no matters were to be debated without the royal licence. Nor would William allow any ecclesiastical censure on his barons or officers of State for any scandalous crime without a Royal Warrant. This last,' says Collier (History, vol. ii., p. 3), always prone to exaggerate Church authority, 'was a wresting of the keys out of the hands of those our Saviour entrusted them into-seizing the apostolical character, and dissolving the Church into the State. It placed the Christian religion at the mercy of the civil magistrate.' But under William all things indicated a strong line of separation between the ecclesiastical and temporal power. The Archbishop now held his Synod as a body distinct from the great Gemot of the realm. It almost necessarily followed that the King should assert a distinct authority over ecclesiastical matters, in a shape which gave him the aspect of an external, and even a hostile, power. In this sense it was a novelty for the King to control the action of a distinct ecclesiastical body, or distinctly to signify his personal will in ecclesiastical matters. The alleged changes of William were angrily debated from the days of his son onward, but all of them became part and parcel of the law of England. The supremacy established by William was essentially the same as was contended for by Henry II., and finally established by Henry VIII.*

The next great era to which allusion may be made is the reign of Henry II. Under this sovereign the rule of law was initiated. The King restored the machinery of the Exchequer and 'Curia Regis,' which had been instituted by Henry I.,† extended their powers, and brought them into

* Freeman's Norman Conquest, vol. iv. pp. 437-9.

The Justiciar was an officer appointed by the Norman Kings to assist in the business entailed on the King, and at times to take his place. He was Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, and represented

close connection with the provincial organisations of the shires, the hundreds, and the local franchises. Having met with opposition to the carrying out of this policy from the barons, and from the clergy, the former were called upon to agree to the restriction of their hereditary jurisdictions to the smallest compass, and the latter to allow themselves to be, in all matters not purely spiritual, subject to the ordinary process of the law. Hence arose the two great struggles of the reign, which must be regarded together; the Constitutions of Clarendon were but part of a scheme which was to reduce all men to equality before the law. Before, however, referring briefly to those famous ordinances, it may be useful to trace to its source in the Curia Regis the political functions now exercised by the Privy Council, the House of Lords, the Chancellor, and the Courts of Common Law; and for this purpose we must bear in

the King in all matters-regent of the kingdom in his absence—and, whether the King was absent or present, the supreme administrator of, law and finance. Under him the King's clerks, or chaplains, were formed into a body of secretaries, the chief of whom bore the title of Chancellor. The Conqueror himself executed in person a great part of the the business of the State; it is under William Rufus that the Justiciar becomes the Prime Minister. The organisation of the Justiciar's administration dates from the reign of Henry I. His staff was selected from the barons or vassals of the Crown, who were more nearly connected with the royal household, or qualified by their knowledge of the law for the position of judges. These were formed into a Supreme Court attendant upon the King-the Curia Regis-which, when employed in finance, sat in the Chamber, and was known by the name of the Exchequer. This staff of officers, which may be regarded as a Judicial Committee representing the whole Court of vassals, was the germ of the whole administrative machinery of the Constitution. By it all appeals were decided, and to it all suits might be called up on application of the suitors. As a royal council it shared in the revision and registration of the laws and charters, which it attests. But in matters of taxation and legislation it had no direct influence: these powers belonged to the King and the Witan-the King and the National Assembly, now composed of his vassals.-Stubbs' Select Charters, p. 16.

а

mind what has been already said (note, p. xii) of the constitution of the Curia Regis—or royal Court. Henry, in 1178, restricted the number of those who exercised their functions in the Curia to five, and reserved for his own hearing in full council the causes in which this Court, which until now had been a final Court of Appeal, failed to do justice. This limited tribunal is the lineal predecessor of the existing Courts of Queen's Bench and Common Pleas; the Upper Court of Appeal, the King in his ordinary Council, is the body from which, at later dates, the judicial functions of the Privy Council, and the equitable jurisdiction of the Chancellor, are derived. It is this Council which, when united with the general body of the Baronage in its triennial assemblies, constitutes the Magnum Concilium of the next centuries: and it is from the confusion of powers which resulted from this constant union of the Royal Council with the Court of the Barons, that the House of Lords, the descendant of the latter, borrowed its character as a Court of Appeal, while the Privy Council, as descendant of the former, borrowed a legislative character—carried out in its ordinances-which had at first belonged only to the King in his great Council of the Baronage. The original Tribunal, the King's ordinary Council, retained throughout its undiminished powers, changing at various times, and throwing off new offshoots-such as the Court of the Star Chamber-until it has reached our own time in the form of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

