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WIVES OF ECCLESIASTICS.

In reply to your correspondent's query as to the "wives of
ecclesiastics," I find amongst my notes one to this effect:--

ERROR, to assume in ancient genealogies that a branch is
necessarily extinct, simply because the last known representative
is described as "Clericus," and _ergo_, must have died S.P.L.

It will be obvious to many of your readers that Clericus is _nomen
generale_ for all such as were learned in the arts of reading and
writing, and whom the old law deemed capable of claiming benefit of
clergy,--a benefit not confined to those in orders, if the ordinary's
deputy standing by could say "_legit ut clericus_."

The title of Clericus, then, in earlier times as now, belonged not only
to those in the holy ministry of the Church, and to whom more strictly
applied the term Clergy, either regular or secular, but to those as well
who by their function or course of life practised their pens in any
court or otherwise, as Clerk of the King's Wardrobe, Clerks of the
Exchequer, &c. Though in former times clerks of this description were
frequently in holy orders and held benefices, it must be evident that
they were not all so of necessity; and the instances are so numerous
where persons having the title of "Clericus" appear nevertheless to have
been in the married state, and to have discharged functions incompatible
with the service of the Church, that the assertion will not be denied
that the restrictions as to contracting matrimonial alliances did not
extend to clerks not in holy orders or below the grade of _subdiaconus_.
The _Registrum Brevium_ furnishes a precedent of a writ, "_De clerico
infra sacros ordines constituto non eligendo in officium_." This
distinction alone would prove that other clerks were not ineligible to
office. The various decrees of the Church may be cited to show that the
prohibition to marry did not include all clerks generally. Pope Gregory
VII., in a synod held in 1074, "interdixit clericis, maxime divino
ministerio consecratis uxores habere, vel cum mulicribus habitare, nisi
quas Nicena Synodus vel alii canones exceperunt."

The statutes made by Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas,
Archbishop elect of York, and all the other bishops of England, in 1108,
in presence of King Henry I., and with the assent of his barons, confine
the interdiction respecting marriages to _Presbyteri, Diaconi et
Subdiaconi