SUMMARY OF ACTS 123 these, which had varied from twelve to three, now to be uniformly four, except in a few cases. The non-residentiary and sinecure deaneries of Wolverhampton, Middleham, Heytesbury, and Brecon are suppressed; honorary canons, to the number of twenty-four in each cathedral, to have stalls and take rank next after the canons residentiary; the separate patronage of deans and chapters, which by the system of options had become a matter of rotation, is transferred to the bishop of the diocese ; benefices in the common patronage of the chapter to be given to canons, archdeacons, or other cathedral clergy. Finally, the Commissioners are empowered to frame schemes which the Crown might ratify by Order in Council, as in the Established Church Act. The sum taken from cathedral establishments and applied to the building of churches and parsonages and the augmentation of small livings was some £300,000 per annum. AUTHORITIES: GENERAL.-Histories, by Sir Spencer Walpole, Herbert Paul, Justin M'Carthy, Harriet Martineau; The Black Book (Anon. 1820); Extraordinary Black Book (Anon. 1831); Reports of Ecclesiastical Commission, 1835-36; Lord Henley, Plan of Church Reform. BIOGRAPHIES: Edw. Stanley, by A. P. Stanley; Bishop Watson (Autobiography); Bishop Barrington, by G. Townsend; Sydney Smith, by Lady Holland; Lord Melbourne, by W. T. McC. Torrens; Sir Robert Peel, by Lord Rosebery, C. S. Parker, W. C. Taylor. CHAPTER VI ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS THE question of Ecclesiastical Courts is one of the most complicated problems of Church history. The limits of imperial or royal and ecclesiastical authority have been debated since the time of Constantine, and the debate is still going on. In England, before the Conquest, civil and ecclesiastical affairs were transacted to a large extent in common. William Before the the Conqueror, with continental ideas of feudalism and a distinct jurisdiction in matters ecclesiastical and secular, declared that the ancient English institutions in this matter were both uncanonical and contrary to right government.1 He divided the ecclesiastical from the secular jurisdiction in matters not strictly spiritual, forbidding bishops and archdeacons to exercise jurisdiction in the courts of the hundred, and bidding them hold their own courts, according to the canons and episcopal laws.' He thus substituted the procedure of the Roman civil law, so far as it was followed by the universal ecclesiastical custom of continental Christendom, for the mixed jurisdiction of the English shires and hundreds, and established episcopal jurisdiction over ecclesiastical persons and things. In doing this he did not give up any of the regal authority exercised by his predecessors, but probably meant, like Henry VIII., to reserve his own supreme authority above both clergy and laity. In ecclesiastical legislation also, by the enactment of canons, William 1 Non bene nec secundum sanctorum canonum praecepta (Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 81). CHAP. VI MEDIEVAL CHURCH COURTS 125 'did not suffer the primate of his kingdom, the Archbishop of Canterbury, if he had called together under his presidency an assembly of bishops, to enact or prohibit anything but what was agreeable to his will, and had been first ordained by him.' This is not unlike the Tudor supremacy, saving the right of appeal to Rome. In the later The makers of our Constitution, Henry I., Henry II., and Edward I. and his successors, in strengthening the secular power at the expense of the ecclesiastical, and building up that supremacy which was finally and violently Middle Ages. asserted by Henry VIII., at each step admitted encroachments from the popular will. In spite of the intrusion of canon law and the unsleeping encroachments of the papal curia, the statutes of praemunire and provisors were remembered and put in force when the Bulls Clericis laicos and Unam sanctam were forgotten, and appeals in certain cases were transferred from the ecclesiastical to the civil courts, in spite of the protest of the clergy. Papal excommunication was not valid, ie. carried no temporal penalties, in England. In short, Henry VIII., by excluding the Pope from jurisdiction in England, extended the limits of the Royal supremacy; he did not invent it. And such is the working of this peculiarly English growth that Henry VIII., in establishing his own. autocracy above all orders of subjects, did in the event establish the autocracy of Parliament. By the English Constitution, ecclesiastical law should be administered by ecclesiastical judges, i.e. according to Lord Coke, archbishops, bishops, and their officers who have spiritual jurisdiction, in their provincial and diocesan courts. Convocation also is a spiritual court, and constitutionally has jurisdiction in cases of heresy, and the powers of Convocation are part of the Constitution, whether in abeyance or not. In case of failure of justice an appeal was allowed