The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects | Page 2

charged with the
enforcement of legislation on parochial matters. Thus the provisions of
the Rubric of the Book of Common Prayer were enforced by the
justices as well as by the ordinaries. Again, secular and ecclesiastical
judges had concurrent jurisdiction over church 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 triennial
visitations of the bishop, the mode of procedure, the class of offences,
the parish officers summoned, the discipline exercised--all were the
same, the bishop's court being simply substituted for the time being for
that of the archdeacon.
There were other visitations: those of the Queen's High Commissioners,
and those of the Metropolitan. There were a very great number of other
courts, but for the purposes of the every-day ecclesiastical governance
of the parish the two classes of courts or visitations above mentioned
are all that need concern us. It is, however, important to state, that
while churchwardens and sidemen were compelled to attend the two
general courts of the archdeacon (and of course the bishop's court) and
to write out on each occasion formal lists of offenders and offences
("presentments" or "detections") these parish officers might also at any
time make voluntary presentments to the archdeacons. Those
functionaries, in fact, seem to have held sittings for the transaction of
current business, or of matters which could not be terminated at the
visitation, every month, or even every three weeks. Others may have

sat (as we should say of a common-law judge) in chambers.[5] Before
each general visitation an apparitor or summoner of the court went
about and gave warning to the churchwardens of some half-dozen
parishes, more or less, to be in attendance with other parish officers on
a day fixed in some church centrally located in respect of the parishes
selected for that day's visitation.
The church of each parish was, indeed, not only its place for worship,
but also the seat and centre for the transaction of all business
concerning the parish. In it, according to law, the minister had to read
aloud from time to time articles of inquiry founded on the Queen's or
the diocesan's injunctions, and to admonish wardens and sidemen to
present offences under these articles at the next visitation.[6] In it also
he gave monition for the annual choice of collectors for the poor;[7]
warning for the yearly perambulation of the parish bounds;[8] and
public announcement of the six certain days on which each year every
parishioner had to attend in person or send wain and men for the repair
of highways.[9] In the parish church also proclamation had to be made
of estrays before the beasts could be legally seized and impounded.[10]
Here, too, school-masters often taught their pupils[11]--unless, indeed,
the parish possessed a separate school-house. Here, in the vestry, the
parish armor was frequently kept, and sometimes the parish powder
barrels were deposited;[12] here too, occasionally, country parsons
stored their wool or grain.[13]
Finally, in the parish church assembled vestries for the holding of
accounts, the making of rates and the election of officers. Overseers of
the poor held their monthly meetings here. Occasionally the
neighboring justices of