CONGE, in the French law, a licence, or permission, granted by a superior to an inferior, which gives him a dispensation from some duty to which he was before obliged. A woman cannot obligate herself without the conge or licence of her husband; a monk cannot go out of his convent, without the conge of his superiors.
CONGE d'ire, in ecclesiastical polity, the king's permission royal to a dean and chapter in the time of a vacancy, to chuse a bishop; or to an abbey, or priory, of his own foundation, to chuse their abbot or prior.
The king of England, as sovereign patron of all archbishops, bishops, and other ecclesiastical benefices, had of ancient time free appointment of all ecclesiastical dignities, whenever they chanced to be void; investing them first per bacculum & annulum, and afterwards by his letters-patent; and in course of time he made the election over to others, under certain forms and limitations, as that they should at every vacation, before they chuse, demand the king's conge d'ire, and after the election crave his royal assent, &c.