Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/497

 Ch. 18. dower the perficient founder of all eleemoynary ones, the right of viitation of the former reults, according to the rule laid down, to the king; and of the latter, to the patron or endower.

king being thus contituted by law the viitor of all civil corporations, the law has alo appointed the place, wherein he hall exercie this juridiction: which is the court of king's bench; where, and where only, all mibehaviours of this kind of corporations are enquired into and redreed, and all their controveries decided. And this is what I undertand to be the meaning of our lawyers, when they ay that thee civil corporations are liable to no viitation; that is, that the law having by immemorial uage appointed them to be viited and inpected by the king their founder, in his majety's court of king's bench, according to the rules of the common law, they ought not to be viited elewhere, or by any other authority. And this is o trictly true, that though the king by his letters patent had ubjected the college of phyicians to the viitation of four very repectable perons, the lord chancellor, the two chief jutices, and the chief baron; though the college had accepted this charter with all poible marks of acquiecence, and had acted under it for near a century; yet, in 1753, the authority of this proviion coming in dipute, on an appeal preferred to thee uppoed viitors, they directed the legality of their own appointment to be argued: and, as this college was merely a civil and not an eleemoynary foundation, they at length determined, upon everal days olemn debate, that they had no juridiction as viitors; and remitted the appellant (if aggrieved) to his regular remedy in his majety's court of king's bench.

to eleemoynary corporations, by the dotation the founder and his heirs are of common right the legal viitors, to ee that that property is rightly employed, which would otherwie have Rh