contributed to unhinge his mind, which had always been subject to a dark, constitutional melancholy; and a painful disease, and a dangerous narcotic taken to alleviate it, aggravated the evil. In November 1774, he died by his own hand, when but just forty-nine; and in this manner, about two years before the outbreak of the American War, England lost the greatest general she had produced since the death of Marlborough.' Another group of measures of considerable importance, which occupied at this time the attention of the public and of Parliament related to religious liberty. The spirit of intolerance, as we have seen in the last volume, had been for a long time steadily declining in England, and there was no disposition in the higher ranks of the Government and among the leaders of either of the great parties in the State to make legislation subservient to religious fanaticism. Prosecutions for religious heterodoxy had almost wholly ceased. The only case, I believe, of the punishment of a freethinker for his writings in the early years of George III. was that of Peter Anet, who was sentenced in 1762 to stand twice in the pillory, and to be imprisoned for a year in Bridewell with hard labour, for a very violent and scurrilous attack upon Christianity.? The Methodist movement, however, contributed to strengthen a spirit of fanaticism among the classes who were influenced by it, and, on the other hand, as we have already seen, it was encountered by explosions of mob violence which often amounted to a high degree of persecution, and which were sometimes in a very shameful manner connived at, countenanced, or even instigated by local magistrates and by clergymen. Isolated incidents occasionally occurred which seemed to show that the spirit of persecution was rather dormant than dead; 3 and the law, though mildly administered, contained many things that were repugnant to true religious liberty. CH. XIII. THE ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS. 493 The Ecclesiastical Courts still retained a jurisdiction which was in many respects oppressive and anomalous, and there were frequent complaints of their expensive, vexatious, and dilatory proceedings. Their conflict with the temporal courts dates from a period long anterior to the Reformation, and the temporal courts had early assumed, and exercised with much severity, a superintending influence over the spiritual ones, defining their sphere of action, and arresting by writs of prohibition' their attempts to extend their authority. The Ecclesiastical Courts retained, however, a power of taking cognisance of acts of private immorality, heresy, and neglect of religious observances, and some large departments of wrong lay within their jurisdiction. The withholding of tithes and other ecclesiastical dues and fees from the parson or vicar, injuries done by one clergyman to another, questions of spoliation and dilapidation of churches or parsonages, matrimonial cases, and also, by a peculiarity of English law, testamentary cases and cases of intestacy, passed under their control. The tendency of English law, however, was gradually to abridge their sphere. The strange power they originally possessed of compelling an accused person to criminate himself, by tendering to him what was termed an ex-officio oath relating to the matter in dispute, would probably have been abolished under Elizabeth but for the direct intervention of the Queen.1 It was finally taken away under Charles II.2 and the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts in cases of tithes and other pecuniary dues was greatly limited. When a question of disputed right was raised, the trial passed at once from the Ecclesiastical to the Civil Court, and this rule applied to all tithe cases in which the defendant pleaded any custom, modus, or composition. The Ecclesiastical Court had, therefore, only to enforce an undisputed right, and in cases of dues or tithes under the value of 40s. a law of William III. provided a summary process by which they might be recovered before a justice of the peace.3 The discipline the Spiritual Courts exercised in cases of immorality, and especially in cases of non-attendance at church, gradually faded away, from the impossibility of enforcing it. 'Hallam's Hist. of England, ch. iv. The only place where in the eighteenth century the discipline of the Anglican Church appears to have been habitually and severely enforced was in the Isle of Man under the Episcopate of Bishop Wilson. Already in the seventeenth century it had become customary to commute these penances for a money payment,' and such payments in cases which were mainly pro salute animi gradually ceased. Archbishop Secker in 1753 complained bitterly of the difficulty of enforcing any kind of ecclesiastical discipline. Yet occasionally in some country parishes, even in the closing years of the eighteenth century, the spectacle might be seen of some poor woman arrayed in a white sheet doing public penance for her fault.2 In cases, however, of the wrongs which I have enumerated, and also in cases of defamation, the Ecclesiastical Courts retained all their vigour, and there were bitter complaints of their abuses and of the excessive expense of their procedure. They possessed also a peculiar weapon of terrible force. The sentence of excommunication might be imposed by them for many offences; but it was most commonly employed as a punishment for contempt of the Ecclesiastical Court in not appearing before it, or not obeying its decrees, or not paying its fees or costs. An excommunicated person in England was placed almost wholly beyond the protection of the law. He could not be a witness or a juryman. He could not bring an action to secure or recover his property. If he died without the removal of his sentence he had no right to Christian burial. Nor was this all. After forty days' contumacy he might be arrested by the writ De excommunicato capiendo,' issued by the Court of Chancery, and imprisoned till he was reconciled to the Church. It is a singular fact that such a tremendous power, which 1 Blackstone, book iv. ch. xv, xix. In the debate about Ecclesiastical Courts in 1813, one of the speakers mentions a case of defamation in which the defendant had been acquitted before the Commissary Court of Surrey, but was afterwards found guilty in the Court of Arches and condemned to do penance, and then came a dispensation from perform. ance, for which he had to pay 951.' An. Reg. 1813, p. 56. 