[257] One explanation of the frequent repetition of these canons by successive synods is that in those early days it was not a matter of course that a law once made stood good until repealed; rather, on the contrary, that a law lapsed by desuetude, and needed to be re-enacted from time to time to keep it in vigour. The early kings renewed their predecessors’ concessions; grantees sought the confirmation of charters from the heir of the original grantor; and laws of Parliament were often passed again by subsequent Parliaments. So a new archbishop began his reign by calling the provincial synod together and issuing a set of provincial constitutions, repeating former canons, which it was still necessary to keep in active use.
[258] In the debates of the Twenty-fourth Session of the Council of Trent, in the autumn of 1563, one patriarch declared that the proposed decree annulling clandestine marriages was directly opposed to the law of God, and that he would resist it at the peril of his life (Bishop of Bristol, “On what are the Papal Claims founded?”—S.P.C.K.).
[259] Hook’s “Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury,” vi. 317.
[260] It is very significant that after the Reformation legislation had legalized clerical marriages, the wives of the bishops did not openly live in their palaces with them, but in houses of their own. It was a survival of the custom that ecclesiastics might have wives, but that their wives might not be introduced into society.
[261] “Harl.,” 862, p. 221. A more important example is that of Margaret Countess of Flanders, who married a deacon, and subsequently repudiated him and married again, with the result of a disputed succession (Matthew Paris, under 1254 A.D., v. 435, Rolls Series).
[262] “Transactions of the Gloucester Archæol. Society,” 1893. Paper on “Newnham,” by R. I. Kerr.
[263] J. Raine, Preface to “Archbishop Gray’s Register.”
[264] See other curious instances of it in the “Papal Letters,” Rolls Series, vol. i. pp. 239, 243.
[265] “Letters of Henry III.,” Rolls Series.
[266] The Bishop of Oxford doubts whether the sons of such marriages after the twelfth century would be ordained without a dispensation.