at least, returned good for 
 evil. 
 
 The music of the English Church has attained its elevated 
 station in consequence chiefly of its national stamp. It pos- 
 sesses some of the excellencies which are common to all sacred 
 compositions of a high order, of whatever school. It abounds 
 with skilful and masterly fugues ; nor are the more elaborate 
 exercises in Canon wanting. In Purcell's Service in B flat no 
 less than ten of these compositions appear; and his magnifi- 
 
 * A Sermon preached at Oxford a few years before the establishment of this 
 Meeting of tbe Three Choirs, and entitled ' Cathedral Service decent and useful,' was 
 thus dedicated by its author: — 
 
 ." To William Croft, Mus. Doc. Oxon., Composer to His Majesty. 
 
 " Sir, — \V r hen I was desired to publish this sermon, there could be no dispute to 
 whom I should dedicate it. It does of right belong to you, who are so great an 
 ornament to your profession, who have contributed so well to the true Church musick, 
 and so much to the happiness of your most obliged and humble servant, 
 
 " William Dinglly." 
 
 f Since the preceding article on this subject was written, we have ascertained 
 that in some Cathedrals Lay- clerks have not ten shillings for their week's work of 
 two attendances every day. 
 
 X ' History of the origin and progress of the Meeting of the Three Choirs of 
 Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford,' by the Rev. Daniel Lysons. 
 
72 
 
 cent anthem, " O God, thou hast cast us out," is a piece of 
 fugal counterpoint in the manner of Palestrina in nowise in- 
 ferior to similar exercises of that great master. Our Church 
 writers, from Tallis to Battishill, may be regarded as the best 
 models of vocal part-writing ; and in all the characteristics of 
 ecclesiastical composition which the English school shares in 
 common with those of Italy and Germany, it holds no second 
 place. But the possession of these qualities confers not its 
 peculiar claim to admiration, which is rather found in the 
 forcible and just expression which all our great masters have 
 imparted to their sacred compositions, — in the constant con- 
 nexion which they have preserved between sound and sense. 
 They treated music as a language designed and fitted to ap- 
 peal more forcibly to the heart than mere recitation, and they 
 used it accordingly. The modern writers for the Catholic 
 Church, among whom we include Hasse, Jomelli and their 
 contemporaries, too frequently regard words as the mere vehi- 
 cles of sound; and whether the music, written to the same 
 words, be grave or gay, seems the mere effect of caprice or 
 chance. The solemn invocation with which the Mass opens 
 is, by the same composer, set to music of a totally opposite 
 character, — at one time with becoming gravity and solemn- 
 ity, at another with a sole desire to render the movement 
 sparkling and showy. The words implore the mercy of God 
 and of Christ, while the music affords, and is designed to 
 afford, to the prima donna of the choir the welcome oppor- 
 tunity of displaying her agilita di voce. The " peace of 
 God" is supplicated at the close of the Mass by the rapid 
 and noisy reiteration of a hacknied operatic cadence, to the 
 words " Dona nobis," a dozen times repeated with intervening 
 symphonies. The grand crash is reserved for the " pacem," 
 which is shouted to the full roar and din of the orchestra, the 
 "brass band" being at this point let loose, and the enraptured 
 drummers enjoying the licence and luxury of & fortissimo. 
 
 Such is the inevitable consequence of admitting the style 
 of the theatre into the music of the Church. It begins by 
 imitation, — it ends by amalgamation and adoption; it begins 
 by being like the music of the Opera,— it ends by being the 
 same. The taste of listeners (not worshipers) becomes more 
 and more depraved ; the musical appetite requires fresh sti- 
 
7-3 
 
 mulants; the house of prayer is regarded and called "the 
 Sunday Opera ;" singers are only eager for individual display, 
 and the bravura of the preceding night is repeated with a 
 clumsy adaptation to Latin words, in the hope that, during its 
 performance, admiration of the creature may be substituted 
 for adoration of the Creator. These results are before our 
 eyes ; we hear 'Di tanti palpiti' played and sung in a place 
 of worship, and a ' Stabat Mater' turned into a set of qua- 
 drilles. And why have such indecencies never been perpe- 
 trated with English Church music ? Simply because it is im- 
 possible. Its anthems express, in appropriate musical sounds, 
 the sentiment with which they are connected, and they will 
 express no other. In those compositions which may be said 
 emphatically to embody and represent the English school of 
 Church music, the connexion of sound with sense is recog- 
 nized and adopted as a principle. " Music and poetry," said 
 Purcell, " are twin-sisters, lovely when apart, but most lovely 
 when united." 
 
