3 - Arenas for conflict

Summary

Episodes of conflict between parsons and their parishioners were played out in the ecclesiastical and secular courts of the land. The church courts provided a natural source of remedy for spiritual complaints, serving both to correct offenders and as venues for interpersonal disputes. Visitations channelled offenders against the canons and statutes to the consistory court's correctional side. The court's plenary side heard complaints from plaintiffs concerning such matters as the non-payment of tithes, the neglect of the cure of souls, and vilification of the clergy. Complainants looking for a favourable hearing also had other legal venues from which to choose. The Quarter Sessions heard indictments for assault and mediated in rating disputes. Tithe disputes were brought to the Assize's nisi prius jurisdiction via Common Pleas, as well as to the emerging jurisdictions of the equity courts of Chancery and Exchequer. The chronology of lay–clerical conflict is closely bound up with the histories of the courts and of their competition for business. The church courts suffered a disastrous collapse in business, both correctional and plenary, and in authority in the late seventeenth century, making it difficult to assess changes in the incidence of lay–clerical conflict in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The surviving evidence shows that disputes between clergymen and laymen continued to occur after 1700, although they were less likely than before to appear before the courts.