to denote that part of a church in which the communion table or altar is placed, with the area before it, in which the congregation assemble when the Eucharist is administered. An outcry was raised at the Reformation against the rubric prefixed to the Common Prayer, which ordained that the chancels should remain as in times past. The more ardent reformers asserted that this ordinance tended only to magnify the priesthood; and hence the modern practice of performing divine service in the body of the church, though the chancel still remains as a separate part of the edifice. In many churches the Epistles and Gospels and the Commandments are read at the communion-table, the proper place for which is the chancel. The chancel was often separated from the nave or body of the church by lattice-work, cancelli, and it was from this circumstance that the term chancel seems to have originated. The word cancelli is used by Cicero and other Latin writers to express a partition made by upright and cross pieces of wood or metal for the purpose of making any barrier or separation in courts of justice, in a theatre, and so forth. In some churches we may hear of the chancel of a particular family. This is in cases in which some particular family has had a private oratory within the church, which has usually been also the burial-place of the family. These private chapels or chantries are sometimes called chancels, for the same reason that the great choir is sometimes so called; that is, in consequence of being divided from the rest of the church by cancelli. CHANCELLOR (in Latin, Cancellárius). The primary meaning of cancellarius is "qui ad cancellos assistit," one who is stationed at the lattice-work of a window or a door way, to introduce visitors, &c. A cancellarius in this sense was no more than a door-keeper. The emperor Carinus made one of his cancellarii praefect of the city, a promotion which caused great dissatisfaction. (Vopiscus, Carinus, c. 16.) In another sense, cancellarius was a kind of legal scribe, so called also from his position at the cancelli of the courts of law. The cancellarius, under the later emperors, and in the Constantinopolitan court, was a chief scribe or secretary (¿ μéyas λoyobÉTMns), who was ultimately invested with judicial powers, and a general superintendence over the rest of the officers of the emperor. He was called cancellarius because he sat intra cancellos (within the lattice), a screen which divided off a portion of a larger room for the sake of greater privacy; from which circumstance the chancel of a church also acquires its name. The prelates of the Roman church had likewise an officer so called; in the Church of England, each bishop has a chancellor, who exercises judicial functions. All the modern nations of Europe have or have had chancellors, though the powers and duties seem to have varied in each. In England the chancellor was originally the king's chief secretary, to whom petitions were referred, by whom patents and grants from the crown were approved and completed, and by whom reports upon such matters were, if necessary, made to the king; hence he was sometimes styled Referendarius. This term occurs in a charter of Ethelbert, A.D. 605; and Selden (Treatise on the Office of Chancellor) considers it synonymous with chancellor, a name which, he says, first occurs, in the history of England, in the time of Edward the Elder, about A.D. 920. In the capacity of secretary he was the adviser of his master; prepared and made out his mandates, grants, and charters, and finally (when seals came into use) affixed his seal. Hence, or perhaps because in early times he was usually an ecclesiastic, he became keeper of the king's conscience, examiner of his patents, the officer by whom prerogative writs were prepared, and keeper of the great seal. The last ecclesiastic who exercised the office was John Williams, archbishop of York, who was lord keeper from July 10, 1621, to November 1, 1625; his friend and secretary, John Hacket, whe became bishop of Lichfield and Coventry wrote his life in a volume of singular interest, which he entitled 'Scrinia Reserata.' The interference of the king, as the source of justice, was frequently sought against the decisions of the courts of law, where they worked injustice; and also in matters which were not cognizable in the ordinary courts, or in which, from the maintenance or protection afforded to his adversary, the petitioner was unable to obtain redress. The jurisdiction with which the English chancellor is invested had its origin in this portion of discretionary power, which was retained by the king on the establishment of courts of justice (Legal Judicature in Chancery stated, p. 27, et seq.). Though the exercise of these powers in modern times is scarcely, if at all, less circumscribed by rule and precedent than the strict jurisdiction of the courts of law [EQUITY], controversies have at times arisen as to the powers of the chancellor; the particulars of one dispute have been preserved to us entire. (The Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery vindicated. Printed at the end of 1 Ch. Rep. and in the 1st vol. of Collect. Jurid.) The style of the Chancellor in England is Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. He takes rank above all dukes not of the blood royal, and next to the archbishop of Canterbury. He