[84] Strafford Letters, i. 111.
[85] P. 155.
[86] Strafford Letters, p. 329. In other letters they complain of what they call the Lady Mora, which seems to be a cant word for the inefficient system of the rest of the council, unless it is a personal nickname for Weston.
[87] The bishops, before the Reformation, issued process from their courts in their own names. By the statute of 1 Edw. VI. c. 2, all ecclesiastical jurisdiction is declared to be immediately from the Crown; and it is directed that persons exercising it shall use the king's arms in their seal, and no other. This was repealed under Mary; but her act is itself repealed by 1 Jac. I. c. 25, § 48. This seems to revive the act of Edward. The spiritual courts, however, continued to issue process in the bishop's name, and with his seal. On some difficulty being made concerning this, it was referred by the star-chamber to the twelve judges, who gave it under their hands that the statute of Edward was repealed, and that the practice of the ecclesiastical courts in this respect was agreeable to law. Neal, 589; Kennet, 92; Rushw. Abr. iii. 340. Whitelock says (p. 22), that the bishops all denied that they held their jurisdiction from the king, for which they were liable to heavy penalties. This question is of little consequence; for it is still true that ecclesiastical jurisdiction, according to the law, emanates from the Crown; nor does anything turn on the issuing of process in the bishop's name, any more than on the holding courts-baron in the name of the lord. In Ireland, unless I am mistaken, the king's name is used in ecclesiastical proceedings. Laud, in his famous speech in the star-chamber, 1637, and again on his trial, asserts episcopal jurisdiction (except what is called in foro contentioso) to be of divine right; a doctrine not easily reconcilable with the Crown's supremacy over all causes under the statute of Elizabeth; since any spiritual censure may be annulled by a lay tribunal, the commission of delegates; and how this can be compatible with a divine authority in the bishop to pronounce it, seems not easy to prove. Laud, I have no doubt, would have put an end to this badge of subordination to the Crown. The judges in Cawdrey's Case (5 Reports) held a very different language; nor would Elizabeth have borne this assumption of the prelates as tamely as Charles, in his poor-spirited bigotry, seems to have done. Stillingfleet, though he disputes at great length the doctrine of Lord Coke, in his fifth Report, as to the extent of the royal supremacy before the first of Elizabeth, fully admits that since the statute of that year, the authority for keeping courts, in whose name soever they may be held, is derived from the king. Vol. iii. 768, 778.
This arrogant contempt of the lawyers manifested by Laud and his faction of priests led to the ruin of the great churchmen and of the church itself—by the hands, chiefly, of that powerful body they had insulted, as Clarendon has justly remarked.
[88] P. 111.
[89] P. 173.
[90] P. 129.
[91] P. 201. See also p. 223.
[92] Vol. ii. p. 100.