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