The church courts in post-reformation England enjoyed a vast range of competence touching the affairs of the laity. Matters of life and death, marriage and midwifery, probate and inheritance, sexual offences and defamation of character, as well as questions of tithe, church attendance and religion, were among the dozens of subjects deemed to be ‘of ecclesiastical cognizance’. Bishops and commissaries, archdeacons and other churchmen with ordinary jurisdiction regularly sat in judgement on the laity or performed routine administrative tasks which tapped them for fees. Thousands of people appeared before the ecclesiastical judges as parties to a suit, defendants in an action, witnesses, petitioners or bondsmen. In its judicial and administrative capacity as well as in its pastoral role, the church involved itself in the everyday lives of layfolk of all descriptions. Protestant England was in this respect a much more sacerdotal society than catholic France. By the ordinance of Villers-Cotterets in 1539 the ecclesiastical courts in France lost almost all their powers over the laity. In England the reformation stripped the church courts of their unpopular powers of punishment but left them to serve the state as an adjunct authority for social regulation.