Page:Debrett's Illustrated Peerage and Titles of Courtesy.djvu/61

 TITLES, ORDERS, AND DEGREES OF PRECEDENCE AND DIGNITI. XXUJ and we are informed by a curious old book upon special privileges, " that where- soever the Court shall happen to be, the king and queen are speciales domestlci paro- Ctuani Arch. Cant, (parishioners of the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury). The powtr of the Archbishops of Canterbury was for- merly enormous, net only in the ecclesiastical but the secular point of view. The Arch- bishop was also very frequently Lord Chan- cellor, and the instances are not few in which the influence of the archiepiscopal see has been formidable to the throne itself. Sine* the Reformation, this secular influence, which had been long declining, may be said to have altogether ceased. The Archbishop of Can- terbury, like his brother of York, is entitled " Your Grace." The formti styles himself, " By Divine Providence," but the Archbishop of York and the other bishops, "By Di vine Permission."* The arms of the Archbishop of Canterbury are Azure, a pastoral staff in pale, argent, ensigned with a cross patee, or, surmounted by a pall of the second, edged and fringed as the third, charged with four crosses fitchee, sable, impaling, or, a cross, gules, between four Moors' heads, full-faced, proper, for Archbishop Juxon (in commemoration of this prelate's faithful attendance upon King Charles I. in his last hours). THE LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR. This exalted office was in former times filled by a prelate, but for more than three centuries this custom has wholly ceased. The Lord Chancellor alone authorises all patents, writs, and grants, by affixing the Great Seal thereto. He collates to the ecclesiastical benefices in the gift of the Crown, is Keeper of the Great Seal, and "judges, according to equity, conscience, THE LORD CHANCELLOK'S MACE. and reason, when he finds the law of the land (the common law) so defective that the sxibject would be injured thereby." Appeals lie to him from all the other courts, and from his decisions there is no appeal except to the House of Lords. For many years the Lord Chancellor has been invariably created a peer concomitantly with his appointment, whereas in more ancient times, when not held by an ecclesiastic, the office was always filled by a commoner, as in the illustrious instance of Sir Phomas More. At present the Lord High Chancellor is the most indispensable ARCHBISHOP. in the English Church for 1,200 years. But it appears that in the Anglo-Saxon or British times the three British archbishops were those of London, Yoi-k, and Caerlon-upon-Usk. These ancient ecclesiastical arrangements were, of course, swept away by the predominant and pagan Saxons.
 * The See of Canterbury was founded by St. Augustine, and has hold pre-eminent rank