laudable Practice

For some years now, it has been the custom on Laudable Practice to mark Thanksgiving in Canada by giving thanks for an aspect of Anglicanism in the True North. Today, as Canadian friends rejoice in the beauty of Fall, give thanks for the harvest, and enjoy family and home, my thoughts turn to a meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in June 1788. Gathered were the Church of England clergy of the Province of Nova Scotia, assembled by their newly-appointed Bishop, Charles Inglis, for his primary episcopal visitation.  At the outset of his visitation charge , Inglis referred to his appointment by the King as part of a wider ecclesiastical policy for post-1783 British North America: Our gracious Sovereign, in His Royal wisdom, and pious solicitude to promote the best interests of religion in His American Dominions, hath been pleased to erect this Province into a Bishop's See, or Diocese, thereby intending to compleat the Polity of the National Church in this country, and to Supply a defect ...

I do declare and promise, that I will be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England, as it is now established, without a King or House of Lords. This was The Engagement, the oath of allegiance required by the Parliamentarian authorities after the execution of the Royal Martyr in January 1649. In his 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull , Robert Nelson provides an account of the young Bull - then an undergraduate in Exeter College, Oxford - refusing to take The Engagement: Mr. Bull had not been admitted two in Exeter College before the Engagement was imposed upon the Nation by a pretended Act of Parliament, which passed in January, 1649. The Kingly Office being abolished upon the Murder of an excellent Prince, it was declared, that for the time to come England should be governed as a Commonwealth by Parliament; that was, by that handful of Men who by their Art and Power, and Villainy, had wrought that wonderful Alteration. And that they might secure their new Government, and have some Obl...