Note 1292 — Chapter X · RISE OF CIVIL MARRIAGE

The Reformers charged that the throng of greedy place-hunters, attracted by fees and emoluments, corrupted the courts as well as the entire ecclesiastical administration of the bishops: see particularly Milton's "Likeliest Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church," Works, III, 1-41: Sir Henry Spelman, he says, "proves that fees exacted or demanded for sacraments, marriages, burials, and especially for interring, are wicked, accursed, simoniacal, and abominable" (loc. cit., 21). "Nor did other abuses imputed to these obnoxious jurisdictions fail to provoke censure, such as the unreasonable fees of their officers, and the usage of granting licenses and commuting penances for money. The ecclesiastical courts indeed have generally been reckoned more dilatory, vexatious, and expensive than those of the common law."—Hallam, Const. Hist., I, 115; cf. 454.

"At Durham, at Lancaster, and at Ely, the Bishops sitting each as a Pope in his own dominions professed to exercise temporal as well as spiritual power, but they had in fact permitted gross abuses to corrupt and obstruct the fountain of justice."—Inderwick, The Interregnum, 184.