instance by Pope, is not so hyperbolical as will generally be supposed. A real Camilla, both in her fleetness of step and in the circumstances of her life, is mentioned by Chaudon, in the Supplement to his Dictionnaire Historique, 1805, vol. 1.

"BLANC (N. le) fille sauvage, trouvée on mois de Septembre 1731, près du village de Soigny, à quatre lieues de Châlons, à l'age d'environ dix ans. On a cru qu'elle avoit été abandonné à la suite d'un naufrage sur les côtes de France, et que de forêt en forêt elle étoit parvenue au lieu où on la trouva. Sa force, son agilité à la course étoient etonnantes. La manière, suivant Racine le fils, dont elle couroit

après les lièvres, n'offroit presque point de mouvement dans ses pieds ni dans ses corps; c'étoit moins courir que glisser. Elle a passé la plus grande partie de sa vie dans un convent de Chaillot, où les bienfaits du duc d'Orléans avoient pourvu à sa pension et à son entretien. Elle est morte vers l'an 1760, après s'être con

formée avec facilité aux usages de l'état social, et avoir adopté avec zèle les principes de la religion."

The early life of this young woman rather resembles the account of Camilla's childhood, whom her father Metabus

in dumis interque horrentia lustra . . . Nutribat. (Æn. xi. 570.)

while her residence in a convent partly reminds us of the words,

Solâ contenta Diana Eternum telorum et virginitatis amorem Intemerata colit (1. 582); though perhaps in the case of the French foundling it was hardly an optional matter, as she was not likely to have proved attractive, or to have become very polished. However, in any case, that the wildness of her early life had neither stultified her mind or her soul, it is highly interesting to learn. Yours, &c. CYDWELI.

NOTWITHSTANDING the atten

tion which the exercise of the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction has for many ages attracted, on account, not only of the direct and intimate connexion between its legal principles and the national religion, but also of the practical importance of the questions which are submitted to its decisions, the collective information to be found respecting its early or later history in this country, is of the most meagre and scanty description.

This neglect, therefore, of what appears to me an interesting subject has been the cause of my attempting the following general sketch of the rise and progress of the English Ecclesiastical Courts; confining myself, however, to the more striking and curious features exhibited by them, either in their origin or in their subsequent extension and developement. The establishment of these courts in England was of considerably later date than in almost any other state of Europe. On the continent they had been in active operation ever since the reign of the Emperor Theodosius the Younger, to whom must be ascribed their first legalization. But even before that age the separation of the Christian body

from the nation at large, which still adhered to paganism on almost all material points, both in practice and opinion, had occasioned many peculiar questions, in which their faith might be in some degree implicated or compromised, to be treated upon and determined by their own assembly, under the supervision of the higher priesthood, and without the intervention of the ordinary civil tribunals of the state. This we have every reason to regard as the first germ of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, an authority, perhaps, co-existent with Christianity itself, and to which it is impossible to find an exemplar or analogy in any pagan state of antiquity.

Whilst in England, these courts, as we shall afterwards see, owe their ostensible birth to a sudden and fortuitous introduction of foreign usages and principles of law, on the continent they had been the spontaneous though gradual product of opinions deducible from and connected with the dogmas and traditional practices of the Christian religion itself. The mode of this developement may be illustrated in a few words. The Church militant, as a governing power, possessed, simultaneously with the authority of inflicting a

private penance for the more secret offences of a minor grade, a corresponding jurisdiction to impose a public admonition or censure on offenders of a glaring and scandalous character.* And to the exercise of the latter of these powers we are indebted for the criminal processes of the Church, pro salute animæ, or for the reformation of moral excesses. In the same manner, the circumstance of marriage being regarded in the light of a sacrament, or sacramental rite, necessarily and consistently placed it, together with all matters relating thereto, under the care and control of the Church.

This jurisdiction being, therefore, native and inherent in the Church, received at the hands of Theodosius no more than a general confirmation and support. But from the simple text of the codex Theodosianus, by which the bishops are pronounced to be the proper judges in all cases, quoties de religione agitur," the ecclesiastical jurisdiction received a liberal amplification in succeeding ages, through the voluntary concessions of the secular government. For the Church subsequently acquired a complete power of adjudication, not only over the misconduct of clerks, or laics, and over its own revenues, and marriages; but also over the accessary questions of dower and alimony, the breach of faith in sworn compact or mere promises, the validity or invalidity of last wills, the enforcement of legacies, and the administration of a deceased person's property.

