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the Commissioners of Inquiry; but Lord Chancellor Cottenham took up the project in 1836, and his Bill was substantially approved by the Lords on the recommendation of a Select Committee. It was now said that Parliament could not abolish the diocesan courts till it had provided otherwise for the exercise of ecclesiastical discipline; but in 1844, after such provision had been made, Lyndhurst proposed, not to abolish but to improve these courts, and was supported by Brougham and Bishop Blomfield-a striking confession of failure, when we remember that the latter was a member of the Commission, which indeed had been appointed on the advice of Lyndhurst.1

That a scheme of ecclesiastical reform recommended by leading bishops and lawyers, acceptable to both political parties and approved in substance by Select Committees of both Lords and Commons, should have been held up in this fashion for twelve years and then abandoned may well surprise us. The exasperated critic who described it as "of second rate importance and of first rate difficulty" may have been more epigrammatic than accurate; but at least it was not of sufficient general interest to overcome the antagonism of those whom it adversely affected. Brougham informed the House of Lords in 1844 that as soon as he addressed himself to this question he raised "a host of adversaries," who overwhelmed him with deputations and petitions; and he illustrated his plight by referring to the reception of a somewhat similar measure. In 1831 a Bill was introduced with the approval of the Government to establish a general office-such as had long existed in Scotland-for the registration of deeds. So powerful was the opposition that a member said "he never knew such a unanimity of opinion prevail against any measure." It was said that great part of legal practice in the country

1 Hansard, xix. 612; xxvii. 909, 925, 926, 931, 935; xxviii. 1120; xxxi. 324; xlvii. 536; lxxiii. 1312, 1340, 1341.

would be transferred to London; that, as title-deeds were frequently deposited as security, it would be impossible either to lend or borrow money; that the veil of mystery and secrecy" would be withdrawn from private affairs; and that there were people in London who would ransack title-deeds for flaws in the hope of being rewarded by those whom they should put in possession. Brougham said that the opposition to the Reform Bill outside Parliament was really a joke compared to the opposition to the Registry Act." Soon after the Lords had thrown out the Reform Bill in October 1831, he went for a brief holiday to his home in Westmorland; and on his journey back to London, if he saw one bill or placard against reform, he saw a score against the registration scheme. It was, he asserted, the same combination of country lawyers and country gentlemen who frustrated the attempt to consolidate the ecclesiastical courts, both denouncing it as a conspiracy to despoil the rural districts for the enrichment of London.1

The Church courts having thus made good their defence, the natural course was to leave them more or less intact, but to take away their extraneous jurisdiction and to confine them, as they are now confined, to Church business and clerical discipline. In 1847 the jurisdiction of a bishop was made co-extensive with his diocese, except in testamentary and intestate affairs; and, ten years later, these and matrimonial affairs were transferred to the civil courts.2 In 1855 charges of defamation, and in 1860 charges of "brawling," when brought against laymen, were similarly transferred; and, though Church rates continued to find occupation for the ecclesiastical courts till their abolition in 1868, a considerable mitigation of the grievance was effected in

1 Hansard, ix. 125, 563, 977, 979, 1187; lxxiii. 1340, 1341. * A reform advocated by Bishop Blomfield as early as 1832, but not accepted by his fellow Commissioners.-Hansard, lxxiii. 1338.

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1840. In the previous year a conscientious Dissenter named Thorogood had been imprisoned at Chelmsford for refusal to pay 5s. 6d. of Church rate, or at least for contumacy in failing to appear when summoned before the Consistorial Court of London. Lushington, the judge of this court, had been the reluctant instrument of his fate, and held-though the Attorney-General was of a different opinion-that he could not release him without payment of both tax and costs. In the summer of 1840 Thorogood had been eighteen months in prison; and, his case having attracted much attention in Parliament, an Act was then passed which empowered the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council or, under certain conditions, the judge of any ecclesiastical court to order the release of persons imprisoned on this charge.1

