14 - Reform frustrated

Summary

‘Sir R. Inglis said, whatever other objections there might be to the measure proposed by his right hon. Friend, at least the Government could not be charged with precipitancy in regard to its introduction, for there was no question, he believed, as to which so much had been written and so little done since 1829 as that of the Ecclesiastical Courts.’

Abolition of the court of delegates was the most immediate parliamentary response to the many recommendations of the Ecclesiastical Courts Commissioners, that ‘most able and learned body of men’, as Lord Brougham described them in a speech in the Lords in 1833. Brougham also lamented the failure of the house to pass his Local Courts Bill. This had made it necessary for him, he argued, to bring forward a measure transferring the jurisdiction of the minor ecclesiastical courts, which he numbered at no fewer than 340, to the diocesan courts. There were disadvantages in such a transfer, he conceded. Some litigants and others would have to travel greater distances to conduct their legal business, an inconvenience that would been avoided had the Lords passed the Local Courts Bill.

The other recommendations of the 1830 commissioners were not forgotten either. The new bill promised to abolish the criminal jurisdiction of the church courts, transforming the offences formerly punishable by them into misdemeanours punishable by the temporal magistracy.