| The courts of the eighteenth-century Church of England were important both theoretically and in practice. From the standpoint of theory, the very existence of ecclesiastical courts with jurisdiction of unconsenting laymen raised questions regarding the source of that jurisdiction. Indeed, the early eighteenth century saw a protracted debate, in sermons, political pamphlets, visitation charges, and legal treatises, over the constitutional position of the Church of England in general and its courts in particular. The basic issue in these debates was whether the Church and its courts existed by divine right or were the product of a voluntary association of individuals. No definitive resolution to this debate appeared during the period under study.; The intensity of the theoretical debates over the courts' legitimacy was matched by the volume of business the courts were handling. As in earlier centuries, the courts heard large numbers of testamentary, defamation, and tithe matters. Although the courts' disciplinary work was substantially reduced from that of earlier centuries, much of the religiously-motivated policing of morals had not disappeared, but rather was taken up by the Societies for the Reformation of Manners, who prosecuted morals offenders in the temporal courts. The disciplinary suites that were brought in the ecclesiastical courts often turned out to be part of a larger web if litigation between private parties over rights in property.; The picture that emerges from a study of the theory and practice of the eighteenth-century ecclesiastical courts is a mixed one. Theoretical justifications for the courts' existence that had their roots in the medieval period continued to have currency and, possibly, even dominated thinking about them. At the same time, however, the increasingly temporal nature of the courts' actual business served to undermine the plausibility of such theoretical justifications. |
