IV. By an easy transition we pass from ecclesiastical revenues to ecclesiastical courts. Both the Archidiaconal and the Consistorial resumed their activity after the Restoration, and before them were brought numerous charges of delinquency, respecting clergymen and laymen. It would be beyond my purpose to enter into the _penetralia_ of these intricate proceedings; it will be sufficient to notice the nature of some of the accusations on which individuals were arraigned, as illustrative of the social life of the period. Yet before doing so I must notice two circumstances, which require more attention than they have received from historians. The first is this:-- [Sidenote: ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS.] By the Act of the 13th Charles II. cap. 12, which restored the jurisdiction of the ordinary Ecclesiastical Courts, but abolished that of the extraordinary High Commission Court, it was expressly provided that there should no longer be any administration of the _ex-officio_ oath, by which persons were compelled to accuse, or to purge themselves of any criminal matter. But as it has been recently remarked, whilst the letter of this enactment seems to have been so far observed, that an accused clergyman or other person, liable to deprivation, could not be obliged to answer on oath as to the truth of the charge,--the spirit of the enactment, in certain other cases, was violated to a great extent. For, in the administration of articles to a defendant in a cause of correction, the practice was to charge the commission of the offence on the ground of public “fame,” without specific evidence, and to require the defendant to answer on oath, who, if he failed to do so, was treated as having admitted the truth of the allegation. Thus, instead of the burden of proving guilt being thrown on the accuser, the burden of establishing innocence seems to have rested on the accused, and he became liable to be called upon to make “canonical purgation;” _i.e._, “to declare on oath that he was not guilty of the offence, and to produce a certain number of witnesses, as ‘compurgators,’ to swear that they believed his declaration to be true.”[292] This circumstance shows, in what a limited degree the Act of Charles II., restoring the ecclesiastical courts, diminished even oppressive tendencies; how, whilst it altered them in form, it left scope for the exercise of their former spirit, and how they remained instruments of injustice and cruelty, to be used by those who were malignantly or resentfully disposed. At the same time we should carefully weigh the number and the nature of the appeals made from the judgment of the lower to the decision of the higher authority. To this I will presently direct attention.