is appointed by the delivery of the great seal into his custody, though there are instances of his having been appointed by patent. The resumption of the great seal by the king determines his office. By virtue of his office he is the king's principal adviser in matters of law, and a privy counsellor; speaker and prolocutor of the House of Lords, chief judge in the Court of Chan- | cery, and the head of the profession of the law; visitor in the king's right of all hospitals and colleges of royal foundation; and patron of all crown livings under the value of 201. a year, according to the valuation made in the reign of Henry VIII., and confirmed in that of Elizabeth. [BENEFICE, p. 352.] He appoints and removes all justices of the peace, though usually only at the recommendation of lords-lieutenants of counties. He issues writs for summoning parliaments, and transacts all business connected with the custody and use of the great seal. To him was intrusted the care of infants and their property upon the dissolution of the court of wards and liveries: and he has the jurisdiction over idiots and lunatics by special delegation from the crown. He also exercises a special jurisdiction, conferred upon him by various statutes, as original and appellate judge, as to charitable uses, friendly societies, infant lunatic and idiot trustees, in certain appeals from the court of review, in bankruptcy, and in many other cases. He is a conservator of the peace, and may award precepts and take recognizances to keep the peace; and has concurrent jurisdiction with the other judges of the superior courts, with respect to writs of habeas corpus. Except in the case of service of process, given to him by some recent statutes, the lord chancellor has no jurisdiction in Scotland. The authority of lord chancellor and lord keeper are made the same by the stat. 5 Eliz. c. 18: it is not now customary to appoint a lord keeper, and of course there cannot now be a lord chancellor and lord keeper at the same time. The last lord keeper was Lord Henley, in 1757. The great seal is however sometimes put into commission during the temporary vacancy of the office, or the sickness of the chancellor, the seal being intrusted to the chief commissioner. (1 Will. and M. c. 21.) The chancellor has also important political functions: he has a seat in the cabinet, and usually takes an active part in public measures. He resigns office with the party to which he is attached. By 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 111, § 3, in consideration that the Chancellor had lost the patronage of certain offices then abolished, the king is empowered to grant an annuity of 5000l. a year to the Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper on his resignation of office. The salary of the Lord Chancellor is 10,000l. a year, and is paid out of the Suitors' Fee Fund. He has besides a salary as Speaker of the House of Lords. There is also a Lord High Chancellor of Ireland, whose authority within his own jurisdiction is in most respects the same as that of the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. The salary of the Irish Chancellor, which is paid out of the Consolidated Fund, is 8000l. a year. His retiring pension is 36927. a year. (Selden, Off. Ch.; Black stone, Com.; Story On Equity; and the Books of Chancery Practice.) [CHANCERY.] The Chancellor of a Diocese or of a Bishop is Vicar-general to the bishop, holds his courts, and directs and assists him in matters of ecclesiastical law. He has a freehold in his office, and he is not necessarily an ecclesiastic; but if he is a layman, or married, he must be a Doctor of the Civil Law. (Blackstone, Com. ; 37 H. VIII. c. 17.) The Chancellor of a Cathedral is an officer who superintends the regularity of the religious services. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster presides either in person or by deputy in the court of the Duchy of Lancaster concerning all matters of equity relating to lands holden of the king, in right of the Duchy of Lancaster. His salary is 2000l. a year, and that of the Vice-Chancellor is 600l.: the fees, which amount to 30l. or 401. annually, are deducted from the salary cellor holds courts both in Westminster and in Lancashire. appointment) he sits in court; but all the legal business is transacted by the barons. If the chief baron and barons are equally divided in opinion, the Chancellor of the Exchequer may be required to re-hear the cause with the barons, and give his decision. The last instance occurred in 1735, when Sir Robert Walpole gave his decision upon a question of considerable doubt and difficulty, which is said to have given great satisfaction. (Blackstone, Com.; Fowler's Exchequer Practice.) The Chancellor of the Order of the Garter and other orders of knighthood seals and authenticates the formal instruments of the chapter, and keeps the register of the order. He exercises various functions at the installation of the knights, and during their meetings and processions. CHANCELLOR OF SCOTLAND, As in England, the chancellor of Scotland was always a high officer of the crown, and had great influence with the The Vice-Chan-king and authority in his councils. As in England too, that authority at length extended itself beyond its former limits, and affected the whole judicial power of the kingdom. Its operation and effect in the two countries, however, was different: for while in England the chancellor only carved out for himself a jurisdiction in equity, in Scotland he reached the head of the administration of justice, and sat in a court which dispensed both The Chancellors of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are elected by the respective corporate bodies of which they are the heads; they exercise exclusive jurisdiction in all civil actions and suits where a member of the University or privileged person is one of the parties, except in cases where the right to freehold is concerned. In both the English Uni-equity and common law, and the course versities the duties of the Chancellor are in nearly all cases discharged by a ViceChancellor. