lies in the last resort to judges delegates appointed by the crown under the great seal in chancery.

I have now gone through the several species of private, or special courts, of the greatest note in the kingdom, instituted for the local redress of private wrongs; and must, in the close of all, make one general observation from sir Edward Coke that these particular jurisdictions, derogating from the general jurisdiction of the courts of common law, are ever taken strictly, and cannot be extended farther than the express letter of their privileges will most explicitly warrant.

CHAPTER VII.

OF THE COGNIZANCE OF PRIVATE WRONGS.

We are now to proceed to the cognizance of private wrongs; that is, to consider in which of the vast variety of courts, mentioned in the three preceding chapters, every possible injury that can be offered to a man's person or property is certain of meeting with redress.

I. The wrongs or injuries cognizable by the ecclesiastical courts, I shall reduce under three general heads; of causes pecuniary, causes matrimonial, and causes testamentary.

1. Pecuniary causes, cognizable in the ecclesiastical courts, are such as arise either from the withholding ecclesiastical dues, or the doing or

neglecting some act relating to the church, whereby some damage accrues to the plaintiff; towards obtaining a satisfaction for which he is permitted to institute a suit in the spiritual court.

The principal of these is the subtraction or withholding of tithes from the parson or vicar, whether the former be a clergyman or a lay appropriator. But herein a distinction must be taken for the ecclesiastical courts have no jurisdiction to try the right of tithes, unless between spiritual persons; but in ordinary cases, between spiritual men and lay men, are only to compel the payment of them, when the right is not disputed. However it now seldom happens that tithes are sued for at all in the spiritual court; for if the defendant pleads any custom, modus, composition, or other matter whereby the right of tithing is called in question, this takes it out of the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical judges: for the law will not suffer the existence of such a right to be decided by the sentence of any single, much less an ecclesiastical, judge; without the verdict of a jury. But a more summary method than either of recovering small tithes under the value of 40s. is given by statute 7 & 8 W. III. c. 6. by complaint to two justices of the peace and, by another statute of the same year, the same remedy is extended to all tithes withheld by quakers under the value of ten pounds.

Another pecuniary injury, cognizable in the spiritual courts, is the non-payment of other eccle

siastical dues to the clergy; as pensions, mortuaries, compositions, offerings, and whatsoever falls under the denomination of surplice-fees, for marriages or other ministerial offices of the church: all which injuries are redressed by a decree for their actual payment. Besides which all offerings, oblations, and obventions, not exceeding the value of 40s. may be recovered in a summary way, before two justices of the peace.

For fees also, settled and acknowledged to be due to the officers of the ecclesiastical courts, a suit will lie therein: but not if the right of the fees is at all disputable; for then it must be decided at the common law.

Under this head of pecuniary injuries may also be reduced the several matters of spoliation, dilapidations, and neglect of repairing the church and things thereunto belonging; for which a satisfaction may be sued for in the ecclesiastical

court.

For dilapidations, which are a kind of ecclesiastical waste, either voluntary, by pulling down; or permissive, by suffering the chancel, parsonagehouse, and other buildings thereunto belonging, to decay. And by statute 14 Eliz. c. 11. all money recovered for dilapidations shall within two years be employed upon the buildings, in respect whereof it was recovered, on penalty of forfeiting double the value to the crown.

As to the neglect of reparations of the church, churchyard, and the like, the spiritual court has

undoubted cognizance thereof; and a suit may be brought therein for non-payment of a rate made by the churchwardens for that purpose.

2. Matrimonial causes, or injuries respecting the rights of marriage, are another. And causes matrimonial are now so peculiarly ecclesiastical, that the temporal courts will never interfere in controversies of this kind, unless in some particular cases.

Of matrimonial causes, the principal is, 1. Causa jactitationis matrimonii; when one of the parties boasts or gives out that he or she is married to the other, whereby a common reputation of their matrimony may ensue. On this ground the

party injured may libel the other in the spiritual court; and, unless the defendant undertakes and makes out a proof of the actual marriage, he or she is enjoined perpetual silence upon that head; which is the only remedy the ecclesiastical courts can give for this injury. 2. Another species of matrimonial causes was when a party contracted to another, brought a suit in the ecclesiastical court to compel a celebration of the marriage in pursuance of such contract; but this branch of causes is now cut off entirely by the act for preventing clandestine marriages, 26 Geo. II. c. 33. which enacts, that for the future no suit shall be had in any ecclesiastical court, to compel a celebration of marriage in facie ecclesiæ, for or because of any contract of matrimony whatsoever. 3. The suit for restoration of conjugal rights is also another species of matrimonial causes which is brought

whenever either the husband or wife is guilty of the injury of subtraction, or lives separate from the other without any sufficient reason; in which case the ecclesiastical jurisdiction will compel them to come together again, if either party be weak enough to desire it, contrary to the inclinations of the other. 4. Divorces also, are causes thoroughly matrimonial, and cognizable by the ecclesiastical judge. If it become improper, through some supervenient cause arising ex post facto, that the parties should live together any longer; as through intolerable cruelty, &c. this unfitness or inability for the marriage state may be looked upon as an injury to the suffering party; and for this the ecclesiastical law administers the remedy of separation, or a divorce a mensa et thoro. But if the cause existed previous to the marriage, and was such a one as rendered the marriage unlawful ab initio, as consanguinity, corporal imbecility, or the like; in this case the law looks upon the marriage to have been always null and void, being contracted in fraudem legis, and decrees not only a separation from bed and board, but a vinculo matrimonii itself. 5. The last species of matrimonial causes is a consequence drawn from one of the species of divorce, that a mensa et thoro; which is the suit for alimony, a term which signifies maintenance : which suit the wife, in case of separation, may have against her husband, if he neglects or refuses to make her an allowance suitable to their station in life. This is an injury to the wife, and the court christian will redress it by assigning her a compe