The present rule which fixes the ordination of clergy in the Ember weeks cannot be traced farther back than the time of Pope Gelasius, A.D. 492-496. In the early ages of the church ordinations took place at any season of the year whenever necessity required. Gelasius is stated by ritual writers to have been the first who limited them to these particular times, the special solemnity of the season being in all probability the cause of the selection. The rule once introduced commended itself to the mind of the church, and its observance spread. We find it laid down in the pontificate of Archbishop Ecgbert of York, A.D. 732-766, and referred to as a canonical rule in a capitulary of Charlemagne, and it was finally established as a law of the church in the pontificate of Gregory VII., c. 1085. AUTHORITIES.--Muratori, _Dissert. de jejun. quat. temp._, c. vii., anecdot. tom. ii. p. 262; Bingham, _Antiq. of the Christ. Church_, bk. iv. ch. vi. § 6, bk. xxi. ch. ii. §§ 1-7; Binterin, _Denkwürdigkeiten_, vol. v. part 2, pp. 133 ff.; Augusti, _Handbuch der christlich. Archäol._ vol. i. p. 465, iii. p. 486. (E. V.) EMBEZZLEMENT (A.-Fr. _embesilement_, from _beseler_ or _besillier_, to destroy), in English law, a peculiar form of theft, which is distinguished from the ordinary crime in two points:--(1) It is committed by a person who is in the position of clerk or servant to the owner of the property stolen; and (2) the property when stolen is in the possession of such clerk or servant. The definition of embezzlement as a special form of theft arose out of the difficulties caused by the legal doctrine that to constitute larceny the property must be taken out of the possession of the owner. Servants and others were thus able to steal with impunity goods entrusted to them by their masters. A statute of Henry VIII. (1529) was passed to meet this case; and it enacted that it should be felony in servants to convert to their own use caskets, jewels, money, goods or chattels delivered to them by their masters. "This act," says Sir J.F. Stephen (_General View of the Criminal Law of England_), "assisted by certain subtleties according to which the possession of the servant was taken under particular circumstances to be the possession of the master, so that the servant by converting the goods to his own use took them out of his own possession _qua_ servant (which was his master's possession) and put them into his own possession _qua_ thief (which was a felony), was considered sufficient for practical purposes for more than 200 years." In 1799 a clerk who had converted to his own use a cheque paid across the counter to him by a customer of his master was held to be not guilty of felony; and in the same year an act was passed, which, meeting the difficulty in such cases, enacted that if any clerk or servant, or any person employed as clerk or servant, should, by virtue of such employment, receive or take