 This perversion of the true end and purpose of devotional 
 music, into which eminent modern composers for the Church 
 of Rome have been seduced — or perhaps, against their own 
 better judgement, driven — has been censured by the best au- 
 thorities of that communion and country. Thus Kircher, in 
 a chapter devoted to the errors and abuses of modern Church 
 music, having denounced the practice of regarding words as 
 mere vehicles of sound, says — 
 
 u In hunc eundem errorem incidunt Missarum compositores, qui dum 
 vocem Kyrie eleison ante Deum per humilem supplicis et prostrati animi 
 affectum exprimere debercnt, ridiculis saltibus ct incongruo diminutarum 
 notarum augmento clausulis chorea? theatrisque quam Ecclesise aptioribus 
 referunt : verum hoc forte illis ignoscendum, dum quod Grsecum est non 
 intelligunt*." 
 
 Martini thus describes the true character and end of 
 Church music : — 
 
 " Chi vuol comporre per servigio di Chiesa dee accomodarsi al fine 
 ch'ella ha avuto nell' accompagnare le lodi di Dio col canto. II fine della 
 Chiesa altro certamente non e stato, se non se col moderato di lui allctta- 
 mento eccitar l'animo a sollevarsi a Dio con affetti divoti e religiosi, ren- 
 dendo lodi alia sua infinita Maesta. Qual sorte di Musica per tanto usar 
 
 * A. Kircheri Musurgia Universalis, p. 501. 
 
74 
 
 dovressi per conformarsi a un tal fine? Se noi riguarderemo con diritto e 
 spassionato animo la Musica de' nostri giorni, piena di tanti vezzi lusin- 
 ghieri, di tanti passi graziosi, di tanti scherzi e delicattezze, saremo forzati 
 a confessare che non serve che per allettare e dilettare il senso." 
 
 He then illustrates the corruption of sacred music and its 
 growing assimilation to that of the theatre by several in- 
 stances, among others by a celebrated composition of Pergo- 
 lesi for the church, adding : — 
 
 " Questa coraposizione del Pergolesi, se si confronti con l'altra sua dell' 
 Intermezzo intitolato La Serva Padrona, si scorge affatto simile a lei, e 
 dello stesso carattere, eccettuatine alcuni pochi passi. In ambedue si 
 veggono lo stesso stile, gli stessi passi, le stesse stessissime delicate e gra- 
 ziose espressioni. E come mai pud quella musica, che h atta ad esprimere 
 sensi burlevoli e ridicoli, potra essere acconcia ad esprimere sentimenti pii, 
 devoti e compuntivi come quella degli Ebrei ? Questi sentimenti sono 
 troppo tra di loro contrarj, perche una stessa stessissima musica possa 
 esprimersi entrambi*." 
 
 In the language of yet more indignant rebuke the late 
 learned and accomplished Direttore of the Pope's Chapel de- 
 nounces this practice : — 
 
 " Ora quali idee potevan mai suscitarsi negli auditori, allorche udivano 
 nelle Chiese o intuonare un Kyrie, un Gloria, un Credo, od un Motetto : 
 ovverro eseguirsi sull' organo una Sonata con quelle stesse melodie, con 
 quella misura, con quegli andamenti, che forse la sera indietro eran loro 
 serviti a trastullo, che avevan misurati i loro passi nel ballo, che poterono 
 essere le scintille onde accendersi in loro qualche fuoco novello, od avvi- 
 varsi il sopito : che riducevan loro alia memoria quegli abiti, que' visi, 
 quelle parole, quelle mosse, que' sorrisi, quelle gare, quel trionfante liber- 
 tinaggio ? Ohime, la casa santa di Dio ! Ohime, il luogo venerabile 
 dell' orazione ! Ohime, il divin sagrifizio incruento! Ohime, 1' irritata 
 divina giustizia, che vibrar doveva gia gia i fulmini dell'acceso furore^. " 
 
 The existence of the Cathedral Service has contributed to 
 the national character, as well as to the unrivalled excellence, 
 of our devotional music. It has no duplicate in any church 
 in Christendom, Protestant or Catholic, and can be heard in 
 England alone. Our composers, from the period of the Re- 
 formation, have been free to open the sacred volume for them- 
 selves, and thence to select words suited to different seasons 
 or festivals of the Church, to occasions of national mourning 
 or rejoicing, and not unfrequently to give fit utterance and ex- 
 
