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establishments appears, on the contrary, to have been a necessary consequence of a correspondent exaltation of the crown; and we shall find that, in every country, they remained longer in power and splendour, according as particular circumstances contributed to thwart the ambitious views of the monarch, and to prevent the extension of his prerogative.

roy

In the dominions belonging to France the judicial power of the cour de advanced very quickly from the reign of Hugh Capet, by the disuse of the county courts, and by receiving appeals from the courts of the barons. These appeals, agreeable to the general custom of the feudal governments, contained at first a complaint that injustice had been committed by the inferior judge, who, therefore, was obliged to appear as a party, before the superior tribunal. But according as the practice of appealing became more frequent, the petitions of appeal were admitted upon slighter grounds; the charge of wilful injustice against the inferior courts was more and more overlooked; the magistrates who had presided in these courts, were no longer sufficiently interested to appear for the justification of their conduct;

and the controversy was examined in the court of review, for the sole purpose of determining the propriety or impropriety of the former decision.

It is true, that from the disorders which prevailed in France, under the later princes of the Carlovingian race, one or two of the great lords had acquired such independence, as, for some time after the reign of Hugh Capet, prevented the king from reviewing their sentences ; but this is mentioned by all the historians as a remarkable singularity. It also merits attention, that the French monarchs, about this period, were not content with the power of receiving appeals from the several courts of their barons. An expedient was devised of sending royal bailiffs into different parts of the kingdom, with a commission to take cognizance of all those causes in which the sovereign was interested, and in reality for the purpose of abridging and limiting the subordinate jurisdiction of the neighbouring feudal superiors. By an edict of Philip Augustus, in the year 1190, those bailiffs were appointed in all the principal towns of the kingdom*.

* Hainault's Abridgment of Hist. of France.

CHAP. IV.

Progress of ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Au

thority.

THE hierarchy of the western church grew up and extended itself over the kingdoms of Europe, independent of the boundaries which had been set to the dominion of secular princes, and of the revolutions which took place in the state of any civil government. The Roman pontiff, having found the means of uniting under his protection the clergy of each particular kingdom, was equally interested in promoting their influence, as they were in maintaining the authority of their spiritual leader. By taking advantage, therefore, of the various and successive contentions among opposite and rival powers, he was enabled to extort concessions from those whom he had supported, to levy impositions, and to exalt the dignity and prerogatives of the holy see.

The Norman conquest, in England, was followed by a complete separation of the

ecclesiastical from the temporal courts. By a regulation of William the Conqueror, the bishop was no longer permitted to sit as a judge in the court of the county, nor the rural dean in that of the hundred*. This alteration had undoubtedly a tendency to promote that exclusive jurisdiction which the clergy were desirous of establishing; and to build up that system of church power which the wisdom of after ages found it so necessary, and at the same time so difficult to pull down. Under the dominion of the Anglo-Saxon princes, while the spiritual judges were associated with the civil magistrate, many causes of an ecclesiastical nature were brought under the cognizance of the temporal courts; and though, from the superior knowledge and address of churchmen, the decisions given by those tribunals might be apt, in some cases, to favour of a clerical spirit, there was little danger, from this arrangement, that the church would become totally independent of the state. But from the moment that the clergy were excluded from a voice in the courts of the

* William the Conqueror's charter, with advice of the national council. Spelman.

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hundred and of the county, ecclesiastical controversies were appropriated, in all cases, to the judicatories of the church; and the ambition of churchmen immediately excited them to extend their own peculiar jurisdiction, by invading that of the civil magistrate.

The encroachments made by the spiritual, upon the province of the temporal courts, were of a similar nature in England, and in all the other countries belonging to the Western church. The pretence for these encroachments was, the privilege of the clergy to inflict censure upon every irregularity, which could be considered as a sin, or an offence in the sight of God. Under this description, every act of injustice, every violation of the laws of the land, was manifestly included; but the offences which in this view attracted more particularly the attention of churchmen were such, it may easily be conceived, as had an immediate connexion with their own interest, or with those religious observances from which their own dignity and importance were in some measure derived.

One of the first interpositions of the church, in a matter of civil jurisdiction, appears to