244 The Period of Constitution Making"
it very possible that Lanfranc would have demanded and the
Conqueror conceded the general principle that the trial of the
accused clerk must take place before the spiritual forum;
[but doubts] whether more than this would have been con-
ceded or even demanded, whether as much as this could
always be obtained.1
If the accusation were in a lay court, a sort of possession
of the case was obtained which, made possible a share in
the punishment. The church could not pronounce a
judgment which involved loss of life or limb; hence it was
essential to the peace of the country that the civil au-
thority be able to supplement, in case of heinous crimes,
the church's degradation of the clerk. It is significant
that no one denied Henry II.'s claim that the procedure he
advocated was the actual practice in the time of his
grandfather.2 We may venture, then, to sum up the
competence of the church courts during the three Norman
reigns. They had jurisdiction over all clergy and laymen
in matters falling within the domain of the canon law,
and, by their interpretation, that domain spread and
many civil cases were being drawn from the lay courts.
They had the trial of ordained clergy who had been
accused of crimes in the lay courts, and, in cases where a
blood judgment would have been rendered in a lay court,
turned the degraded clerk over to the secular arm for
further punishment. But there must have been many
exceptions to this rule, if one may venture to call it such;
there were probably instances in which criminous clerks
had accusation, trial, and sole punishment in the church
court, and it is certain that in some cases the church did
not even get the trial.
In the reign of Stephen, the church courts made their
highest pretensions and attained their widest jurisdiction.
Stephen's temperament and the circumstances of his
succession led him, early in his reign, to make broad and
unwise promises to various individuals and classes. His
* P. and M. iť 454. * See below, pp. 247-249.