diction is only over the thirteen peculiar parishes belonging to the Archbishop in London; but the office of Dean of the Arches having been for a long time united with that of the Archbishop's principal official, he now, in right of the last-mentioned office, receives and determines appeals from the sentences of all inferior ecclesiastical courts within the province; and entertains original suits sent up to him from the inferior ecclesiastical courts by Letters of Request.'

"The official principal or auditor of the Chancery Court of York is the judge of the Court of the Archbishop of York.' And from the judgment of both courts' an appeal lies to the 'queen,' as supreme head of the English Church, in the place of the Bishop of Rome, who formerly exercised this jurisdiction; which circumstance alone will furnish the reason why the clergy were formerly' so anxious to separate the spiritual court from the temporal."

I pass by such ecclesiastical courts as have only what is called a voluntary, and not a contentious jurisdiction, which are merely concerned in doing or selling what no one opposes, and which keep an open office for that purpose, as granting dispensations, licences, faculties, but do not concern themselves with administering redress to any injury;—and proceed to

4. The great court of appeal in all ecclesiastical causes; 'viz., the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which has been substituted for the Court of Delegates, judices delegati, who were formerly appointed by commission under the Great

The judge of each court was formerly appointed by the Archbishop:and was, therefore, an ecclesiastical judge of an ecclesiastical court. Under the Public Worship Regulation Act, 1874, a judge, who is appointed either by the Archbishops jointly, with the approval of the Crown, or, if they make default, by letters patent, becomes ex officio, when vacancies occur, the official principal of the Court of Arches and the official principal or auditor of the Chancery Court of York. This change in the mode of appointment not being made either by, or with the consent of the Church in, convocation (as was done

Seal, to represent the royal person, and hear all appeals to the sovereign, made by virtue of the statute 25 Henry VIII. c. 19.

Appeals to Rome were always looked upon by the English nation with an evil eye, as being contrary to the liberty of the subject, the honour of the crown, and the independence of the whole realm; and were first introduced in very turbulent times in the sixteenth year of King Stephen, A.D. 1151, at the same period, Sir Henry Spelman observes, that the civil and canon laws were first imported into England. But, in a few years after, to obviate this growing practice, the Constitutions made at Clarendon, 11 Hen. II., on account of the disturbances raised by Archishop à-Becket and other zealots of the holy see, expressly declare, that appeals in causes ecclesiastical ought to lie, from the archdeacon to the diocesan; from the diocesan to the archbishop of the province; and from the archbishop to the king; and are not to proceed any farther without special licence from the crown. But the unhappy advantage that was given in the reigns of King John, and his son Henry the Third, to the encroaching power of the Pope, who was ever vigilant to improve all opportunities of extending his jurisdiction, at length riveted the custom of appealing to Rome in causes ecclesiastical so strongly, that it never could be thoroughly broken off, till the grand rupture happened in the reign of Henry the Eighth, when all the jurisdiction 'previously possessed' by the Pope in matters ecclesiastical was transferred to the crown, to which, as many learned persons maintain,' it originally belonged; so that 'in that view' the statute of Henry VIII. was but declaratory of the ancient law of the realm.j

The court of Delegates continued to be the great court of appeal in ecclesiastical causes, till the statute of Henry VIII. was in this respect repealed; and the appellate jurisdiction of the

k

h This commission was frequently filled with lords, spiritual and temporal, and always with judges of the courts at Westminster, and doctors of the civil

law.

Cod. Vet. Leg. 315.

J 4 Inst. 341. In case the king himself be party in any of these suits, says Blackstone, the appeal does not then lie to him in chancery, which would be absurd; but, by the statute 24 Hen. VIII.

c. 12, to all the bishops of the realm, assembled in the upper house of convocation. But this view of the effect of the statute, 24 Hen. VIII. c. 12, has been held to be incorrect, the appeal being by 25 Hen. VIII. c. 19, even in cases in which the crown is concerned, to the king in chancery, that is, to the delegates. Gorham v. Bishop of Exeter, 15 Q. B. 52.

