“When Glanville wrote (about 1660), a Freeholder was allowed to make a Will, so as he gave the best Thing he had to the Lord Paramount, and the next best to the Church.”
“They are said to be Ecclesiastical Inheritances collateral to the Estate of the Land, out of which they arise, and are of their own Nature due only to Spiritual Persons.”
Certain Lands were, however, exempt. “Most orders of Monks were first exempted; but in time this was restrained to three orders—Cistertians, Hospitallers, Templars.”
Dissenters.—After the various laws against “Popish Recusants,” as they were called, had had the effect of rendering somewhat firm the establishment of the English Protestant Church, and about the time of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a new trouble arose from those who dissented from that church, in its forms and in some of its principles, and government then began to interfere with them.
In the 1st Year of the reign of William and Mary these “Dissenters” were exempted from the statutes of 1 Eliz. cap. 2, 23 Eliz. cap. 1, 3 Jac. cap. 4, above mentioned. “But they must not assemble in Places with Doors locked, barred, or bolted, nor until the place is certified to the Bishop of the Diocese or to the Arch Deacon or to the Justices at the Quarter Sessions, and registered there and they have a certificate thereof.”
Their Preachers must declare their Approbation, and subscribe the “Articles of Religion,” except the 20th, 34th, 35th, and 36th articles, and must take the oaths and subscribe the Declaration prescribed Dy certain statutes, and that at the Quarter Sessions where they live.
So that, from the reign of Elizabeth, through the reign of James I., and until the the troubles which ended in the civil war and the Protectorate of Cromwell, Dissenters were subject to many of the restrictions which had been imposed on the Roman Catholics; and even when those troubles finally ended in the flight of James II., and the elevation of William and Mary to the throne, freedom of religion was not allowed to the Dissenters, but they were permitted to enjoy their dissent from the forms and ceremonies of the Church of England only by declaring their assent to many of its most important tenets of faith or doctrine.
The oaths of allegiance and supremacy enjoined by the statutes of 1 Eliz. and 3 Jac. were abrogated by the Statute of 1 Will., and Mar. cap. 8, and the following substituted:
“I, A. B., do sincerely promise and swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance,” etc.
“I, A. B., do swear that I do from my Heart abhor, detest and abjure as Impious and Heretical, that damnable Doctrine and Position that Princes excommunicated or deprived by the Pope or any authority of the See of Rome may be deposed by their subjects or any other whatsoever; and I do declare that no Foreign Prince, Person, Prelate, State or Potentate, hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction, Power, Superiority, Pre-eminence or Authority, Ecclesiastical or Spiritual, within the Realm. So help me God.”