If,
however, a man were obdurate and hardened he was turned over to the
Queen's High Commissioners, and these, while making the fullest use of
ecclesiastical procedure and the oath _ex officio_,[169] also freely
employed the penalties of the temporal courts, viz., fines and
imprisonments. As no ecclesiastical offence was too small for the
Commissioners to deal with, and as their jurisdiction was not limited
(like that of the ordinaries) to a district or a diocese, courts of
High Commission may be called universal ordinaries.[170] Finally, if a
person stood excommunicate over forty days, an ecclesiastical judge,
on application to the diocesan, might procure against him out of
Chancery the writ _De excommunicato capiendo_. This writ was probably
not very often resorted to in practice, partly because of the great
expense involved, and partly perhaps, too, because of the slack
execution of the writ by certain undersheriffs or bailiffs, encouraged
as they were by the rather hostile attitude sometimes assumed against
the courts Christian by the Queen's temporal judges.[171] The writ
was, however, certainly no dead letter, and served also _in terrorem_
to reduce stubborn offenders.[172] Indeed Archbishop Bancroft in 1605
called it "the chiefest temporal strength of ecclesiastical
jurisdiction.
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