“The Lord judges the peoples; judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me.”

 

Psalm 7:8

 

The Consistory Court

          A Really Peculiar Place

Those who know something of the history of this priory church will know that in the Middle Ages the Benedictine monks of Selby Abbey formed here what was called the ‘Peculiar Jurisdiction of Snaith’. The monks could raise their own taxes, operate in their own way, be, in the old meaning of the word, peculiar, that is to say, not being like most other parts of the Church.

In the image in the top left by Paul Whiteley, you can see the three swans of Selby Abbey on either side of the window. There is a suspicion that this was the only part of the Priory funded by the Abbey, and the arms of the Dawnay family above the window would seem to support that idea.

The Priory contained a Consistory Court which is, in general, an ecclesiastical court. Each diocese within the Church of England has a consistory court although, in reality, only a few specialist courts remain, and a court session can be held in any appointed church building.

The court originally held jurisdiction over matrimonial and probate issues, but this was moved to secular courts in 1857 by Acts of Parliament. Since then, consistory courts have been used mainly for dispensing faculties for church properties, although they can still be used for the trial of any member of the clergy other than a bishop. This does not happen very often.

In a market town like Snaith, the consistory court in the Priory would probably have been the only court of any kind in the area, and was no doubt used to resolve disputes of all kinds within the boundary of the parish.

Sadly, the court facilities at St Laurence Priory no longer exist, although the court at Chester Cathedral is probably quite representative of what it would have been like in this building.

A page from the Consistory Court Records
(Cause Paper CP.G.3454 from the Borthwick Institute for Archives)