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 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 | persons are now often called canons; but the most general name by which they are known, as the institution existed in remote 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 appointment 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 belongs to the archdeacon was anciently performed by the officer in the bishop's | until the creation of Manchester into a court called the chorepiscopus. The bishop's see, which will not occur until chorepiscopus (Xwpeniσкonos) 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 dis- This distribution of the dioceses into charged the minor episcopal functions. archdeaconries cannot be assigned to any He might be of episcopal rank or not certain period, but the common opinion is (Ducange, Glossarium). The chorepis- that it was made some time after the Concopus is mentioned in a Constitution of quest. It is said that Stephen Langton, Justinian. (Cod. i. tit. 3, s. 41 (42).) | archbishop of Canterbury, was the first The manner in which the archdeacon English bishop who established an archusurped upon this obsolete officer and deacon in his diocese, about A.D. 1075. attracted to himself the functions which The office of archdeacon is mentioned in belonged to him, is supposed to have a charter of William the Conqueror. (Philbeen this:-being near the bishop and limore.) The bishops had baronies, and much trusted by him, the archdeacon were tied by the constitutions of Clawas often employed by the bishop to visit rendon to a strict attendance upon the distant parts of the diocese, especially king in his great council, and they were when the bishop required particular and consequently obliged to delegate their authentic information, and to report to episcopal powers. Each archidiaconal disthe bishop the actual state of things. triet was assigned to its own archdeacon, Hence deacons were spoken of by very with the same precision as other and early Christian writers as being the larger districts are assigned to the bishops bishop's eye; and from this power of and archbishops; and the archdeacons inspection and report the transition was were entitled to certain annual payments, easy to the delegation, to one of the dea- under the name of procurations, from the cons, of a portion of episcopal authority, benefices within their archdeaconries. and empowering him to proceed to reform The act already cited (6 & 7 Will. IV. and redress, as well as to observe and c. 97) directed a new arrangement of all report. 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. 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 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 dean has been found extremely useful, no emolument whatever is attached to it. Archdeacons must have been six full years in priests' orders (§ 27, 3 & 4 Vict. c. 27), and they are appointed by the respective bishops; they are inducted by being placed in a stall in the cathedral by the dean and chapter. By virtue of this locus in choro a quare impedit lies for an archdeaconry. (Phillimore.) The duty of archdeacons now is to visit their archdeaconries from time to time: to see that the churches, and especially the chancel, are kept in repair, and that everything is done conformably to the canons and consistently with the decent performance of public worship; and to receive presentations from the churchwardens of matter of public scandal. The visitation of the archdeacon may be held yearly, but he must of necessity have his triennial visitation. Archdeacons may hold courts within their archdeaconries, in which they may hear ecclesiastical causes and grant probates of wills and letters of administration; but an appeal lies to the superior court of the bishop. (24 Hen. VIII. c. 12.) By § 3 of 3 & 4 Vict. c. 86, the archdeacon may be appointed one of the assessors of the bishop's court in hearing proceedings against a clergyman. The judge of the archdeacon's court, when he does not preside himself, is called the Official. Sometimes the archdeacon had a peculiar jurisdiction, in which case his jurisdiction is independent of that of the bishop of the diocese, and an appeal lay to the archbishop. [PECULIAR.] But now, by 6 & 7 Wm. IV. c. 97, § 19, it is enacted that all archdeacons throughout England and Wales shall have and exercise full and equal jurisdiction within their respective archdeaconries, any usage to the contrary notwithstanding. In the revenue attached to the office of archdeacon, we see the inconvenience which attends fixed money payments in connection with offices which are designed to have perpetual endurance. It arises chiefly from the payments by the incumbents. These payments originally bore no contemptible ratio to the whole value of the benefice, and formed a sufficient income for an active and useful officer of the church; but now, by the great change which has taken place in the value of money, the payments are little more than nominal, and the whole income of the archdeacons as such is very inconsiderable. The office, therefore, is generally held by persons who have also benefices or other preferment in the church. There have been in recent times cases where archdeacons have held prebends of cathedrals in other dioceses than that in which their jurisdiction was situated; and also instances in which they have had no cathedral preferment. The 1 & 2 Vict. c. 106, § 124, specially exempts archdeacons from the general operation of the act, by permitting two benefices to be held with an archdeaconry. An archdeacon is said to be a corporation sole. Among the recent acts which affect archdeacons the most important are 1 & 2 Vict. c. 106; 3 & 4 Vict. c. 113; and 4 & 5 Vict. c. 39. Catalogues of the English archdeacons may be found in a book entitled Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ,' by John le Neve. Archdeaconries have been established in some, if not in all, of the dioceses of the new colonial bishops. ARCHES, COURT OF, is the supreme court of appeal in the archbishopric of Canterbury. It derives its name from having formerly been held in the church of St. Mary le Bow (de Arcubus), from which place it was removed about 1567 to the Common Hall of Doctors' Commons, near St. Paul's Church, where it is now held. The acting judge of the court is termed Official Principal of the Court of Arches, or