mer
order.[126]

It seems, in fact, to have been the well-understood thing that just as
parish rates to defray the costs of those matters of parish
administration, falling within the province of the ecclesiastical
courts, were to be assessed by the authority, and under the direction,
of those courts, so, too, the recovery of these rates was to be had
before the same tribunals. It is not denied that recourse may
occasionally have been made in these matters to the courts of common
law, but it is believed that the proper remedy was at ecclesiastical
law.[127] Furthermore, we believe that the means at the disposal of
the ecclesiastical courts for putting their judgments into effect were
quite sufficient and in practice effective.

What these means were will be taken up and discussed a little further
on. Returning to the matter of suing parish debtors in courts
Christian, it is interesting to find that in the language of the
period a suit "at law" did not always mean at common law. An order of
the vestry of Stepney, London, in February, 1605-6, after determining
the manner in which L50 should be raised to pay off parish debts due
to the bell founder, adds that persons refusing to pay their shares,
or neglecting to do so, should not find themselves aggrieved "if the
same be recouered against them by Lawe." And the meaning of this term
is fully explained by these subsequent words in the same order, that
the churchwardens shall "at the chardg of the p[ar]ish appointe and
entertayne one doctor and a proctor to sue and recouer the same by
lawe of any p[er]son [etc.]."[128] Now doctors and proctors practiced
before ecclesiastical tribunals only.[129]

That presentment to the ordinary was the common and usual way, not
only of recovering church rates, but any thing of value that belonged
to the parish and was unjustly detained, the act-books and other
documents of the time plentifully show. Thus in Archbishop Parker's
Visitation Articles for the diocese of Canterbury in the year 1569, he
requires all churchwardens to report to their ordinaries "whether
there be any money or stoke, appertaininge to any paryshe churche, in
anye manne's handes, that refuse or differeth to paye the same
[etc.]."[130] The wardens of Melton Mowbray record under the year 1602
an item for charges at the court at Leicester against a parishioner
"for not payinge his levi for the churche."[131] Those of Ashburton,
Devon, itemize in 1568-1569 two shillings