3. _The Clergy were not, and are not, represented in parliament by the Spiritual Lords._ The bishops are called to the House of Lords as barons; just in the same manner as the abbots and priors were formerly summoned, _not as representing any body of men_, but as holding _in capite_ of the King. The prelates have sat in the House of Lords since William I., not as peers or nobles by blood, nor as representatives, but by virtue of this tenure. They certainly were not considered as _representatives_ before the Reformation; and that the same opinions respecting them prevailed still later, will appear from the decision of the House of Commons in 1 Mary, that a clerk could not be chosen into that House, "because he was _represented_ already in another House;" and again, from a speech in the Commons by Mr. Solicitor St. John on the "Act to take away Bishops' Votes in Parliament:" "1. Because they have no such inherent right and liberty of being there as the Lords Temporal and Peers of the Realm have; _for they are not there representative of any body else; no, not of the clergy_; for if so, then the clergy were twice represented by them, viz. the Lords' House and in the Convocation; for their writ of election is to send two clerks _ad consentiendum_, &c. Besides, none are there representative of others, but those that have their suffrages from others; _and therefore only the clerks in Convocation do represent them_. * * * * * "3. If they were representative of the clergy, as a third estate and degree, no act of parliament could be good if they did wholly disassent; and yet they have disassented, and the law good and in force, as in the Act for establishing the Book of Common Prayer in Queen Elizabeth's time. They did disassent from the confirming of that law, which could not have been good if _they_ had been a third estate, and disassented."--Rapin's _History of England_, book xx. And in the same parliament Lord Falkland-- "Had heard many of the clergy protest, that they could not acknowledge _that they were represented by the bishops_. However, we might presume that, if they could make that appear, _that they were a third estate_, the House of Peers, amongst whom they sat, and yet had their votes, would reject it."--Clarendon's _History of the Rebellion_, book iii. That the Clergy in Convocation make statements to the House of Peers through the bishops, only proves that the latter were a medium of communication between the two; as does also, that on March 18th, 1662, "the President informed the Convocation that the Lord Chancellor had desired _the Bishops_ to thank them _in the name of the Peers_." CANON. EBOR. admits that the bishops do _not_ represent the clergy, except by a fiction; the Canons declare _that Convocation does represent_ them. His position therefore falls at once to the ground.