Transcribed from the 1851 Joseph Masters edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org [Picture: Public domain book cover] A SECOND LETTER TO THE BISHOP OF EXETER. * * * * * BY A LAYMAN * * * * * FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY. * * * * * LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR BY JOSEPH MASTERS, ALDERSGATE STREET. MDCCCLI. * * * * * A LETTER. MY DEAR LORD, I TRUST I can now satisfy you that we have both been labouring under a great mistake for some time, and that after all no ecclesiastical rule can properly be said to have been violated by the judgment of the Privy Council in the Gorham Case, but that it is quite right that the Crown should have the jurisdiction in such a case which they have actually exercised. The question then is this, What is the real nature of the suit called Duplex Querela? For a suit it is no doubt, (though I had at one time thought otherwise) and one too in the Archbishop’s Court. You will find from our older authorities that the Archbishops of Canterbury in former times used to claim the right of interfering in their comprovincial dioceses per simplicem querelam, i.e. as I believe, of acting, so to speak, in all cases as joint ordinary with each Bishop throughout their province. This claim of jurisdiction is specially mentioned and discussed in Gibson’s Codex. This right, however, was disputed and given up, and the jurisdiction was ultimately confined to those cases alone in which, after an application to the Comprovincial Bishop, he had heard the Clerk and decided wrongly against him. This right the injured Clerk pursued by the process called the Duplex Querela, a process there is some reason to believe peculiar to the province of Canterbury, and arising from the legatine jurisdiction of that See,—as it is well known that the Archbishops of Canterbury anciently claimed to be legati nati of the Pope. {4} But whether this be so or not, it is clear that either on this ground or as metropolitans, they have always exercised this jurisdiction within their province. I cannot find any instance of the Archbishop of York doing this, which inclines me to this hypothesis of the legatine jurisdiction. If this be the nature of the Duplex Querela it is manifest that it consists really of two parts wholly separate and distinct from each other; one, a suit in the Archbishop’s Court for the purpose of determining whether the Archbishop has in the particular case, this jurisdiction: and this depends on the question whether the Bishop has committed an error;—and secondly, a claim by the Clerk that if the