A
synodical assembly of a church is at times called "Convocation".
Convocations of Canterbury and York plays
bagpipes in
Currie Hall during the college's fall Convocation. 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 a national synod of bishops. With the recognition of York as a separate province in 733, this synod was divided into two. 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 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. 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. 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. and many churchmen began to argue that neither Parliament nor the bishops in the House of Lords expressed the mind of the Church as a whole In 1847 the routine session at the beginning of a new Parliament coincided with the polemical nomination of
Dr Hampden to the see of Hereford. The formal address to the Queen was debated for six hours and an amendment carried praying the Crown to revive the active powers of convocation. The opposition was formidable: half the clergy and most of the laity rejected the idea, many politicians were against it and the two archbishops—
John Bird Sumner and Thomas Musgrave—had no desire to revive Convocation. The legal basis of the resistance was the claim that convocation could only discuss such business as was expressly specified by the Crown. Over the next eight years it was established that it could debate and act provided it did not try to discuss or frame canons and that the archbishop could only prorogue (adjourn) a session with the consent of his fellow diocesans. In 1851, Canterbury received a petition, in 1853 it appointed committees and by 1855 Archbishop Sumner was convinced of the value of convocation and those bishops who had opposed the revival were taking part positively in its debates. Archbishop Musgrave maintained his opposition until his death in 1860—he even locked the room where it was due to meet—and the Northern Convocation remained inactive until his successor took office. The convocations have always been exclusively clerical assemblies. However, in 1885 the convocations agreed to the establishment of parallel Houses of Laity elected by the lay members of the diocesan conferences. These were not part of Convocation; they had no constitutional status and were merely advisory. At the beginning of the twentieth century, both convocations together with their respective houses of laity began to meet as a Representative Council which however had no legal authority or position. This was superseded in 1920 by the
Church Assembly which was given the right to propose measures to Parliament by the
Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919. The convocations still exist and their members constitute the two clerical houses of the
General Synod but, apart from some residual and formal responsibilities, all legal authority is now vested in the synod which was established in 1970. ==University use==