in the French law, a license 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 oblige herself without the conge or license of her husband; a monk cannot go out of his convent, without the conge of his superiors.

CONGE d'élire, in ecclesiastical policy, the king's permission royal to a dean and chapter in the time of a vacancy, to choose a bishop; or to an abbey, or priory, of his own foundation, to choose 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 dignitaries, whosoever they chanced to be void; investing them first per baculum et annuitum, 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 choose, demand the king's conge d'élire, and after the election crave his royal assent, &c.

in Architecture, a mould in form of a quarter round, or a cavetto, which serves to separate two members from one another; such as that which joins the shaft of the column to the cincture, called also apophysis.

CONGES are also rings or ferrels formerly used in the extremities of wooden pillars, to keep them from splitting, afterwards imitated in stone-work.