owever, always assumed to itself the right to grant licences for an
absolute divorce; and further, by claiming the power to declare
marriages null and void, though professedly this could be done only in
cases where the original contract could be said to be void, it was, and
is to this day, undoubtedly extended in practice to cases in which it is
impossible to suppose the original contract really void, but in which a
complete divorce is on other grounds desirable.

DIVORCE IN ENGLAND

In England the law of divorce, originally based on the canon law of
Rome, underwent some, though little, permanent change at the
Reformation, but was profoundly modified by the exercise of the power of
the state through legislation. From the canon law was derived the
principle that divorce could legally take place only by sentence of the
court, and never at the will of the parties. Complete divorce has never
been governed by any other principle than this; and in so far as an
incomplete divorce has become practicable at the will of the parties, it
has been by the intervention of civil tribunals and contrary to the law
of the ecclesiastical courts. Those courts adopted as ground for divorce
_a mensa et thoro_ the main grounds allowed by Roman canon law, adultery
and cruelty (Ayliffe, 22; Co. Lit. 102; 1 Salk. 162; Godolphin Abridg.
495). The causes of heresy and of entering into religion, if ever they
were recognized in England, ceased to exist at the Reformation.

The principles upon which the English ecclesiastical courts proceeded in
divorce _a mensa et thoro_ are those which are still in force, and which
(with some modification by statutory enactment) have been administered
by judicial tribunals down to the present day. The courts by which the
ecclesiastical law, and therefore the law of divorce, was administered
were, until 1857, the courts of the various dioceses, including that of
the archbishop of Canterbury, known as the Court of Arches, and that of
the archbishop of York, known as the Consistory Court of York; but by
statute a suitor was prevented from taking proceedings in any court
except that determined by the residence of the person against whom
proceedings were taken (23 Hen. VIII. c. 9). From these courts an appeal
lay to delegates appointed in each case by the crown, until the
establishment of the judicial committee of the privy council in 1836,
when the appeal was given to the crown as advised by that body.

The proof o