This was the condition of the continental Ecclesiastical Courts at the epoch of the accession of the Norman Conqueror to the throne of England, and they had already excited the jealousy and awakened the late repentance of the secular authorities, with whose jurisdiction they on many occasions clashed and even successfully competed. In the words of

* Manifesta peccata non sunt occultâ correctione purganda. (Decret. Greg. 9, lib. 5, tit. 38, cap. 1.) Offences of this kind, according to the canon law, cannot be absolved by a priest, but must be referred to the bishop of the diocese.

+ Cod. Theod. leg. 1, de reliq. "Quoties de religione agitur episcopos convenit judicare,"

a great French antiquary,‡ describing their state at this time, "Curiæ Christianitatis amplissima fuit jurisdictio, cum questionum et causarum omnium quæ non modo res ecclesiæ, sed et sacramenta et quidquid ex eis dubietatis oriretur, spectant, cognitionem sibi arrogasset."

Nothing of this kind was to be seen in England at the time of the Norman Conquest. The Anglo-Saxon common law never recognised the principle of a separate civil or criminal jurisdiction exercised by the Church; though, either out of respect to the sacred character of its members, or from a sense of their superior learning and intelligence, it had certainly admitted the episcopal order to a participation in the municipal judicature of the country. Ever since the introduction of Christianity into England, the bishops had sat to hear causes in the county court, in conjunction with the ealdorman or his sheriff.

It will be a mistake, however, to suppose that the secular authorities even in those times interfered (at least legally) in the administration of justice by the bishops in matters which regarded the assignment of penance for a public immorality, or in the cognizance and punishment of the excesses of the clerks of his diocese. These questions, though discussed and tried in the presence of the hundred, were reserved for the judgment and decision of the bishop alone. But this hybrid union of courts, besides its great practical inconvenience, was for other reasons unlikely to find favour in the minds of the foreign churchmen, who had succeeded to the episcopal sees of England on the expulsion of the native prelates. The former had been educated under a totally dif ferent system. Many of them had previously acquired fame for their proficiency in the peculiar law of the Church, and during the old constitution of things in England there was little or no scope for a display of the powers and ambition of cultivated intellect and learning. The Saxon municipal courts, as it would appear, never possessed a bar of professional

‡ Ducange, sub voce Curia Christiani. tatis.

advocates, and their Gothic manner of trial could not fail to wear a barbarous aspect to men whose minds were fraught with a prepossession in favour of the more refined jurisprudence of the code or the ecclesiastical canons. But a stronger and (at the same time) less worldly motive may have influenced the Norman Conqueror and his clergy in effecting the revolution to which I am now alluding. It is not improbable that religious scruples might have occasioned a reluctance on the part of the latter to countenance a scheme which continually exposed them to the risk of violating the canons, by personally interfering in secular causes, or which compelled them to endure the scandal of seeing matters of religious censure, if not directly submitted to the decision, yet, at least, occasionally subject to the interposition, of a lay judge. For, as the bishop and the ealdorman presided over an united court, the separation of causes would not constantly be so strict but that the one should at times intermeddle in the peculiar province of the other; and finally, there also existed another reason for this change. The scyrgemot, or county court, soon after the accession of William the First, was considerably abridged of its legitimate powers, and from its former high rank was converted into a merely secondary court of justice, by the institution of the Norman "aula regis," which, as a tribunal of the first instance, began to absorb the general legal business of the kingdom. And accordingly the attendance at the degraded county court, however, it might have satisfied the unassuming temperament of the English bishops of that period, could scarcely square with the more elevated pretensions of the foreign intruders.*

The persuasions of the clergy therefore, backed probably by the authority of the Pope, may have been the inducing reason to William the First to separate the unnatural conjunction which had hitherto existed between

* The necessity for their attendance was not, however, formerly repealed until the statute of Marlborough, at the close of the reign of Henry III.

the municipal and ecclesiastical jurisdictions, and to ordain that, "for the future, no bishop or archdeacon should hold pleas founded on the canon laws (de legibus episcopalibus) in the hundred or county court, or lay before secular men any question which concerned the government or cure of

souls. These enactments were contained in a statute of the Norman Parliament, (for such it is, though commonly styled a charter of that monarch), the date of which is not expressed, and cannot be now supplied from any extrinsic source.

This Act, though brief in its expressions, is pregnant with the clearest directions respecting the constitution and regimen of the new intended courts. It not only defines the nature of the suits to be tried there, at the same time providing a code of laws for the guidance of those whose province it should be to administer justice in relation thereto, but it also prescribes a fixed and settled locality for the courts; and finally-without derogating from the rights of regal prerogative by setting up an imperium in imperio, a consequence to be fairly apprehended in that era of clerical pretension, if this new creation had been endowed with the power of effectually enforcing its decrees by a direct course, through its own ministers and satellites-it subjects the infant jurisdiction by a consummate stroke of policy to a complete dependence on the municipal authority, by taking the immediate execution of all its sentences out of the hands of ecclesiastics, and referring it entirely to the secular arm of the justiciaries of the crown.

