2. Ecclesiastics, when accused of any crime, shall appear before the king's justices, who shall determine whether the case ought to be tried in the secular or episcopal courts. The king's justices shall inquire into the manner in which causes of this kind are judged by the ecclesiastical courts; and if the clerk is convicted or confesses his crime, he shall lose his benefit of clergy. 3. No archbishop, bishop, or ecclesiastic of high rank shall leave the kingdom without the king's permission. If he should go abroad, he must give surety to the king for his return, and for his good conduct in all matters affecting the interests of the king. 4. Excommunicated persons shall not be bound to give security for continuing in their present place of abode, but merely for presenting themselves to suffer the judgment of the church and to receive absolution. 5. No tenant in chief of the king, no officer of his household, or of his demesnes, shall be excommunicated, or his lands put under an interdict, until application has been made to the king, or, in his absence, to the grand justiciary, in order to obtain justice at his hands. 6. All appeals in spiritual causes shall be carried from the archdeacon to the bishop, from the bishop to the primate, and from him to the king, and shall be carried no further without the king's consent. {277} 7. If any law-suit arise between a layman and an ecclesiastic concerning the nature of a fief, the question shall be decided by the king's chief justice, by the verdict of twelve _probi homines_; and according as the nature of the fief may be determined, further proceedings shall be carried on before the civil or ecclesiastical courts. 8. Any inhabitant of a city, town, borough or manor in the king's demesnes, who has been cited before an ecclesiastical court to answer for some offence, and who has refused to appear, may be placed under an interdict; but no one may be excommunicated till the chief officer of the place where he resides be consulted, that he may compel him by the civil authority to give satisfaction to the church. 9. The judgment of all causes, for debts contracted by oath or otherwise, is referred to the civil courts. 10. When any archbishopric, or bishopric, or abbey, or priory of royal foundation is vacant, the king shall enjoy its revenues; and when it becomes necessary to fill up a see, the king shall summon a chapter to proceed, in the royal chapel, to the election, which must obtain the sanction of the king, according to the advice of the prelates whom he may have thought proper to consult; and the bishop-elect shall swear fealty and homage to the king as to his lord, for all his temporal possessions, with the exception of the rights of his order. 11. Churches belonging to the king's fee shall not be granted in perpetuity without his consent.