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is under-treasurer, and holds the seal of the Exchequer. The office of Lord High Treasurer is now executed by the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the principal finance minister of the crown: the office is sometimes held by the Prime Minister when he is a member of the House of Commons. The legal functions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer are now merely formal. [EXCHEQUER.] Bills in the Exchequer were addressed to him, and to the barons of that court, so long as the equity jurisdiction of the Exchequer existed, and on some occasions (as on his of proceeding in which all the other judicatures of the realm were bound to follow. In 1425, which was shortly after the return of King James I. from his long captivity in England, the "chancellor and with him certaine discreete persones of the thre estates chosen and depute by the king" were erected into the court of the session, for the final determination of all matters competent to the king and his council. The court of the session, however, expired with Bishop Wardlaw, from whom in all likelihood it originated; the chancellor's office being taken, on his death, from his protégé, Bishop Cameron, and given to Sir William Crichton, a layman, when the former policy of determining suits by the old common law was broken by the Union, when both portions of the island became one great mercantile community, to which the civil law was in many respects unsuitable; and since that event various provisions have been made to improve and assimilate the laws and practice of the two kingdoms. The similarity of procedure in the court of session in Scotland and the high court of chancery in England is striking. Both courts indeed, and the ecclesiastical courts of both countries, borrowed their forms from the court of Rome, and with these last the forms of the court of session in many respects still agree. The bill or written supplication to the court for letters, whether of summons or of diligence, is of the same nature with the sup plication for letters in the court of Rome; and it is observable that when the desire of the bill is granted, it is in the same terms in both courts. The condescendence and answers are plainly derived. from the articuli and responsiones of the papal tribunal. The initialia testimonii, or purging of a witness, are identical with the interrogatoria generalia of that court. Letters of advocation, suspension, and reduction are well known there. The restored. This continued (with the exception of an attempt to the contrary in 1457, probably under the influence of Bishop Shorsewood, the favourite and confessor of King James II.) till the time of Bishop Elphinstone, to whom undoubtedly may be ascribed the crafty acts passed in 1487 for the recovery of the large jurisdiction of the chancellor and court of the session, as well as the act 1494, c. 5, to enforce in the courts the study and practice of the canon and civil laws. Nor perhaps shall we greatly err in conceiving his zeal to have been employed in establishing in 1503 the court of daily council, which was essentially a restoration of the old court of the session. But all these proved only preparatory steps to the erection of the court of council and session, or college of justice, which was instituted in 1532, and has continued to our own time. Of this college the chancellor, or, as he then began to be styled, lord chancellor of Scotland, was to be principal; and as on the one hand it was the supreme court of the kingdom, and on the other all inferior courts were required to copy its proceedings, it wielded the whole judicative power of the country. It early claimed also, and exercised, a large legis-"malè appellatum et benè processum" is lative power under the statutes permitting it to pass acts of sederunt; and the officers who executed its warrants and decrees were either its own macers or else messengers, over whom it obtained complete control. These powers the court wielded so as to effect nearly an entire change of the law. The ecclesiastical estate for some time predominated both on the bench and at the bar. The consequence was, the canon and civil laws became, what indeed they used to be styled, the common law of the land, and the old common law became obsolete and antiquated. Much of this has been corrected since the Reformation; and still more since the union with England, where the old common law has ever continued the antagonist of Roman jurisprudence. At the Reformation the authority of the canon law ceased, and not long afterward ministers of