280 //. FROM THE llOO'S TO THE 1800'S shape. Their legislative authority was paralysed, but they could exercise a real authority as the queen's advisers ; and the jurisdiction, which they had difficulties in enforcing through their own courts, they could enforce as members of the High Commission Court. But the ecclesiastical law — how did it fare under the circumstances? In the first place the forms of the courts were maintained, and were enough to sustain the civilians who worked in them ; the Prerogative Court and the consistory courts lived on the testamentary and matrimonial jurisdiction ; and before the spiritual courts were tried the smaller cases of discipline which were not important enough for the High Commission Court. Doctors' Commons, which had dwelt before in Paternoster Row or at the Queen's Head, under the auspices of Dr. Henry Harvey, built itself a new home, with hall and library and plate and privileges for importing wine. Knowledge of canon and civil law was in parliament, as in 1585, regarded as a special qualification for service in the House of Commons on com- mittees. In the parliaments of 1559 and 1563 were intro- duced bills to make a University degree necessary for ecclesi- astical judges. And the canon law, as drawn up by Lynd- wood, and the civilian procedure, subsisted, for the revision which had been completed by Edward's commissioners did not approve itself to Elizabeth or her advisers, and after an abortive attempt to carry it through the parliament of 1559, took Its place on the shelf of broken projects. Even the Court of High Commission, novel as Its functions were and unfettered as It was in the exercise of them, condescended to borrow from the canonical jurisprudence some of its most offensive details, its ex officio oath and the censures by which it would enforce its sentences. It was a strange composite system, perhaps the only one possible consistently with the retention of historic continuity, but obviously and most certainly tolerable only for a time. What was the attitude of theologians, of common lawyers, and of canonists towards this critically-balanced structure. To the true theologians, whether Catholic or Puritan, the whole was repulsive: we see this in the half-hearted, almost despairing adhesion of Archbishop Parker, and in the strong