 * Saggio di Contrappunto, da F. G. Martini, 1774, pp. 7, 8. 
 f Baini, — Vita di Falestrina, vol. i. p. 162. 
 
pression to their own feelings. We often trace the accidental 
 or the habitual turn of mind of a composer in his writings. 
 Who can hear, for example, Jeremiah Clark's Anthem, c Bow 
 down thine ear, O Lord, and hear me,' without recognizing in 
 it the language of a wounded spirit and a broken heart, the 
 passionate supplication for divine aid, the anguish of a mind to 
 which existence finally became a burthen too heavy to be borne? 
 u The depth of Clark's meditative devotion, in his saner mo- 
 " ments, cannot be doubted," says Mr. Jebb, " by those who 
 " have studied his inimitable anthem, c I will love thee,0 Lord;' 
 " than which none in the English language brings into more 
 " expressive relief the skilful contrasts of divine poetry, whe- 
 " ther we regard the verse, the chorus or the symphon}'. 
 * The author must avow his deliberate conviction, that no 
 <c commentary which he has ever read, has, to him, so brought 
 " out or illustrated the meaning of that wonderful psalm as 
 " this composition."* This is no solitary instance of the in- 
 trinsic worth, the inestimable value and the unrivalled cha- 
 racter of our Cathedral music. It might have borne unques- 
 tioned testimony to the attainments of its authors, it might 
 have exhibited abundant proofs of industry, erudition and 
 skill, it might have fulfilled every condition that the critic 
 would require, but it might also have been destitute of that 
 quality which is above and beyond all others, which renders 
 it the fit and efficacious ally to devotion, and one of the golden 
 links which unites earth with heaven. 
 
 " If music doth indeed possess such power and assert such a dominion, 
 shall we exclude it from the sanctuary ? Shall we abandon one of the 
 most efficacious instruments for controuling the passions and regulating 
 the affections of men ? Is it wise to leave it in the hands of the enemy and 
 the seducer, and not direct its influence to those better purposes for which 
 it is fitted and designed ? Who would restrain the force of language in 
 this place? Yet is it weak when compared with the voice of music; 
 mightier is the eloquence of song than that of speech." f 
 
 To all these queries the Bishop of London's Bill practically 
 answers " Yes." The works of the musician, unlike those of 
 the poet, the painter or the sculptor, must make their appeal 
 
 * 'The Choral Service of the United Church of England and Ireland/ by the 
 Ilev. John Jebb, A.M., \\ 385. 
 
 f 'The Churchman's Song of Praise ;' Sermon by the Rev. Charles Thorp, B.D. 
 
to the public through the instrumentality of other persons, 
 who must be endowed by nature and by temperament, as well 
 as trained by education. When a composition is committed 
 into the hands of incompetent persons, it is not a performance 
 of it but a travestie. The singer and the composer must have 
 a coincidence of soul and sentiment, or the intent of the com- 
 position is not manifest. A ploughman as the reader of 
 Shakspeare and a country Lay-clerk of the present day as the 
 singer of Purcell, are engaged in a work for which they are 
 equally and for a similar reason unfitted. In proportion as 
 the style of music is elevated, — that is, in proportion as it 
 reaches and expresses the loftiness of its subject, — in propor- 
 tion as it is precisely what it ought to be, — will the incompe- 
 tency of the singer appear more conspicuous. Yet into 
 such hands — to journeymen at fourteen shillings a week — 
 is it intended that such music shall be exclusively committed 
 for performance. The class of persons for whom it was writ- 
 ten — men of education as well as musical knowledge — are 
 henceforward to be excluded from every choir. " It is not 
 my intention," said the Bishop of London, " to tax the mu- 
 sical powers of the Minor Canons." Are we accustomed thus 
 to deal with music elsewhere — are we content with vulgarity 
 or even with mediocrity when it appears in the form of an 
 entertainment ? On the contrary, is not Europe ransacked 
 for singers and players, and if any are known to exist, sur- 
 passing or reputed to surpass the average degree of excellence, 
 is any sum thought too large to obtain their services ? Often 
 does a single singer at the Queen's Theatre receive at the end 
 of a season an amount of money larger than is paid to the 
 united choirs (meaning by the word " choirs " those who sing) 
 of St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey. This would not be 
 a very creditable state of things, even if we had to pay for our 
 choirs as we do for our opera-singers ; but this is not required 
 of us. Not a shilling needs to be drawn from our pockets, 
 no rates need to be levied, no jangling vestries need dispute, 
 no appeals to courts ecclesiastical or civil need arise, no 
 church-rate martyrs need suffer. The piety of our fore- 
 fathers has ensured not a " moderate and economical," but an 
 ample and munificent provision for public worship, in the 
 noble edifices which they erected to the honour of God. Let 
 
