Note 162 — Chapter III · SURNAMES OF OFFICE.

The Ordinary was any ecclesiastic judge, the bishop himself, or his deputy. Thus, in a statute of Edward III., dated 1341, it is said:—‘Item, it is accorded and assented that the king and his heirs shal have the conisance of the usurers dead, and that the Ordinaries of Holy Church—les Ordinares de Seinte Esglise—have the conisance of usurers in life, as to them appertaineth, to make compulsion by the censures of Holy Church for the sin,’ &c. (Stat. Realm, vol. i. p. 296.) We still call the gaol chaplain the ordinary who conducts the condemned prisoner to the scaffold and reads the appointed service. The Parliamentary Writs give us a ‘John Ordeiner’ and a ‘Stephen Ordinar.’