COURT OF ARCHES.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2018, 27 March 1914, Page 10

COURT OF ARCHES.

LOST RECORDS MSCOTBRED AT LAMBETH. At a dinner of the Authors' Club recently, Sir Lewis Bibdin, K.C., Bean of the Arches, gave mi extraordinarily interesting account of the adventures of the lost or -forgotten records of the Court of Arches. These records, which were kept in various plsoes after the Fire of London, were removed in ISBS from St. Paul's Cathedral to Lambeth Palace, where they lay buried for nearly 40 years "iii a deep stratum of London soot and dust"; and tho nature and value of their contents have only just heen discovered,

On becoming Dean of the- Arches in 1903, Sir Lewis -JPibdiu did what ho conld to e-\-phwo tho room in which the documents were .kept, but it was not ' until tho summer, of last, year,, when lio was helped by the Rev. Olatido Jenkins,, librarian of Latfibath, that he was aM6 to go .through Jthcro, - They -cover a period- of 200 years, fr0m.1660- to ISS6, aiid provide a set of about 2060 in iMirober; decided -in the'..principal ecclesiasticaL .Court.' in England.' Theyfall iijto' . threft , groups—testamentary and matrimonial' matters j tho meralg and ecclesiastical duties of the clergy and laity; and tho control of Church fabrics, officers, and endowments. Sit Lewis Di-bdia said that ho wished to, lay, stress oh tho human, ra-ther than on ins technical interest of these 2000 tales of real life, told often with; a particularity which not even the modern newspaper conM safely achieve. When 'they considered that they related to people'of «very class—there was- the fashionable divorce ease at the top, a-iid the defamation of one village virago by another at the bottom—it was difficult to exaggerate their .historical value as pietares of English life and manners in former times, The greater Jmmher of tho cases- of both clerical and lay discipline were concerned with common-place and often squalid stories of moral ill-doing. Occasionally thefo eanie a gleam of interest. There was a suit against ail iiidMnbcmt Who neglected jits duty, drank too much, a,ud threw tobacco pipes about in the churchyard, but the limit was reached when he insisted on keeping a cheese in the font and suffering it to remain there all the winter, to the great discomfort of the parishioners sitting near by. . One thing that had rather surprised him was the number of eases in which persons were cited for disrespect, ir» reverent behaviour, and so forth to chancellors, commissaries, and officials, the Judges of the crowd of minor Courts which exercised ecclesiastical jurisdiction. There were seven or eight processes, scattered about in as many different parts of the ninninrent room.'all-re-tating to one gigantic fnia-rrel between £ certain ftev. Dr. Eyre; who was .Chancellor of Oath and Wells some time in the 18th tpjtnry, • and the then 'Archdeacon oMpAslls. The dispute originated in the Archdeacon's failure to pay sufficient doferaiee to the Gli-ance-MoT's rvirisdictwn superseding his own during an episcopal visitation. The Chanealt lor esxuniiininicated the Archdeacon, hut then it appeared that the Chancel-. '.or was himself under exeoiMiHwicHtion for contempt of his superior, the -Court of Arches. So the Chaiieellor's sentence was revoked, and the AjxhdearoH was restored to +!se communion of the faithful, fiut ther" were endless subsidiary c-iuflrrts, s While Dr. Evre- had been sitting in his Consistory Court in Wells Cathedral- e-xcoroinHmeaitHg the Archdeacon ( certain hyst : -imlers—(juito as if they w*fivAlsatf*u citizens of JfaTvern—had laughed. Tliey were prompt1v oswwnmiinicated. A venrer who dsrorl to remove n document from the enshmii of the Chancellor's desk, over which he was wont to contemplate -a stiff-ueeked and contumacious world, was also esconiimiiiscatwl. la the end, however, Dr. ffiyre-'s pscomiiiimications were alt revoked by hifdier authoritv, and lie was ordered to pay everybody's costs.