imprisonment or banishment." For this crime and similar offenses "clerical delinquents" are treated with even greater severity.[237] [Footnote 234: "Inter conjuges si capitales intercedant inimicitiae tamque vehementer exarserint, ut alter alterum aut insidiis aut venenis appellat, aut aliqua vel aperta vi, vel occulta peste, vitam velit eripere, quamprimum tam horribile crimen probatum fuerit, rite in juditio divortio volumus hujuscemodi personas distrahi."--_Ref. leg. ecc.: ap._ JEAFFRESON, _op. cit._, II, 320, 321, note.] [Footnote 235: "Parva contentiones, nisi perpetuae sint, divortium non inducunt."--_Ref. leg. ecc.: ap._ JEAFFRESON, _op. cit._, II, 321.] [Footnote 236: JEAFFRESON, _op. cit._, II, 321.] [Footnote 237: _Ibid._, 322, 323.] The report prepared by the commission never received the sanction of the king; nor does it appear that any authoritative change in the canon law relating to divorce was ever made until the present century. Nevertheless the _Reformatio Legum_ "is a work of great authority, showing the recognized opinion and sentiment of the church of England at that time and containing the views of the first reformers."[238] The principle represented by it was carried out in practice, though it may well be doubted whether, as is sometimes urged,[239] the decrees of the ecclesiastical court ever went so far as expressly to grant dissolution of wedlock. According to the ancient form of judgment, divorce was probably still pronounced only _a mensa et thoro_; but, whatever the shape of the decrees, there is strong evidence that from about 1548 to 1602, except for the short period of Mary's reign, "the community, in cases of adultery, relied upon them as justifying a second act of matrimony."[240] For already in 1548--four years before Edward's commission had completed its report--the new doctrine had been in a measure sustained by the well-known case of Lord Northampton, brother of Queen Catherine Parr. After obtaining a decision of an ecclesiastical court separating him from his wife, Anne Bourchier, the marquis had contracted another union with Elizabeth Brooke, daughter of Lord Cobham. Subsequently a commission of delegates, headed by the archbishop of Canterbury, declared the second marriage valid, "because the former contract had been absolutely destroyed" by Anne Bourchier's infidelity;[241] and in 1552 this decision was confirmed by an act of Parliament[242] which declares the marriage valid "by the law of God,--any decretal, canon ecclesiastical, law, or usage to the contrary notwithstanding."[243] [Footnote 238: GEARY, _Marriage and Family Relations_, 8 n. 6.]