ON THE INFLUENCE OF FEUDALISM. Ji 1 



bill " soitfait comme il est desire ; " .when a bill of supply is passed 

 it is carried up and presented to the king by the speaker of the House 

 of Commons, and the royal assent is thus expressed " le roy renter cie 

 ses loyal subjects, accepte lour benevolence et aussi le veut" And 

 here it may bo remarked (though somewhat in digression) that the 

 Norman French language might once ( if the conqueror's wish could have 

 been gratified) have been imposed upon this land, it was the language 

 of the court, of judicial proceedings, and until the reign of Richard 

 III. the statutes were generally written in it This will conclude my 

 observations upon the political institutions of England. 



Second. — The remnants of feudal associations relative to the 

 Clergy of this country must next claim our attention. As I have 

 before generally stated, most of the tenitory of England was subject 

 to the feudal law. William first knew well how firmly the clergy 

 could cement his newly acquired power, and the grant to them of 

 more than one-third of the fiefs proves how much he valued their ad- 

 herence and how well he repaid them for it. But yet they held their 

 domains under no peculiar or privileged tenure, and the church 

 could claim no exemption from the feudal services, other than the 

 non-liability to personal military service which was commuted by 

 pecuniary payments. Prior to the conquest the clergy had no sepa- 

 rate ecclesiastical jurisdiction 3 spiritual as well as temporal causes 

 being- tried in the county courts, when the bishop of the diocese and 

 the alderman or earl jointly presided ; but the Conqueror's charter at 

 the instance of his foreign clergy separated the jurisdictions and pro- 

 . hibiting spiritual causes from being tried in secular courts, com- 

 manded the suitors to appear before the bishop only, whose decisions 

 were to be conformable to the canon law. 



This was the foundation of the Courts Christian as they were called, 

 which pursuant to the principles on which'they were first founded now 

 exercise jurisdiction not merely in matters purely eclesiastical but in 

 many which are simply civil ; for example, in causes testamentary, 

 and affecting slander, brawling, marriage, and divorce. What these 

 Courts Christian were in Bishop Burnet's time may be best gathered 

 from his own words, " As to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, it has been 

 the burthen of my life to see how it was administered ; our courts are 

 managed under the rules of the canon law, dilatory and expensive^ 

 and as their constitution is bad^ so the business of them is small ', 



