2 Hen. IV, 15, was followed by the similar 2 Hen. V, 7 (1414). The Constitutions of Archbishop Arundel (1409) and of Archbishop Chichele (1416), provided a procedure for heresy causes before bishops or Consistory Courts, and heresy itself was defined by the former authority. There were five trials of heresy between 1410 and 1457 before the archbishop with episcopal assessors, and two before him sitting with non-episcopal assessors. Heresy was in the Middle Ages punished by the Church Courts, but the only penalties they could inflict were ecclesiastical censures, imposition of penances, excommunications, and in case of clerics, deprivation of benefices. The Civil law of the Roman Empire had provided that it should be punishable by death by burning at the hands of the State for obstinate and relapsed heretics, and the English Canonists urged that this should be treated as part of the Common law. The writ de heretico comburendo was actually put in force between 1410 and 1612, but it is a moot point whether the offence was punishable by death and whether the writ was of any real force. It is not clear if conviction of such an offence before the ordinary warranted the exercise of the writ, or whether the conviction had to be made before Convocation. The burnings for heresy inflicted upon the Lollards and by the Tudor sovereigns, were mostly under statutory authority. The heresy statutes were all repealed by the Edw. VI, 12, and 1 Eliz. 1 (they had been re-enacted in the interval by Philip and Mary); and the latter statute gave a definition of heresy. Previously, the lay courts had accepted the findings of the Ecclesiastical Courts, but had the power to determine if a particular tenet was heretical or not. It was defined to be "what had been so determined, ordered or adjudged by the authority of the canonical scriptures, the first four General Councils, or any other General Council wherein the same was declared heresy by authority of canonical scriptures, in express or plain words,

or such as the High Court of Parliament should declare with the assent of the clergy in Convocation." Though repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1863, the Courts have always followed the definition. It is perhaps still possible for a layman to be prosecuted for heresy in an Ecclesiastical Court, and excommunicated if he refuses to recant, upon which the Court can order six months' imprisonment.

As regards the judicial organisation of the Church, the existing Bishops' Courts continued after the Reformation: but the civil power claimed jurisdiction over cases of doctrine. The jurisdiction of the civil power to deal with heresy was based by the Tudor sovereigns upon their power by virtue of the Royal Supremacy, as regards the Church, to reform and reduce all errors, heresies, abuses, offences, contempts and enormities which by any spiritual authority may lawfully be reformed, etc., notwithstanding any usage, custom, foreign laws, foreign authority, prescription, or any other thing to the contrary in the Church.1 Heresy was triable before the Ecclesiastical Courts, and under Edward VI, though the heresy statutes were repealed, trials for heresy took place before the archbishop and others as commissaries of the King according to the procedure of the Ecclesiastical Courts. Two special Courts designed for appeals and important causes, the High Court of Delegates and the High Commission, were set up by Henry VIII and Elizabeth respectively, both to exercise the ecclesiastical jurisdiction vested in the Crown. The latter Court was abolished by the Long Parliament, and the powers of the former were transferred to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in 1830. A considerable part of the present jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts is permissive in character, faculties and the like, and is chiefly concerned with the fabrics and fittings of churches and churchyards,

1 26 Hen. VIII, 1, and 1 Eliz., I.

2 16 Car. I, II.

for the addition to or modification of which a faculty from the diocesan chancellor is necessary. Cases involving points of doctrine come ultimately under the cognizance of the secular Court, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, but these have become very rare. In the well-known modern case of the Bishop of Lincoln, which was concerned with questions of ritual and doctrine, the Archbishop of Canterbury held a Special Court, with his Vicar-General, and the Bishops of London, Hereford, Rochester and Salisbury as assessors. An appeal was taken to the Privy Council, which had held that the archbishop had such jurisdiction with or without assessors, and an appeal so lay from his decision, but the respondent bishop did not appear. There are also special statutory provisions for maintaining ecclesiastical discipline in the Church under the Acts of 1840, 1892 and 1898. But these Courts cannot impose penalties other than deprivation or suspension from office, and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction requires the aid of the civil arm to give its decisions effect, e.g., in order to recover tithes resort must be had to the civil Courts, though the property of ecclesiastical persons can only be made available in execution with the sanction of the ecclesiastical authorities. Nevertheless the Church has a forum domesticum; and except in the case of ecclesiastical matters which have a civil aspect, and of trusts in legal instruments, the civil Courts do not exercise jurisdiction. In the case of other religious bodies resort must be had to the civil Courts, e.g., to determine the status of Nonconformist ministers.

The juridical position of the Church as a historic organisation has the further advantage of rendering it independent of the civil Courts as regards its status, doctrines and organisation. It can take property left or given or placed in trust with it without having to show what its doctrines are or what its general purposes embrace. The fact of its having a law of its own, equally valid as law with the ordinary law

of the land, distinguishes it broadly from the non-official religious bodies. They must resort to the civil Courts to determine all questions of organisation and discipline, as well as of doctrine and ritual, which depend ultimately on the legal instruments by which those matters are regulated, viz., the trust deeds of the different denominations which govern, except where the aid of Parliament has been invoked.

There is no power except in Parliament to alter the mutual relations of members of those Churches as fixed by their trust deeds. Where these do not expressly state the doctrines which are those of the particular society or congregation, by statute a twenty-five years' usage is allowed to be conclusive of their character, yet the majority have not rights over the minority except as the original titles may prescribe. Much progress has been made towards consolidation of the individual bodies of particular religious communities: there have been Parliamentary unions of two or three of these bodies: and much is being done by special local associations of a particular denomination in a particular county or district to bring independent units belonging to the same general persuasion under a centralised authority, and by the general adoption of " model deeds" of the larger denominations for the property of independent congregations. The voluntary churches and the Established Church have therefore each their relative advantages and disadvantages. The constitution of the former must be expressed in legal instruments and be subject to legal interpretation. The State Church is subject to restrictions on her freedom of action in consideration of the benefit accruing to her from her official connection: her formularies are fixed by Act of Parliament, and her deliberative assembly cannot meet without the sanction of the Crown. For these the only quid pro quo is her privileged position. But the proposed. disestablishment and disendowment of the Church in Wales

raises the converse question what is to be the attitude of the State towards a church or a portion of a church which for political reasons is considered to be no longer entitled to be regarded as the "established" or official religious denomination because not that of the numerical majority of the population. The inquiry of the House of Lords Committee raises in its most acute form the question of how far the Legislature can interfere with the organisation of any religious body after it has lost its connection with the State; and the evidence of such ecclesiastical experts as the present Dean of the Arches (Sir L. Dibdin), the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishop of St. Davids, on the constitutional and legal aspect of the proposal to deprive the Church in Wales of its representation in Convocation, is of the most weighty kind. Its importance may perhaps justify the following summary of the evidence and arguments presented as regards the relation of the Church in Wales to the whole body of the Church of England and the position of Convocation.

The dioceses of the Church in Wales have for practical purposes always (i.e., since the beginning of the 13th century without dispute) been part of the Province of Canterbury. Until the submission of the clergy to Henry VIII, Convocation, consisting of the bishops (and abbots till they were suppressed), deans, archdeacons and proctors for the parochial clergy, could be and was summoned to meet by the archbishop independently of the Crown, but when a subsidy was demanded by the Crown from the clergy it was done by a King's writ to the archbishop commanding him to summon it: and the recital in the Act of Parliament of 1534 that the clergy have " acknowledged according to the truth that the Convocation of the Clergy is, always has been, and ought to be assembled only by the King's writ"—perhaps due to an inaccurate rendering by the draftsman of the words actually used in