tution, and induction. The method of conferring holy orders is foreign to the purpose of these commentaries, except so far that no person can be admitted a deacon before twenty-three, or a priest before twenty-four years of age, as required by the canons of 1603, which in this point are enforced by the statute 44 Geo. c. 43.

When a person has been admitted to holy orders, he may be presented to a parsonage or vicarage; that is, the patron may offer his clerk to the bishop to be instituted. The bishop may refuse him upon many accounts, as, if the patron is excommunicated, and remains in contempt forty days, or if the clerk be unfit: which unfitness is of several kinds. First, with regard to his person; as, if he be under age, or unfit to discharge the pastoral office for want of learning; of which last the bishop is sole judge. If the bishop admits the patron's presentation, the clerk is next to be instituted by him; which is a kind of investiture of the spiritual part of the benefice: for by institution the care of the souls of the parish is committed to the charge of the clerk. When the bishop is also the patron, and confers the living, the presentation and institution are one and the same act, and are called a collation to a benefice. And by institution or collation the church is full, so that there can be no fresh presentation till another vacancy. Upon institution, also, the clerk may enter on the parsonage-house and glebe, and take the tithes. But he cannot grant or let them, or bring an action for them, till induction, which is performed in virtue of a mandate from the bishop to the archdeacon, and is done by giving the clerk corporal possession of the church, as by holding the ring of the door, tolling the bell, or the like: a form required by law, to give all the parishioners due notice, and sufficient certainty of their new minister, to whom their tithes are to be paid. A clerk thus presented, instituted, and inducted is then, and not before, in complete possession, and is called persona impersonata, or parson imparsonee.

The rights of a parson or vicar, in his tithes and ecclesiastical dues, fall more properly under the second book of these commentaries and as to his duties, they are principally of ecclesiastical cognizance; those only excepted which are laid upon him by statute. And those are indeed so numerous, that with

the exception of residence, to which it is enough to allude, I must refer to such authors as have compiled treatises expressly upon this subject.

A parson or vicar may cease to be so, 1, by death; 2, by cession, in taking another benefice; 3, by consecration; for, as was mentioned before, when a clerk is promoted to a bishopric all his other preferments are void the instant that he is consecrated; 4, by resignation, accepted by the ordinary; 5, by deprivation, for fit and sufficient causes allowed by the law, which it is unnecessary here to enumerate; 6, by renunciation of his orders; that is, by relinquishing by deed enrolled in Chancery, as far as he can, all the privileges of his order.

Besides parsons and vicars, properly so called, there are numerous ministers of the church who have many of the rights, and are subject to most of the disabilities, of the beneficed clergy. These are the incumbents of districts, constituted parishes by special acts of parliament, or formed from time to time by virtue of the powers conferred on the Church Building Commissioners, appointed by 58 Geo. III. c. 45, all of whom are subject to the visitation and correction of the bishop. These ministers were for some time called perpetual curates, but are now designated vicars.

VI. A curate is the same that a vicar was formerly, an officiating temporary minister. This section of the clergy are the objects of several statutes, which ordain, that they shall be paid such stipend as the bishop thinks reasonable; he alone also having authority to grant, and, subject to appeal to the metropolitan, withdraw their licences.

Of certain inferior ecclesiastical officers the common law takes notice, viz.:

VII. Churchwardens, the guardians of the church, and representatives of the body of the parish, who are sometimes appointed by the parson, sometimes by the parish, sometimes by both together, as custom directs. As to the church, churchyard, &c., they have no sort of interest therein; but if any damage is done thereto, the parson only or vicar shall have the action. Lands, however, given for the benefit of the parish, the churchwardens and overseers hold in the nature of a body corporate. Their office also is to repair the church, if they have funds, and to

make rates for that purpose; of which, however, they have no means of enforcing payment from those who refuse. They are to keep all persons orderly while in church, and formerly might levy a shilling forfeiture on all such as did not repair to church on Sundays and holidays.

VIII. Parish clerks and sextons are also regarded by the common law as persons who have freeholds in their offices. They may be punished, but cannot be deprived by ecclesiastical censures; a parish clerk may be removed by the archdeacon.

CHAPTER XII.

OF THE CIVIL, MILITARY, AND MARITIME STATES.

THE lay part of the community, or such as are not of the clergy, may be divided into the civil, the military, and the maritime.

