Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/36

20 law .” And of this temper between the clergy and laity many more intances might be given.

things were in this ituation, the clergy, finding it impoible to root out the municipal law, began to withdraw themelves by degrees from the temporal courts; and to that end, very early in the reign of king Henry the third, epicopal contitutions were publihed, forbidding all eccleiatics to appear as advocates ; nor did they long continue to act as judges there, not caring to take the oath of office which was then found neceary to be adminitred, that they hould in all things determine according to the law and cutom of this realm ; though they till kept poeion of the high office of chancellor, an office then of little juridical power; and afterwards, as it’s buines increaed by degrees, they modelled the proces of the court at their own dicretion.

wherever they retired, and wherever their authority extended, they carried with them the ame zeal to introduce the rules of the civil, in excluion of the municipal law. This appears in a particular manner from the piritual courts of all denominations, from the chancellor’s courts in both our univerities, and from the high court of chancery before-mentioned; in all of which the proceedings are to this day in a coure much conformed to the civil law: for which no tolerable reaon can be aigned, unles that thee courts were all under the immediate direction of the popih eccleiatics, among whom it was a point of religion to exclude the municipal law; pope Innocent the fourth having forbidden the very reading of it by the clergy, becaue it’s deciions were not founded on the imperial contitutions, but merely on the cutoms of the laity. And if it be conidered, that our univerities began about that period to receive their preent form of cholatic dicipline; that they were then, and continued to be