§ 32. THE ARCHBISHOP AND THE KING. 133
IV. No archbishop, bishop, or other exalted person shall leave the king dom without the king's license ; and if they wish to leave it, the king shall be empowered, if he pleases, to take security from them, that they will do no harm to the king or kingdom, either in going or remaining, or in returning.
V. Persons excommunicated are not to give bail, ad remanentiam, nor to make oath, but only to give bail and pledge that they will stand by the judg ment of the Church where they are absolved.
VI. Laics shall not be accused, save by certain and legal accusers and witnesses in presence of the bishop, so that the archdeacon may not lose his rights, or anything which accrues to him therefrom. And if those who are arraigned are such that no one is willing or dares to accuse them, the sheriff, on demand from the bishop, shall cause twelve loyal men of the village to swear before the bishop that they will declare the truth in that matter accord ing to their conscience.
VII. No one who holds of the king in chief, nor any of his domestic ser vants, shall be excommunicated, nor his lands be put under an interdict, until the king shall be consulted, if he is in the kingdom ; or, if he is abroad, his justiciary, that he may do what is right in that matter, and so that what ever belongs to the king's court may therein be settled, and the same on the other hand of the ecclesiastical court.
VIII. Appeals, if they arise, must be made from the archdeacon to the bishop, and from the bishop to the archbishop ; and if the archbishop shall fail in administering justice, the parties shall come before our lord the king, that by his precept the controversy may be terminated in the archbishop's court, so that it may not proceed further without the consent of our lord the king.
IX. If a dispute shall arise between a clerk and a laic, or between a laic and a clerk, about a tenement, which the clerk wishes to claim as eleemosy nary, but the laic claims as lay fee, it shall be settled by the declaration of twelve qualified men, through the agency of the king's capital judiciary, whether the tenement is eleemosynary or lay fee, in presence of the king's judiciaries. And if it shall be declared that it is eleemosynary, it shall be pleaded in the ecclesiastical court ; but, if a lay fee, unless both shall claim the tenement of the same bishop or baron, it shall be pleaded in the king's court ; but if both shall claim of that fee from the same bishop or baron, it shall be pleaded in his court, yet so that the same declaration above-named shall not deprive of seizing him who before was seized, until he shall be divested by the pleadings.
X. If any man belonging to a city, castle, borough, or king's royal manor shall be summoned by the archdeacon or bishop to answer for a crime, and shall not comply with the summons, it shall be lawful to place him under an interdict, but not to excommunicate him, until the king's principal officer of that place be informed thereof, that he may justify his appearing to the sum mons ; and if the king's officer shall fail in that matter, he shall be at the king's mercy, and the bishop shall forthwith coerce the party accused with ecclesiastical discipline.
XI. The archbishops, bishops, and all other persons of the kingdom, who
134 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1123-1108.
hold of the king in chief, shall hold their possessions of the king as barony, and answer for the same to the king's justiciaries and officers, and follow and observe all the king's customs and rectitudes ; and be bound to be present, in the judgment of the king's court with the barons, like other barons, until the judgment proceeds to mutilation or death.
XII. When an archbishopric, bishopric, abbacy, or priory on the king's domain shall be vacant, it shall be in his hand, and he shall receive from it all the revenues and proceeds, as of his domains. And when the time shall come for providing for that church, our lord the king shall recommend the best persons to that church, and the election shall be made in the king's chapel, with the king's consent, and the advice of the persons of the kingdom whom he shall have summoned for that purpose. And the person elected shall there do homage and fealty to our lord the king, as to his liege lord, of life and limb, and of his earthly honors saving his orders, before he is conse crated.
XIII. If any of the king's nobles shall have refused to render justice to an archbishop or bishop or archdeacon, for himself or any of his men, our lord the king shall justice them. And if by chance any one shall have deforced our lord the king of his rights, the archbishops, bishops, and arch deacons shall justice him that he may render satisfaction to the king.
XIV. The chattels of those who are in forfeiture to the king shall not be detained by the Church or the cemetery, in opposition to the king's justice, for they belong to the king, whether they are found in the Church or without.
XV. Pleas for debts which are due, whether with the interposition of a pledge of faith or not, belong to the king's court.
XVI. The sons of rustics shall not be ordained without the consent of the lord, in whose land they are known to have been born.
These Constitutions were drawn up in the spirit and lan guage of feudalism, under the inspiration of the king, by Archbishop Roger of York, Bishop Foliot of London (the chief enemies of Becket), Bishop Joceline of Salisbury, Richard de Luci (the king's chief judiciary), and Joceline of Baliol. They are restrictions on the immunities of the clergy; the last is an invasion of the rights of the people, but is based on the canonical exclusion of slaves from the clerical order without the consent of their masters. They subject the clergy equally with the laity to the crown and the laws of the land. They reduce the Church to an imperium in imperio, instead of recognizing her as a distinct and independent imperium. They formulate in the shape of legal enactments certain " ancient customs " (comuetudines) which