secular courts firmly, and at length successfully, resisted. The general reader will find as much probably as he will be curious to learn on this subject in the second volume of Mr. Hallam's View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, pp. 310 et seqq. The practice was based on the doctrine of the spiritual courts, that they act pro salute animæ; and the prevention of injustice and perjury, particularly the latter, was alleged as a justifiable ground for their interposition. This contest was continued, with more or less energy, till after the date of the above document, though the ecclesiastical tribunals had sometime before been driven from many of their positions. A great effort was made on their behalf by Archbishop Boniface, who issued his canons and constitutions in 1258, and afterwards there was an appeal to parliament, but without success; and the statute or ordinance intitled 'Circumspecte agatis,' commonly referred to the thirteenth year of Edward the First, shews within what limits their authority was then reduced. However, contracts concerning lay-fees, i.e. in popular language, the lands of lay persons, were never suffered to be brought under their cognizance; and therefore this case was clearly out of their general jurisdiction, and hence the endeavour to give the Dean a special jurisdiction and coercive power by means of an express stipulation for the purpose, and an oath taken for the observance of it; a contrivance which after all, I have no doubt, would have been found unavailing if the lady had sought the protection of the common law court; and an apprehension of this, I conceive, induced the framer of the instrument to provide so carefully that she should submit to excommunication on the bare allegation of Richard de Calna that he had been disturbed, without oath or other proof being required, and without any judicial fuss (sine aliquo strepitu judiciale).[1]W. S. W.
- ↑ This is not a solitary instance of such a phrase in a document of that period. A similar one occurs in an agreement between the abbot and convent of St. Mary Oseney and the prior and convent of Burncester (Bicester) respecting some tithes, which is recited in an agreement between the same parties dated 1300; see Paroch. Antiq. 344. It has some other points of resemblance to the document above mentioned; for the prior and his convent agreed to submit to the "coercion and discretion" of the official or chancellor of the bishop of Lincoln, or any other judge the abbot and his convent should choose, that the observance of the agreement might be enforced by ecclesiastical censures "absque articuli seu libelli petitione et quocunque strepitu judiciali." A stipulation of this kind was probably not uncommon when parties engaged to submit to the decision of a person who had no other authority to adjudicate between them in the matter; as appears to have been the case in the agreement referred to, though the subject of it and the parties were, for most purposes, within the jurisdiction of the bishop of Lincoln.
