attendance, and--at any rate between 1572 and 1597[3]--over the care
of the parish poor. Finally, it must not be supposed that the men who
actually sat as judges in the archdeacon's or the bishop's court were
necessarily in orders. In point of fact a large proportion, perhaps a
large majority of them, were laymen, since the act of Henry VIII in
1545 permitted married civilians to exercise ecclesiastical
jurisdiction.[4]

In the treatment of our subject the plan we shall follow is, first, to
make some preliminary observations as to the times, places and modes
of holding the church courts; second, with the aid of illustrations
drawn from the act-books of these courts, to show how their judicial
administration was exercised over the parish, either through the
medium of the parish officers or directly upon the parishioners
themselves; third, to analyze the means at the command of the
ecclesiastical judges to enforce their decrees; and, finally, to point
out that from its very nature the exercise of spiritual jurisdiction
was liable to abuses, and must at all times have proved unpopular.

Speaking generally (for the jurisdictions called "peculiars" formed
exceptions), England was divided for the purposes of local
ecclesiastical administration and discipline into archdeaconries, each
comprising a varying number of parishes. Twice a year as a rule the
archdeacon, or his official in his place, held a visitation or kept a
general court (the two terms being synonymous) in the church of some
market town--not always the same--of the archdeaconry. The usual times
for these visitations were Easter and Michaelmas. The bishops also
commonly held visitations in person, or by vicars-general or
chancellors, once every third year throughout their dioceses. Yet at
the semiannual visitations of the archdeacon as well as at the