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statute the Doctor then set forth the act of general pardon, 7th of George I. and insisted on the benefit thereof.

To this replication the Bishop demurred; Dr. Bentley joined in demurrer; and after several arguments, the Court of King's Bench, in Trinity term 1731, were pleased to give judgment for Dr. Bentley, that the prohibition should stand.

Whereupon the Bishop brought a writ of error in parliament to reverse this judgment; and on his behalf (N. Fazakerley, J. Harper) the general question [235] was said to be, Whether, upon the whole matter, the Bishop appeared to have an authority to proceed upon the articles, or not? The 40th chapter of the statutes given by Queen Elizabeth to the college, intitled, De Magistri si res exigat amotione, impowers the Bishop of Ely, as visitor, to proceed against the Master for the crimes therein mentioned, by the words dilapidatio bonorum, et violatio statutorum collegii; and the articles upon which the Bishop was proceeding, amounted plainly to a charge of those crimes, as would appear when the nature of the several facts, which made up the charge, was considered. But, upon the argument of this matter in the Court of King's Bench, several objections were made: 1. That several of the matters charged in the articles were pardoned by the act of general pardon, 7 Geo. I. II. That many of the matters charged upon Dr. Bentley, being done by him in his corporate capacity, and in conjunction with others of the corporation, ought to be considered as corporate acts; and therefore to be punished only by the general visitor of the corporation, which was the King, and not the Bishop of Ely. III. That by the citation, the Doctor was to appear before the Bishop, as visitor of the Master, specially authorised and appointed by the 40th chapter of Queen Elizabeth's statutes; whereas it appeared by the defendant's plea, that a general visitatorial power had been before granted by King Edward VI. to the Bishop of Ely, and consequently, there being no visitatorial power remaining in the crown for Queen Elizabeth to grant, her grant could not enure as an appointment of a special visitor of the Master, but it supposed the Bishop already to be visitor. To the first of these objections it was answered, that the act of general pardon extended only to offences against the public laws of the kingdom, but not to offences against the private statutes of such particular societies as colleges are; and the Court of King's Bench were unanimously of this opinion. To the second it was said, that supposing the Bishop to be the special visitor of the Master only, yet, if Dr. Bentley had really concurred in corporate acts done against the statutes, he was certainly punishable for such concurrence, and the proper person to punish him was his visitor, whether that visitor was the visitor of those who concurred with him or not; and this was likewise the unanimous opinion of the Court of King's Bench. To the last objection it was answered, that supposing the Bishop of Ely was first constituted visitor by the 46th statute of King Edward VI. yet the statutes of Queen Elizabeth being good, and the 40th of those statutes having in it words sufficient of themselves, without the statute of King Edward, to authorise him to proceed against the Master in a special manner, the Bishop might found such proceedings on which of those statutes he thought fit; and as to being special visitor of the Master only, the Bishop did not suppose himself so. But had the citation in question been defective, yet the appearance of Dr. Bentley upon it at the time and place appointed, would effectually have cured any mistake in the citation. And if the Bishop, in his visitatorial acts, had given a wrong account of the original of his jurisdiction, it [236] was not apprehended, that any such error could prejudice him; visitors not being tied up to any particular forms, nor to be prohibited for irregularities in their proceedings, or informalities in their acts, but only for want of jurisdiction. Now in the present case, it appeared upon the record, that the Bishop had a jurisdiction to proceed against the Doctor, and indeed the objection supposes it; if, therefore, this prohibition should be continued, it could not be for want of jurisdiction in the Bishop, but because the citation required the Doctor to appear before the Bishop under a wrong description of his authority; whereas it was apprehended, that the Bishop had no occasion to mention his authority at all; he needed not to have called himself visitor; it would have sufficed, that in fact he was so and Dr. Bentley, having sworn to the observation of the statutes of the college, must have been presumed to know who was the visitor set over him by those statutes. For these reasons it was conceived, that the judgment given by the Court of King's Bench was erroneous, and ought to be reversed.

On the other side it was said (P. Yorke, T. Reeve, W. Greaves), that this was a mere