[Sidenote: Limits of spiritual jurisdiction defined.]
Undismayed by his previous failures, Peckham, in 1285, made another attempt to secure the independence of the Church in matters of jurisdiction; and a series of articles was drawn up by the bishops of his province in convocation, and presented to the king. The most important of these urged that a check should be put on the issue of prohibitions from the king's court staying proceedings in ecclesiastical courts. The articles were answered by the chancellor; some concessions were made which failed to satisfy the bishops, and a reply was sent criticizing the chancellor's answers. Edward was determined to settle the relations of the Church and the Crown in these matters. He had, perhaps before receiving the articles, caused an inquisition to be made into suits brought by the clergy against laymen, had imprisoned all the judges and officers of the ecclesiastical courts who were convicted of having fined laymen too heavily, and had declared that these courts could not claim as of right the cognizance of any save matrimonial and testamentary causes. This violent curtailment of the rights of the Church was maintained during the dispute with the prelates. It was modified shortly afterwards by a writ, addressed to the bishops by the king in parliament, and called "Circumspecte agatis." By this writ, which had the force of a statute, ecclesiastical jurisdiction was defined as extending to cases of deadly sin which were visited by penance or fine, and offences as regards things spiritual, such as neglect of churches, to suits about tithes and offerings, assaults on clerks, defamation, and perjury which did not involve a question of money. This writ, then, ascertained the limits between the areas proper to the secular and the ecclesiastical courts, settled the relations between Church and State in England as far as jurisdiction was concerned, and declared the triumph of the principles which Henry II. had laid down in the Constitutions of Clarendon. The punishments inflicted by spiritual judges for the correction of the soul put a salutary check on violence and debauchery; and if sometimes the clergy used their spiritual power to defend their temporal rights, they executed justice on offenders against morality without respect of persons. Peckham gave a signal instance of this by condemning Sir Osbert Giffard, who had carried off two nuns from Wilton, to nine public floggings, to fasting, and to put off the dress and accoutrements of a knight and a gentleman until he had made a three years' pilgrimage to the Holy Land. And as an ecclesiastical judge had a right to a writ committing any excommunicated person to prison until satisfaction was given to the Church, an offender was forced to submit to the penance imposed on him.