tness to its enforcement.[159]

Parish opinion was further sought to be moulded by the reading in
church of various tracts, homilies, monitions, forms of special
prayers, etc., etc., which the wardens were ordered to procure from
time to time, and which are very often met with in their accounts.
These official mediums of information or edification conveyed to the
good people of the parishes some knowledge of the events and politics
of the realm and of the world beyond it. Thus they heard of the
overthrow of the rebels in the North of England (1569), the ravages of
the great earthquake of 1579; the progress of the plague; or, again,
of the struggle of the French Protestants led by Henry of Navarre, the
defeat of the Turks at Lepanto, and so forth.[160]

As food for the more advanced minds of the congregations, ordinaries
saw to it that volumes dealing with the interpretation of the
Scriptures, the polity of Church and State, and the defence of that
polity were provided for every parish church. Such works were Erasmus'
Paraphrases, Bullinger's Decades, Bishop Jewel's works, and other
writings of an apologetic nature. To a certain extent news was also
spread, and grievances were aired, in unofficial broadsides or
ballads. These treated of such subjects as the untimely end of
traitors great or small; the adventures of her Majesty's soldiers and
sailors; the rapacity of landlords and the evils of the enclosure
movement.[161]

But these publications and all other printed matter were subject to
the strict censorship of Church and State. Extremely few presses were
permitted in England, and these few under the jealous supervision of
the high ecclesiastical authorities, as is evidenced by the numerous
orders or decrees issued by them to the Master and Wardens of the
London Stationers Company, which, with a very few special patentees,
enjoyed the monopoly of printing.[162]

Having now reviewed the chief administrative functions of the
spiritual courts and their mode of exercise, the question presents
itself, What were the means at the disposal of the ordinaries for
enforcing their decrees? The principal one of these has already been
mentioned incidentally, viz., excommunication. Excommunication was the
most usual, as it was by far the most effective, weapon for compelling
obedience to the mandate of the judge in any matter whatever. Indeed
without this instrument of coercion the ecclesiastical judges would
have been impotent.