Page:Books Condemned to be Burnt - James Anson Farrer.djvu/107

Rh only that Episcopacy was not of Divine institution, or jure divino (as, indeed, Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, had argued before the King) ; but that the issuing of processes in the names and with the seals of the bishops in the ecclesiastical courts was a trespass on the Royal Prerogative. What happened proves that it was. The statute of Edward VI. ( Ed. VI., c. 2) had enacted that all the proceedings of the ecclesiastical courts should "be made in the name and the style of the King," and that no other seal of jurisdiction should be used but with the Royal arms engraven, under penalty of imprisonment. Mary repealed this Act, nor did Elizabeth replace it. But a clause in a statute of James ( Jac. I., c. 25) repealed the repealing Act of Mary, so that the Act of Edward came back into force; and Bastwick was perfectly right. The judges, nevertheless, in May 1637, decided that Mary's repeal Act was still in force; and Charles, at Laud's instigation, issued a proclamation, in August 1637, to the effect that the proceedings of the High Commission and other ecclesiastical courts were agreeable to the laws and statutes of the realm. In this manner did the