The 6th canon enacts regulations respecting testaments. On this subject, the following quotation, from the proceedings of a council in 1420, will serve to explain the canon which modified the exaction of mortuaries, mentioned in p. 351. The clergy of each diocese reported on oath to the council, “That the practice was first to pay the debts of the deceased, and then to divide his effects into three equal portions, whereof one was given to his widow, and one to his children: That the executors bestowed the remaining third in payment of legacies, and for the soul of the deceased (pro exequiis et anima defuncti): That of this third or _dead’s part_ (defuncti pars) the executors were wont to pay, or to compound with the ordinary, at the rate of five per cent for the expense of confirmation.” Chartulary of Moray, apud Lord Hailes’s Prov. Councils, p. 23. Besides the five per cent claimed by the bishop, we have already seen that the vicar had twenty per cent, even according to the mitigated arrangement, before any legacy was paid. No mention is made of the case of a person leaving neither wife nor {418} children; and _there_ it was,” says Lord Hailes, “that the clergy reaped their harvest.” He might have added the case of persons dying intestate, to whom the bishops had the power of naming executors. That was the golden age of the clergy, when they were under no necessity of instituting processes for augmentation from unexhausted teinds, or of count and reckoning to recover the use of funds destined to their support! Note Y, Footnote 245. _Of the Catechism commonly called Archbishop Hamilton’s._――Very different and discordant accounts have been given of this book. My account is taken from the catechism itself, compared with the canon of the council which authorized its use. The title is as follows:――