But these publications and all other printed matter were subject to the strict censorship of Church and State.  Extremely few presses were permitted in England, and these few under the jealous supervision of the high ecclesiastical authorities, as is evidenced by the numerous orders or decrees issued by them to the Master and Wardens of the London Stationers Company, which, with a very few special patentees, enjoyed the monopoly of printing.[162]

Having now reviewed the chief administrative functions of the spiritual courts and their mode of exercise, the question presents itself, What were the means at the disposal of the ordinaries for enforcing their decrees?  The principal one of these has already been mentioned incidentally, viz., excommunication.  Excommunication was the most usual, as it was by far the most effective, weapon for compelling obedience to the mandate of the judge in any matter whatever.  Indeed without this instrument of coercion the ecclesiastical judges would have been impotent.

Excommunication was of two kinds, the lesser and the greater.  The former was in constant use (to employ the words of a contemporary document) “for manifest and wilful contumacy or disobedience in not appearing when ... summoned for a cause ecclesiastical, or when any sentence or decree of the bishop or his officer, being deliberately made, was wilfully disobeyed...."[163] Even under the lesser excommunication a man could not attend service, and he was deprived of the use of the sacraments.[164] If an excommunicate sought to enter church with the congregation, either he had to be forcibly expelled or the service could not proceed.[165] If he continued in his contempt of court he made himself liable to the greater excommunication,[166] and then he was virtually an outcast from the society of his fellow parishioners.[167] That excommunication was feared by the great majority of parish folk there is no reason to doubt.  Certainly the greater excommunication might seriously injure a man in his business as well as his social interests, not to mention the trouble and expense of getting an absolution.[168] That excommunication reduced most offenders to order the church court proceedings demonstrate.  If, however, a man were obdurate and hardened he was turned over to the Queen’s High Commissioners, and these, while making the fullest use of ecclesiastical procedure and the oath ex officio,[169] also freely employed the penalties of the temporal courts, viz., fines and imprisonments.  As no ecclesiastical offence was too small for the Commissioners to deal with, and as their jurisdiction was not limited (like that of the ordinaries) to a district or a diocese, courts of High Commission may be called universal ordinaries.[170] Finally, if a person stood excommunicate over forty days, an ecclesiastical judge, on application to the diocesan, might procure against him out of Chancery the writ De excommunicato capiendo.