Crossword-Solution: AGATIS 6 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 7

Four years later Edward pressed his advantage still further by the royal ordinance of 1285, called _Circumspecte agatis_, which, though accepting the supremacy of the Church courts within their own sphere, narrowly defined the limits of their power in matters involving a temporal element.

That year, which also witnessed the passing of the _Circumspecte agatis_, stands out as the most fruitful in lawmaking in the whole of Edward's reign.

Edward I., who was a strong king, checked an attempt to magnify the spiritual authority by the writ _Circumspecte agatis_, which defined the sphere of the ecclesiastical courts, put a restraint on religious endowments by the Statute of Mortmain, and desiring that every estate in the realm should have a share in public burdens and counsels, caused the beneficed clergy to be summoned to send proctors to parliament.

The statute of Mortmain of 1279, which forbade the further grant of lands to ecclesiastical corporations without the royal consent, and the writ _Circumspecte Agatis_ of 1285, which limited the church courts to strictly ecclesiastical business, both provoked strong clerical opposition.

Disputes still went on as to rights of jurisdiction, and in 1344, after the grant of a clerical tenth, it was enacted, with the assent of the lay estates, that the ecclesiastical courts should not be subject to unfair interference either by writs of prohibition or by inquiry by secular judges; the whole statute forming a kind of reading of "Circumspecte agatis" in the clerical interest.