in English ecclesiastical polity, is a court of appeal, belonging to the archbishop of each province; whereof the judge is called the dean of the arches, because he anciently held his court in the church of St Mary le bow (Santa Maria de arcibus), though all the principal spiritual courts are now holden at Doctors Commons. His proper jurisdiction is only over the 13 peculiar parishes belonging to the archbishop in London, but the office of dean of the arches having been for a long time united with that of the archbishop's principal office, he now, in right of the last-mentioned office, receives and determines appeals from the sentences of all inferior ecclesiastical courts within the province. And from him there lies an appeal to the king in chancery (that is, to a court of delegates appointed under the king's great seal), by statute 25th Hen. VIII. c. 19, as supreme head of the English church, in the place of the bishop of Rome, who formerly exercised this jurisdiction; which circumstance alone will furnish the reason why the Popish clergy were so anxious to separate the spiritual court from the temporal.