CONVENTICLE

A diminutive of convent, denoting properly a cabal, or secret a embly of a part of the monks of a convent, to make a party in the election of an abbot. It is now the legal term to denote any place of worship used by those who depart from the Church of England. By the 73rd canon it is thus ordained: “Forasmuch as all conventicles and secret meetings of priests and ministers have ever been justly accounted very hateful to the state of the Church wherein they live, we do ordain that no priests or ministers of the Word of God , nor any other persons, shall meet together in any private house, or elsewhere, to consult upon any matter or course to be taken by them, or upon their motion or direction by any other, which may any way tend to the impeaching or depraving of the doctrine of the Church of England, or the Book of Common Prayer, or any part of the government or discipline now established in the Church of England, under pain of excommunication ipso facto .”