‘Into theology Cyprian scarcely ever entered’, wrote W. D. Niven, yet d'Alès's book La Théologie de S. Cyprien covers more than 400 pages without appearing to be dealing with a non-existent subject. The prima facie conflict is not difficult to resolve. A religious leader can no more help talking theology, whether consciously intending to do so or not, than Molière's M. Jourdain could help talking prose. An unconscious theology, indeed, can be every bit as important and as influential as a fully selfconscious one; in fact, its influence is very liable to be the greater, because succeeding generations are less likely to be aware of it and so less likely to submit it to critical scrutiny and review. In no case is this largely-unconscious influence more significant than in the case of Cyprian. All the other outstanding writers of the third-century western Church ended their days in schism. Tertullian, Hippolytus and Novatian were all far greater theologians than Cyprian, but all three broke from the catholic Church in support of the rigorist cause. In spite of this fact, their importance for later theology remains considerable. But that importance is a fully conscious theological one. Where their ideas were accepted and developed, it was because they carried conscious conviction as theological ideas; the fact of who it was who was the father of the ideas did little to commend them.

Some years ago Professor Powicke wrote of the possibility that a study of the surviving records of the medieval church courts would ‘reveal unexpected possibilities of insight into the daily lives of men and women in a pre-Reformation diocese as subjects of an active jurisdiction, parallel to that of the common law. That this jurisdiction existed we already knew, but the prospect of seeing it at work is exciting’. Since then, it has become increasingly clear that the exploration of the working of the church courts would throw light on the whole relationship between Church and People in medieval, and indeed post-medieval, England. Unfortunately, the records, although quite voluminous, have survived only in a haphazard and intermittent way, and it is, as yet, impossible to form any general conclusions about the subject as a whole. In the hope of contributing to this process, I propose to examine the working of the consistory court in the diocese of Lincoln, one of the largest and most populous dioceses in pre-Reformation England.

During the late 1480s there began a revival of the Lollard heresy that had been driven underground early in the century by the repressive measures of Henry IV and his successor. Had such measures been taken with the same vigour at this time, it would no doubt have been driven underground once more; but in their absence it began to flourish, and by the end of the first decade of the sixteenth century it had become a serious menace. The Convocation of 1511 was convened to discuss the suppression of heresy, for ‘In this tyme also we perceue contradiction of the lay people … We are also nowe a dayes reued of heretykes, men mad with marueylous folysshnes’. The archbishop of Canterbury gave the example to the rest by initiating an extensive persecution in his own diocese of Canterbury. The bishop of London, Fitzjames, had already begun to move against the heretics in his jurisdiction in 1510, and completed his first major persecution by burning two of them in 1511. At the same time bishop Smith of Lincoln was busy examining heretics in Buckinghamshire.

Out of an approximate total of four hundred, the number of livings in Kent from which clergy are known to have been ejected under the Act for Confirming and Restoring of Ministers of 13 September 1660 and the Act for the Uniformity of Public Prayers of 19 May 1662 is sixty-five. For comparative purposes it may be observed that the number of Kentish benefices known to have been under sequestration during the period between 1643 and 1660 was one hundred and twenty, i.e. almost double. These figures follow fairly closely the pattern for England in general: the proportion of sequestrations (30 per cent.) is almost identical, the proportion of ejections a little lower in Kent (16 per cent.) than in the country as a whole. Since thirty-six parishes in Kent were affected by both sequestration and ejection, the number of parishes unaffected by either was even larger than is suggested at first sight by the figures given above. Dr. Whiteman's conclusion from her consideration of the statistics for sequestrations throughout the country would certainly seem to be true of the situation in Kent: ‘continuity was much greater … than used to be thought’.

The passage of Catholic emancipation in 1829 ended a highly controversial struggle and marked an important stage in a gradual revolution in Church and State. Yet the duke of Wellington, whose political standing and skill were largely responsible for its passage, has rarely been given due credit for it. His popular reputation is still that of a wartime genius but a peacetime Blimp. His resistance to parliamentary reform is vividly remembered, but his adoption of Catholic emancipation is lightly passed over in comparison. It is widely believed that he yielded to emancipation only because he was forced to do so by the irresistible demands of O'Connell and the Irish Catholics. More recent accounts have hinted at a different picture, but the old image is far from being completely exorcised. It is the aim of this article to show that, instead of blindly opposing Catholic emancipation until further resistance was both useless and dangerous, Wellington had long regarded the question with an empirical eye and had, in fact, been considering means of passing it years before 1829.

In 1883 Osmund Airy published in the British Quarterly Review some ‘Notes on the reign of Charles II’, in which he stressed the fear of popery still felt by the average Englishman. He instanced this by describing the feelings aroused by the king's issue of an Indulgence in December 1662. ‘Charles’, he wrote, ‘was not long left in ignorance of the feelings he had roused … The meeting, as we should say, spoke at once through its chairman’. ‘We were fortunate enough some while ago’, Airy continues, ‘while searching in the British Museum on this subject, to find a letter which we believe has not anywhere been noticed, addressed to the King by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Gilbert Sheldon, who appears to represent completely the savage side of the Anglican Church’. Airy proceeded to quote the letter in full, noting ‘this is written within three months after the proposal for comprehension, probably in January’. The letter is violent in tone, referring, for instance, to ‘that most damnable and heretical doctrine of the Church of Rome, whore of Babylon’, and warning the king that by his action he may draw upon himself and the kingdom in general ‘God's heavy wrath and indignation’. A number of later historians have followed Airy in attributing the letter to Sheldon, though not without surprise at the unlikely language.