1430 THE CHURCH IN THE DOMINIONS [PART VII 
metropolitan and suffragan. They also held that so much 
of the letters patent as attempted to confer any coercive 
legal jurisdiction was in violation of the law 16 Car. I. c. 11, 
which had repealed the power given in s. 18 of 1 Eliz. c. 1, 
to appoint persons to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction 
within the realms of England and Ireland, or any other the 
dominions and countries of the Crown. By 13 Car. IL c. 12 
the ordinary ecclesiastical jurisdiction and authority as it 
existed before 1639 was restored, but the Act of 16 Car. 1 
was repealed only with a proviso that s. 18 of the Act of 
Elizabeth should remain repealed. 
There was therefore no power in the Crown to create any 
new or additional ecclesiastical tribunal or jurisdiction, and 
the clauses which purported to do so contained in the letters 
patent to the appellant and respondent were simply void in 
law. No metropolitan or bishop in any Colony having 
legislative institutions could, by virtue of the Crown’s 
letters patent alone (unless granted under an Act of Parlia- 
ment or confirmed bya Colonial statute), exercise any coercive 
jurisdiction, or hold any court or tribunal for that purpose. 
Pastoral or spiritual authority might be incidental to the 
office of bishop, but all jurisdiction in the Church, where it 
could be lawfully conferred, must proceed from the Crown, 
and be exercised as the law directed, and suspension or 
privation of office was matter of coercive legal jurisdiction 
and not of mere spiritual authority. 
They proceeded to consider the question whether there 
was any contractual basis, and they replied that not only was 
there no trace of an agreement to confer jurisdiction, but it 
was not legally competent to the Bishop of Natal to give, or to 
the Bishop of Cape Town to accept or exercise, any such juris- 
diction. They also pointed out that the reference to them was 
perfectly proper, as it was a reference to the Sovereign as head 
of the Established Church and depositary of the ultimate 
appellate jurisdiction. Before the Reformation, in a dispute 
of this nature between two independent prelates, an appeal 
would have lain to the Pope, but all appellate authority of 
the Pope over members of the Established Church was by 
statute vested in the Crown. Moreover, by the Act 25