bind the laity[z]; whatever regard the
clergy may think proper to pay them.

[Footnote z: Stra. 1057.]

THERE are four species of courts in which the civil and canon laws are
permitted under different restrictions to be used. 1. The courts of
the arch-bishops and bishops and their derivative officers, usually
called in our law courts christian, _curiae christianitatis_, or the
ecclesiastical courts. 2. The military courts. 3. The courts of
admiralty. 4. The courts of the two universities. In all, their
reception in general, and the different degrees of that reception, are
grounded intirely upon custom; corroborated in the latter instance by
act of parliament, ratifying those charters which confirm the
customary law of the universities. The more minute consideration of
these will fall properly under that part of these commentaries which
treats of the jurisdiction of courts. It will suffice at present to
remark a few particulars relative to them all, which may serve to
inculcate more strongly the doctrine laid down concerning them[a].

[Footnote a: Hale Hist. c. 2.]

1. AND, first, the courts of common law have the superintendency over
these courts; to keep them within their jurisdictions, to determine
wherein they exceed them, to restrain and prohibit such excess, and
(in case of contumacy) to punish the officer who executes, and in some
cases the judge who enforces, the sentence so declared to be illegal.

2. THE common law has reserved to itself the exposition of all such
acts of parliament, as concern either the extent of these courts or
the matters depending before them. And therefore if these courts
either refuse to allow these acts of parliament, or will expound them
in any other sense than what the common law puts upon them, the king's
courts at Westminster will grant prohibitions to restrain and control
them.

3. AN appeal lies from all these courts to the king, in the last
resort; which proves that the jurisdiction exercised in them is
derived from the crown of England, and not from any foreign potentate,
or intrinsic authority of their own.--And, from these three strong
marks and ensigns of superiority, it appears beyond a doubt that the
civil and canon laws, though admitted in some cases by custom in some
courts, are only subordinate and _leges sub graviori lege_; and that,
thus admitted, restrained, altered, new-modelled, and amended, they
are by no means with us a distinct independent species of laws