ABSTRACT
The ecclesiastical courts in the latter part of the eighteenth century were decayed, but they were not dead. Apart from the question of discipline, the profession of ecclesiastical law was sustained by the administration of the probate jurisdiction of the nation. Several commentators note a sharper decline in presentments from the 1780s on, Gibson and Begiato noting that religious reformers seemed to be placing their faith in the new Sunday Schools to reform the morals of the nation in place of the old discipline. As the spiritual discipline of the laity by the church courts slowly but surely diminished, it is not surprising that that of the clergy no longer lived up to that of the rigorous and controversial seventeenth century. In the early nineteenth century, the Evangelical movement came first, raising expectations of Christian discipleship for all, and the clergy by implication.