the gospel were disabled by statute from being either of the bench or bar. The authority of the canon law was in like manner essentially but verbally translated in the phrase of the Scots court, "finds the letters orderly proceeded;" and letters of horning, caption, and relaxation bear their papal origin impressed upon them. It appears also that from an early period the courtissued commissions to its macers to perform judicial duties, as the ecclesiastics appoint the inferior church officers their legates and commissaries for the like purposes; and at an early time also the judges began the yet subsisting custom of changing their name on their elevation to the bench, in imitation, as it seems, of the like custom on elevation in the papal hierarchy. From what is above stated, we may see why there is no court of chancery in Scotland, separate from the courts of common law, as in England; the whole judicatures of Scotland having become subject to the court of session, where the chancellor presided, dispensing both equity and common law. But from the earliest times there was an office of chancery in Scotland, and we shall find that many of the early chancellors had been clerici cancellarii.' In the list of chancellors for Scotland in the Penny Cyclopædia,' art. "Chancellor," various errors are corrected which occur in Crawford's Officers of State' in the series of chancellors of Scotland. In Beatson's Political Index' there is a chancellor as early as the reign of Malcolm III., but the more authentic series begins with Constantine, earl of Fife, who was chancellor in the time of Alexander I. By art. 24 of the treaty of Union, it was provided that there should in future be but one great seal for the United Kingdom, and that a seal should be kept and used in Scotland for such private rights or grants as had usually passed the great seal of Scotland. The office of chancellor of Scotland then properly expired, and none have been appointed to it since the earl of Seafield, who was chancellor at the time of the Union. CHANCERY (Cancellaria); the term is derived from Chancellor, Cancellarius, and signifies the court where that judge exercises his functions. There are several chanceries, as there are several chancellors; but the place where the Lord High Chancellor's judicial functions are exercised is called the High Court of Chancery. law judges, that is, during good behaviour. He has the power of hearing and determining originally the same matters as the Lord Chancellor, excepting cases in lunacy and bankruptcy; orders and decrees pronounced by the Master of the Rolls are good and valid, but they must be signed by the Lord Chancellor before they are enrolled, and they are subject to be reversed by the Chancellor. The Master of the Rolls has precedence next to the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench. This office is one of high antiquity. The salary is 7000l. a year under 1 Vict. c. 46. The Master of the Rolls in Ireland has 39691. a year under 4 Geo. IV. c. 61. The office of Vice-Chancellor was created by 53 Geo. III. c. 24. This officer (who, in Chancery, takes precedence next to the Master of the Rolls) is appointed by the crown by letters patent, and holds his office during good behaviour. Rank and precedence are given him by 5 Vict. c. 5 next after the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer. If a member of the Privy Council, he is also to be a member of the Judicial Committee. He has power to hear and determine all matters depending in the Court of Chancery, either as a court of law or as a court of equity, or as incident to any ministerial office of the said court, or which are subjected to the jurisdiction of The principal part of the business of such court or of the Lord Chancellor by the Court of Chancery consists in the any special act of parliament, as the Lord administration of Equity, a name which Chancellor shall from time to time direct. in this country comprehends those rules All orders and decrees of the Vice-Chanof law, which are applicable to such cellor are valid, but subject to be altered matters as belong to the jurisdiction of or reversed by the Chancellor; and they the court. The Court of Exchequer had must be signed by the Lord Chancellor a similar jurisdiction, which was abo- before they can be enrolled. It is exlished by 5 Vict. c. 5. [EQUITY.] pressly provided by the act that the ViceThe Lord Chancellor, the three Vice-Chancellor has no power to alter or disChancellors, and the Master of the Rolls, are the judges by whom equity is administered in Chancery. Each of them has a separate court. In term-time they sit in Westminster Hall; in vacation, the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellors sit in Lincoln's Inn, and the Master of the Rolls at the Rolls, in Chancery-lane. The Master of the Rolls is appointed by the crown by letters patent, and holds his office on the same terms as the common charge any decree or order made by the Lord Chancellor, unless authorised by the Lord Chancellor, nor any power to alter or discharge any order or decree o the Master of the Rolls. The salary is 6000l. a year, granted by 2 & 3 Will. IV. c. 116. On the next appointment of a Vice-Chancellor, under 53 Geo. III. c. 24, the salary will be 5000l., with a retiring pension of 3500l. Since the appointment of two additional Vice-Chancellors |