law and the national Church law, where the latter prevailed, are cases in which a reasonable custom established in England ousted the papal law. But in these circumstances there was no collision, because the Roman Canon Law recognised local custom and provided that, unless the contrary was expressly stated, it should be respected. Such cases are therefore no evidence of the independence of a home-made Canon Law.

Mr Ogle devotes a large portion of his book to a constitution of Archbishop Peckham (1279) against pluralities. This constitution traversed a decree of a General Council and was on that account declared to be void by Lyndwood in his gloss, as being an attempt by an inferior to vary the work of a superior legislator. For Maitland's purpose the case is clearly in point. But Mr Ogle enters upon a learned and clever account of the relations between Peckham and Gregory X, derived partly from documents and partly from the author's imagination, in order to show that the Archbishop and the Pope understood each other very well, and that the former apologised for his constitution by explaining that, though irregular, it was as much as the English people would stand. All which is very interesting, but it does not get over the fact of Lyndwood's gloss, and indeed has nothing to do with the point for which Maitland quotes it. There being no custom to support Peckham's constitution, and Mr Ogle admitting that the Archbishop could not enact a Canon which, of its own strength, would be good against the superior legislator, whether Pope or Council, it is difficult to see why Mr Ogle should be so concerned about it.

He not only handles Maitland with his accustomed rigour, but he is even angry with Lyndwood himself. Mr Ogle cherishes a special kindness for Lyndwood. He is (p. 156) our wise Englishman' and (p. 62)' our irreproachable canonist.' On p. 189 we are apprised of his beautiful humility.' On p. 156 we learn, it was just like Lyndwood to bear them [the ordinary country clergy] in his thoughts. This admirable lawyer and man of affairs was by way of being a saint as well.' On p. 65-such is the pleasant intimacy between them-he is even 'our good Lyndwood.' But there is a limit; and over this Peckham affair Mr Ogle is seriously annoyed. Lyndwood is denounced (p. 119) as 'no more than a blind leader of

the blind'! If we may judge from his features, as they have imperfectly survived, Lyndwood, whether humble or not, was a strong, hard-headed man who might conceivably resent being patronised. Mr Ogle sees (p. 189) in the Provinciale' 'a conscious attempt to bring the current law of the Church into line with the buoyant spirit of nationalism.' 'It was a work not only of learning but of devotion, patriotism and politic wisdom.' In his view Lyndwood's book is an effort to rescue the English Canons from oblivion and to give the English Church a homemade code, as a countermove to the tendency, then observable, to enforce the Præmunire Acts in cases where Roman Canon Law was being employed in appeals to Rome or in hearings in England by papal delegates. Mr Ogle's wrath, which is always ready to burst out on Maitland, is particularly hot against him (pp. 189-92) for calling the Provinciale' an elementary law book for beginners.'

6

Another point Mr Ogle makes is about Procurations, i.e. customary payments made by incumbents to bishops, archdeacons and others at their visitations. Benedict XII (Friedberg, ii, col. 1280-4) decreed the sum to be offered to a visitor. Stratford's Constitutions (1342; Lynd. 223-4) require the customary amount, which was less than that mentioned in the Decretal, to be paid to archdeacons, but make no mention of bishops. Lyndwood in his gloss (p. 224, v. solet solvi) refers to the English custom as to archdeacons, and adds that in the case of other visitors the papal law will apply. Mr Ogle (p. 77), relying on a statement in John of Ayton (Ayton, 114), 'that the Bishops of this kingdom do not commonly exact procurations,' deems Lyndwood's mention of the Decretal to be 'purely academic,' and blames Maitland for treating Lyndwood's 'glancing references' to it as solemn statements of the law.' He says (p. 75) that 'it affords a striking illustration of Maitland's method.' We cannot help thinking that Mr Ogle's basis for criticism is slender and precarious. Other ecclesiastical authorities besides bishops and archdeacons-notably monastic and capitular bodies-held visitations in the Middle Ages to which Benedict's Decretal would apply and Lyndwood's note be practically useful. As to bishops, even if John of Ayton was right as to the practice in the fourteenth century,

can we be sure it was still in existence in Lyndwood's time a century later? Almost every bishop in England was in receipt of episcopal procurations by ancient right, when, in the nineteenth century, his estates passed into the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who, however, ceased to collect them.

