r also.

[Footnote d: Co. Litt. 43.]

ANOTHER division of corporations, either sole or aggregate, is into
_ecclesiastical_ and _lay_. Ecclesiastical corporations are where the
members that compose it are entirely spiritual persons; such as
bishops; certain deans, and prebendaries; all archdeacons, parsons,
and vicars; which are sole corporations: deans and chapters at
present, and formerly prior and convent, abbot and monks, and the
like, bodies aggregate. These are erected for the furtherance of
religion, and the perpetuating the rights of the church. Lay
corporations are of two sorts, _civil_ and _eleemosynary_. The civil
are such as are erected for a variety of temporal purposes. The king,
for instance, is made a corporation to prevent in general the
possibility of an _interregnum_ or vacancy of the throne, and to
preserve the possessions of the crown entire; for, immediately upon
the demise of one king, his successor is, as we have formerly seen, in
full possession of the regal rights and dignity. Other lay
corporations are erected for the good government of a town or
particular district, as a mayor and commonalty, bailiff and burgesses,
or the like: some for the advancement and regulation of manufactures
and commerce; as the trading companies of London, and other towns: and
some for the better carrying on of divers special purposes; as
churchwardens, for conservation of the goods of the parish; the
college of physicians and company of surgeons in London, for the
improvement of the medical science; the royal society, for the
advancement of natural knowlege; and the society of antiquarians, for
promoting the study of antiquities. And among these I am inclined to
think the general corporate bodies of the universities of Oxford and
Cambridge must be ranked: for it is clear they are not spiritual or
ecclesiastical corporations, being composed of more laymen than
clergy: neither are they eleemosynary foundations, though stipends are
annexed to particular magistrates and professors, any more than other
corporations where the acting officers have standing salaries; for
these are rewards _pro opera et labore_, not charitable donations
only, since every stipend is preceded by service and duty: they seem
therefore to be merely civil corporations. The eleemosynary sort are
such as are constituted for the perpetual distribution of the free
alms, or bounty, of the founder of them to such persons as he has
directed. Of this ki