1646.
It is now time to direct attention to the final measures adopted with reference to Episcopacy. There remained the old bill of 1642, which had been bandied about between the Parliament and the King, to which the latter had never given consent, and which, therefore, according to the monarchical constitution of the country, had never become law. Virtually it took effect, but constitutionally it had no authority. Other measures were in the same predicament. Parliament, therefore, in the autumn of 1646, commenced a revolutionary proceeding, which really turned England into a republic. The Houses determined that their own ordinances should be valid and sufficient. Ecclesiastical changes were amongst the first to be ratified by this proceeding. The old bill relative to Episcopacy being thrown aside, a new one came before the Lords and Commons, and received the sanction of both Houses on the 9th of October.[593]
This ordinance abolished the titles, sequestered the Church property, and extinguished the jurisdiction of the hierarchy of England.[594]
Ecclesiastical Courts.
The name, style, and dignity of archbishop and bishops were to be known no more. At one sweep church property belonging to them was transferred to other hands. "All counties palatine, honours, manors, lordships, stiles, circuits, precincts, castles, granges, messuages, mills, lands, tenements, meadows, pastures, parsonages, appropriate titles, oblations, obventions, pensions, portions of tithes, parsonages, vicarages, churches, chapels, advowsons, donatives, nominations, rights of patronage and presentations, parks, woods, rents, reversions, services, annuities, franchises, liberties, privileges, immunities, rights of action and of entry, interests, titles of entry, conditions, common court leet, and courts baron, and all other possessions," with all and every their appurtenances, became vested in ecclesiastical commissioners. Another ordinance, bearing date the 16th of November, gave authority to the commissioners to sell such property for the benefit of the Commonwealth, with a special reservation in favour of the jura regalia of the palatine of Durham, and the jura regalia of the bishopric of Ely.[595] No cathedrals, churches, chapels, or churchyards, however, were to be disposed of; neither was anything in the ordinance to affect the property of Serjeants' Inn, or Lincoln's Inn. Careful provision is made by the ordinance for securing the property to purchasers, and for preserving the funds so realized. The first of these ordinances also stated that no one was to use any archiepiscopal or episcopal jurisdiction; that the sheriffs of counties where any felony was to be tried should present to the judge some fit person to do such things as, by the office of the ordinary, had used to be done, and "that all issues triable by the ordinary or bishop shall be tried by jury in usual course."
1646.
Ecclesiastical Courts.
That last line legalized an extensive revolution. Ecclesiastical Courts in England, as noticed in our introduction, were of high antiquity and of large jurisdiction. From the time of the Conqueror they had taken cognizance of church matters and public morals. After the Reformation their authority continued. Moral offences, not provided for by common law, heresy, schism, and ecclesiastical disobedience, questions touching marriage and divorce, together with the proving of wills, remained, as before, subject to the ecclesiastical courts. Though interfered with to some extent by the Court of High Commission, the old Church Courts retained much of their former business down to the time when the Long Parliament was opened. Consistories held in provincial cathedrals might be somewhat quiet, but proceedings before Archidiaconal tribunals were often exciting enough when enquiries were made into village scandals; whilst Doctors' Commons continued a centre of the greatest activity. There sat the Consistory Court of the Bishop of London, the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, and the Court of Arches. The judges and advocates received no small attention, and were paid no little reverence, as they appeared in black velvet caps and hoods lined with taffeta or miniver; the proctors being only a little less dignified with their hoods of lambskin, whilst actuaries, registrars, and beadles were busy in their attendance. Citations, bills, and answers, proofs, witnesses, and presumptions, with all their slow and expensive machinery, were patiently kept at work by ecclesiastical lawyers, and were anxiously waited for and watched by ecclesiastical and lay litigants. But with the opening of the Parliament came a change. Amongst the many jeu d'esprits of the time is one belonging to the year 1641, entitled, "The Spiritual Courts epitomised in a Dialogue between two Proctors, Busy-Body and Scrape-All," with a woodcut on the title page representing the Bishops' Court in great confusion.[596] Complaints couched in very exceptionable phraseology indicate that the Prerogative, the Consistory, and the Archdeacon's Courts, which "used to be crowded like money in a usurer's bag, are very quiet and peaceable now;" "no more false Latin," no more "ten pounds for a probate to Mr. Copper-nose, the English proctor," "and no more prying into people's actions." An end had come to inventories, such as terrified all Bloomsbury, Covent Garden, Long Acre, and Beech Lane. No more pretended caveats, and bills which would exceed a tailor's. On a curious broadside, entitled, "The Last Will and Testament of Doctors' Commons," the same exultation over the decline of the courts is rudely and vulgarly expressed in very queer cuts and in very bad English. The Court is represented as very aged, and sorely shaken both in body and mind by a Westminster ague. That which affected Doctors' Commons would shake all the consistorial and commissory courts throughout the country.
Ecclesiastical causes necessarily fell into confusion. The ordinance, however, of October, would settle the question, and sweep all issues, determinable of old by the ordinary or bishop, into the common law courts, there to be tried by juries in the usual way. This would effect not only a great professional change disastrous to ecclesiastical lawyers, and apparent in the deserted yard of Doctors' Commons, but would occasion a great social change also. People would now carry cases touching marriage and divorce to the sessions or the assizes. As to one important point, however, that of wills, the authority of the old courts of registration survived the ejection of bishops, and the abolition of their order. In the Bishop's principal Registry and Consistory Court at Exeter, wills are found in the first case up to the year 1653, in the second, up to the year 1650, when a gap occurs as far as 1660. In the Archdeacon of Sudbury's Registry, wills also are found belonging to 1652, and the years preceding. In the Chapter House of York, there are transcripts of wills to 1650, and from 1650 originals occur. In the Archdeaconry of Taunton, wills did not cease to be registered till 1649, in the Archdeaconry of Huntingdon, not till 1653.[597] A new law with respect to the probate of wills was passed in the last-mentioned year.[598]
1646.