from the archdeacon's court to the bishop, from the bishop's court to the archbishop, from the archbishop's court to the Pope; the Crown claiming and exercising the right of staying proceedings in ecclesiastical courts by a writ of prohibition when temporal interests were involved, but not in matters of faith, morals, or ritual, which belonged to the spiritualty. Already before the Reformation the abuse of appeals to Rome was intolerable, and Henry VIII. in abating this nuisance, so far deserved well of the nation. The intention of Henry VIII. when he cut himself off from the Roman obedience was to resume to the Crown the jurisdiction usurped, as he held, by the Popes (1) from the Crown, (2) from the Church of England, and also to assert Despotism of Tudor the ancient power and authority of the Crown Sovereigns. over the ecclesiastical authority itself, whether Papal or national; in Stubbs's words, 'an undefined power and authority in ecclesiastical matters as fountain of all authority and ordinary of ordinaries.' It was left Henry VIII. did not claim to exercise sacerdotal functions, nor to determine questions of doctrine or ritual. to the body spiritual, when any cause of the law divine happened to come in question, or of spiritual learning,' to declare, interpret, and show it. It is further stated in the first Statute of Restraint of Appeals (24 Henry VIII. c. 12) that the spiritualty always has been reputed both for knowledge, integrity, and sufficiency of number 'sufficient and meet of itself. . . to declare and determine all such doubts, and to administer all such offices and duties as to their rooms spiritual doth appertain.' The Royal supremacy, of the as defined by Acts of Parliament (1534-1537), inSpiritualty cluded the full power to 'visit, repress, redress, ecclesiastical reform, correct, restrain, and amend all . . . heresies, abuses, offences, contempts, and enormities. which by any manner spiritual authority ought or may lawfully be reformed, redressed, etc.,' and since the ecclesiastical jurisdiction was declared in the same Acts to he held entirely by, from, and under the King, it was difficult for Henry, even if he had been so minded, not to exercise in practice all the powers spiritual, except the administration of sacerdotal offices in church. Function in causes. The legislation of Henry VIII. did not repeal the canon law as part of the common law of England. Power was taken to reform the canon law, but the power was Canon law. never exercised; it remained unreformed as part of the system to be administered by the ecclesiastical tribunals, though no care was taken that canon law jurists should be consulted, or indeed that such lawyers should exist at all. VI COURT OF DELEGATES 127 But a principal novelty created by Henry VIII.'s system was that henceforward no canons could be made by Convocation without the Royal assent, and that canons passed in Convocation had no binding force in law till they had been enacted in Parliament; whilst the Crown was enabled to issue proclamations and injunctions or advertisements having the force of law in ecclesiastical matters. Court of Court of High Commission. As a consequence of this legislation two new courts of appeal from the provincial, consistory, archidiaconal, and peculiar courts were erected: (1) the Court of Delegates, created by Statute 25 Henry VIII. Delegates. c. 19 (1534), which existed, except during the reign of Mary, till 1832; (2) the Court of High Commission, created by Elizabeth in 1558 (1 Elizabeth c. I § 18), and abolished in 1641 by 15 Car. I. c. II § 3. By the Act of 1534 (the Submission of the Clergy and Restraint of Appeals) it was enacted that appeals from the archbishops' courts, which had hitherto been heard at Rome, should thenceforward lie to the King in Chancery, and that upon every such appeal the King should institute a court like as in case of appeal from the Admiral's Court,' and that their sentence should be final. The court so constituted came to be called the Court of Delegates; a Commission was appointed for each separate case, usually consisting of three puisne judges and Composition three or four civilians in special cases lords of the Court of Delegates. spiritual or temporal might be added. The Court heard matters of appeal of every sort, and administered cases of ecclesiastical law when such came before it, which was but seldom, by civil law procedure. The power of the Crown in ecclesiastical matters was extended still further under Edward VI.; after the reign of Mary the strong anti-clerical set of opinion returned, Edward VI. coinciding with autocratic doctrines of government and a spirit of subserviency among the clergy, and threw ecclesiastical government into the hands of the Queen. Elizabeth seldom meddled with doctrine, and Elizabeth. expressly disclaimed to be a judge of it, though she could interfere in a disciplinary way, as in the instance of the Lambeth Articles in 1595; she left such matters to the |