this be justly and honestly administered, let the Statutes of 
 Cathedrals be enforced, and the end is accomplished. 
 
 These facts will suffice to show that the operation of Bishop 
 Blomficld's Bill are of general interest and concern ; that, so 
 far from being an affair in which Bishops and Deans and 
 Chapters are the only conflicting parties, there is not an 
 Englishman, worthy the name, who ought to contemplate its 
 tendency and final issue with indifference. It has been ap- 
 parent tli at we possess an ample, rich, and, we repeat, unri- 
 valled collection of devotional music ; and that, in consequence 
 of the existence of Cathedral Choirs, great advantages have 
 accrued to one of the arts in various ways. But the Com- 
 missioners virtually say, u Cui bono? what utility is there in 
 the Choral Service of the Church, or in the maintenance of a 
 large Choir ? What need you fi ve-and-twenty, ten, or five ? 
 We prefer a more moderate and economical arrangement." 
 Be it so ; but be consistent. What need we a Cathedral, why 
 'the high-embowed roof/ the ' antique pillars/ and the e storied 
 windows,' any more than c the full-voiced Choir ?' Spend 
 no more money in preserving and restoring your minsters. 
 Why this waste ? Pull down these vast and costly struc- 
 turesj sell the materials, and in some snug corner erect a 
 square brick building ; level St. Paul's, and let out its valu- 
 able site on building-leases. 
 
 This spirit, now avowed from the episcopal bench, is fitly 
 rebuked by a republican preacher : — 
 
 " Happily," says Dr. Channing, " human nature is too stubborn to 
 yield to this narrow utility. It is interesting to observe how the very 
 mechanical arts, which are designed to minister to the necessities and com- 
 forts of life, are perpetually passing these limits ; how they disdain to stop 
 at mere convenience. This ' utility' would work a great change in town 
 and country, would level to the dust the wonders of architecture, annihilate 
 the fine arts, and blot out innumerable beauties which the hand of taste 
 has spread over the face of the earth. The idea of beauty is an inde- 
 structible principle in our nature, and this single truth is enough to put us 
 on our guard against vulgar notions of utility." 
 
 If a Cathedral is to be regarded only as a place to confer a 
 title on a Bishop, a barn will answer that purpose as well. 
 There is no tenable ground, no safe position, no consistent 
 middle course, between the destruction of Cathedrals alto- 
 gether, and their retention in their designed magnificence. 
 
78 
 
 The building and the service are perfectly harmonious and 
 well-adjusted in their plan and proportions ; everything that 
 belongs to them is of a piece, every element contributes 
 its share to an aggregate of beauty and grandeur ; the place 
 is fitted for the music and the music for the place. A 
 beggarly choir in a stately and finely-proportioned edifice 
 is worse than none, because every admixture of poverty and 
 splendour is offensive. Be consistent therefore, — carry out 
 your principle, and raze our minsters and cathedrals. Per- 
 haps you are not inclined to hazard such a proposal, but 
 others will have no such fears and misgivings. You have 
 given in your allegiance to the Utilitarians, — you have adopted 
 and avowed their principle as your guide, — can you wonder if 
 they labour to follow it out? can you consistently refrain 
 from helping them? Have a care, gentlemen, (£ you have 
 " given a lesson of legislative interference with the property 
 u of the Church, which many will be found too ready to 
 « learn*." 
 
