Page:Life of John Knox (3).pdf/4

4 be seen how much influence it would add to the already too great power of the clergy.

Their character also was held sacred, neither were they subject to the same laws, nor tried by the same judges as the laity, a remarkable instance of which occurred on the trial of the murderers of Cardinal Beaton, one of who was a priest. He was claimed by a delegate from the clerical courts, and, exempted from the judgment of Parliament on that account.

By their reputation for learning, they almost wholly engrossed the high offices of emolument and trust in the civil governments, but even this was not for acting in their capacity of confessors, they made use of all those motives which operate most powerfully on the human mind to promote the interest of the church, so that few were suffered to leave the world without bestowing on her some marks of their liberality, and where credulity failed to produce this effect, they called in the aid of law. (When a person died intestate, by the 22nd Statute of William the Lion; the disposal of his effects was vested in the bishop of the diocese, after paying his funeral charges and debts, and his distributing among his kindred the sums, to which they were respectively entitled, it being presumed that no Christian would have chosen to leave the world without destining some part of this substance to pious purposes). Their courts had likewise the cognisance of all testamentary deeds and matrimonial contracts, and to these engines of power, and often in their hands of oppression, they superadded the sentence of excommunication, which besides depriving the unhappy victim on whom it fell of all Christian privileges, cut him off from every right as a man or citizen. To these, and, other causes of a similar nature, may be ascribed