more commouly Dean of the Arches. This court has ordinary jurisdiction in all spiritual causes arising within the parish of St. Mary le Bow and twelve other parishes, which are called a deanery, and are exempt from the authority of the bishop of London. The Court of Arches has also a general appellate jurisdiction in ecclesiastical causes arising within the province of Canterbury, and it has original jurisdiction on subtraction of legacy given by wills which have been proved in the prerogative court of that province. The Dean of the Arches for the time being is president of the College of Doctors of Law, who practise in the Ec clesiastical and Admiralty Courts, incor- 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 Arches Court, or his surrogate, and are registered in the Arches Court. (Parliamentary Paper, 327, Sess. 1844.) There are no bye-laws, regulations, or resolutions made by proctors of the Arches or Prerogative Courts of Canterbury, 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 this statute, the number of proctors having then increased to forty, it was, among other things, ordained that there should be thirty-four proctors exercent in the Arches Court, each of whom should have power and privilege to take clerks apprentices, and that the remaining proctors should be esteemed and called supernumeraries, who should not have power to take such clerks until they should have succeeded into the number of the thirtyfour; and that no proctor should take any clerk apprentice until he should have continued exercent in the Arches Court and to the better administration of justice, if either litigant party in any contested suit in any Ecclesiastical Court, either in the province of Canterbury or in the province of York, had the right to remove such suit into the Arches Court of Canterbury." § 1 provided that all persons may (if they think fit) commence a suit in the Court of Arches, and that the Court of Arches shall have as full power and jurisdiction to proceed in and adjudicate upon such suit, and to decree final or interlocutory sentence, as if such suit had come before the Court of Arches by letters of request. § 4 provided that pro cess of the Court of Arches should extend to England and Wales; and § 5, that the Dean of Arches might order examination to be taken in India and the Colonies, as in 1 Geo. IV. c. 101. This bill, however, was not carried. ARCHIVE, or ARCHIVES, a chamber or apartment where the public papers or records of a state or community are deposited sometimes, by a common figure, applied to the papers themselves. The word archive is ultimately derived from the Greek 'Apxeîov (Archeion). The Greek word archeion seems, in its primary signification, to mean "a council-house, or state-house," or "a body of public functionaries," as the Ephori at Sparta. (Aristotle, Politic. ii. 9; and Pausanias, iii. 11.) Others derive the word Archive from arca," a chest," such being in early times a usual depository for records. So Isidorus, Orig. lib. xx. c. 9-" Archa dicta, quod arceat visum atque prohibeat. Hinc et archivum, hinc et arcanum, id est secretum, unde cæteri arcentur." "It is called Archa, because it does not allow (arc-eat) us to see what is in it. Hence also Archivum and Arcanum, that is, a thing kept secret, from which people are excluded (arc-entur)." This explanation is manifestly false and absurd. The Greek word Archeion was introduced into the Latin language, to signify a place in which public instruments were deposited (Dig. 48, tit. 19, s. 9). The word Archiva, from which the French and English Archives is derived, is used by Tertullian (Facciol. Lexic. Archium et Archivum'); thus he speaks of the "Romana Archiva " The Latin word for Archeium is Tabularium. Among the Romans, archives, in the sense of public documents (tabulæ publica), were deposited in temples. These documents were-leges, senatusconsulta, tabulæ censoriæ, registers of births and deaths, and other like matters. Registers of this kind were kept in the temples of the Nymphs, of Lucina, and others; but more particularly that of Saturn, in which also the public treasury was kept. Among the early Christians churches were used for the same purposes. In England registers of births, deaths, and marriages were till recently (1837) kept in the parish churches, and were generally admissible as evidence of the facts to which they relate, though_not_originally intended for that purpose. Partial attempts at registration were made by the Dissenters, such as the registration of births kept at Dr. Williams' Library, Redcross-street. One-half of the parish registers anterior to A.D. 1600 had been lost at the period when the act for the registration of births, marriages, and deaths came into operation. By § 8 of this statute a registeroffice is required to be provided and upheld in each poor-law union in England and Wales, for the custody of the registers; and §§ 2 and 5 establish a central office in London. [REGISTRATION OF BIRTHS, &c.] By § 65 of the Municipal Corporations Act (5 Wm. IV. c. 76) the custody of charters, deeds, muniments, and records of every borough shall be kept in such place as the council shall direct; and the town-clerk shall have the charge and custody of and be responsible for them. Justinian's legislation made public documents judicial evidence. It is said that Charlemagne ordered the establishment of places for the custody of public documents. The church has usually been most careful in the preservation of all its papers, and accordingly such papers are the oldest that have been preserved in modern times. The importance of carefully preserving all documents that relate to transactions which affect the interests of the state and its component members is obvious; and next to the preservation of such documents, the most important thing is to arrange them well, and render them accessible, under proper regulations, to all persons who have occasion to use them. What has been done in this way in Germany is stated in the article Archive,' in the Staats-Lexicon of Rotteck and Welcker. In England the wordArchives is not used to indicate public documents. Such documents are called Charters, Muniments, Records, and State-papers. [RECORDS.] AREO'PAGUS, COUNCIL OF, a council so called from the hill of that name, on which its sessions were held; it was also called the council above (vw Bouλn), to distinguish it from the Council |