This ecclesiastical system, however, never obtained a firm footing in England, and the great lawyers and statesmen have always shown not only an unwillingness to defer to its authority, but even an aversion to its rule. There was, however, a kind of national C. L. in England, composed of legative and provincial constitutions, adapted to the par ticular necessities of the English church. The legative constitutions were ecclesiastical laws, enacted in national synods, held under the cardinals Otho and Othobon, legates from pope Gregory IX. and pope Clement IV., in the reign of king Henry III., about the years 1220 and 1268. The protineizil constitutions are principally the decrees of provincial synods, held under divers archbishops of Canterbury, from Stephen Langton, in the reign of Henry III., to Henry Chicheley, in the reign of Henry V., and adopted also by the province of York in the reign of Henry VI. Ar the dawn of the reformation, in the reign of Henry VIII., it was enacted in parliament that a review should be had of the C. L.; and till such review should be made, all canons, constitutions, ordi nances, and synodals provincial being then already made, and not repugnant to the law of the laud or the king's prerogative, should still be used and executed. And as no such review has yet been perfected, upon this enactment now depends the authority of the C. L. in England, the limitations of which appear, upon the whole, to be as follows: that no canon contrary to the common or statute law, or the prerogative royal, is of any validity; that, subject to this condition, the canons made anterior to the parliamentary provision above mentioned, and adopted in our system (for there are some which have had no reception among us), are binding both on clergy and laity; but that canons made since that period, and having no sanction from the parliament, are, as regards the laity at least, of no force. See CANONS OF THE CUURCII OF ENGLAND.
In Scotland, Presbyterian though the ecclesiastical system of that country be, the old Roman C. L. still prevails to a certain extent. " So deep hath this canon law been rooted," observes lord Stair in his Institutes of the Scotch Lau, " that even where the pope's authority is rejected, yet consideration must be had to these laws, not only as those by which church benefices have been erected and ordered, but as likewise con taining many equitable and profitable laws, which, because of their weighty matter, and their being once received, may more fitly be retained than rejected." In two old Scotch acts of parliament, made in 1540 and 1551, the C. L. is used in conjunction with the Roman law to denote the common law of the country, the expression used being " the common law, baith canon, civil, and statutes of the reahne." See on the subject of this article generally the following anthorities—Blackstone's C(»nmentaries, by Kerr, vol. i. pp. 65 and 66; Stephen's Cog 4th edition, Vkil. a, pp. 61 and 69—vol. ii. pp.
251, 256, 257, and 290—vol. iii. pp. 40, 48, and 421—and vol. iv. p. 242; Dr. Irving's Study of the Cicil Law; and Phillimore on the Influence of the Ecclesiastical Law, etc., 1851. See also a discriminating article on this subject in Knight's Political Dictionary, 1845; and see Wharton's Law Dictionary, 2d edition, 1859. It will also be found care fully treated in Dr. Hook's Church Dictionary, 7th edition, 1854. In regard to Scotland, see Stair's Institutes of the Law of Scotland, I. 1, 13, and II. 8, 29; and Erskine's Institutes of the same law, I. 1, 28.