The Court of Arches is the Archbishop's court of appeal for the Province of Canterbury. It derives its name from the church of St. Mary-le-Bow or St. Maria de Arcubus in the city of London where the court was held from at least the primacy of Archbishop Pecham (1279–92) until the church was destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666. The church was one of thirteen in the City of London which, before the abolition of peculiars in the middle of the nineteenth century, came within the Archbishop's jurisdiction of the deanery of the Arches. The judge or Official Principal who presided over the Court of Arches came to be known as the Dean of the Arches from his lesser office as judge of the court of the peculiar.
