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 Arch

deaconry of Taunton, wills did not cease to be registered till 1649, in the Archdeaconry of Huntingdon, not till 1653.1 A new law with respect to the probate of wills was passed in the last-mentioned year. 2

The effect, in relation to public morals, of the abolition of Bishop's Courts, and of the disuse of those which were Archidiaconal, has been too much overlooked. Though the old church discipline, by calling in the aid of the civil power, contradicted the spirit of Christianity, though it was often completely frustrated, and though for really religious ends it proved generally ineffectual; yet it would, in some cases, check the immorality of a parish, whatever might be the evils-in the way of slander, injustice, and heart-burning which it called into existence. And, at any rate, the destruction of a tribunal before which people were liable to be cited for unchastity and other vices not cognizable by the secular courts, is an important fact in the history of those times, and indicates the occurrence of a considerable judicial and social revolution. No doubt the Presbyterians, in their scheme of discipline, and the Long Parliament, in its acts against immorality, endeavoured to supply what they considered a defect, after they had accomplished the abolition of the old system. The ordinance just described only transferred into the

'This information respecting wills is drawn from Sir H. Nicholas' Notitia Historica, 144—205. In the month of November, 1644, an ordinance of Parliament appointed Sir Nathaniel Brent a Presbyterian master or keeper of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, in the room of Dr. Merrick, a Royalist Episcopalian.-Husband, 582.

In the Windsor churchwardens' accounts an instance occurs of money

paid in 1651-2 for searching the Prerogative Court for the Countess of Devonshire's will, then lately deceased.-Annals of Windsor, ii. 267.

2 We shall describe this law in the next volume. It should be noticed that the ordinance of 1646, respecting bishops, said nothing about deans and chapters, or archdeacons. How they were afterwards dealt with will also be seen hereafter.

hands of commissioners the property and revenues pertaining to bishoprics; it did not touch advowsons and tithes in general, or affect parochial and other ecclesiastical edifices. The right of presentation to livings remained in the hands of patrons, where the right had not been forfeited by delinquency, and tithes continued to be claimed as in former days; but the method of recovering them had undergone a change. Public opinion appears to have become altogether unsettled respecting the question of ministerial support.

In the month of November, 1646, "The Moderate Intelligencer" informs its readers of a petition from the county of Kent being presented to Parliament against the support of ministers by the payment of tithes. It was submitted to the legislature that all clergymen should receive the same amount of salary, according to the part of England in which they resided. These Kentish adviser's recommended that in parishes north of the river Trent the stipend should be £100 per annum ; and that on the south side of it ought to amount to £150. The reason alleged for equal salaries being paid to all incumbents in each of these districts was, that the arrangement would prevent ministers from hunting after preferment. The petitioners notice that some people said— who had "little scripture or reason for their opinion that tithes were unlawful, and that "men should be at the pleasure of the people," in other words, should be left to be provided for on the voluntary system; others, it is observed, would, to avoid strife, fain have ministers paid their tithes in money, not in kind, and they also advocated the repeal of statutes forbidding the clergy to hold farms, or to cultivate the practice of husbandry. It is also mentioned that some persons advocated a new division of parishes, making them all of the same size.

However truly the newspapers might reflect diversities of opinion on this subject, whatever sympathy some puritan farmers or some puritan parsons might feel with these inhabitants of Kent, Parliament firmly maintained the rights of tithe property. In August, 1647, came forth another ordinance,' confirming the prior one of 1644, and removing doubts raised as to whether it extended to ministers inducted by parliamentary authority. It mentions appeals brought into Chancery for vexation and delay, and ordains that no such appeals should be admitted until the party appealing paid into court, or into the hands of justices of the peace, the value of the tithes in dispute. This ordinance was to continue in force until the first of November, 1648. The April of that year brought another ordinance,2 cancelling a proviso in the ordinance of 1644, for placing beyond its reach the city of London, and committing the enforcement of these ecclesiastical dues to the Lord Mayor and justices within their jurisdiction. 3

A newspaper of the 4th of November, 1646, informed the public of a bill introduced that day for repairing churches, and for giving power to compel people to con

1 Scobell, 129.

2 Ibid., 146.

3 In September, 1647, the certificate of certain Cheshire justices touching a refusal to pay tithes to a Puritan, Mr. Smith, of Tattenhall, came before the committee. Some Royalist Episcopalians took encouragement, in their refusal, from two petitions of the sequestered clergy to the King and Sir Thomas Fairfax. It is certified, "from the said justices, that they conceive the ordinance of Parliament for payment of tithes cannot be put by them into execution without bloodshed." The

Serjeant-at-Arms is commissioned to bring these delinquents "in safe custody to answer their said contempt."-Nonconformity in Ches

hire, 472.

The objections to paying tithes at that period went much further than such objections as are urged by Paley.-Moral and Political Philosophy, book vi., iii. A corn-rent, as he suggests, or such commutation of tithes as is now adopted, would not have met the objections. A fixed and uniform stipend paid by the State was widely desired.

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tribute towards needful and pious works; the power to be vested not merely in churchwardens, but in justices of the peace. Mention is also made of a committee to meet in the Star Chamber, for the purpose of considering what course had best be adopted, whether by commitment or otherwise, in order to compel payment from those who refused to contribute according to the ordinary assessments. More than a year after these reports were printed, the Lords and Commons, on the 9th of February, 1647-8, ordained that churchwardens should be chosen annually by the inhabitants of every parish and chapelry, on the Monday or Tuesday of Easter Week, and that they, with the overseers of the poor, should, upon public notice, "make rates or assessments by taxation of every inhabitant." Churchwardens were also to receive any rents and profits which had been given for repairing parochial edifices; and, when churchwardens became negligent of their duties, two neighbouring justices of the peace were empowered to interfere, and to give order for necessary repairs. The ordinance was not to extend to churches "ruined" by the "unhappy wars, extremity of age, or other casualties," nor was it to apply to any cathedral or collegiate churches, all of which were "to be repaired as formerly they have been used and accustomed."

1 Scobell, 139.

66

1646, 15th December.-It is ordered that Mr. Tooley, &c., shall treat with the dean and prebends about mending the windows and repairing the cathedral church, and to consider whether it be fit to remove the pulpit to the former place where it stood or not, and to examine whether there be £100 a year appointed for the repairing of the

church, and how much thereof is in arrear."

"1647.-8th November. It is ordered that the sheriffs shall give entertainment to the preachers who come to preach at the cathedral in such manner as the former sheriffs did, and that they shall give like allowance for the same as they did." -Extracted from the Norwich Corporation Records.