Note 38 — Chapter II · Local Customs—Civic, Aquatic, Ceremonial.

Editor’s Note.—It was the excommunication of Queen Elizabeth by the Pope that led to the transference of the Channel Islands from the Diocese of Coutances to that of Winchester. Canon MacColl in his “Reformation Settlement” notes as an extraordinary fact that the Bishop of Coutances so far disapproved of that excommunication as to have offered, on condition that his jurisdiction was allowed, to give institution to those clergy whom the Queen might nominate from the English Universities. In fact, up to the date of the bull of excommunication, the islands remained under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Coutances, who permitted the use of the reformed Prayer Book, and ruled, apparently without a protest, over a portion of his diocese, in which the claim to supremacy on the part of the Pope was denied.