8o RECENT CHANGES. [XIV. work and treasury of all sorts of such lore. There were too Johnson, Wilkins, and many other honest and subordinate workers on the theological as well as on the legal side. But the history of this department of law draws quickly to an end. The Hanoverian policy with regard to the Church and Convocation fell on all politico-ecclesiastical life as a blight. The Nonjurors were left out of the pale of the recognised laity, the common lawyers edged the theologians out of the court of delegates, the Convocations were silenced, and the bishops, almost as much as in Elizabeth's time, made their position in the House of Lords the fulcrum of all the force they ventured to exercise. Except for testamentary causes, and rare occasions of matrimonial and slanderous causes, the Church jurisdiction ceased to exist, and so continued dormant an until in our times, in 1849d i n 1 ^5o , the Gorham case roused the attention of both lawyers and clergymen to the fact that without knowing it they had let the centre of ecclesiastical gravity become seriously misplaced. Into this region of discussion, for many reasons, I must not attempt now to make my way. A few years after the Gorham controversy, a change or series of changes set in from another quarter: the matrimonial jurisdiction was remodelled when the facilities for divorce were increased, and the whole testamentary jurisdiction was withdrawn from the nominal superintendence of the archbishops. The Courts, the profits and privileges of which had so long maintained the close corporation of Doctors' Commons, and had caused the study of canon law in some at least of its branches to be languidly pursued, were radically and fundamentally changed ; and, although it was difficult at once to improvise new forms and rules of procedure to take the place of the ancient forms and those which had grown out of them, these forms also were doomed. In the still more recent remodelling of the whole judicial system further