Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/240

 226 //. FROM THE llOO'S TO THE 1800'S law of Europe, imported as a body of law into this kingdom, and governing those courts propria vigore, but instead thereof an Ecclesiastical law, of which the general Canon law is no doubt the basis, but which has been modified and altered from time to time by the ecclesiastical constitutions of our archbishops and bishops, and by the legislation of the realm, and which has been known from early times by the distinguishing title of the King's Ecclesiastical law. . . . That the Canon law of Europe does not, and never did, as a body of laws, form part of the law of England, has been long settled and established law." So also Sir John NichoU : ^ " Indeed the whole Canon law rests for its authority in this country upon received usage; it is not binding here propria vigore.'* The Canon law of itself is not therefore part of English law [This statement, however, should be compared with the views of Dr. Stubbs, in Essay No. 8, post, and of Professor Maitland, in his volume on the Canon Law, there cited. — Eds.], nor does the Civil law appear to enter into this branch of the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction. The Ecclesiastical Courts had jurisdiction affecting the subjects of the realm in three matters: — I. Pecuniary, in tithes, dilapidations &c., to which we need not further refer. II. Matrimonial causes; validity of marriage, legitimacy, divorce, &c. III. Testamentary causes, and the administra- tion of the estates of Intestates. Matrimonial Jurisdiction The Judicature Act, 1873, ^ transferred to the newly cre- ated Probate, Admiralty and Divorce Division of the High Court of Justice inter alia, all matters within the exclusive cognizance of the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, and applied to that Division all the rules, orders and proce- dure of that Court. The Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes was created by an Act of 1857,^ by which all causes and matters matrimonial, which should be pending in any Ecclesiastical Court in England were transferred to that '3 Phill. Rep. 67, 78-79. »20 and 21 Vic. c, 85 § 4, 6, 22.
 * ^f^ «nd 37 Vic. c. 66 §§ ''4, 70, 74. 38 and 39 Vic. c. 77 §§ 18, 21.