 There is one striking and important fact connected with 
 the history of Cathedral Music, which alone ought to have 
 sufficed, if not utterly to condemn the entire work of inno- 
 vation, at least to have induced doubt and hesitation on the 
 part of those who gave it the sanction of law. So long as 
 music continued to be part of the education of a clergyman 
 (that branch of the art, at least, which might form a portion 
 of his daily duty), the ministers of the Church were never 
 found among the advocates of destruction or innovation. 
 They knew better : from study came knowledge, from know- 
 ledge admiration. They were the advocates of Cathedral 
 music in the pulpit and from the press ; many were orna- 
 ments and examples to their respective Choirs, many en- 
 riched the libraries of the Cathedrals by their compositions. 
 Do we ever find any fondness for change, any hints for new- 
 modelling the service from such men as Aldrich, Tucker, 
 Holder, Creyghton, Finch, or Bayley ? Never : the labours 
 of these dignitaries of the Church (all of them connected with 
 Cathedral or collegiate churches or with the Chapel Royal), 
 were directed to the improvement of their Choirs in every 
 
 * ' Letter to the Bishop of Lincoln.' 
 
way. Alilrich, the accomplished .scholar, the acute polemic, 
 the skilful logician, — in addition to all his other labours as 
 a member and champion of the Church, and in addition also 
 to his duties as Dean of Christ Church, — was, of all these, the 
 most abundant contributor to our stock of devotional music. 
 Dean Aldrich's management of the Christ Church choir is 
 thus related by one of the Oxford Professors of Music : — 
 
 " 1st. lie never admitted a boy chorister, unless he had given sufficient 
 proof of his abilities ; by which means he had always a good supply and a 
 complete set ; for parents, seeing that children who had merit were certain 
 of being preferred, were very solicitous to get them previously instructed. 
 2ndly. In admitting a singing-man or chaplain, he made it a rule to give 
 the preference to one who had merited his favour in a lower capacity, pro- 
 vided he was qualified for his new station. By a strict observance of this 
 method, there was not a useless member in his choir ; for the chaplains had 
 then an equal share of choral duty with the singing-men ; nor was there 
 the least grumbling or complaint on that account ; the Dean himself set- 
 ting a noble example to the former, by constantly singing a part in all the 
 Services and Anthems. 3rdly. In order to keep up the spirit of music, 
 and to promote social harmony, the whole body attended him duly on a 
 certain evening in the week, when he not only appointed the pieces that 
 should be performed, but assisted in the performance himself. What an 
 admirable example was this ! Could any of the band be remiss or negligent 
 when animated by such a leader ? " * 
 
 Dr. Hayes, who states that this information was given him 
 by a member of Christ Church in the time of Dean Aldrich, 
 thus describes the conduct of Cathedral dignitaries in his own 
 time : — 
 
 " What protection can the organist of a College or a Cathedral expect 
 from one who has no relish for music, which is often the case, or from one 
 who apprehends he is placed in his stall for no other purpose but to play 
 the bashaw over the inferior members ? Such an one, in case of a vacancy, 
 will pay more regard to the person who recommends, than to the merit of 
 the candidate. Parts and abilities are no qualification nowadays ; some 
 previous questions must be answered to the satisfaction of the Dean ; as, 
 how did his father vote at the last election, or how does he intend to vote 
 at the next ? And unless these questions can be satisfactorily answered, 
 no other arguments will avail. The organist, failing id his attempt, retires, 
 with this mortification added to that of being obliged to endeavour to make 
 singers of those to whom nature has denied the necessary requisites, — a 
 slavery equal to that of the Israelites in Egypt. And without a proper 
 supply of Singing- boys, what Chaplains, Minor Canons, or Lay Clerks 
 can be expected as useful persons in Cathedral duty ? This is a most un- 
 
 * 'Remarks on Mr Avison'a Es.;;y on Musical Expression/ l>y Dr. Hayes. 
 
80 
 
 comfortable reflection to all lovers of Church Music, and to those who 
 wish its advancement ; and what affords no better, is the mean and scanty 
 remuneration annexed to the office of Lay Clerk in every Cathedral in the 
 kingdom, excepting the very few where the Minor Canons and Lay Clerks 
 have retained their ancient privileges of letting and renewing their estates, 
 and of making the same proportionable improvement in them as the Dean 
 and Chapter make in theirs. For the generality, the salaries belonging to 
 these inferior members remain identically the same as at the Reformation ; 
 the Deans, with their brethren of the Chapters, being careful to monopo- 
 lize the profits arising from the improvements of these estates to their own 
 private advantage. Hence the miserable performances which we hear in 
 Cathedrals : as it cannot reasonably be expected that the poor men, who 
 have obtained these places merely to eke out a pitiful maintenance, should 
 neglect their necessary employments to study the art of singing properly. 
 Thus, if the Dean on the one hand be regardless how the state of music 
 stands in his Cathedral, the singers are equally so ; and in such a disgust- 
 ful situation the organist will have little appetite to set about the work of 
 reformation. He has little probability of being reimbursed for purchasing 
 music, or paid for having it transcribed into the choir-books, while he 
 knows the impracticability of getting it performed with tolerable de- 
 cency*." 
 
