John, by divine providence archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England and metropolitan, to his well-beloved in Christ Bartholomew Clerke, doctor of laws, dean of our mother court of the arches of Canterbury at London, William Aubrey, doctor of laws, auditor of our Canterbury court of audience of causes and transactions, William Drury, doctor of laws, master, warden or commissary of our Canterbury court of the prerogative, or in your absences, to your lawful surrogates, Greeting

By daily experience we know that in the course of time, laws, however well made, come to stond in need of reinforcement, either because of the wickedness of men, which grows daily and threatens new dangers, or because of a different set of matters and circumstances, which need we have recently noticed, from the frequent complaints of several people, has also become the case in the courts of our archiepiscopal see of Canterbury. Desiring to avoid and remedy such inconveniences, and for the better government of our courts and of all who practise in them, as well as for the speedier execution and administration of justice, we have undertaken, after mature and deliberate counsel, to publish the following statutes contained in this volume, signed with our own hand and bearing our archiepiscopal seal. Wherefore we instruct you to order them to be read and promulgated publicly as soon as possible in any and every of the said courts, in our name and by our authority. And when a copy of these statutes, drawn up in identical form, has been transcribed and deposited in each of our courts (which we desire shall be fully completed within the next Michaelmas term), we want this original volume to be returned to us or to our successors for safekeeping. And we firmly enjoin and command, both that you observe them yourselves and that you oversee and ensure, with the utmost diligence, that they are fulfilled by the advocates, registrars, proctors and all other servants of the said courts, by virtue of the oaths previously sworn [by them], and subject to the penalties herein expressed. Notwithstanding this, we declare by the tenor of these presents that it is not our intention to abrogate in any way any old statutes of any court of ours, except in so far as they are incompatible with those statutes or have been otherwise altered.