Excerpt from A Collection of the Laws and Canons of the Church of England, From Its First Foundation to the Conquest, and From the Conquest to the Reign of King Henry VIII, Vol. 1 of 2: Translated Into English With Explanatory Notes Mr. Johnson's translation of English Canons, &c., of which the first and only previous edition was published ad. 1720, is mainly founded upon the Concilia of Sir Henry Spelman, who had formed a plan for collecting all the Ecclesiastical councils, decrees, laws and constitutions of the British Isles in three periods, namely, from the first introduction of Chris tianity to the Norman Conquest from the Conquest to the Reformation; and lastly from the Reformation to his own time. The first part of the intended work, completed amid the greatest difficulties, of which the almost universal ignorance of the anglo-saxon tongue was even greater than the troubles of the times, was published ad. 1639; and the second ad. 1664, by his nephew after the author's decease, which event prevented the execution of the third parta. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.