"No Popery!"

For the first time in centuries, the Commons of Great Britain reversed, last week, a vital decision by the Peers and Bishops touching the very life of the Established Church of England.

A volume bound in yellow paper was the source of august discord. Already 100,000 copies have been sold, for the volume is the new Alternative Prayer Book of the Church of England (TIME, Feb. 21), recently approved by the Church Assembly, and submitted to the House of Lords last week. So important loomed this revised manual of prayer, that the Lords Spiritual and Temporal assembled in greater numbers than at any time since the World War. The four benches assigned to bishops towered with stiff regalia. Then up rose, to put the motion, the Right Honorable and Most Reverend Randall Thomas Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England.

For 21 years, said His Grace of Canterbury, the Church had been slowly correlating the elements here presented. The proposed changes would in no way compromise the essential principles established by the Reformation, but they would mould antiquated rules of Church discipline into harmony with modern needs. For example, the need of extending facilities for partaking of Holy Communion had made it seem wise to sanction reservation of the Sacrament (see RELIGION). Finally, Their Lordships should be guided by the action of the Assembly of the Church in approving the volume now presented for authorization. . . .

After three days of spirited but chiefly decorative debate, the House of Lords voted 241 to 88 its sweeping approval of the Alternative Prayer Book. Triumphant, the Primate of All England and other Lords Spiritual moved over to the gallery of the House of Commons. Although they could not address its members, their three-to-one victory in the Lords was surely a straw vote of promising import.

When the Commons debate began all party whips were taken off. Thus each member spoke and voted from personal conviction. To further emphasize the ruling out of politics, two members of Premier Stanley Baldwin's cabinet spoke for approval of the Prayer Book and two against.

The motion for approval was put by First Lord of the Admiralty William Clive Bridgeman, a Cabinet member, speaking, he said, simply in behalf of "the man in the pew." Premier Baldwin himself supported Mr. Bridgeman, pointing out that the proposed revision was a compromise between high and low church opinion. He warned that to deny the church her carefully chosen ground of compromise would be to weaken her authority to a point at which proposals to disestablish the Church might again be made. "How many members of this House," he concluded, 'believe that the Church would survive disestablishment? I believe that I am right in thinking that the spirit . . . of compromise which has been a mark of the Church of England for centuries is a thing worth preserving in national life." Such reasoned argument appealed to many in the House, but passions began to stir when a fiery blast against "compromise" was blared by the Home Secretary, hot-headed reactionary Sir William ("Jix") Joynson-Hicks. Cried he: "Romish practices have been tolerated too long in the Church of England! The bishops know not how to suppress these practices and so they propose to surrender to them. Today [sarcastically] it is to those Bishops who have proved their impotence [against Romish influences] that this House is being asked to make over yet more power. . . ." Cries of "Right 'Jix'! No Popery!" constantly interrupted Sir William as his speech gathered force. He sat down amid roars of applause. In vain pallid Lord Hugh Cecil* coldly interjected: "The Church of England is not, after all, a mere society for the better contradiction of the Pope." In vain, for the House had risen to "No Popery!" as a nation rises blindly to the trump of war. At 11:30 p. m. a division (vote) was taken. Into the "nays" lobby rushed Conservative Viscounts Astor, Liberal David Lloyd George, Laborite James Henry Thomas (famed "balance wheel of British Labor") and other members of wildly assorted parties to a total of 238. Into the "ayes" lobby filed 205 members, equally assorted. From the gallery looked down in consternation the impotent Bishops. Their three-to-one victory in the Lords had turned to a bitter four-to-five defeat in the Commons. . . . For a moment the vote's shattering impact seemed lost upon 77-year-old Randall Thomas Davidson, Primate of All England, Archbishop of Canterbury. Then great tears gushed from his eyes, sobs issued from his throat. Slowly he was led away by the Right Honorable and Most Reverend Cosmo Gordon Lang, Primate of England, Archbishop of York. The labors of these two old friends for 21 years and more would have to be begun anew. "No Popery!" and the desire of many members to force disestablishment to an issue had triumphed.

* Not to be confused with his elder brother, Viscount Cecil of Chelwood.