secular, much as in our own day the criminal and civil cases are disposed of by two judges of assize.
The whole account as given in the report has an air of vagueness and uncertainty about it, depending mainly, no doubt, on the scarcity and remoteness of the evidence, but which seems to suggest also, what was doubtless the fact, that the powers of the judges named, no less of the king himself than of the bishop and the ealdorman, though large, were vague and undefined, and partook more of the character of visitorial authority than of strict legal power. Indeed it is abundantly clear that in those early days the 'authority' of any man who from rank, birth, or office had become an important individuality carried with it an amount of actual power, efficient both for good and for evil, which we living in the latter end of the nineteenth century find it difficult adequately to realise.
Beyond the point which we have already indicated, the report does not go in defining the constitution of the courts which administered the law in ecclesiastical cases in those early times, or their mode of procedure.
It does, however, describe the law administered in the ancient English Church as comprising,[1] first, 'a body of canonical law containing the Holy Scriptures, the Creeds, and the canons of general councils, which were authoritative in the whole of the Western Church; and, secondly, the decrees of national councils, supplemented in application by the less authoritative manuals of discipline known as Penitentials, by the collections of foreign canons, and by the coincident legislation of Christian kings,' and this is a matter important to be remembered.
The commissioners note further, here as elsewhere in
- ↑ Report of the above Commission, p. xvii.
