Clarendon

Clarendon, CONSTITUTIONS OF, were laws made by a council of the nobility and prelates held at the hunting lodge of Clarendon, 2 miles SE. of Salisbury, in 1164, whereby King Henry II. checked the power of the church, and greatly narrowed the total exemption which the clergy had claimed from the jurisdiction of the secular magistrate. These famous ordinances, sixteen in number, defined the limits of the patronage, as well as of the jurisdiction, of the pope in England, and provided that the crown should be entitled to interfere in the election to all vacant offices and dignities in the church. The constitutions were unanimously adopted, and Becket, the primate, reluctantly signed them. His subsequent withdrawal of his consent, when Pope Alexander III. declined to ratify them, led to the memorable disputes between Becket and the king (see BECKET). Notwithstanding the personal humiliation to which Henry submitted after Becket's death, most of the provisions of the constitutions of Clarendon, which were part of a great scheme of administrative reform, continued to be a permanent gain to the civil power. See Stubbs, Constitutional History, and his Select Charters.