SEQUESTRATION is a process by which the revenues of an ecele aiaatical benefice are received and applied by persons other than the incumbent of it. It issues immediately from the bishop in all cases, but it may be founded upon proceedings commenced either in his own court or in the temporal courts. It is a mandate, in the nature of a warrant, addressed by the. bishop to the parties who are to execute it. These are called eequestrators, and in general are the churchwardens of the parish. So far as regards their duties under the sequestratiou, they are a kind of bailiffs. They collect the fruits of the benefice, and apply them according to the directions they receive in each case.
The occasions on which a sequestration is founded on proceedings in the court of the bishop are various. There may be a sequestration where a living is vacant by death ; in order to provide for the ex penses of supplying the cure, and to preserve the surplus for the successor. Where the title to a living is in dispute, a sequestration may issue under which some third party collects the fruits, and, after defraying the salary of the curate and other necessary expenses of the benefice, retains the surplus for the party who may appear to be law fully entitled. There are many occasions also where the bishop acting judicially may sequester a living, as where the parsonage-house is in decay, and the incumbent, after due admonition, which may be made by the archdeacon, fails for a period of two months to repair it. The payment of a curate's salary may also ho enforced by sequestration.
Sequestrations founded on proceedings in the temporal courts occur under the following circumstances :—Tho sheriff, the ordinary minis terial officer of those courts, has no power to interfere with ecclesi astical revenues. When a judgment therefore has been obtniucd against a beneficed clergyman, and execution has issued upon it, and the clergyman has no lay property upon which the sheriff can levy, he makes a return that the defendant is a beneficed clerk having no lay fee within his bailiwick. The plaintiff may then sue out a writ ad
dressed to the bishop, directing him to levy the amount upon tho clergyman's ecclesiastical goods. The bishop upon this issues a 'seques tration, directing the sequestrators to levy the debt upon the profits of the benefice ; or the plaintiff may sue out a sequestrari addressed to the bishop. The bishop, under these circumstances, is said to be a kind of ecclesiastical sheriff; and the temporal courts, in so far as relates to his duties as such ministerial officer, have the same power over him as they have over the sheriff, and his duties are ana logous. [snetiirr.l The sequestration ought to be forthwith pub lished by reading it in church during divine service, and afterwards at the church-door. The party obtaining it may, on giving proper security, name his own sequestraters. Under either of those writs the plaintiff is entitled to the growing profits, until the whole suns endorsed upon it is satisfied, even although this should not occur till after the time at which the writ is returnable. The necessary expenses of the sequestration, &c., are also leviable under the writ. The lands are bound from the time of the delivery of it to the bishop, Sequestration in chancery is a "writ issuing out of the court, directed to four or more commiemioners, empowering them to cuter into a defendant's real estates, and to sequester into their own hands not only the reuts thereof, but also all his goods, chattels, and personal estate whatsoever, to keep the same until the defendant has fully answered his contempt." It issues upon the occasion of their com mitting a contempt against the court, by keeping out of the way of the serjeact-at-arms, or escaping from custody, or disobeying an order of the court to pay money.
Sequestration Mao may bo issued from the Courts of Common Law against a corporation, to compel obedience to a mandamus or injunction.