This is plainly shewn by examining the details of the instrument. It com

† Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, by Thorpe, 1840, p. 213. From a transcript in the Liber pilosus of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, London, and in the Register of Lincoln, Remig. fol. 9. Co. Instit. 4 par. cap. 53, fo. 260, Godolp. Rep. Can. cap. 10. Willielmus, gratia Dei rex Anglorum, comitibus, vicecomitibus, et omnibus francigenis, et quibus in episcopatu Remigii terras habentibus, Salutem. Sciatis vos omnes et cæteri mei fideles qui in Anglia manent quod episcopales leges quæ non bene nec secundum sanctarum causarum præcepta usque ad

mences by reciting that "until William's time the episcopal laws had not been well administered, or according to the precepts of the holy canons, and he therefore adjudged by the advice of the common council, and the council of his archbishops, bishops, and abbats, and all the chief men of the realm, that the same should be amended."

These terms unequivocally stamp the document with the impress of an Act of Parliament. They declare it to be an ordinance communis concilii, &c. i.e. of the National Assembly, such as the Parlement of Normandy or the Witenagemot of England. Those terms are totally inapplicable to a charter, which is a purely royal act.

"I

Next follows the enactment.* therefore command, and by royal authority ordain, that no bishop or archdeacon shall hold pleas any more concerning the episcopal laws in the hundred, nor bring to the judgment of secular men a cause which appertains to the government of souls; but whosoever shall be impeached according to the episcopal laws, for any cause or fault, shall come to the place which the bishop shall have chosen and named for this purpose, and there answer respecting his cause, and do right to God and his bishop, not according to the hundred, but according to the canons and episcopal laws."

This portion of the act, as I remarked before, completely overturned the English common law previously existing on the subject. That law was now made to conform to the regulations of the rest of Europe.

This section also provided that the mea tempora in regno Angliæ fuerunt, communi concilio et concilio archiepiscoporum meorum et cæterorum episcoporum et abbatum et omnium principum regni mei, emendendas judicavi.

* Id. Propterea mando et regia authoritate præcipio ut nullus episcopus vel archidiaconus de legibus episcopalibus amplius in hundretto placita teneant, nec causam quæ ad regimen animarum pertinet ad judicium secularium hominum adducant, sed quicunque secundum episcopales leges de quacunque causa vel culpa interpellatus fuerit, ad locum quem ad hoc episcopus elegerit et nominaverit, veniat, ibique de causa sua respondeat, et non secundum hundrettum, sed secundum canones et episcopales leges rectum Deo et episcopo suo faciat,

Ecclesiastical Court or Consistory should have a fixed and permanent locality, viz. in the see of the bishop, or such other convenient place in his diocese as he should elect for the purpose. The sheriff's jura, or the hundred court, being perambulatory, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, such as it was in Saxon times, necessarily shared in the same unsettled condition, and yet, as the consistory was, agreeably to this enactment, a local court, it would be productive of the same or nearly equal beneficial effects in that respect; an advantage which was afterwards sensibly felt when the municipal courts became centralised at Westminster.

We accordingly find that, in obedience to the statute, each bishop established his tribunal in the cathedral church of his diocese. The Archbishop of Canterbury also selected for the exercise of his metropolitical and appellate powers the parish church of Saint Mary-le-Bow, or Sancta Maria de Arcubus in London, on account of its being situate within a peculiar and immediate jurisdiction belonging to his see within that city. But his court as ordinary of the diocese of Kent was held in the cathedral church of Canterbury. The former court, called par excellence, curia Cantuariensis, shortly afterwards received the additional name of the Arches Court of Canterbury, which it still retains as its sole judicial designation.

The final sentence of the Conqueror's ordinance, sed secundum canones et episcopales leges rectum Deo et episcopo suo faciat," strictly enjoined the law of the courts to be that of the canons, without admixture of municipal principles or customs. Along with the law the English Ecclesiastical Courts adopted the practice of the Roman consistory, and to which they have closely adhered, up to the present time, the modern formulare varying little, if at all, from its original standard. In causes of the first instance the citation, the libel, the litis contestatio, the answers, the compulsories, or literæ compulsoriales, to enforce the attendance of witnesses, were and still are identical in form with the instruments in use at Rome. was also the same examination of witnesses in secret, and the consequent decree of publication passed by the

There