Law Courts 243
might be exerted to enforce the bishop's summons.
William assumed that it was clear to every one what
breaches of church law were. There is certainly no hint
from his reign of "any immunity of from
jurisdiction or temporal punishment.1* Simply, the old
local courts no longer dealt with laymen's failures to
their church obligations.
Between the time of this ordinance and the famous
controversy between Henry II. and Becket, the Jurisdic-
tional claims of the church made a great advance. It
was then that there took place in England what has
aptly called the "reception of Gregorianism." This
might easily be taken to mean too much, but the English
church did become deeply and lastingly affected by the
principles of the great pope; and such a change in so im-
portant an element of the population necessarily touched
the government, and that most markedly in the judiciary.
The unknown author of the Leges Henrici Primi, writing
under Henry L, said that all ordained clergy "are to be
accused before their prelates for all crimes, both the great-
est and the lesser." This writer borrowed so much from
continental principle and practice that it is hard to tell
how far this reflects English custom in his time. But
there is reason to believe that it is not wholly contrary
to fact, and it may safely be concluded that there was
some attempt, in Henry L's reign, to accuse and try
criminous clerks in the bishop's court. William's ordi-
nance said nothing about criminous clerkss and he un-
questionably intended, at the time of its issue, that they
should be dealt with as they always had been in England;
for it was clearly concerned with changing Anglo-Saxon
and not Norman practice. But it should be noticed that
there were three distinguishable parts in the criminal
procedure: accusation, trial, and punishment. William
had come from the continent and dealt with prelates who,
for the most part, had had a continental training; and,
apart from what this particular ordinance said or did
not say, Maitland thinks