| 释义 |
Doctors' Commons
[See commons 3 b.]
The common table and dining-hall of the Association or College of Doctors of Civil Law in London; hence, the buildings occupied and used by these as an incorporated Society and now the name of the site of these, to the south of St. Paul's Cathedral.
The Society was formed in 1509, by civilians entitled to plead in the Court of Arches. In 1768 they were incorporated under the name of ‘the College of Doctors of Laws [of Oxford and Cambridge] exercent in the Ecclesiastical and Admiralty Courts’. In the buildings of Doctors' Commons were held five courts, viz. the Court of Arches, Prerogative Court of Canterbury, Court of Faculties or Dispensations, Consistory Court, and High Court of Admiralty; the business included all matters of ecclesiastical law, prosecutions for heresy, divorce suits, licences for marriage, testamentary affairs, Admiralty and Prize cases, etc. The Society was dissolved in 1858 and the buildings were taken down in 1867. Literary references to Doctors' Commons in later times usually refer to the registration or probate of wills, to marriage licences, or to proceedings for divorce.
1680J. Godolphin Repertor. Canon. (ed. 2) App. 10 Doctors of the Civil Laws to the Number of Thirteen in all, assembled together in the common Dining-Hall of Doctors Commons in London. a1690Bp. T. Barlow Rem. 365 (T.) A dignitary of our church..had been at Doctors-Commons; and there fee'd one of the doctors, who is a judge of one of those courts where matrimonial causes are conusable. 1705Hickeringill Priest-cr. iv. (1721) 210 Another calls to the Bumbailiffs, the Jaylors, Doctor's-Commons, and the Hangman. 1708S. Centlivre Busie Body iv. iv, With this Proviso that he To-morrow Morning weds me. He is now gone to Doctors-Commons for a Licence. 1813Byron Waltz xiii, Search Doctors' Commons. 1819― Juan i. xxxvi, No choice was left his feelings or his pride, Save death or Doctors' Commons. 1854Phillimore Internat. Law Pref. (1873) 37. |