Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/287

 8. STUBBS: THE CANON LAW 273 he would be ' damnee in hell.' But this may have been ex- ceptional. It must not however be supposed that the fault in this rivalry was altogether to be ascribed to the canonists. The English-trained lawyer was as infallible in that age as in this; and when we find him, and his brethren in the parlia- ment, constantly hampering the legitimate work of the church, we see that there were two sides to the question; when in the fourteenth century the Commons petition that the clergy may not make in their convocation canons to bind the laity, it is rather a relief to find that the canons in question relate to tithe of underwood : but when in 1446 we find the clergy remonstrating that the professional law- yers ' pretended privilege, by what right,' they say, * we know not, to interpret acts of parliament and explain the mind of the legislature, and by thus practising upon the statutes sometimes ground their opinion on mysterious and unintelligible reasons, and so wrest the laws contrary to the meaning and intention of parliament ; ' or petitioning that the judges who showed such strong bias should no longer issue prohibitions, but, when questions arose concerning the limits and jurisdiction of the rival courts, indifferent persons should be pitched upon to judge them; or the lawyers, on the other hand, striking at the root of all ecclesiastical juris- diction as if it were a transgression of the Statute of Prae- munire, — well, when we look at these things, we shall see that there were questions unsettled even before the Council of Trent, and hear opinions and complaints that sound like echoes beforehand of voices with which in these days our ears are too familiar. I must, however, now proceed to the Reformation, and endeavour to determine, as strongly and as clearly as I can, the bearing of that most critical era on our subject. Henry VIII had, as early as 1515, seen a struggle between the sec- ular and ecclesiastical jurisdictions in Standish's case, in the course of which he is said to have expressed himself as determined to endure no division of sovereignty in his own realm. Whether that was really said or merely put into his mouth afterwards, I cannot say; but certainly no scheme