Provisors, Statute of.
A statute passed in the thirty-eighth year of Edward III (1365), and directed against the claim of the Pope to appoint to benefices in England. It confirmed a previous statute which enacted that the King and the Lords were to appoint to benefices of their own or their ancestors’ creation, and not the Pope of Rome, and further made the introduction of Papal Bulls and Briefs into the realm illegal.
Prudhommes.
Notable citizens elected, in the French towns in the twelfth century, to act as an advisory board to the provost or representative of the King.
Pruth, Peace of the.
A treaty between Russia and Turkey, signed in 1711, after the relief of Peter the Great, who had been besieged in Hush. It provided for the cession to Turkey of Azov, and the retirement of Charles XII to Sweden unmolested. It is also called the Treaty of Falczi.
Pucelle, La.
A sobriquet of Joan of Arc.
Punishment Act.
An Act passed by the British Parliament in 1836, at the instance of Lord Glenelg, which, after setting forth in the preamble that the Cape Colony was inhabited by “uncivilized persons,” proceeded to give the officers of the Crown power to arrest and bring to trial in Cape Town all British subjects dwelling south of the twenty-fifth parallel of latitude. It caused intense irritation in South Africa, especially in Natal, which was claiming to be erected into a separate British Colony, and refused to recognize the right of the Cape Government to enforce the law while affording them no protection against Kaffir and other enemies.