had to be forcibly expelled or the service could not proceed.[165] If he continued in his contempt of court he made himself liable to the greater excommunication,[166] and then he was virtually an outcast from the society of his fellow parishioners.[167] That excommunication was feared by the great majority of parish folk there is no reason to doubt. Certainly the greater excommunication might seriously injure a man in his business as well as his social interests, not to mention the trouble and expense of getting an absolution.[168] That excommunication reduced most offenders to order the church court proceedings demonstrate. If, however, a man were obdurate and hardened he was turned over to the Queen's High Commissioners, and these, while making the fullest use of ecclesiastical procedure and the oath ex officio,[169] also freely employed the penalties of the temporal courts, viz., fines and imprisonments. As no ecclesiastical offence was too small for the Commissioners to deal with, and as their jurisdiction was not limited (like that of the ordinaries) to a district or a diocese, courts of High Commission may be called universal ordinaries.[170] Finally, if a person stood excommunicate over forty days, an ecclesiastical judge, on application to the diocesan, might procure against him out of Chancery the writ De excommunicato capiendo. This writ was probably not very often resorted to in practice, partly because of the great expense involved, and partly perhaps, too, because of the slack execution of the writ by certain undersheriffs or bailiffs, encouraged as they were by the rather hostile attitude sometimes assumed against the courts Christian by the Queen's temporal judges.[171] The writ was, however, certainly no dead letter, and served also in terrorem to reduce stubborn offenders.[172] Indeed Archbishop Bancroft in 1605 called it "the chiefest temporal strength of ecclesiastical jurisdiction."[173]

In view of the fact that "standing excommunicate" was in itself a presentable offence before the ordinary, and an offence often presented,[174] and in view of the further fact that the excommunicate might, according to a contemporary who writes with authority, "be punished for absence from diuine praier, neither shall his excommunication excuse him, for it is in his owne default,"[175] it is queried whether such an involuntary absentee from church did not make himself just as liable to presentment at quarter sessions for recusancy[176] as any voluntary recusant. Perhaps it is for this reason that grand juries are sometimes complained of for discriminating among the names sent in to them on the bishops' certificates for indictment at quarter sessions, and for certifying some and throwing out others "at their pleasure."[177]

But be this as it may—and it is conjecture unsupported by positive proof—enough has been said, it is hoped, to show that ordinaries were quite capable of making their decrees obeyed, and that excommunication (contrary to the commonly received opinion) was a most effective means of coercion. Many, indeed, were its uses. It might (or its equivalent interdiction or suspension[178]), as has been seen,[179] be used to compel a parish officer to perform the duties of his office. It might also be employed, when persuasion failed, to induce a parishioner to accept office when chosen by his fellows.[180] But, it would seem, one single definition would comprise all cases: excommunication was employed against all those who disobeyed some order of the spiritual judge, express or implied—it was a summary process for contempt of court, in fact, and was daily used as such.

To recapitulate: a very large part of the parishioner's life and activity fell under the surveillance and regulation of the ecclesiastical courts. They compelled him to attend on specified days his parish church, and no other; to be married there; to have his children baptized and his wife churched there; to receive a certain number of times communion there; to contribute to the maintenance of church and churchyard, as well as to the finding of the requisites for service or the church ornaments or utensils. In his parish church he and his children were catechized and instructed, and, if the latter were taught in a neighboring school-house, it was under the strict supervision of the ordinary and by his or the bishop's licence and allowance. So true was this that the schoolmaster was, like the parson, a church officer. For the parishioner his church was the place of business where all local affairs, civil or ecclesiastical, were transacted, as well as the centre of social life in the village. Here the mandates of the authorities in Church and State were read to him; here he was admonished of his duty to contribute to, or to perform, the burdens of parish administration and warned of the penalties for neglect; here he met with his fellows to settle parish affairs and audit parish accounts, or to choose parish officers under the auspices of the ordinary, being himself compelled, if necessary, by that official to serve when his own turn for office came round. As churchwarden it was his duty to collect the rents from parish lands and tenements, and to see that parish offerings were gathered and the parish rates assessed and paid, or recovered by means of the ecclesiastical courts. If the church was ruinous; if bread and wine were lacking for the communion; if any of the books, furniture, utensils or ornaments enjoined by the diocesan's articles or by the canons were missing; if the curate did not follow the Rubric, or retained "superstitious" rites; if the yearly perambulation was omitted; if faults of the minister or of the parishioners were not presented: he and his fellow-warden were held responsible by the official.

The machinery which the canon and the civil law placed at the disposal of the ordinary for his judicial administration of the parish was extraordinarily flexible. Courts Christian were unencumbered by the formalities of the common law or by the coöperation of juries. They could proceed ex officio, i.e., without formal presentment and upon hearsay only, and they were armed with the formidable power of administering the oath ex officio by which a parishioner was forced to disclose all he knew against himself. They could in all cases command the doing, as well as the giving[181] of a thing—powers far more extensive than those possessed by any court of equity of today. Lastly, it was their custom to require that a return be made in court, or in other words, a certification, that their commands had been duly performed—thus stamping them as true administrative bodies. It was inevitable from the nature of their jurisdiction and procedure that abuses should be committed both by ecclesiastical judges and by their officers, such as registrars, proctors and apparitors. These judges wielded an admirable instrument of administration and discipline, one that could be bent to meet any emergency, but this efficiency had been attained at the sacrifice of some indispensable safeguards for the carrying out of impartial justice. First, no parishioner's acts, whether done in an official or a private capacity, were ever quite safe from misrepresentation, or downright falsification by his enemies, for secret denunciation to wardens or sidemen (or to the ordinary himself) by any one[182] might start a proceeding against the person denounced and force him upon oath to disclose the most private, the most confidential, matters. Again, proctors, apparitors, registrars, and other scribes whose fees depended on citations and the drawing up of court proceedings, documents, or certificates, had every interest in haling persons before the official, because court fees had to be paid whether a man were found innocent or guilty.[183] Hence the system tended to create spies, of whom the chief were the apparitors, or summoners, and their underlings. There is a very interesting contemporary ballad entitled "A new Ballad of the Parrator and the