parties acquiesce in his judgment, the case is taken to the local court of law, or Sorenskrivers' court, which is also held within each parish, to be sanctioned, revised as to rights of any third parties, and registered, when it has the validity of a final decision. If one party agrees and the other does not, the party not agreeing appeals to the local or Sorenskrivers' court, which sits once, at least, in every parish in every quarter of a year; but he will have the expenses of both parties to pay, if the terms of agreement proposed and rejected are judged not unreasonable. In this higher court, which is, properly speaking, the lowest legal court, the parties may appear, if they choose, by their law agents; but in this and all the subsequent higher courts no new matter, statements, or reference are received but what stand in the protocol of the commissioner of the court of mutual agreement. (Laing's Journal of a Residence in Norway, 1836.)

v. Fergus, 7th July, 1796, M. 633.) The decree arbitral must be executed with the usual solemnities of written deeds in Scotland. A submission in which the arbiters are not named is not binding on the parties. If there be more than one arbiter, the decree is not valid unless they be unanimous. An oversman may be named in the submission, or the arbiters may be empowered to choose one. It is a condition precedent to any reference to an oversman, that the arbiters are not unanimous, and the proceedings of an oversman are null if there is no difference of opinion. The oversman's decree must bear that the arbiters differed in opinion. A time during which the submission is to be in force may be fixed with or without a power of prorogation. It has become a practice that when a blank space is left in the submission for the period of its continuance, that period is held to be a year. Where there is no such blank, it is presumed that the submission subsists for the period of what is called "the long prescription," viz. 40 years.

ARCHBISHOP. [BISHOP.]

ARCHDEACON. In contemplating the character and office of the bishop in the early ages of the church, we are not to regard him as a solitary person acting alone and without advice. He had a species of clerical council around him, persons who lived a kind of collegiate life in buildings attached to the great cathedral church, each of whom, or at least several of whom, possessed distinct offices, such as those of chancellor, trea

ARBITRATION. In Scotland the system of arbitration is a modification of that of the Roman law. The submission, by which the parties agree to abide by the decision of an arbiter, is a regularly executed contract, and it requires all the solemnities peculiar to the execution of deeds in Scotland. According to the practice by which, on the consent of the parties to that effect embodied in its substance, a contract may be registered for execution, the submission may contain a clause authorizing the decree to be pronounced on it to be registered for execution; and when so registered, the arbiter's decision is insurer, precentor, and the like. These the same position as the decree of a court. It was formerly usual to embody a clause of registration for execution against the arbiter if he failed to give a decision. This practice is now disused, but it is still held, according to the doctrine of the civilians, that an arbiter who has accepted the submission can be judicially compelled to decide. Where there were two arbiters, and action was raised against one of them, either to concur with the other or name an oversman (umpire), "the court, without entering on the question how far a sole arbiter is bound to decide, were clear that against one of two arbiters the conclusions of the action were ill-founded."-(White | belongs to the archdeacon was anciently

persons are now often called canons; but
the most general name by which they are
known, as the institution existed in re-
mote times, is that of deacon, a term
of which dean is a contraction. Deacon
appears to come from the Greek term
diáconos (diákovos), the name of that
officer in the church of whose appoint-
ment we have an account in Acts,
vi. To one of these deacons precedence
was given, and no doubt some species of
superintendence or control, and to him
the title of archdeacon was assigned.
In the name there is no indication of
any peculiar employment.
What now

performed by the officer in the bishop's | until the creation of Manchester into a The bishop's see, which will not occur until court called the chorepiscopus. chorepiscopus (XwрeriσкоTOS) was the the next vacancy in the see of St. Asaph bishop's deputy or vicar in small towns and Bangor. and country places, in which he discharged the minor episcopal functions. He might be of episcopal rank or not (Ducange, Glossarium). The chorepiscopus is mentioned in a Constitution of Justinian. (Cod. i. tit. 3, s. 41 (42).) The manner in which the archdeacon usurped upon this obsolete officer and attracted to himself the functions which belonged to him, is supposed to have been this:-being near the bishop and much trusted by him, the archdeacon was often employed by the bishop to visit distant parts of the diocese, especially when the bishop required particular and authentic information, and to report to the bishop the actual state of things. Hence deacons were spoken of by very early Christian writers as being the bishop's eye; and from this power of inspection and report the transition was easy to the delegation, to one of the deacons, of a portion of episcopal authority, and empowering him to proceed to reform and redress, as well as to observe and report.