Mr Ogle has a good deal to say about the testamentary jurisdiction of the Church courts which grew up in the thirteenth century and lasted till the middle of the nineteenth. He describes it (p. 86) as a mere enormity from the point of view of the papal Canon Law,' by which, we gather, he only means that the Pope did not claim a similar jurisdiction. However that may be, the jurisdiction was not created by any home-made Canons. The most notable incident in its early history is the conflict, in the thirteenth century, between Archbishop Peckham and his suffragans, in the course of which the Archbishop felt compelled to excommunicate Bishop Cantilupe of Hereford and to denounce his 'malice as a wolf in sheep's clothing,' 'his deranged intellect,' and his frivolous and blasphemous mendacities.'* The quarrel was as to the Archbishop's exclusive right to grant probate where a testator died possessed of goods to a substantial amount in more than one diocese. Mr Ogle frequently refers to the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, in which was transacted the provincial testamentary business, for several centuries prior to its abolition in 1857. But that he is accurate (pp. 87, 98, etc.) in describing Lyndwood as its President at the time of writing the 'Provinciale,' or at any time, seems unlikely. Lyndwood no doubt exercised the Archbishop's testamentary jurisdiction (Lynd. 174, v. laicis) when he was Dean of the Arches, but he is never described as Judge of the Prerogative Court; and it has been supposed that Archbishop Stafford's appointment (Stafford's Reg., 8a Lambeth MSS.) of Alexander Prowet, Bachelor of Canon Law, to be Commissary of the Prerogative, marks the beginning of that Court. This was in 1443, long after Lyndwood must have exchanged the Deanery of the Arches for other public work.

We may now lay down Mr Ogle's book and consider

* Canterbury and York Society, Cantilupe's Register, Introduction, p. 1.

its effect. If we mistake not, it has suffered from overhaste in production. But it is too valuable a contribution to historical study and too brilliant a piece of penmanship to be forgotten; and we venture to submit two suggestions towards a second edition. First, Mr Ogle's treatment of Maitland is both painful and unconvincing, and urgently requires reconsideration. Secondly, we believe Mr Ogle's book would be still more effective than it is, if he would make, even at the sacrifice of some ornamental passages, his general position more clear, and if also he could simplify his treatment of particular points. The reader is sometimes bewildered by rhetorical flouts over an enemy supposed to be already vanquished, before the enemy's case has been either stated or answered.

Mr Ogle has had no difficulty in demonstrating the absurdity of the contention put forward in the House of Commons by Mr Ellis Griffith on behalf of Welsh Liberationists (Ogle, p. 16), that Prof. Maitland had established 'the absolute identity of the ecclesiastical system of the pre-Reformation Church of England with that of the contemporary Church of Rome.' The affectation of knowledge, in spite of an ignorance so great as to overlook all the peculiarities of the English system-the law of prohibitions, of advowsons, and of probates, as well as an accumulation of local customs-is mere effrontery; and it may be open to question whether this statement was worth the labour of elaborate refutation. Mr Ogle has, however, disposed of it satisfactorily and completely.

It seems to us that Mr Ogle's main contribution to the discussion has been the assignment to custom and prescription of their proper influence in pre-Reformation Church law, an influence which had been inadequately appreciated by Maitland. Mr Ogle does not contend, any more than Stubbs or Maitland, for the Peter-pence Act view of the matter, namely, that the papal law, as such, had no recognition in England, but derived such authority as it possessed from long usage, which the ‘free liberty' of the people and the 'sufferance' of the Crown had turned into law. While differing as to whether the Roman Canon Law ought to be regarded as statutelaw' or as case-law,' or as having binding' or only 'great' authority, all three are agreed that it was received here with some authority, as law enacted by the Pope in

a legislative capacity which had some relation to the Universal Church.

The Reformation, therefore, produced a change to this extent. Some laws which had been theretofore used because they were papal, were thenceforward used because they were customary. That the realisation of this fact should raise Liberationists and Roman Catholics to such heights of exultation as to inspire comparisons of the Church of England to an irreparably punctured balloon' and 'a bird sinking to earth with a broken pinion ('Tablet,' May 18, 1912, p. 761), seems a little difficult to understand. Whatever the effect of the rejection of the Pope's legal authority on the continuity of the Church of England, it could hardly have been so momentous as that produced by the rejection of his spiritual authority; and yet this was the very core and essence of the Reformation: Be that as it may, the repudiation of Roman Canon Law by the English Church in the sixteenth century was no breaking away from the Universal Church, for the sufficient reason that Roman Canon Law was no part of the essential equipment of the Universal Church, but a comparatively modern introduction of doubtful origin and partial acceptance. Westminster Abbey is older than Gratian's Decretum; and there were English and Welsh Church courts where an English and Welsh Church law was administered long before the Pope had usurped the right to legislate for the whole Christian Church. The so-called breach of legal continuity at the Reformation was certainly a breach with the medieval system of Church law, but it was also a recurrence to an earlier and, as English Churchmen believe, a better system of national and ecclesiastical liberty. It was in harmony with the effort to regain primitive Christianity which was the keynote of the English Reformation.

In a phrase somehow reminiscent of the pulpit, Mr Ogle (p. 192) exhorts his readers-'Let us here hold fast to Stubbs.' We venture to think that is excellent advice. To understand thoroughly how Church law began and grew in England, we must carry back our examination to the date when the conversion of England began, and watch the progress of events, and especially the foreign influences at work in England, during the cen