page_title: Convocation
section_title: Convocations of Canterbury and York
hierarchical_section_title: Convocation / Ecclesiastical convocations / Convocations of Canterbury and York
caption_attribution_description: English: Bag piper, Padre, Currie Hall, Royal Military College of Canada, fall 2011
context_page_description: A convocation is a group of people formally assembled for a special purpose, mostly ecclesiastical or academic.
context_section_description: The Convocations of Canterbury and York were the synodical assemblies of the two Provinces of the Church of England until the Church Assembly was established in 1920. Their origins date back to the end of the seventh century when Theodore of Tarsus (Archbishop of Canterbury, 668-690) reorganized the structures of the English Church and established national synod of bishops. With the recognition of York as a separate province in 733, this synod was divided into two.  In 1225, representatives of the cathedral and monastic chapters were included for the first time and in 1285 the membership of the Convocation of Canterbury assumed the basic form which it retained till 1921: Bishops, Abbots (till the 1530s and the Dissolution of the Monasteries), Deans, and Archdeacons, plus one representative of each cathedral chapter and two for the clergy from each diocese.  By the fifteenth century, each convocation was divided into an upper house (the Bishops) and a lower house (the remaining members).  In 1921, the number of proctors (elected representatives) of the diocesan clergy was increased to make them a majority in the lower houses.
  The Convocation of York was a relatively small part of the Church in England and Wales with only five member dioceses in Henry VIII's reign. In 1462 it decided that all the provincial constitutions  of Canterbury which were not repugnant or prejudicial to its own should be allowed in the Northern Province and by 1530 the Archbishop of York rarely attended sessions and the custom that York waited to see what Canterbury had decided and either accepted or rejected it was well established. The Convocation of York was, in practice, taking second place to that of Canterbury so much so that in 1852 the Archbishop of York Thomas Musgrave stated that since the time of Henry VIII the archbishop had only attended personally two sessions (in 1689 and 1708).
  The legislative powers of the convocations varied considerably over the centuries.  Until 1664, they (not Parliament) determined the taxes to be paid by the clergy, but their powers in general were severely curtailed by Henry VIII in 1532/4; and from the time of the Reformation till 1965 they were summoned and dissolved at the same time as Parliament. Under Henry VIII and his successor Edward VI between 1534 and 1553 the Convocations were used as a source of clerical opinion but ecclesiastical legislation was secured by statute from Parliament.  Later between 1559 and 1641, Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I gave the force of law to decisions of Convocation without recourse to Parliament by letters patent under the great seal notably the Thirty-Nine Articles (1571) and the 141 Canons of 1603.
  The Convocations were abolished during the Commonwealth but restored on the accession of Charles II in 1660 and they synodically approved the Book of Common Prayer which was imposed by the Act of Uniformity in 1662. Formal sessions at the start of each parliament continued but no real business was discussed until after the Revolution of 1688 which brought William III and Mary II to the throne when attempts to include some of the Protestant dissenters met such resistance in the lower house that the government abandoned them and the Convocations resumed their purely formal meetings
  In 1697 Francis Atterbury published his Letter to a Convocation Man concerning the Rights, Powers and Privileges of that Body which, in essence, claimed that the Convocation was an estate of the realm like Parliament and that the lower clergy were being illegally disfranchised and denied its proper voice in government.  Business was resumed in 1701 and by the time Queen Anne died in 1714 draft canons and forms of service had been drawn up for royal assent.  However, there was an inherent tension between the two houses, the lower house was mainly Tory in its politics and high church in its doctrine while the upper house was mainly Whig and latitudinarian and therefore in favour of toleration for Protestant dissenters and their possible reincorporation into the Church of England and feelings ran h
caption: A cadet of the Royal Military College of Canada plays bagpipes in Currie Hall during the College's fall Convocation.
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