It must not, however, be supposed that the General Report of 1832 proved wholly abortive. One of its most important suggestions was in great measure adopted and is still in force; and, singularly enough, this was almost the only part of the scheme which did not meet with immediate approval, being presented to Parliament first in an altered, and then in quite a different, form. There was general agreement that the existing practice in what was technically called the "correction of clerks " should not continue. The procedure in cases of discipline was the same as in civil suits, being set in motion by an informer or "promoter," and was so dilatory and expensive that in the five years preceding the appointment of the Commission there had been only fifteen prosecutions in the whole province of Canterbury.2 We

1 3 & 4 Vict. c. 93; Hansard, lv. 1189, 1193, 1255, 1388. One finds with surprise that people at this period were being imprisoned by the civil courts at least in Lancashire-under the Act of Elizabeth enforcing attendance at church; but the real offence was usually that of being drunk and disorderly on Sunday. Persons convicted on this charge merely incurred a fine, which they were seldom able to pay, whereas under the Act of 1559 they could be imprisoned in default of payment.-Hansard, lx. 309.

2 Hansard, xlvii. 1312.

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have seen that the Commissioners had recommended that the bishop in such cases should resume his personal jurisdiction, this being the corollary of their proposal to abolish the diocesan courts; and the Ecclesiastical Courts Bill was consequently accompanied by a Church Discipline Bill.

Introducing such a measure in 1836, Lord Cottenham said that it had been found advisable not to give the bishop full power in the trial of his clergy, but that the latter should be tried, like their fellow-citizens, by a jury. The bishop was to preside, but was to be advised by a legal assessor; and the accused could be convicted only with the concurrence of six out of nine clergymen. The Bill passed the Lords without opposition, but was then abandoned owing to "a great cry" raised against it by the clergy, who much disliked the idea of sitting in judgment on their delinquent brethren. Recognising, though it limited, the personal jurisdiction of the bishop, this measure was plainly founded on the Report; but the limitation had an unexpected development; for it soon appeared that, with the exception of Lord Wynford, all the Commissioners at least all who expressed an opinion-had entirely receded from the proposal they had put forward in 1832. They had come round to the view which was expressed at the time by one of their colleagues, the late Dr. Van Mildert, that the bishop would not have leisure, and would seldom be competent, to determine questions of ecclesiastical law, whilst in three cases out of four he would be prosecutor as well as judge; and they had become alive to the fact that there were inferior courts, possessing or claiming a right to try clerks, which were notoriously incompetent, their judges in many cases being deputies with a salary of only ten guineas a year. Under such conditions the clerical jury would have been a considerable safeguard; and, this expedient having been repudiated by the clergy, it was proposed in the next Bill-that of 1838-that matters

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of discipline should be tried exclusively by the Court of Arches.1

A summary of this measure had been seen and approved by all the bishops then in town, with the exception of Phillpotts and Monk. The former denounced the Bill-after it had passed the Commonsin one of his most violent speeches, declaring that it was inconsistent with the divine origin of Episcopacy, would wrest from the bishops their spiritual weapons, and, in short, was "the greatest blow that ever was struck against the Church of England as a Church." No law, he declared, should prevent him from prosecuting criminous clerks, and even from proceeding, if necessary, to excommunication. Next year the Bill was again introduced in a slightly modified form, the chief change being that appeals, instead of being heard in the Archbishop's court, were to come directly before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Phillpotts declared this to be a change for the worse, pointing out that there need not be more than two bishops on the Judicial Committee, and that the other members, except the Lord Chancellor, might be Catholics or Dissenters. The Dean of Arches derived his appellate jurisdiction from the Archbishop of Canterbury, but the original jurisdiction contemplated in this and the previous Bill would be conferred on him by Act of Parliament; and as a layman he was no more competent to take away holy orders than to confer them. The Church had long been deprived of its legislative, and now it was to be stripped of its judicial, power. In reply to this argument it was said that the Dean of Arches was already concerned with spiritual censures, since he could annul them on appeal; that nearly every case of discipline now came up to this court either by "letters of request before it had commenced or by appeal on some technical point during its progress; that, even where the case was tried locally,

1 Hansard, xliv. 616; xlvii. 1029, 1308, 1330, 1331.

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