court of high commission

Court of High Commission. Hist. Eccles. law. A tribunal responsible for inquiring into religious offenses such as the holding of heretical opinions, and absence from church. • Functioning as a court, the High Commission also prosecuted violations of the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity (1559), the statutes that gave the Crown supreme power over the Church of England. The Commission’s broad powers and use of civil-law procedures in ways counter to the common law (such as compelling suspects to testify against themselves) sparked opposition to its existence. Its close relationship with the Court of Star Chamber hastened its demise (along with the Star Chamber) in 1641.

— Also termed High Commission Court.

“[T]he court of the king’s high commission in causes ecclesiastical … was intended to vindicate the dignity and peace of the church, by reforming, ordering, and correcting the ecclesiastical state and persons, and all manner of errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, offences, contempts, and enormities. Under the shelter of which very general words, means were found in that and the two succeeding reigns, to vest in the high commissioners extraordinary and almost despotic powers, of fining and imprisoning; which they exerted much beyond the degree of the offence itself, and frequently over offences by no means of spiritual cognizance. For these reasons this court was justly abolished by Statute 16 Car. I, c. 11. And the weak and illegal attempt that was made to revive it, during the reign of King James the second, served only to hasten that infatuated prince’s ruin.” 3 William Blackstone, Commen-taries on the Laws of England 67–68 (1768).

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