 Dr. Hayes in this passage wa« describing his own position, 
 and relating facts which never were impeached or disputed. 
 The corporate privileges of the few choirs who had retained 
 them are all swept away by that zealous defender of the 
 sacredness of trusts and the inviolability of endowments — the 
 Bishop of London f. 
 
 Every measure which has been devised for the destruction 
 of Cathedral music has originated from men profoundly 
 ignorant of its worth and beauty ; other, worse motives have 
 conspired, but a musically-educated priest was never known 
 as its assailant nor ever appeared in the character of an in- 
 novator. In this class we certainly do not include the Cam- 
 bridge students who have learned the flute, nor the Oxford 
 ones who blow their more favourite cornopean ; but we mean 
 such as have applied themselves to the study of the art in its 
 highest character and for its noblest purposes. Among such 
 will uniformly be found (as far as our inquiry and experience 
 extend) the zealous advocates and ardent admirers of the 
 Cathedral Service. 
 
 The fact to which we have alluded would not have the 
 
 * Ibid., p. 94, et seq. 
 
 ■f See his speeches on the Dissenters' Chapels Bill. 
 
81 
 
 smallest influence on the conduct of those who framed tin; 
 recent act of Parliament. With presumptuous folly, or in 
 unpardonable ignorance, they pursued their headlong career, 
 overturning prebendal stalls and minor canonries, trampling 
 upon the spoils of genius and the ruins of art, their eager 
 eyes only fixed upon the golden prize which their out- 
 stretched hands were ready to clutch. But what excuse can 
 be framed for the conduct of statesmen and legislators, who, 
 without hesitation or inquiry, precipitated the work of de- 
 struction ? They were invited to legalize certain novel pro- 
 jects, coming from a suspicious quarter and having a most 
 suspicious tendency, — among others, to uproot and overturn 
 the Cathedral Service. Did these questions never occur to 
 them? " How comes it about that this scheme is now pro- 
 pounded from episcopal authority for the first time? The 
 Cathedral Service must have been planned by the fathers 
 of our Church — it has existed ever since — it has received 
 the sanction of her most eminent divines from that time to 
 the present, — why is it now proposed to destroy it? We 
 ought, at least, to inquire before we proceed ; at present 
 we are in the dark, and therefore ought to tread cautiously ; 
 we are ignorant, and therefore ought not to legislate*/ 5 If 
 they needed authorities, the concurrent opinions of the most 
 eminent dignitaries of the Church in every successive reign 
 were at hand ; if documents, the Statutes of every Cathedral 
 were at their command, and the decisions of courts of law ; if 
 oral testimony, that of Minor Canons, Organists and Choir- 
 men was at their door ; but if they sought a precedent, they 
 would find it only in the journals of the Long Parliament. 
 But they cared for none of these things, and with indecent 
 haste and unpardonable indifference rendered reform impos- 
 sible and ruin certain. 
 
 There is another circumstance connected with this Act of 
 Parliament which, whether originating in ignorance, care- 
 lessness or design, will equally contribute in no inconsiderable 
 
 * " A foolish divine, here and there, blind to his own interest, may have hinted 
 that he was content with the method approved and practised by Barrow, Tillotson, 
 Juxon, Tenison, Sherlock and Wake. But what ignorance and perverseness to 
 oppose such men as these to the mighty Trismegistus ! Vicarages and rectories are 
 in his right hand, and in his left endowed chapels and Btalla — therefore he is infal- 
 lible." — Letter i?i the ' Time*,' signed ' Sottosopr a,' March 30, 1 I I. 
 
