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"III. And also many of your said most humble and obedient subjects, and specially those that be of the poorest sort, within this your Realm, be daily convented and called before the said spiritual ordinaries, their commissaries and substitutes, ex officio; sometimes, at the pleasure of the said ordinaries, for malice without any cause; and sometimes at the only promotion and accusement of their summoners and apparitors, being light and undiscreet persons; without any lawful cause of accusation, or credible fame proved against them, and without any presentment in the visitation: and your said poor subjects be thus inquieted, disturbed, vexed, troubled, and put to excessive and importable charges for them to bear and many times be suspended and excommunicate for small and light causes upon the only certificate of the proctors of the adversaries, made under a feigned seal which every proctor hath in his keeping; whereas the party suspended or excommunicate many times never had any warning; and yet when he shall be absolved, if it be out of court, he shall be compelled to pay to his own proctor twenty pence; to the proctor which is against him other twenty pence, and twenty pence to the scribe, besides a privy reward that the judge shall have, to the great impoverishing of your said poor lay subjects.

The ordinaries quickly multiplied in number and increased in pretension. In Boston, in 1651, the King's Arms and its furniture were held to be worth £600. Board was cheap enough. In 1634 the Court set the price of a single meal at sixpence, and an ale quart of beer at a penny. At the Ship Tavern a man had "fire and bed, dyet, wyne and beere betweene meals" for three shillings a day.

Laws were enacted, at that time, revoking the licenses of all inns, alehouses and drinking establishments, except those at James City, and two at the ferries on the York River, where only beer and cider could be sold. This was the first recorded attempt at prohibition in Virginia. After the Rebellion was over, the enactment was modified, permitting the operation of two ordinaries in each county.

At all the cross-roads and court-houses there sprang up taverns or ordinaries, and in these the men of a neighborhood would gather, and over a bowl of punch or a bottle of wine, the expense of which they "clubbed" to share, would spend their evenings. Into this life Washington entered eagerly. As a mere lad his ledger records expenditures: "By a club in Arrack at Mr.

In especial however this session was signalised by three Acts, dealing with Mortmain, Benefit of Clergy, and Annates: and by the "Supplication against the Ordinaries" which took partial effect in the "Submission of the Clergy". Cf.

It dwelt upon the assurances which had been given again and again by the ordinaries that their privileges should not be abused; but these promises had been broken as often as they had been made; so that "continually manifest thieves and murderers, indicted and found guilty of their misdeeds by good and substantial inquests, and afterwards, by the usages of the common lawes of the land, delivered to the ordinaries as clerks convict, were speedily and hastily delivered and set at large by the ministers of the said ordinaries for corruption and lucre; or else because the ordinaries enclaiming such offenders by the liberties of the church would in no wise take the charges in safe keeping of them, but did suffer them to make their purgation by such as nothing knew of their misdeeds, and by such fraud did annull and make void the good and provable trial which was used against such offenders by the king's law; to the pernicious example, increase, and courage of such offenders, if the King's Highness by his authority royal put not speedy remedy thereto."

"VII. And also divers spiritual persons being presented as well by your Highness as others within this your Realm to divers benefices or other spiritual promotions, the said ordinaries and their ministers do not only take of them for their letters of institution and induction many large sums of money and rewards; but also do pact and covenant with the same, taking sure bonds for their indemnity to answer to the said ordinaries for the firstfruits of their said benefices after their institution so as they, being once presented or promoted, as aforesaid, are by the said ordinaries very uncharitably handled, to their no little hindrance and impoverishment; which your said subjects suppose not only to be against all laws, right, and good conscience, but also to be simony, and contrary to the laws of God.

Well, after all, everything has its fair as well as its seamy side; and truly I do not see why the Baron's boot-jack may not stand as fair in heraldry as the water-buckets, waggons, cart- wheels, plough-socks, shuttles, candlesticks, and other ordinaries, conveying ideas of anything save chivalry, which appear in the arms of some of our most ancient gentry.

Moreover, I have both pawned and sold plate for my present subsistence, and if immediately I do not receive a supply of all that is due to me upon amount of ordinaries, the which I do hopefully expect upon former addresses to that purpose, I cannot subsist longer in this Court, nor yet know how to remove out of it, if such should be his Majesty's orders of revocation, by my Lord of Sandwich: a thing intimated to me here by more than common persons, whether with or without ground I cannot say, having not heard one word from any Minister of our Court for the space of above seven weeks last past, or concerning myself anything out of England, save what I read in a London diurnal, that letters from me out of Portugal, by sea, signifying my then immediate return for Madrid, were come to hand.

At last Louis XIII made Treville the captain of his Musketeers, who were to Louis XIII in devotedness, or rather in fanaticism, what his Ordinaries had been to Henry III, and his Scotch Guard to Louis XI. On his part, the cardinal was not behind the king in this respect.