Clarendon

CONSTITUTIONS OF. Certain statutes made in the reign of Henry II. at a parliament held at Clarendon (A. D. 1164) by which the king checked the power of the pope and his clergy and greatly narrowed the exemption they claimed from secular jurisdiction. Previous to this time, there had been an entire separation between the clergy and laity, as members of the same commonwealth. The clergy, having emancipated themselves from the laws as administered by the courts of law, had assumed powers and exemptions quite inconsistent with the good government of the country. This state of things led to the enactment referred to. By this enactment all controversies arising out of ecclesiastical matters were required to be determined in the civil courts, and all appeals in spiritual causes were to be carried from the bishops to the primate, and from him to the king, but no further without the king's consent. The archbishops and bishops were to be regarded as barons of the realm, possessing the privileges and subject to the burdens belonging to that rank, and bound to attend the king in his councils. The revenues of vacant sees were to belong to the king, and goods forfeited debts in cases where they had been accustomed to do so, but should leave all lawsuits to the determination of the civil courts. The rigid enforcement of these statutes by the king was unhappily stopped, for a season, by the fatal event of his disputes with Archbishop Becket. Pitz Stephen 27; 2 Lingard 59; 1 Hume 382; Wllkins 321; 4 Bla. Com. 422; 1 Poll. & M. 430-440, 461; 2 id. 196.