82 
 
 degree to accomplish its general intention with regard to Ca- 
 thedral music. It contains no provision for the appointment 
 of a Precentor, nor even any recognition of the office or its 
 duties. The Service of the Cathedral (essentially and, with 
 the exception of the Lessons, altogether musical) is thus left 
 without any director or head. The office of Precentor is 
 one of great antiquity and of prime importance. " Paulinus," 
 says Bede, "leaving York and returning to Rochester, left 
 " behind him one James, a priest, who, when that province 
 " had peace, and the number of the faithful increased, being 
 (i very skilful in ecclesiastical song, began to teach many to 
 w sing after the way either of Rome or Canterbury." — "That 
 " is," says Dean Comber, " he taught clerks to chaunt the 
 " Liturgy of St. Augustin to its proper notes*." 
 
 The office of Precentor of St. Paul's was afterwards sepa- 
 rately endowed : — 
 
 " As the former kings did by their several charters confirm all the lands 
 and possessions which had been given to this Cathedral, so also did King 
 John by Charter, dated at Shoreham, 16. Junii, give sundry lands for the 
 founding of a chief Chanter heref." 
 
 The duties of the Precentor have been adverted to in our 
 former article J. To the importance of these, Church hi- 
 story, Cathedral statutes and choir-books, and the writings 
 of our best divines concur in bearing testimony. The re- 
 sponsive choirs of every Cathedral are named after the Dean 
 and the Precentor : every Service in existence, from the time 
 of Tallis to the present day, is constructed with a reference 
 to this arrangement, and the words " Decani" and "Cantoris" 
 occur repeatedly in every page of each, the stall of the latter 
 being on the side opposite to that of the former officer. 
 
 The following passage from Bishop Beveridge will show his 
 estimate of the dignity and responsibility of a duty which is 
 now quietly abolished : — 
 
 " Besides the stated Psalms, there is another Hymn or Anthem ap- 
 pointed to be sung in such places [Cathedral and Collegiate Churches]. 
 But what that shall be is not appointed by the Church, but is left to the 
 
 * Beda, Histor. lib. ii. cap. 20 (quoted by Comber). 
 
 t Dugdale's St. Paul's, p. 8. (Ellis's edition.) ■ 
 
 J The British and Foreign Review, No. XXXIII. p. 90. 
 
83 
 
 discretion of one who presides there, to choose such as he shall judge most 
 
 proper to set forth the glory of God in general, or upon any particular oc- 
 casion. In which great care ought to be taken that it will be such as will 
 answer its end. Otherwise, instead of furthering, it will interrupt devo- 
 tion ; which, whosoever shall be the cause of, either by his carelessness 
 or indiscretion in the choice, ought to be called to account for it by his 
 superiors here, as he assuredly will by the Supreme Judge of the world at 
 the last day*." 
 
 The Statutes of every Cathedral prescribe the qualifications, 
 and define the duties, of this important office. The latter are 
 unceasing and various, and demand suitable attainments. 
 The entire economy of the Cathedral is arranged by the Pre- 
 centor ; he (as a Recorder to the Mayor of a corporation) is 
 the Dean's adviser; every appointment should be virtually 
 made by him, because he is required to be a fit and competent 
 judge of every candidate's qualifications ; the u Combination," 
 as it is called, for every week is made by him ; he is to select 
 every Service and Anthem for performance — to see that they 
 are diligently prepared and efficiently sung; he is to allot 
 every singer his place in the choir, and assign to every Minor 
 Canon or Lay-clerk his part in whatever he may require to be 
 performed ; he is to select such music as he may see fit to be 
 purchased or copied ; the library is to be under his care, and 
 he is responsible for its preservation, renewal and increase. 
 He is to select Anthems and Services suited to the various 
 festivals of the Church, and on the greater feasts he is to 
 intone or commence the church hymns. 
 
 Now, we ask, who henceforward is to discharge these 
 duties? Not our Deans, — for of them they are not required, 
 nor are they competent to the work, — neither the (two) Mi- 
 nor Canons, for we have it from Bishop Blomfield's own lips, 
 that " there is no intention of taxing their musical powers." 
 By whom then are these daily and onerous duties to be dis- 
 charged ? A Choir without a head is as an army without a 
 leader ; and no one member of the body, save the Precentor, 
 has any more power than his fellow. Nothing remains but 
 that the Lay-clerks and boys should sit in council (the organ- 
 ist, in many Cathedrals, not being a recognized and statutable 
 
 * ' Defence of the Book of Psalms.' 
 
 H 
 
84 
 
 officer) upon the weekly " Combination," and, if they can, agree 
 upon it. Perhaps this is part of the plan, — truly it is of a 
 piece with the rest of it. 
 
