Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/286

 272 //. FROM THE llOO'S TO THE 1800'S had no provision, It Is not likely that the klrlgs^ "WOttW-^MMce.....^ been jealous of papal or archieplscopal enactments, or would have stood on their rights when the exact line was occasion- ally overstepped. But the extravagance of ecclesiastical claims provoked them to opposition and justified it. When the archbishops of Henry Ill's reign claimed exclusive juris- diction In suits of advowsons, the right to exact personal tithes, and to try all questions of credit granted * fide inter- poslta,' even so gentle a worm as the king turned again ; and we find among his letters, and still more among those of his son, constant cautions to the primates and the u ttf l V"* *^ //"^ vocations not to attempt anything to the prejudice of the W 1 crpwn ^^^ customs of the land, as well as Innumerable pro- • hibltions to ecclesiastical judges against their trying otlier civil suits than those which touch testamcrrtary or matri«- Uionlal matters. **Edward II had to prohibit the employment of Imperial notaries. In the spiritual matters proper, the kings seldom Interfered; only where a political motive was suspected, or where a servant of the crown was attacked, or where the spiritual judge had clearly gone beyond his discretion. The Church history of the thirteenth and four- teenth centuries is full of cautions and prohibitions, and of struggles between the officers who had thus to Interfere with one another ; and the definitions of the ' Articuli Clerl ' under Edward II which prescribed the points on which pro- hibitions were to be granted, and the Statute of Praemunire under Edward III, which forbade the multiplication of ap- peals to Rome, did little to ameliorate relations. When however heresy became a matter of litigation, the two sys- tems deliberately worked together ; and, although there were many hitches, during the whole of the Lancastrian period there was more definite co-operation and less conflict. The common law was really becoming more a matter of scientific treatment, and the greatest judges were men who had had scientific education on both sides. Sometimes there was, as was natural, a little Inconsistency and awkwardness ; the bowsprit got mixed up with the rudder; as when Morton, at once archbishop and chancellor, allowed his judgment on '• a fraudulent executor to be modified by the reflexion that