The Long Parliament, almost from the beginning, took ecclesiastical affairs entirely into its own hands. It assumed control over church property, not, indeed, touching the rights of Puritan patrons, but interfering to a large extent with those advowsons and presentations which belonged to High Churchmen.
As time rolled on, and especially when the war began, not only rights of this description which had belonged to Royalists were forfeited entirely; but we may state in passing, that a wholesale sequestration of property followed, it being then enacted that the estates real and personal of Bishops, Deans and Chapters, and other persons, who had either taken up arms against the Parliament, or _contributed aid or assistance_ to such as did, should be seized, and employed for the benefit of the Commonwealth.[480] Such nets swept within their meshes an abundance of spoil. Ecclesiastical corporations and Royalist nobles, squires, and clergymen, suffered the deprivation not only of their ancient privileges, but of their property and possessions. One forfeiture in particular may be mentioned, illustrative of the control which Parliament assumed over the benefices of the Church. An ordinance appeared commanding the Archbishop of Canterbury to collate to benefices such persons, and such persons only, as were nominated by Parliament.[481] For disobedience to this ordinance he was the following month wholly suspended from the duties and privileges of his office. The temporalities of the archbishopric were claimed by the High Court of Parliament, which ordered that Edward Corbet, a Puritan clergyman, whom Laud had refused to collate, should be by the Vicar General inducted to the living of Chartham, in Kent, a benefice in the Archbishop's gift. The revenues of Deans and Chapters were collected and administered by committees, who paid such sums to such persons for such purposes as Parliament might appoint. The system of pew-rents adopted in some places, like everything else in the Church of England, now came under Parliamentary control. Numerous benefices had been vacated through the death or the ejection of incumbents. How were the vacancies to be filled up? In some instances returned refugees, who had suffered in the days of Laud, were instituted to the vacant benefices.[482] Scotch Divines, and ministers of other Protestant Churches, were also declared eligible for appointment. At the same time Episcopal ordinations were not nullified, and the validity of all Presbyterian ordinations, as a matter of course, was acknowledged by a Presbyterian Parliament.