If this is a just account of the origin of the archdeacon's power, it is manifest that originally the power would be extended over the whole of a diocese; but at present it is confined within certain limits. In England, according to the Valor Ecclesiasticus of King Henry VIII., there are fifty-four archdeaconries, or districts through which the visitorial and corrective power of an archdeacon extends. Godolphin and Blackstone state that there were sixty archdeaconries: the number has since been increased, and there are now above sixty in England and Wales. Seven new archdeaconries were erected by 6 & 7 Will. IV. c. 97. These are the archdeaconries of Bristol, Maidstone, Monmouth, Westmoreland, Manchester, Lancaster, and Craven; and archidiaconal power was given by the same act to the dean of Rochester in that part of Kent which is in the diocese of Rochester. The constitution of some of these new archdeaconries is contingent; that of Manchester, for instance, will not take place

This distribution of the dioceses into archdeaconries cannot be assigned to any certain period, but the common opinion is that it was made some time after the Conquest. It is said that Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, was the first English bishop who established an archdeacon in his diocese, about A.D. 1075. The office of archdeacon is mentioned in a charter of William the Conqueror. (Phillimore.) The bishops had baronies, and were tied by the constitutions of Cla.. rendon to a strict attendance upon the king in his great council, and they were consequently obliged to delegate their episcopal powers. Each archidiaconal district was assigned to its own archdeacon, with the same precision as other and larger districts are assigned to the bishops and archbishops; and the archdeacons were entitled to certain annual payments, under the name of procurations, from the benefices within their archdeaconries. The act already cited (6 & 7 Will. IV. c. 97) directed a new arrangement of all existing deaneries and archdeaconries, so that every parish and extra-parochial place shall be within a rural deanery, and every deanery within an archdeaconry, and that no archdeaconry extend out of the diocese.

As the archdeacon in antient times intruded upon the chorepiscopus, so in recent times he has extinguished the authority and destroyed almost the name of another officer of the church, namely, the rural dean. The archdeaconries are still subdivided into deaneries, and it is usual for the archdeacon, when he holds his visitations, to summon the clergy of each deanery to meet him at the chief town of the deanery. Formerly, over each of the deaneries a substantive officer, called a dean, presided, whose duty it was to observe and report, if he had not even power to correct and reform; but the office has been laid aside in some dioceses, though in others it has been reestablished. But where it has been superseded, the duties are discharged by the archdeacon. Though the office of rural

N 2

clesiastical and Admiralty Courts, incor-
porated by royal charter in 1768, and the
advocates and proctors who practise in
these courts receive their admission in the
Arches Court. The judge is the deputy
of the archbishop, who is the judge of
the court. The Dean of Arches has al-
ways been selected from the College of
Advocates. There are four terms in
each year, and four sessions in each term.
An appeal lay from this court to the
Court of Delegates, or more strictly to
the king in chancery (25 Henry VIII.
c. 19), by whom delegates were appointed
to hear each cause, the appeal being to
him as head of the church, in place of
the Pope. By 2 & 3 Will. IV. c. 92, ap-
peals are transferred from the Court of
Delegates to the king in council. The
ecclesiastical courts are competent to en-
tertain criminal proceedings in certain
cases, and also to take cognizance of
causes of defamation; for which last
offence persons were formerly directed to
do penance, but this has very rarely been
required by the Arches Court of late
years. There is no salary attached to the
office of judge; and his income arising
from fees, as also that of the registrar, is
very small.
One judge has for many
years presided in the Arches and in the
Prerogative Court.

five years; that the term of service of a clerk should be seven years, and that no proctor having one such clerk should be capable of taking another at the same time, until the first should have served five years. It is in practice required that a proctor shall have been five years on the list of the thirty-four seniors before being allowed to take an articled clerk. There are two rules observed with respect to the qualification of articled clerks which are not contained in the annexed statute; one, by which the age of the clerk is required to be fourteen, and not above eighteen years; and the other, that such clerk should not have been a stipendiary writing-clerk. The above rule with respect to age has, under particular circumstances, been occasionally dispensed with by the judge. The date of and authority for these two rules are not known. [BARRISTER.]

The ordinances and decrees of Sir Richard Raines, Judge of the Prerogative Court, mentioned in the statute, as made in 1686, do not appear to have been registered. It is conceived that they must have been rules and regulations to be observed in the conduct of suits, and not to the articling of clerks on admission of proctors, which acts are done only before the Official Principal of the There are no bye-laws, regulations, Arches Court, or his surrogate, and are or resolutions made by proctors of the registered in the Arches Court. (ParArches or Prerogative Courts of Canter-liamentary Paper, 327, Sess. 1844.) bury, relating to the articling of clerks In the session of 1844 a bill was to proctors, or to the admission of proc- brought into the House of Commons tors. The articling of clerks and ad- "For facilitating Appeals to the Court mission of proctors are regulated by a of Arches." The preamble stated that it statute of the Archbishop of Canterbury, "would tend to the saving of expense, bearing date the 30th of June, 1696. By and to the better administration of justice, this statute, the number of proctors hav- if either litigant party in any contested ing then increased to forty, it was, among suit in any Ecclesiastical Court, either other things, ordained that there should in the province of Canterbury or in the be thirty-four proctors exercent in the province of York, had the right to remove Arches Court, each of whom should have such suit into the Arches Court of Canpower and privilege to take clerks ap- terbury." § 1 provided that all persons prentices, and that the remaining proctors may (if they think fit) commence a suit should be esteemed and called supernu- in the Court of Arches, and that the meraries, who should not have power to Court of Arches shall have as full power take such clerks until they should have and jurisdiction to proceed in and adjudisucceeded into the number of the thirty-cate upon such suit, and to decree final four; and that no proctor should take any clerk apprentice until he should have continued exercent in the Arches Court

or interlocutory sentence, as if such suit had come before the Court of Arches by letters of request. § 4 provided that pro

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