Probate, too, and all matters and suits relating to testacy and intestacy, were disposed of in the Ecclesiastical Courts,--tribunals were attached to the archbishops, bishops, and archdeacons. The Court of Arches, the supreme Ecclesiastical Court for the Province of Canterbury, the Prerogative Court, where all contentious testamentary causes were tried, as well as the Admiralty Courts, were held at Doctors’ Commons. It was a curious mixture of spiritual and legal functions. The judges and officers of the Court were often clergy without any knowledge of the law. They were paid by fees, and, according to the common practice of those days, often discharged their duties by deputy. The advocates who practised before them were, too, anything but ‘learned in the law.’ They wore in Court, if of Oxford, scarlet robes and hoods lined with taffety, and if of Cambridge, white miniver and round black velvet caps. The proctors wore black robes and hoods lined with fur. The procedure was similar to that in vogue in the Common Law Courts, but the nomenclature was entirely different. The substitute for punishment was ‘penance,’ and the consequence of non-submission ‘excommunication,’ which, in addition to spiritual pains, incapacitated the delinquent from bringing any action, and at the end of forty days rendered him liable to imprisonment by the Court of Chancery. The practical result was that both penance and excommunication were indirect methods of extracting money payments. But the whole system was full of abuses, and when, twenty years later, these courts were shorn of all their important functions, it was with the universal concurrence of the public. Until then there were many who shared the opinion of De Foe’s intelligent foreigner, that ‘England was a fine country, but a man called Doctors’ Commons was the devil, for there was no getting out of his clutches, let one’s cause be never so good, without paying a great deal of money.’