Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/496

 480 ole or aggregate, and whether eccleiatical, civil, or eleemoynary. With regard to all eccleiatical corporations, the ordinary is their viitor, o contituted by the canon law, and from thence derived to us. The pope formerly, and now the king, as upreme ordinary, is the viitor of the arch-bihop or metropolitan; the metropolitan has the charge and coercion of all his uffragan bihops; and the bihops in their everal diocees are in eccleiatical matters the viitors of all deans and chapters, of all parons and vicars, and of all other piritual corporations. With repect to all lay-corporations, the founder, his heirs, or aigns, are the viitors, whether the foundation be civil or eleemoynary; for in a lay incorporation the ordinary neither can nor ought to viit.

it is generally aid, thai civil corporations are ubject to no viitation, but merely to the common law of the land; and this hall be preently explained. But firt, as I have laid it down as a rule that the founder, his heirs, or aigns, are the viitors of all lay-corporations, let us enquire what is meant by the founder. The founder of all corporations in the trictet and original ene is the king alone, for he only can incorporate a ociety: and in civil incorporations, uch as mayor and commonalty, &c, where there are no poeions or endowments given to the body, there is no other founder but the king: but in eleemoynary foundations, uch as colleges and hopitals, where there is an endowment of lands, the law ditinguihes, and makes two pecies of foundation; the one fundatio incipiens, or the incorporation, in which ene the king is the general founder of all colleges and hopitals; the other fundatio perficiens, or the dotation of it, in which ene the firt gift of the revenues is the foundation, and he who gives them is in law the founder: and it is in this lat ene that we generally call a man the founder of a college or hopital. But here the king has his prerogative: for, if the king and a private man join in endowing an eleemoynary foundation, the king alone hall be the founder of it. And, in general, the king being the ole founder of all civil corporations, and the en- Rh