 It is wise, it is politic, it is graceful in us to cherish a na- 
 tional school of Church Music ; since a nation which aims at 
 or assumes greatness, should sedulously promote within itself 
 every variety of intellectual activity, and especially exertion in 
 that department of art wherein it has learned to excel. The 
 facility with which the works of art, and especially of music, 
 are brought into this country is an advantage, but not without 
 a possibly attendant evil. If this foreign supply is to super- 
 sede our national and natural aliment, dearly will it be pur- 
 chased. Let us receive from our neighbours their contri- 
 butions as aids, but never as substitutes; and the more we 
 receive from other countries, the greater need have we of our 
 own produce. A people trained and accustomed to look 
 abroad for intellectual succour, and to whom the expectation 
 of foreign aid is always present, will become mentally debased 
 and enslaved. It may boast of its wealth and proudly shake 
 its purse, but it will be vulgar and feeble. Like an individual, 
 it will only command respect in proportion as it is self-relying. 
 Nor can we appreciate the products of foreign genius with- 
 out the requisite cultivation. Unless we understand their pe- 
 culiar excellencies, unless we have the ability to analyze and 
 dissect them, and to know why they are what they are, our 
 admiration is little better than that of a savage or a clown. 
 Abandon or discourage the study of any art, and the descent 
 to vulgarity is speedy and certain. Besides, the works of all 
 nations have a national stamp ; they spring from races born 
 in different climes, of different habits, laws, tastes, tempera- 
 ment, — not only of different religious creeds, but different 
 religious feelings and outward forms of devotion : each is to 
 the other foreign. One of the great beauties of our Service is 
 the fitness and correspondence of all its parts. "The Bible 
 and the Prayer-Book read as one," — their language is of the 
 same age, and the same venerable character is impressed on 
 our best Cathedral music. Even all our best writers of mo- 
 dern times endeavour to preserve it. " Let us have new 
 " Church music," says Dr. Crotch, " but no new style ; no- 
 
85 
 
 " thing which recommends itself for its novelty, or reminds 
 " us of what we hear at the parade, the concert- room, or the 
 "theatre*." 
 
 Hence the folly of introducing scraps of modern Masses, 
 with all their gaudy attire and showy equipage, into Cathe- 
 drals. They have no agreement with, or relation to, the build- 
 ing or its purpose ; they are of the earth — earthy, and to the 
 earth they chain the hearer; his thoughts wander to their 
 birth-place, the Opera-house ; and music, instead of being a 
 help to devotion, becomes its hindrance. 
 
 Much more might be said on this subject, but our limits 
 warn us to conclude. We have endeavoured to show, as far 
 as these would allow, what Cathedral Music was, what it is, 
 and what it must be (if such a state can be said to be one of 
 real existence), unless some timely remedy be applied. Be it 
 remembered that no experimental legislation is necessary, no 
 leap in the dark ; we have simply to restore the foundations, 
 and to obey the injunctions ; to follow out the practice of our 
 forefathers, — a practice of which experience has proved the 
 inestimable value, and which the highest authorities in the 
 Church have through succeeding generations combined to 
 extol f. 
 
 * Lectures on Music, p. 83. 
 
 f Since the above sheets were printed, some indications of an intention to per- 
 form their duty have appeared among Capitular bodies. May the examples of 
 Bristol and Worcester be followed by every Cathedral in the kingdom ! At the 
 same time we must be allowed to remark that, for reasons which have been stated 
 above, a mere increase of the number of Lay-clerks will not restore the Cathedral 
 Service to its designed excellence. The Minor Canons ought to be the chief 
 strength — the efficient force of the Choirs. Upon men of education ought to de- 
 volve the performance of music which demands not only a good voice but a cul- 
 tivated mind and a correct taste. Again we say, refer to and enforce an observ- 
 ance of the Statutes. The following paragraph appeared in the ' Great Western 
 Advertiser/ January 11, 1845. 
 
 " The Dean and Chapter of Bristol have enforced an increased measure of duty 
 on the choir-men of that cathedral, and have increased their remuneration. At 
 Worcester, also, the Dean and Chapter have added four supernumeraries to the 
 choir, and have enforced a full attendance, viz., six men and the usual number of 
 boys, ;it each daily service. Our musical readers well know that no service can 
 be properly performed with less than six men." 
 
 Printed by R. and J. E. Taylor, Red* Linn Court, Fleet Street.