CONVOCATION

(Lat. con voco, I coil together.) In English Ecclesiastical Law, the council of the church, derived, first, from the custom of the bishops a embling their diocesan clergy for the sake of considering spiritual matters; and, secondly, of the archbishops holding convocations of the clergy of a whole province. Convocations were first a embled in England under the king's authority by Edward L, who summoned them by their provinces, for the sake of obtaining subsidies from the clerical body. They met in each province in two houses — one of the suffragan bishops; the other of deans, arch-. and representatives of the inferior clergy. The taxation of their own body was withdrawn from convoeain 1664; and, on the other hand, the privilege of voting knights of the shire was then conceded to ecclesiastics. As the power of enacting canons had been already virtually abolished by statutes of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and Charles II., there now remained no busine for convocaiion to transact; and it was only in the reigns of William III. and Anne, when attempts were made by the high church party to impart fresh activity to it as an ecclesiastical tribunal, that its meetings were attended with any historical importance. 8ince that period it has become customary to prorogue convocation every year immediately upon lis a embling. The rights and history of the convocal ion are treated of at length in several writings of the learned Bishop Gibson, especially his Synodus Anglicana, Lond. 170-2. 281 [s. 295]