_ in any way--anything that
concerned the relation of the sexes, that concerned the Holy
Sacraments, and marriage is a sacrament. Consequently the mediaeval
church claimed that it had jurisdiction over all marriage, and over
all divorce; and also took jurisdiction over a man's children at his
death, and over his property, now exercised by our courts of probate.
This they got out of the notion that when a man was dead, there was
something, in a sense, that went beyond this life in looking after his
property and children. And down until twenty or thirty years ago all
jurisdiction in England in matters which concerned a man's property,
after death, belonged to the church courts and their successors. The
church law was based on the Roman law, but was called _canon_ law,
the technical word, because it is the "canons" of the church. It is a
convenient term to distinguish it from the ordinary civil law of the
Continent. So that the Constitutions of Clarendon began what was
completed only under Henry VIII; they very clearly asserted the claim
of the king to be supreme over the Church of England. The Bishop of
Rome, as Henry VIII called the pope, had no more power than any other
foreign bishop.[2] There still remained the institution known as
benefit of clergy, by which any priest, or later any clerk or cleric
(which word came to mean any one who could read and write) could
get off of any criminal accusation, at first even murder, by simply
pleading his clergy; in which case the worst that could happen to him
was that he was branded in the right hand. But the Constitutions of
Clarendon were a great step toward civil liberty. Taken by us in 1164,
it was followed in so neighboring a country as France only so late as
a few years ago. The priests, however, still managed to retain their
jurisdiction over offences among themselves, as well as over marriage,
the relation between the sexes, slander, usury, and wills--of matters
relating to the sacraments, and of sins.

[Footnote 1: Stubbs, p. 136.]

[Footnote 2: Yet "Peter's Pence" were initiated by Ini, King of the
West Saxons, about 690!]

Now this is a very interesting matter, and were it borne in mind by
our modern legislators they would escape a good deal of unintelligent
legislation; that is, the distinction between a sin and a crime. A sin
is against the church, or against one's conscience; matter, therefore,
for the priest, or one's spiritual adviser. A crime is an offence
a