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by Archbishop Parker in his ecclesiastical capacity in 1563 (only five years after the Protestant Queen's accession), and has received no subsequent confirmation beyond what it may be supposed to derive from the canons of 1603, which are clearly not binding on the laity. Lord Hardwicke held distinctly that they possessed no binding authority as laws,[1] and Mr. Hallam says of them: "a code of new canons had recently been established in convocation, with the king's assent, obligatory perhaps upon the clergy, but tending to set up an unwarrantable authority over the whole nation."
Now, the leading case in which the temporal courts have declared a marriage with a deceased wife's sister to be void, is Hill v. Good,[2] decided by the Common Pleas in 1673. Lord Chief Justice Vaughan delivered the judgment of the court, and that judgment will be found to depend almost exclusively upon the assumed authority of these very canons. But in The Queen v. O'Connell, it was held (particularly by Lord Denman,) that almost any course of practice, or current of authorities, might be disregarded, if proved to have originated in mistake. It is quite clear that the doctrine in dispute originated in a mistake,—whether in the erro-
