Lay

2. A share of the profits of a fish« ing or whaling voyage, allotted te the officers and seamen, inthe nature of wages. 3 Story, 108.

adj. In English law, not clerical or ecclesiastical. See Laity. In America, where clergymen are not a distinct rank, in a legal sense, lay is employed as opposed to professional. It is generally, but not necessarily, used in opposition to clerical. Lay corporation. An artificial person, organized of secular persons, or for secular purposes; not ecclesiastical. Lay fee. A fee held by ordinary feudal tenure, to distinguish ordinary fees held of lay lords, from fees held by ecclesiastical tenures. Lay impropriator. In English ecclesiastical law, a layman who holds a spiritual appropriation. Lay investiture. In ecclesiastical law, the ceremony of putting a bishop in possession of the temporalities of his diocese. Election was, in very early times, the usual mode of elevation to the episcopal chair throughout all Christendom; and this was promiscuously performed by the laity as well as the clergy, till at length, it becoming tumultuous, the emperors and other sovereigns of the respective kingdoms of Europe took the appointment in some degree into their own hands, by reserving to themselves the right of confirming these elections, and of granting investiture of the temporalities, which now began almost universally to be annexed to this spiritual dignity; without which confirmation and investiture the elected bishops could neither be consecrated nor receive any secular profits. This right was acknowledged in the Emperor Charlemagne, a.d. 773, by Pope Hadrian I. and the council of Lateran, and universally exercised by other Christian princes; but the policy of the court of Rome at the same time began by degrees to exclude the laity from any share in these elections, to confine them wholly to the clergy, which at length was completely effected, — the mere form of election appearing to the people to be a thing of little consequence, while the crown was in possession of an absolute negative, which was almost equivalent to a direct right of nomination. Hence the right of appointing to bishoprics is said to have been in the crown of England, as well as other kingdoms in Europe, even in the Saxon times; because the rights of confirmation and investiture were in effect, though not in form, a right of complete donation. But when, by length of time, the custom of making elections by the clergy only was fully established, the popes began to except to the usual method of granting those investitures, which was per annulum et baculum, by the prince's delivering to the prelate a ring, and pastoral staff or crosier; pretending that this was an encroachment on the church's authority, and an attempt by these symbols to confer a spiritual jurisdiction.