2 Several curious particulars about Church discipline in England in the eighteenth century will be found in Abbey and Overton's very interesting work on The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 52-54, 506 509. See Jacob's Law Dictionary, art. 'Excommunication.' Tomlins' Law Dict. art. Excommunication.' 6 495 in theory at least, might extend even to perpetual imprisonment, should during the whole of the eighteenth century have been lodged with an Ecclesiastical Court, and that it might be applied to men who had committed such trivial offences as the non-payment of fees or costs. Nor was it by any means a dead letter. Howard, in the course of his visits to the English gaols, mentions that in Rothwell gaol, in Yorkshire, he found a weaver named William Carr, who, having given a bad name to a woman who was said not to deserve a very good one,' was cited before the Ecclesiastical Court and imprisoned until he shall have made satisfaction to the Holy Church as well for the contempt as for the injury by him done unto it.' He lay in prison from May 1774 to July 1776, when he was released by an insolvent Act which forgave that class of debtors their fees.' In 1787 two women were committed to Northampton gaol by virtue of the writ 'De excommunicato capiendo,' 'because they had wickedly contemned the power of the keys.'2 In this year, however, an Act was carried limiting the time of commencing suits in these Courts for different offences to six or eight months.3 But the most serious abuses connected with them continued to the present century. In 1812 Lord Folkestone brought forward the subject when presenting a petition from a young woman who had lain for two years in Bristol gaol as an excommunicated person. She had neglected to perform a penance imposed on her by the Ecclesiastical Court; had been excommunicated and imprisoned in consequence; and, as she was too poor to pay the fees that had been incurred, she was unable to obtain her release. Lord Folkestone related six or seven other cases of a similar kind, and in about half of them the excommunicated person had been at least three years in prison. In 1813 an important Act was passed regulating the Ecclesiastical Courts. The power of excommunication for contempt and non-payment of fees was taken away. The penalty was reserved only for certain expressly defined offences, and no civil penalty or disability, except im p. 416. Howard on Prisons (3rd ed.), 327 Geo. III. c. 44. Parl. Debates, xxi. 99, 100, 295 2 Disney's Life of Sykes, 199, 200, 373, 374. 303. prisonment not exceeding six months, could any longer attach to excommunication.1 A very scandalous form of persecution, in which, however, religious motives had no part, was practised in the last years of George II. and the early years of George III. by no less a body than the Corporation of the City of London. In 1748 that Corporation made a bye-law imposing a fine of 400l. and 20 marks on any person who, being nominated by the Lord Mayor for the office of Sheriff, refused to stand the election of the Common Hall, and 600. on anyone who, being elected, refused to serve. The proceeds of these fines were to be employed in building the New Mansion House, which had just been begun. But the office of Sheriff was one of those in which no one could serve who had not previously taken the Sacrament according to the Anglican rite, and it was, therefore, one of those from which Dissenters were excluded. It would appear almost incredible, if the facts were not amply attested, that under these circumstances the City of London systematically elected wealthy Dissenters to the office in order that they should be objected to and fined, and that in this manner it extorted no less than 15,000l. The electors appointed these Dissenters with a clear knowledge that they would not serve, and with the sole purpose of extorting money. One of those whom they selected was blind; another was bedridden. Sometimes the victims appealed against the sentence, but the case was brought in the first instance before a City court, which always gave verdicts for the Corporation, and the cost of appeals against the whole weight of the City influence was so great that few men were rich enough or determined enough to encounter it. At last a gentleman named Evans, who had been elected Sheriff, determined to fight the battle to the end. For no less than ten years the case was before the Courts. It was contended on the part of the Corporation that the Toleration Act did nothing more than suspend the penalties for attending the Nonconformist, and neglecting the Anglican, service; that it left the Dissenters liable to every other penalty and inconvenience to which they had been previously subject, and that they might, therefore, be legally fined for refusing to serve in 153 Geo. III. c. 127. |