Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/169

 5. JENKS: EDWARD I 155 effectually prevent its coining again into the market. For once, Edward and his barons were at one; and the Statute of 1279 was supplemented by certain useful clauses in the Statute of Westminster the Second. Moreover, this same enactment contained a salutary clause, compelling the clerical authority, which claimed a share in the goods of every man who died without making a will, to satisfy the debts of thej deceased out of the assets coming to its hands. But the Stat- ute Circumspecte Agatis makes no extreme claims. In all suits really spiritual, such as the enforcement of penances for deadly sin, the infliction of penalties for neglect of the fabric of a church or of a churchyard, the claim by a parson to tithes, mortuaries, oblations, or other customary dues, even claims to the proceeds of benefices (so long as the titles to the benefices themselves are not in dispute), and in actions for violence to a clerk, or for defamatory words, the King's judges are not to interfere by the issue of a Prohibition. On the other hand, the King provides the judges with a list of matters properly belonging to the royal jurisdiction, and the list, long as it is, amply establishes the position so frequently insisted upon in these pages, that the jurisdiction of the royal tribunals was, even in Edward's reign, a jurisdiction which was being slowly being built up, bit by bit, in the struggle of many rivals. A truly liberal regulation, variously attrib- uted to the years 1286, 1290, and 1296, but probably belong- ing to the year 1290, provided for the contingency of a Prohibition being issued in a case in which the King's courts did not provide a remedy. In such a case, the King's official (the Chancellor or Chief Justice), having satisfied himself of the possibilitj'^ of a failure of justice, is to write to the ecclesiastical judge, bidding him to proceed notwithstanding the Prohibition. The last piece of legislation to be noticed, in this fruitful year (1285), is an Ordinance for the government of London, which seems to have been published just before its close. Evidently, Edward could not bring himself to forgive entirely the great city which had taken up arms against his father, and insulted his mother. He steadily refuses to recognise the Mayor as an essential feature of municipal existence. There