2 & 3 Will. IV. c. 92.

crown in Chancery directed to be exercised by the king in council;' to whom, it will be remembered, an appeal always lay from the judgments of the courts in the foreign dominions of the crown. Such appeals were generally heard by a committee of the privy council assembled, pro hac vice; an irregularly constituted and sifting tribunal, which it was found necessary to reconstruct, when the increasing importance of its jurisdiction, arising principally from the extension of our colonial possessions, excited public attention to its deficiencies. This was effected by the statute 3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 41, by which the President for the time being of the privy council, the Lord Chancellor, the Chief Justices and Chief Baron, the Master of the Rolls, and certain other judges, are constituted the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, to which are to be referred all appeals or complaints brought before the queen, or queen in council. It sits as a court, hears the appeal, and makes a report or recommendation to the sovereign, who thereupon gives judgment accordingly; and though styled a committee, it is a court of record," and has full power to punish contempts, and award costs.'"

m

These are now the principal courts of ecclesiastical jurisdiction; none of which, except the Judicial Committee,' are allowed to be courts of record; no more than was another much more formidable jurisdiction, but now deservedly annihilated, viz., the

The statute 26 Henry VIII. o. 1; reciting, that the king's majesty justly and rightfully is and ought to be the Supreme Head of the Church of England; and so had been recognized by the clergy of the kingdom in their Convocations; yet nevertheless for corroboration and confirmation thereof, &c., enacts, that the king shall be taken, accepted, and reputed the only supreme head, &c., and shall have and enjoy, annexed and united to the Imperial Crown, inter alia, all jurisdiction, &c. The statute 3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 41, which transferred the ecclesiastical jurisdiction to the Crown in Council, did not receive (as it is contended, to be valid spiritually, it ought to have done) the consent or concurrence of the Convocations; and accordingly, by many churchmen, the judgments of the Judicial Committee (i.e. of the Crown in Council) in ecclesiastical causes, though binding

in personam, are not considered binding

in conscience.'

m 6 & 7 Vict. c. 38; 7 & 8 Vict. c. 69; 8 & 9 Vict. c. 30; 14 & 15 Vict. c. 83; 34 & 35 Vict. c. 91.

n 3 & 4 Vict. c. 65; 6 & 7 Vict. c. 38; 7 & 8 Vict. c. 69.

I may here mention that formerly a Commission of Review was sometimes granted, in extraordinary cases, to revise the sentence of the Court of Delegates; when it was apprehended they had been led into a material error. This commission might be granted, although the statutes 24 & 25 Hen. VIII. declare the sentence of the delegates final: because the Pope as supreme head by the canon law used to grant such commission of review; and such authority as the Pope theretofore exerted, was annexed to the crown by statutes 25 Hen. VIII. c. 1 and 1 Eliz. c. 1.

court of High Commission in causes ecclesiastical. This court was erected and united to the regal power by virtue of the statute 1 Eliz. c. 1, instead of a larger jurisdiction which had before been exercised under the Pope's authority. It was intended to vindicate the dignity and peace of the Church, by reforming, ordering, and correcting the ecclesiastical state and persons, and all manner of errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, offences, contempts, and enormities. Under the shelter of which very general words, means were found, in that and the two succeeding reigns, to vest in the high commissioners extraordinary and almost despotic powers of fining and imprisoning, which they exerted much beyond the degree of the offence itself, and frequently over offences by no means of spiritual cognizance. For these reasons this court was justly abolished by statute 16 Car. I. c. 11; and the weak and illegal attempt that was made to revive it, during the reign of King James the Second, served only to hasten that infatuated prince's ruin.

71

CHAPTER VI.

OF COURTS OF A SPECIAL JURISDICTION.

IN the two preceding chapters we have considered the several courts, whose jurisdiction is public and general; and which are so contrived, that some or other of them may administer redress to every possible injury that can arise in the kingdom at large. There yet remain certain others, which are instituted only to 'prevent' particular wrongs; or whose jurisdiction is either confined to particular spots, or private and special in its nature.

'Of the first species are the London Court of Bankruptcy, and the County Courts, as local courts of bankruptcy; whose functions are to prevent a general body of creditors being wronged by preferences given to individuals: and the Court of the Railway Commissioners, whose duties I shall take occasion briefly to define. The second class, or those courts whose jurisdiction is confined to particular spots, comprises the courts of the Stannaries, of the Universities, and of the cities and great towns of the kingdom; the Forest courts; the court of Policies of Assurance; and the courts of the Commissioners of Sewers.'

I. 'A court of Bankruptcy was first established, as we have seen in the second volume of these commentaries, by the statute 1 & 2 Will. IV. c. 56; superseding the seventy commissioners, who were officers of the court of Chancery, for the distribution of bankrupts' estates. District courts were afterwards established by the statute 5 & 6 Vict. c. 122. And finally, by the Bankruptcy Act, 1869, all these courts were abolished, and the London Bankruptcy Court was constituted; consisting of a chief judge and registrars, with original jurisdiction in a large district, comprising the city of London and the districts of a great many of the county courts in the metropolis and its neighbourhood.'

"The London Court is expressly constituted a court of law and equity, and a principal court of record; the chief judge