Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/26



respect, and by his gentleness the affections, of all classes of people. All things seemed to have gone on smoothly till 1856, when, upon his resolving to hold a synod of his diocese, he issued summonses to the clergy and certain delegates of the laity. Mr. Long, one of his clergy, refused to attend, and repeated the refusal in 1860, when a second synod was proposed to be held. It was alleged that Gray had no authority either from the crown or the local legislature to hold any such synod; and on 8 Jan. 1861 the offending clergyman was suspended by Gray from the cure of souls, and in March following he was deprived by the withdrawal of his license. In an action brought by the clergyman and his churchwardens before the supreme court of the colony, the judges decided in favour of Gray, on the ground that though no coercive jurisdiction could be claimed by virtue of the letters patent of 1853, when he was constituted metropolitan, because they were issued after a constitutional government had been established at the Cape, yet the clergyman was bound by his own voluntary submission to acquiesce in the decision of the bishop. From this judgment Mr. Long appealed to the judicial committee of the privy council, who on 24 June 1863 reversed the sentence of the colonial court, the judicial committee agreeing with the inferior court that the letters patent of 1847 and those of 1853 were ineffectual to create any jurisdiction, but denying that the bishop's synod was in any sense a court. The dispute between Gray and Mr. Long was therefore to be treated as a suit between members of a religious body not established by law, and it was decided that Mr. Long had not been guilty of any offence which by the laws of the church of England would have warranted his deprivation. Accordingly Mr. Long was restored to his former status. In the same year (1863) Gray was engaged in another lawsuit. One of his suffragans, Dr. Colenso [q. v.], bishop of Natal, was presented to him by the dean of Cape Town and the archdeacons of George and Graham's Town, on the charge of heresy. Bishop Colenso protested against the jurisdiction of his metropolitan, and offered no defence of his opinions, but admitted that he had published the works from which passages had been quoted, and alleged that they were no offence against the laws of the established church. Accordingly on 16 Dec. 1863 Gray pronounced the deposition of the Bishop of Natal, to take effect from 16 April following, if the bishop should not before that time make a full retractation of the charges brought against him, in writing. This judgment, however, was reversed, on appeal to the judicial committee of the privy council, on the ground that the crown had exceeded its powers in issuing letters patent conveying coercive jurisdiction on its sole authority. The principal point in the judgment is contained in the following words: ‘No metropolitan or bishop in any colony having legislative institutions can by virtue of the crown's letters patent alone (unless granted under an act of parliament or confirmed by a colonial statute) exercise any coercive jurisdiction or hold any court or tribunal for that purpose.’

It is a remarkable fact that the judge who presided at the pronouncement of this judgment, Lord-chancellor Westbury, was the very person who, as attorney-general, had drawn the letters patent which he now pronounced to be null and void in law. The result of the whole litigation was that the Bishop of Natal continued to hold religious services in his cathedral, while the dean also held other services at a different hour, and this state of things continued till the death of the deprived Bishop of Natal, which occurred in 1883. Meanwhile Gray made his appeal to the bishops of the English church to give him their countenance and support, as a bishop of a free and independent church. His anxious desire was that the church of England, through her bishops and convocations, should sanction his proceedings and concur with him in appointing a new bishop for the see, after passing the sentence of excommunication on Colenso, 16 Dec. 1863. The debates on the subject which ensued in the upper house of convocation do not give a very high idea of the intellectual power of the bishops, but upon the whole the upper as well as the lower house of convocation of Canterbury agreed in supporting Gray in his project of consecrating a new bishop for the diocese, taking a different name and title. In 1867 the matter was also brought before the Pan-Anglican Synod, which had been summoned to meet at Lambeth, and which all the bishops in communion with the Anglican church had been invited to attend. Here, owning to the attitude of the American bishops, Gray carried his point, viz. ‘that this conference accepts and adopts the wise decision of the convocation of Canterbury as to the appointment of another bishop to Natal.’ This was carried with three dissentients only, although only two days before, on 25 Sept., the archbishop had refused to put the question: ‘That this conference, while pronouncing no opinion upon any question as to legal rights, acknowledges and accepts the spiritual sentence pronounced by the metropolitan of South Africa upon the Rt. Rev. J. W. Colenso, D.D., Bishop of Natal.’ Gray, in deference to the Archbishop of Canterbury,