are
destined for charitable objects in Rome. These fees were and are
regulated according to the capacity of the petitioners to pay, the
result being that the abuses which the council of Trent had sought to
abolish continued to flourish. In the 17th century a specially
privileged class of bankers (_banquiers expeditionnaires_) existed at
Rome whose sole business was obtaining dispensations on commission, and
one of these, named Pelletier, published at Paris in 1677, under the
royal _imprimatur_, a regular tariff of the sums for which in any given
case a dispensation might be obtained. That the "urgent and just cause"
was, in the circumstances, a very minor consideration was to be
expected, and the enlightened pope Benedict XIV., himself a canon lawyer
of eminence, complained "Dispensationem non raro concedi in Dataria,
sine causa, nempe ob eleemosynam quae praestatur" (Inst. 87, No. 26). It
may be added that the worst abuses of this system have long since
disappeared. The bishops have their own correspondents at Rome, and one
of the duties of the diplomatic representatives of foreign states at the
Curia is to see that their nationals receive their dispensations without
overcharge.

Bishops are by right (_jure ordinario_) competent to dispense in all
cases expressly reserved to them by the canon law, e.g. in the matter of
publication of banns of marriage. They possess besides special powers
delegated to them by the pope and renewed every five years (_facultates
quinquennales_), or by virtue of faculties granted to them personally
(_facultates extraordinariae_), e.g. to dispense from rules of
abstinence, from simple vows, and with some exceptions from the
prohibition of marriage within prohibited degrees.

_Church of England._--By 25 Henry VIII. cap. 21. sec 2 (1534), it was
enacted that neither the king, his successors, nor any of his subjects
should henceforth sue for licences, dispensations, &c., to the see of
Rome, and that the power to issue such licences, dispensations, &c.,
"for causes not being contrary or repugnant to the Holy Scriptures and
laws of God," should be vested in the archbishop of Canterbury for the
time being, who at his own discretion was to issue such dispensations,
&c., under his seal, to the king and his subjects. The power of
dispensation thus vested in the archbishops partly fell obsolete, partly
has been curtailed by subsequent statutes, e.g. the Pluralities Act of
1838. It is now confined t