These are specimens of the spoliations, many of them positively illegal, all of them wrought, not for the public good but for private enrichment, which our Bishopricks, Chapters, and other ecclesiastical foundations underwent in the course of the sixteenth century. But at Wells these spoliations had an important effect on the constitution of the church. Legal cavils were raised as to the right both of the Chapter and the Vicars to their possessions. It was affirmed that the reconstitution of the Deanery had somehow involved the complete suppression of the Chapter. Both the Chapter and the College of Vicars therefore found it expedient to procure charters from Queen Elizabeth confirming them in their rights and properties. The charter granted to the Chapter is a most curious document, because it is evident that the Residentiaries took this opportunity to procure something like a legal confirmation of the usurpations by which the non-residentiary Canons were gradually cheated out of their rights and powers. The Queen refounds all the dignities and prebends, and endows them afresh with their old possessions. Then, as if the holders of these dignities and prebends did not form the Chapter, the Charter goes on to found the Chapter, as a body consisting of Residentiaries only, and to grant to them the cathedral church and other property. The deed winds up by saying that the non-residentiary Canons are to have votes in Chapter, but only for the purpose of electing a Bishop.[51] I do not profess to know what may be the legal force of such a document, though it certainly seems to me that nothing short of an Act of Parliament can take away from any man or any corporation any rights which they already legally enjoy. But whatever it may be worth, this charter is the authority for the practice by which at Wells the non-residentiary Canons are summoned to the election of a Bishop and not to other meetings of the Chapter, while at York they are still summoned to every meeting. I am not a lawyer and I do not speak as one. But historically the thing is a cheat and an usurpation. The Elizabethan charter carries its own contradiction with it; and, as an ecclesiastical reformer, I say once more that the point to be most strongly insisted on, if our cathedral bodies are ever again to fulfil their ancient uses, is to make both classes of Canons realities. The Residentiaries must be Residentiaries, living on the spot, not making the cathedral a place of holiday retirement from duties elsewhere. And lest the smaller body of Residentiaries should again sink into a narrow oligarchy, the whole body of Canons must be again restored to their ancient rights, not only in the formal election of a Bishop, but in all those matters of election, patronage, discipline, and business of every kind, which are expressed in the ancient formula of "a stall in the choir and a voice in the chapter-house."[52]