ould be held by him in trust for the Holy See. He was
authorised by law to repress spiritual abuses; and the first spiritual
abuse which he would repress should be the liberty which the Anglican
clergy assumed of defending their own religion and of attacking the
doctrines of Rome. [93]

But he was met by a great difficulty. The ecclesiastical supremacy
which had devolved on him, was by no means the same great and terrible
prerogative which Elizabeth, James the First, and Charles the First had
possessed. The enactment which annexed to the crown an almost boundless
visitatorial authority over the Church, though it had never been
formally repealed, had really lost a great part of its force. The
substantive law remained; but it remained unaccompanied by any
formidable sanction or by any efficient system of procedure, and was
therefore little more than a dead letter.

The statute, which restored to Elizabeth the spiritual dominion assumed
by her father and resigned by her sister, contained a clause authorising
the sovereign to constitute a tribunal which might investigate, reform,
and punish all ecclesiastical delinquencies. Under the authority given
by this clause, the Court of High Commission was created. That court
was, during many years, the terror of Nonconformists, and, under the
harsh administration of Laud, became an object of fear and hatred even
to those who most loved the Established Church. When the Long Parliament
met, the High Commission was generally regarded as the most grievous
of the many grievances under which the nation laboured. An act was
therefore somewhat hastily passed, which not only took away from the
Crown the power of appointing visitors to superintend the Church, but
abolished all ecclesiastical courts without distinction.

After the Restoration, the Cavaliers who filled the House of Commons,
zealous as they were for the prerogative, still remembered with
bitterness the tyranny of the High Commission, and were by no means
disposed to revive an institution so odious. They at the same time
thought, and not without reason, that the statute which had swept away
all the courts Christian of the realm, without providing any substitute,
was open to grave objection. They accordingly repealed that statute,
with the exception of the part which related to the High Commission.
Thus, the Archidiaconal Courts, the Consistory Courts, the Court of
Arches, the Court of Peculiars, and the Court of Delegates were