The Rise and Fall of the English Ecclesiastical Courts, 1500–1860

Late Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

Abbreviations; Table of parliamentary statutes; 1. The ecclesiastical courts: structures and procedures; 2. The business of the courts, 1500–1640; 3. Tithe causes; 4. Wills and testamentary causes; 5. Defamation; 6. Matrimonial litigation and marriage licenses; 7. Office causes; 8. The roots of expansion and critical voices; 9. Charting decline, 1640–1830; 10. Explaining decline; 11. The Bills of 1733–1734; 12. Snips and repairs: small steps to reform, 1753–1813; 13. Royal commissions and early fruits, 1815–1832; 14. Reform frustrated; 15. Reforms thick and fast, 1854–1860.