Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/139

Rh shall have power, as delegates of the Apostolic See unto this end, to correct and chastise, even out of the times of visitation, all secular clerks, howsoever exempted, who would otherwise be subject to their jurisdiction, for their excesses, crimes, and delinquencies, as often as, and whensoever there shall be need; no exemptions, delarations, customs, sentences, oaths, concordates, which only bind the authors thereof, being of any avail to the said clerks, or to their relatives, chaplains, domestics, proctors, or to any others whatsoever, in view and in consideration of the said exempted clerks.

Moreover, whereas certain persons, who, under the plea that divers wrongs and annoyances are offered them in their goods, possessions, and rights, obtain that certain judges be deputed by means of letters conservatory, in order to protect and defend them from such annoyances and wrongs, and to maintain and preserve them in possession, or quasi-possession, of their goods, property, and rights, and not to suffer them to be molested therein; [and whereas] they pervert these letters, in many ways, unto an improper meaning, in many respects opposed to the intention of the donor; therefore, these letters conservatory, with whatsoever clauses or decrees, and under what judges soever deputed, or under what other pretext or colour soever they may have been granted, shall not avail any one, of what dignity and condition soever he may be, even though a chapter, so as, in criminal and mixed causes, to protect the party from being capable of being accused and summoned, and from being subjected to inquiry and proceeded against before his own bishop, or other ordinary superior; or to prevent him from being freely liable to be summoned before the ordinary judge, in regard to any rights which may be pleaded as his from having been conceded [to him]. In civil causes also, if he himself be the plaintiff, it shall in no wise be lawful for him to bring up any one for judgment before his own judges conservatory. And if, in those causes, in which he