I. The civil state consists of the nobility and the commonalty. Of the nobility, those now in use are dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, and barons.

A duke, though he be with us, in respect of his title of nobility, inferior in point of antiquity to many others, yet is superior to all of them in rank; his being the first title of dignity after the royal family.

A marquis, marchio, is the next degree of nobility. His office formerly was to guard the frontiers of the kingdom; in particular, the marches of Wales and Scotland. The title has long been a mere ensign of honour.

An earl is a title of nobility so ancient that its origin cannot clearly be traced out. Among the Saxons they are called ealdormen, signifying senior or senator as among the Romans; and also schiremen, because they had the civil government of a shire. On the irruption of the Danes, they changed the name to eorles, and in Latin were called comites, from being the king's attendants. After the Conquest they were called counts or countees, from the French; but did not long retain that name, though their shires

are called counties to this day; and the name has long been a mere title, they having now nothing to do with the government of the county.

The name of vice-comes or viscount was afterwards made use of as an arbitrary title of honour by Henry VI., when he created John Beaumont a peer, by the name of Viscount Beaumont, which was the first instance of the kind.

A baron's is the most general and universal title of nobility; for originally every one of the peers of superior rank had also a barony annexed to his other titles. Barons originally were the same with our present lords of manors, to which the name of court baron, incident to every manor, gives some countenance. All lords of manors, or barons, had seats in parliament, till, about the reign of John, the conflux of them became so troublesome, that the king was obliged to divide them, and summon only the greater barons in person, leaving the small ones to sit by representation in another house; which gave rise to the separation of the two houses of parliament. By degrees the title came to be confined to the lords of parliament only; and there were no other barons among the peerage, till Richard II. first made it a mere title of honour, by conferring it on divers persons by letterspatent.

The right of peerage seems to have been originally territorial, and when the land was alienated, the dignity passed with it as appendant. Thus the bishops still sit in the House of Lords in right of certain ancient baronies supposed to be annexed to their episcopal lands. But when alienations grew frequent, the dignity of peerage was confined to the lineage of the party ennobled; and instead of territorial, became, and has long been, exclusively personal.

A nobleman, in cases of treason and felony, is tried by his peers. This privilege does not extend to bishops, who are not ennobled in blood, and consequently not peers with the nobility. Peeresses, either in their own right or by marriage, are entitled to be tried by the peers. If a woman, noble in her own right, marries a commoner, she remains noble, and shall be tried by her peers; but if only noble by marriage, then by a second

marriage with a commoner she loses her dignity; for as by marriage it is gained, by marriage it is lost. A peer cannot be arrested in civil cases; and sitting in judgment gives his verdict not upon oath, but upon his honour: but when examined as a witness he must be sworn. A peer cannot lose his nobility but by death, and cannot be degraded but by act of parliament.

The commonalty are divided into several degrees; yet all are in law peers, in respect of their want of nobility.

The first personal dignity after nobility is a knight of the Garter; first instituted by Edward III., A.D. 1348. Next follows a knight banneret, created by the king in person, in the field, under the royal banner, in time of open war. Else he ranks after baronets, who are the next order. This is a dignity of inheritance, created by letters-patent, and descendible to issue male. It was first instituted by James I., A.D. 1611, and sold at a fixed price, in order to raise a sum for the reduction of the province of Ulster in Ireland; for which reason all baronets have the arms of Ulster superadded to their family coat. Next follow knights of the Bath, instituted by Henry IV., and revived by George I. in 1725. The last of these inferior nobility are knights bachelors, the most ancient, though the lowest, order of knighthood; for we have an instance of Alfred's conferring this order on his son Athelstan. Formerly every one who held a knight's fee, or 207. per annum, was obliged to be knighted, or pay a fine for his non-compliance. The exertion of this prerogative to raise money in the reign of Charles I., gave great offence, and it was consequently abolished by 16 Car. I. c. 16; and this kind of knighthood has, since that time, fallen into great disregard.

These are all the names of dignity in this kingdom, esquires and gentlemen being only names of worship. But before these last the heralds rank colonels, serjeants-at-law, and doctors in the three learned professions. Esquires and gentlemen are confounded together by Sir Edward Coke, who observes, that esquire is a gentleman, and a gentleman is one qui arma gerit, who bears coat armour, the grant of which adds gentility to a man's family. It is a matter now of no importance whatever, what constitutes the distinction, or who is a real esquire. A