jurisdiction over a district, in opposition to judges extraordinarily
appointed. At common law a bishop was taken to be the ordinary in his
diocese, and so he was designated in some acts of Parliament. But as a
matter of fact 'ordinary' signifies any judge authorized to take
cognizance of causes by virtue of his office or by custom. Such were
pre-eminently the archdeacons. These officers, at first merely
attendant on the bishops at public services, were gradually entrusted
by the latter with their own jurisdictional powers, owing to the vast
extent of dioceses, so that "the holding of General Synods or
Visitations when the Bishop did not visit, came by degrees to be known
and established Branches of the Archidiaconal Office, as such, which
by this means attained to the dignity of Ordinary instead of delegated
jurisdiction." Edmund Gibson, _Codex Juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani_,
or the _Statutes, Constitutions_ (etc.) _of the Church of England_, ii
(1713), 998. Cf. Richard Burn, _Eccles. Law_, ii, 101-2. As the
ordinary in practice entrusted his office of judge to an official, I
have used the two terms interchangeably. In some places exempted from
the archdeacon's jurisdiction commissaries acted as judges, Burn, i,
391.

[42] That is, services and sacraments (except baptism) were suspended
in it. The words of Burn (_Eccles. Law_, i, 616, quoting Gibson, 1047)
are misleading. He says: "But this censure hath been long disused; and
nothing of it appeareth in the laws of church or state since the
reformation." Of course interdiction _temp_. Elizabeth was no longer
the terrible punishment it used to be.

[43] At Shrewsbury.

[44] _Shrop. Arch, and Nat. Hist. Soc. Tr_., i (1878), 62.