"It was formerly customary," he writes, "in the case of certain crimes to deprive married people of the right of association at _bed and board_ though in all other respects their marriage tie remained intact; and since this practice is contrary to Holy Scripture, involves the greatest confusion, and has introduced an accumulation of evils into matrimony, it is our will that the whole thing be by our authority abolished." What he would have said about our wholesale police court method of separating married people without giving them any rights to form new ties one does not like to imagine. One cannot turn from the short and pithy "Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum" of the sixteenth century to the colossal unwieldy Blue Books of the twentieth century with any sense of satisfaction. Perhaps the most interesting thing to be got out of the latter is a study in contrasts between the body, flavour, and bouquet of archbishops of different vintages. Thomas Cranmer's services to the State being no longer available after the Balliol fire, the choice of his Majesty Edward VII., when he issued his Royal Warrant in 1909 for the Divorce Commission, fell on "The Most Reverend Father in God Our right trusty and entirely beloved Counsellor Cosmo Gordon, Archbishop of York, Primate of England and Metropolitan." One would have hoped that after four hundred years further consideration of Cranmer's views on divorce--the latter-day representative of Cranmer's Church would have been able to give King Edward VII. at least as good counsel as his predecessor gave to Edward VI. No doubt the Minority Report that he ultimately wrote fairly represents the narrower views of modern ecclesiastics, but it is a sad thing to see the leader of a great Church absolutely out of touch with the practical reforms that those who know the lives of the poor admit to be necessary. I should regret if, in a moment of spiritual insight, it should be made clear to our good archbishop that in signing the Minority Report his right hand had been guilty of offence, or that he should think fit to discipline himself after Cranmer's example; but if he had thrust his Minority Report into the fire, Church and State might have sung a joyful psalm of conflagration and congratulation. Alas! Edward VI. passed away without reform, and our brave King Edward VII. changed his world whilst the Commissioners were still commissioning, and maybe it will be Edward VIII.'s turn some four hundred years hence to sign the new divorce law. Let nothing be done in a hurry.