It was in the events which followed the iron rule of William of Normandy-in the gradual deterioration of the liberties. to which he was pledged, as the reins of power fell into the hands of smaller men-in the advancing claims to independence on the part of distinct ecclesiastical bodies-in the rise, as the influence of the Italian lawyers increased, of

sary

the mischievous system of Appeals to Rome, which, though they became common in after periods, had never any sanction in the laws of England—in the exaggerated influence of the Canon law, which only a royal prohibition prevented from being openly taught at the University of Oxford, in the reign of Stephen, by the Lombard teacher Vacarius-in the anarchy of the twenty years after the death of Henry I., when all central administration, except the ecclesiastical, collapsed-it was these circumstances that rendered necesthe restrictive action of the Constitutions of Claren don, which determine and illustrate the next great epoch of our ecclesiastical history. These famous ordinances owe their title to Clarendon, a royal palace near Salisbury. It was to this palace that Henry II., desiring to settle the points in dispute, and to re-affirm the old constitution in Church and State, summoned his Great Council. It was attended by the two archbishops, eleven bishops, between thirty and forty of the highest nobles, with numbers of inferior barons, who subscribed the customs, which had been collected and put in writing by the King's order. These Constitutions aimed at the subjection of the great prelates to the Crown to the same extent as the great barons, and brought the whole of the clergy, equally with the laity, within the common law of the land. By them it was enacted that all clerks accused of any crime were to be summoned before the King's Court. The King's justiciaries were to decide whether it was a case for civil or ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and those which belonged to the latter were to be removed to the Bishop's Court.* Appeals lay from the Archdeacon to

The exact form in which this ordinance was signed by the Council is thus given:

Clerici vectati et accusati de quacumque re summoniti a justicia regis venient in curiam ipsius, responsuri ibidem de hoc unde videbitur curiæ regis quod ibidem sit respondendum ; et in curia ecclesiastica unde

the Bishop, from the Bishop to the Archbishop; and on failure of justice by the Archbishop, in the last resort to the King, who by order was to take care that justice was done in the Archbishop's Court, and no further appeal was to be made without the King's consent.* In thus establishing the relations of Church and State, and re-asserting the supremacy of the Crown, Henry but re-affirmed that the old law of England, which claimed for Edward the Confessor the title of the Vicar of the Highest King, a law which was afterwards perpetuated in the statutes of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. There is no reason to believe that in carrying out these reforms the King was actuated by any motives of hostility to the clergy, or even by a desire. to increase the royal power; the abuses against which they were aimed were glaring, and the principles by which they were to be carried out have been stamped from time to time with the approval of the whole people. These famous Constitutions, his signature to which sat so heavy on the heart of Becket, the King, on his reconciliation with the Church, promised to repeal; but no Act appears whereby that repeal was ever effected.†

The Constitutions of Clarendon produced effect, and in the reign of Henry III. more unrestricted and successful efforts began to be made to maintain the independence of

videbitur quod ibidem sit respondendum; ita quod justitia regis mittet in curiam sanctæ ecclesiæ ad videndum qua ratione res ibi tractabitur. Et si clericus "convictus vel confessus fuerit, non debet de cetero eum ecclesia tueri."-Stubbs' Select Charters, p. 132.

*The text is as follows:- De appellationibus, si emerserint, ab archidiacono debent procedere ad episcopum, ab episcopo ad archiepiscopum. Et si archiepiscopus defecerit in justitia exhibenda ad dominum regem perveniendum est postremo, ut præcepto ipsius in curia archiepiscopi controversia terminetur, ita quod non debet ulterius procedere absque assensu domini regis.'-Stubbs' Select Charters, p. 133.

Collier, without any authority, says they were repealed in a Parliament of Richard I.