names]."[142] John Baldwin presented for that "the fame and report goeth" that he keeps back £10, a legacy given seven years previously for church repairs and the poor-box, "and the Church and the poor have wanted the same, having no benefit thereof, as we know."[143] One Consant received a cow belonging to the parish "and hath not made an account to the parish for her."[144] Jeremy Robson is cited "for detaining our Clerk's wages from the land which he occupieth in our parish after 6 s. 8 d. for a plough land of 140 acres."[145] Two lessees of the parish are presented "for withholding the farm of two acres and a half of church land one year and a half unpaid."[146] John Smithe presented for felling and selling a great oak which stood upon church land, "whereas now we stand in lack of the same to repair our Church."[147] A parishioner is cited before the ordinary because he withholds church goods and refuses both to enter into bond for them and to make an accounting.[148] So men are presented for not paying the parish fees due for the burial of members of their family, or for the ringing of knells;[149] for suffering a church tenement or a part of the church fence, which they are bound to repair, to fall into decay,[150] and so forth. In short, any one at all, whether in the capacity of parish officer; rate payer; trustee; administrator or executor; lessee of the parish cattle or its lands or tenements—any one, in fact, standing in the relation of debtor to the parish in a matter falling within the jurisdiction of the spiritual courts, could be, and was, compelled by these to pay or to account to the parishioners.

Not only did the Church regulate many acts of a parishioner's life, and preside over his moral conduct, making him pay in great measure the costs of this disciplinary administration, but it also was entrusted with his education, through which it sought to control his ideas and convictions, and to direct and form public opinion. The education and training of a nation depend, of course, in greatest measure on its primary schools and its press. As for its universities, these are but the apex on the educational pyramid, for a very select few only. Now the primary schools were represented in the times whereof we write by the parish schoolmaster, the familiar "ludimagister" of the canons and act-books, and by the incumbent himself. For the people at large the press was represented almost entirely by the licenced preacher, and, in the larger towns, the licenced lecturer.

The Canons of 1571 ordain that no one shall teach the humanities nor instruct boys, whether in school or in private families,[151] unless the diocesan licence him under his seal. Nor are schoolmasters to use other grammars or catechisms than those officially prescribed. Every year schoolmasters are to commend to the bishop of the diocese the best read among their pupils, and those that by their achievements give promise that they may usefully serve the State or the Church, so that their parents may be induced to educate them further to that end.[152] Bishop Barnes in his Injunctions of 1577 commands that all incumbents of cures in Durham diocese not licenced to preach shall "duly, paynefully and frely" teach the children of their several parishes to read and write. Furthermore, teachers shall exhort the parents of those boys who have proved themselves apt at learning and of "pregnant capacitie" to cause their sons to continue their studies and to acquire the good and liberal sciences. On the other hand they shall induce fathers of sons of little wit or capacity to put them to husbandry, or some other suitable craft, that they may grow to be useful members of the commonwealth.[153] In this diocese we find schoolmasters by profession ("ludimagistri") summoned at the visitations very regularly, and there seem to have been a considerable number of them in the towns, though not in the country parishes, where the curates doubtless officiated as instructors of the youth according to the bishop's monitions.[154] Everywhere in the proceedings of the ecclesiastical courts schoolmasters are "detected" to the judges from time to time for having no licence to teach.[155]

As for the pulpit, that great instrument of political guidance at a period when politics consisted chiefly of religious contentions,[156] it is well known that Elizabeth and her advisors grasped at once its paramount importance, and that she had been on the throne but little over a month when she issued her proclamation inhibiting all preaching and teaching for the time being. This command was followed by her Injunctions of the next year, forbidding any to preach unless licenced by herself, her two archbishops, the diocesan, or her visitors.[157] As is well known also, no command was more universally enforced. It is constantly mentioned in the metropolitan or diocesan injunctions or articles of the period,[158] and the proceedings before the ordinaries bear witness to its enforcement.[159]

Parish opinion was further sought to be moulded by the reading in church of various tracts, homilies, monitions, forms of special prayers, etc., etc., which the wardens were ordered to procure from time to time, and which are very often met with in their accounts. These official mediums of information or edification conveyed to the good people of the parishes some knowledge of the events and politics of the realm and of the world beyond it. Thus they heard of the overthrow of the rebels in the North of England (1569), the ravages of the great earthquake of 1579; the progress of the plague; or, again, of the struggle of the French Protestants led by Henry of Navarre, the defeat of the Turks at Lepanto, and so forth.[160]

As food for the more advanced minds of the congregations, ordinaries saw to it that volumes dealing with the interpretation of the Scriptures, the polity of Church and State, and the defence of that polity were provided for every parish church. Such works were Erasmus' Paraphrases, Bullinger's Decades, Bishop Jewel's works, and other writings of an apologetic nature. To a certain extent news was also spread, and grievances were aired, in unofficial broadsides or ballads. These treated of such subjects as the untimely end of traitors great or small; the adventures of her Majesty's soldiers and sailors; the rapacity of landlords and the evils of the enclosure movement.[161]

But these publications and all other printed matter were subject to the strict censorship of Church and State. Extremely few presses were permitted in England, and these few under the jealous supervision of the high ecclesiastical authorities, as is evidenced by the numerous orders or decrees issued by them to the Master and Wardens of the London Stationers Company, which, with a very few special patentees, enjoyed the monopoly of printing.[162]

Having now reviewed the chief administrative functions of the spiritual courts and their mode of exercise, the question presents itself, What were the means at the disposal of the ordinaries for enforcing their decrees? The principal one of these has already been mentioned incidentally, viz., excommunication. Excommunication was the most usual, as it was by far the most effective, weapon for compelling obedience to the mandate of the judge in any matter whatever. Indeed without this instrument of coercion the ecclesiastical judges would have been impotent.

Excommunication was of two kinds, the lesser and the greater. The former was in constant use (to employ the words of a contemporary document) "for manifest and wilful contumacy or disobedience in not appearing when … summoned for a cause ecclesiastical, or when any sentence or decree of the bishop or his officer, being deliberately made, was wilfully disobeyed…."[163] Even under the lesser excommunication a man could not attend service, and he was deprived of the use of the sacraments.[164] If an excommunicate sought to enter church with the congregation, either he