England Church Courts, Discipline of Clergy, Dispensations, and Immorality Cases (National Institute)

Discipline of Clergy
The clergy were expected to conform to church standards of faith and practice exemplified by their pastoral work and worship, and morality as shown by their personal behaviour and dress. Church courts also dealt with any secular criminal offences committed by the clergy because of the mediaeval concept of benefit of clergy, whereby clerics could not be tried in temporal courts for offences which carried a capital penalty. They were tried in church courts which had no death penalty. This privilege was extended to all those who could read, and could thus theoretically become clerics, and prisoners would be tested by reading a verse from a Latin bible, later relaxed to the use of an English text. At one time over 200 offences carried the death penalty in civil courts and the church courts extended (and abused) the custom of benefit of clergy in their efforts to avoid capital sentences for minor offences. However these provisions dwindled after 1576, the test was abolished in 1706 and the procedure itself in 1827.

Diocesan Courts would hear causes challenging the competence of a clergyman to undertake his duties, including non-residence or devoting too much time to their own farming activities.

Dispensations
These were relaxations of canon law required in certain circumstances, naturally with a fee attached! Some examples were:

Plural Benefices
Dispensations for holding benefices in plurality, that is where one priest is in charge of more than one parish. These records frequently include notes of ordination and can be especially valuable if the cleric was ordained in another diocese.

Unbeneficed Clergy
A dispensation was needed for someone not in holy orders to hold a benefice.

Ordination of Illegitimates
Illegitimate men could not normally be ordained unless a dispensation was obtained.

Eating Meat During Lent
The old Catholic practice of not eating meat during Lent was brought back after the Reformation, primarily to encourage the home fishing fleet and have a ready supply of seamen for the Royal Navy!

Dispensations in order to eat flesh were available upon payment of a fee according to the applicant’s rank, but poor people who were ill could obtain a dispensation for 4d from their minister. These were granted well into the 17th century; Wilkes quotes one for an ancestor in 1663:

Marriage Within Degrees
Marriage was only permissible within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity or affinity by dispensation—the royal houses could not have continued without it!

Immorality
Many ecclesiastical courts achieved reputations as bawdy courts because of their apparent preoccupation with sexual offences.

Incest
The range of relationships deemed incestuous was formerly wider than today.

Bigamy
The Bigamy Act of 1604 made this a secular felony, but church courts continued to investigate marriages of those previously separated in case they were bigamous.

Illegitimacy
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