216 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 



which instances will be given in a more proper 

 place; though one may not be improperly men- 

 tioned here, to shew his concern to maintain all 

 the force and effect that the laws had given to 

 ecclesiastical censwes. 



He had observed, that the benefit designed 

 by the legislature in the writ de ejccommunicato 

 capiendo was evaded or eluded, by the frequent 

 discharging of excommunicate persons out of 

 custody by writs of supersedeas from the Chan- 

 cery, grounded upon errors in the significavits 

 of the excommunication by the ecclesiastical 

 judges ; which errors, nevertheless, the said 

 judges did not know how to amend. And let 

 the cause be what it would, the easiness of ob- 

 taining these writs of supersedeas was so well 

 known by the practising attorneys in the country y 

 that they did generally encourage all sorts of 

 people to stand out in defiance of the Church 

 censures. He wrote to the Archbishop of Can- 

 terbury upon this head in pressing terms, beg- 

 ging his advice and assistance, as in a matter 

 that deeply afiected the whole ecclesiastical 

 jurisdiction of which his grace, next to the 

 king (1698), was the chief patron. He sent 

 him a full account of the case, as it stood in 

 Yorkshire, and all that related to it, hoping that 

 if his grace would represent it fully to the Lord 

 Chancellor, his lordship would give such direc- 



