English Constitutional Documents

1.

Ordinance Separating the Spiritual and Temporal Courts

(Date unknown. Latin text, Stubbs, S. C. 85. Translation, G. and H. 57. 1 Stubbs, 307.)

WILLIAM, by the grace of God king of the English, to R. Bainard, and G. de Magneville, and Peter de Valoines, and all my liege men of Essex, Hertfordshire and Middlesex greeting. Know ye and all my liege men resident in England, that I have by my common council, and by the advice of the archbishops, bishops, abbots and chief men of my realm, determined that the episcopal laws be mended as not having been kept properly nor according to the decrees of the sacred canons throughout the realm of England, even to my own times. Accordingly I command and charge you by royal authority that no bishop nor archdeacon do hereafter hold pleas of episcopal laws in the Hundred, nor bring a cause to the judgment of secular men which concerns the rule of souls. But whoever shall be impleaded by the episcopal laws for any cause or crime, let him come to the place which the bishop shall choose and name for this purpose, and there answer for his cause or crime, and not according to the Hundred but according to the canons and episcopal laws, and let him do right to God and his bishop. But if any one, being lifted up with pride, refuse to come to the bishop’s court, let him be summoned three several times, and if by this means, even, he come not to obedience, let the authority of the king or sheriff be exerted; and he who refuses to come to the bishop’s judgment shall make good the bishop’s law for every summons. This too I absolutely forbid that any sheriff, reeve or king’s minister, or any other layman, do in any wise concern himself with the laws which belong to the bishop, or bring another man to judgment save in the bishop’s court. And let judgment nowhere be undergone but in the bishop’s see or in that place which the bishop appoints for this purpose.