The present Court of Appeal is deduced, in the Historical Introduction, as a natural and logical consequence, from Henry VIII.'s Supremacy. Undoubtedly it is scarcely possible to overstate the all-grasping despotism of Henry VIII., and if a precedent for anything reckless of all separate rights and independence should be wanted, it would never be sought in vain if looked for in the policy and legislation of that reign. So far the editors are right; the power over religion claimed by Henry VIII. will carry them wherever they want to go; it will give them, if they need it, as a still more logical and legitimate development of the Supremacy, the Court of High Commission. Only they ought to have remembered, as fair historians, that even in the days of the Supremacy the distinct nature and business of the Church and of Churchmen was never denied. Laymen were given powers over the Church and in the Church which were new; but the distinct province of the Church, if abridged and put under new control, was not abolished. Side by side with the facts showing the Supremacy and its exercise are a set of facts, for those who choose to see them, showing that the Church was still recognised, even by Henry VIII., as a body which he had not created, which he was obliged to take account of, and which filled a place utterly different from every other body in the State. Henry VIII. played the tyrant with his Churchmen as he did with his Parliament and with everybody else; and Churchmen, like everybody else, submitted to him. But the "Imperialism" of Henry VIII., though it went beyond even the Imperialism of Justinian and Charlemagne in its encroachments on the spiritual power, as little denied the fact of that power as they did. He recognised the distinct place and claims of the spiritualty; and, as we suppose that even the editors of this volume hardly feel themselves bound to make out the consistency of Henry, they might have spared themselves the weak and not very fair attempt to get rid of the force of the remarkable words in which this recognition is recorded in the first Statute of Appeals (24 Henry VIII. c. 12). The words would, no doubt, be worth but little, were it not that as a matter of fact a spiritualty did act and judge and lay down doctrine, and even while yielding to unworthy influence did keep up their corporate existence.