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![handle is hein.slavery/ssactsengr0360 and id is 1 raw text is: years), whether frivolous or not, are vexatious, on that ground only-that in proportion
as such offences are more penal in clerks than in laymen, some limitation, in point of
time, as to suits for such offences is perhaps more necessary in the instance of clerks
than it is in that of laymen-lastly, that the statute had constantly received the interpre-
tation now contended for in practice, to this extent at least; that opinions to that
effect had repeatedly been given by (possibly every) counsel of (any) standing at the
bar; (a), [417] and that no suit similar to the present, under similar circumstances, had
been attempted to be instituted in the long interval between the passing of the act
and the present day. If the Court had any reasonable doubt, the defendant was said
to be clearly entitled to the benefit of that doubt, so as to be dismissed from this part
of the charge.
Court-Sir John Nicholl. The question raised by this objection is a new question,
and it is one not unattended with some doubt and difficulty. On the one hand, the
title of the act, which may be looked to for its object in the case of this as of other
statutes, would seem to imply that it was for the protection of individuals (laymen)
from suits for fornication, in order to the mere infliction of penance after a limited
time : and the particular occasion of the passing of the act which the Court recollects
to have been, certain suits against laymen for fornication long after the alleged com-
mission of the offence then lately depending in an ecclesiastical Court in the west of
England, and the proceedings in which were the subject of pretty general comment at
that time, infers this again to have been its true object. Hence I am strongly disposed
to think that the legislature in passing this act had no intention to interfere at all
with suits instituted for the correction of clerks ; or, in other words, to prevent suits
like the present against clerks, in order to their suspension or deprivation for incon-
tinency among other offices, though [418] no actual incontinence should be chargeable
upon the particular defendant within eight months from the commencement of the
suit. On the other hand, however, the words of the enacting clause in themselves,
and without reference to the preamble of the act, certainly are sufficiently broad, as
contended, to render it incompetent to the Court to entertain the present suit, so far
as the charges of incontinence are concerned. Upon the whole, however, after the
best consideration that I have been able to give to the subject, the statute appears to
me so clearly to have been framed, alio intuitu to that for which it is invoked, that I
shall admit the articles objected to; leaving it to the defendant to appeal, if he thinks
proper, to a tribunal, of which judges of the common law are necessarily a component
part ; (a)2 or if he prefers that course, to apply for a prohibition to one of these Courts
whose peculiar province it is to construe acts of parliament-any one of which is, of
course, more able than this Court to put a right interpretation on the statute, on which
alone the objection taken to these articles avowedly rests.(b)
[419] FULLER V. LANE. Hilary Term, Arches Court, By-Day, 1825. -Faculties appro-
priating pews in parish churches to particular families, in different forms and
under different limitations, too lavishly granted by ordinaries in former times-
the numerous exclusive rights to particular pews vested, or supposed to be vested,
in particular families to which this has given rise, nuisances to parishes at large-it is
(a)1 See too the case of Schulles v. Ilodgson, ante, vol. 1, page 321, where the incon-
tinence charged on the defendant (a clerk in orders, like this defendant, and proceeded
against in a similar suit, in order to the infliction of a similar penalty) was expressly
pleaded to have been committed within eight calendar months from the commence-
ment of the suit. In the case of Schultes v. Hod gson, indeed, the articles were admitted
where the suit commenced in the Consistory Court of Sarum ; it only came to this
Court, the Court of Arches, by appeal. It was not therefore cited in the argument,
by way of authority ; but merely as illustrative of the construction that had been
generally put upon the statute.
(a)2 The Court of Delegates.
(b) The defendant, in the following Easter Term, moving the Court of King's
Bench for a prohibition, a rule was made to shew cause why the Court of Arches
should not be prohibited from holding suit as to the charges of incontinence objected
in these articles. Upon cause shewn, the Court of King's Bench directed that the
plaintiff (the defendant in this Court) should declare in prohibition. And here at
present (September, 1825) the matter rests.
348
FULLER V. LANE
2 ADD. 417.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.slavery/ssactsengr0360&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)