disturber should be attached by his body, and if convicted, lie in prison till he were ransomed at the King’s will, and had satisfied the party grieved, renounced his title, and found sureties not to sue for it any further; and that if they could not be found, then exigents should go forth to outlawry, and the profits of the benefice in the mean time be taken into the King’s hands. And the same statute is confirmed in the twenty-seventh year of King Edward III; which statute alloweth to these provisors two months to appear: but if they appear before they be outlawed, they shall be received to make answer; but if they render not themselves, they shall forfeit all their lands, goods, and chattels, besides that they stand outlawed. The same law is confirmed again by 16 _Rich. II_, _c._ 5; in which is added, because these provisors obtained sometimes from the Pope, that such English bishops, as according to the law were instituted and inducted by the King’s presentees, should be excommunicated, that for this also both they, and the receivers and publishers of such papal process, and the procurers, should have the same punishment. _P._ Let me see the statute itself of 27 _Edw. III_. _L._ It lies there before you, set down _verbatim_ by Sir Edward Coke himself, both in English and French. _P._ It is well. We are now to consider what it means, and whether it be well or ill interpreted by Sir Edward Coke. And first it appeareth by the preamble, which Sir Edward Coke acknowledgeth to be the best interpreter of the statute, that this statute was made against the encroachments only of the Church of Rome upon the right of the King, and other patrons, to collate bishoprics and other benefices within the realm of England, and against the power of the courts spiritual to hold plea of controversies determinable in any of the courts of the King, or to reverse any judgment there given, as being things that tend to the disherison of the King and destruction of the common-law of the realm always used. Put the case now, that a man had procured the Pope to reverse a decree in chancery. Had he been within the danger of præmunire? _L._ Yes, certainly. Or if the judgment had been given in the Court of the Lord Admiral, or in any other King’s court whatsoever, either of law or equity. For courts of equity are most properly courts of the common-law of England, because equity and common-law, as Sir Edward Coke says, are all one. _P._ Then the word common-law is not in this preamble restrained to such courts only where the trial is by juries, but comprehends all the King’s temporal courts, if not also the courts of those subjects that are lords of great manors. _L._ It is very likely, yet I think it will not by every man be granted.