The reader will probably feel some surprise to learn that they were yet unknown; but a committee of inquiry was appointed, and the next day Richard de Lucy and Joscelin de Baliol exhibited the sixteen Constitutions of Clarendon.  Three copies were made, each of which was subscribed by the King, the prelates, and thirty-seven barons.  Henry then demanded that the bishops should affix their seals.  After what had passed, it was a trifle neither worth the asking nor the refusing.  The Primate replied that he had performed all that he had promised, and that he would do nothing more.  His conduct on this trying occasion has been severely condemned for its duplicity.  To me he appears more deserving of pity than censure.  His was not the tergiversation of one who seeks to effect his object by fraud and deception:  it was rather the hesitation of a mind oscillating between the decision of his own judgment and the opinions and apprehensions of others.  His conviction seems to have remained unchanged:  he yielded to avoid the charge of having by his obstinacy drawn destruction on the heads of his fellow-bishops.

After the vehemence with which the recognition of the “customs” was urged, and the importance which has been attached to them by modern writers, the reader will naturally expect some account of the Constitutions of Clarendon.  I shall therefore mention the principal: 

I. It was enacted that “the custody of every vacant archbishopric, bishopric, abbey, and priory of royal foundation ought to be given and its revenues paid to the king; and that the election of a new incumbent ought to be made in consequence of the king’s writ, by the chief clergy of the church, assembled in the king’s chapel, with the assent of the king, and with the advice of such prelates as the king may call to his assistance.”  The custom recited in the first part of this constitution could not claim higher antiquity than the reign of William Rufus, by whom it was introduced.  It had, moreover, been renounced after his death by all his successors, by Henry I, by Stephen, and, lastly, by the present King himself.  On what plea therefore it could be now confirmed as an ancient custom it is difficult to comprehend.

II.  By the second and seventh articles it was provided that in almost every suit, civil or criminal, in which each or either party was a clergyman, the proceeding should commence before the king’s justices, who should determine whether the cause ought to be tried in the secular or episcopal courts; and that in the latter case a civil officer should be present to report the proceedings, and the defendant, if he were convicted in a criminal action, should lose his benefit of clergy.  This, however it might be called for by the exigencies of the times, ought not to have been termed an ancient custom.  It was most certainly an innovation.  It overturned the law as it had invariably stood from the days of the Conqueror, and did not restore the judicial process of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty.